Rina Free

Lee county Georgia is 75th on the list. By 1899, Lee county was sick with Jim Crow and fits the criteria of a Jim Crow sundown town. Segregation in public spaces schools, and housing. 2. Terror from hoods, police, and citizens, 3. Violence or worse. This county had 14 lynchings! Let’s learn history. 

Our ancestors were enslaved in this county. Once the colonizers realized the soil was fertile and transporting cotton by railway and steamboat was possible, oh yeah, this place became rich from our ancestors free labor. During slavery, church was important to our ancestors, and by 1835 the 

Hebron Baptist Church was established by the overseer for us. In 1840, we had a Baptist Church in Palmyra. By 1853 the New Hope Methodist Church West in Smithville was founded. 

By 1860, our ancestors were double the white population in this brewing Jim Crow sundown county. Still enslaved, and heavily guided to religion, Antioch Baptist Church was in existence by 1863. 

By emancipation, it was our faith. Looking towards better days to come that got our ancestors through in Lee county. Our ancestors started buying land, while others found themselves as sha or tenant farmers and establishing more churches like Trinity United Methodist Church in 1889 and the Mount Olive AME Church in 1895. But this brewing rural Jim Crow sundown county was brewing and by 1899, it showed it’s ugly head. Mr. Sam Hose was horrifically unalived in Newnan county, and as expected, our ancestors were trying to process this and what it meant for us all together. Well the white people of Lee county wanted to make sure we didn’t have any more questions about what it meant for us and our place in this county. A mob heard about us talking about the unaliving of Mr Sam Hose. You know, processing it. Mr. Mitchell Daniel spoke ill about the lynching, so in April of 1899, a mob came and lynched him, too. Noone was ever held accountable. 

Our basic American rights under the Constitution, freedom of speech, simply were not allowed here. You could literally be lynched for talking too upity, I guess? By the early 1900s, Imagine being lost in the wrong part of Lee county at night. No cell phones. Hopefully you’d make it out. 

At the turn of the century, education was top of the list for our ancestors in Lee county. 1903, out of an abandoned house, our ancestors started a school in Smithville. We proved to be so smart that the county school board built a 3 room school for us, but the way we were made villains in this county…. sipping their daily coffee and reading their papers in 1906 people would read things that would help shape the mindset of white people in Lee county for generations to come. We were the majority in Lee county, but back then, the quiet part was said out loud and proud– they need to disenfranchis our ancestors. We’ve already sent a legislator from Lee county With a majority, By 1914, our ancestors felt within their rights to stand up for themselves in Lee county and in 1914, there were 2 incidences of our ancestors pew pewing people in the eye….listen. it ended with one of our ancestors unalived, a white man unalived, and several others wounded. 

Our ancestor William Webster shot out Albert greens eyes. As a result Francis marion bass’ was looking for Edward Tyson who was hiding under the house. Tyson then shot out Marion bass’ eye. 

After any progress our ancestors made, it was time again for home Crow to show his ugly head. Our place had to be known in this Jim Crow sundown county.

January of 1916 Felix Lake, his sons Frank and Dewey, and Major, and nephew Seymour were stolen by a mob from the Worth County jail, taken to Lee county, and all lynched from one branch. There’s photos of it. They were never given a trial, even more so, reports said they didn’t even have strong evidence against these men except a confession of the father at gun point. Something any of us would do. By the 1920s, our ancestors started moving with the great migration, but lol Lee county said good…don’t let the door hit ya on the way out. Like Chile please. By 1928 our ancestors were attending school at places like the Smithville Rosenwald School, separate and unequal, even though we were still greatly the majority here. But that doesn’t matter in a Jim Crow sundown town. The white people owned the large farms, had generational wealth, and Georgias Jim Crow laws on their side. We were dealing with separate and unequal. 

Being the majority in this county, when the civil rights movement started making waves across the country, our family in Lee county knew it was time for full equality to get us out of the Jim Crow sundown town era. 

By 1962, the civil rights movement was in full effect in Lee county Georgia. Our families were tired of segragtation and the generations of voter disenfranchisement. By the summer, a full voter registration project was happening. 

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Sncc took the lead under direct lead of Mr. And Mrs Charles and Shirley Sherrod. You remember Mrs. Shirley from bad Baker county…her father was unalived right on front of her when she was just 17. Yes, Mrs. Shirley was pushed into the movement. 

.students like Wingfield would go door to door to get our ancestors out to vote. They were fearless. Our ancestors could get fired, their homes could be burned, or worse. August 1962 shady Grove was the first of many of our churches to get burned down. Even Dr king was touched and wrote about this. 

At this point, forget integration. Mr and Mrs Sherrod along with others got together and bought over 6000 acres of land in Lee county. They called it New Community. We finally had a real safe place to be– during the day and night

“We wanted to put something together where we would always have the land, so that’s how we came up with … owning the land together … as a community,” Sherrod said.

When New Communities was formed in 

Sherrod said they grew peanuts, corn, soybeans, wheat, muscadine grapes, watermelons and other vegetables. They hosted a herd of cattle and hogs. They became known for their cured meats, which they cooked in an old fashioned smokehouse on the side of the road. 

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Wow! I wish that’s where the story ended, but this is a Jim Crow sundown county and this community faced harassment and intimidation from neighbors. And flat out discrimination from the US department of agriculture that blocked funds that put them in debt plus, they had years of drought, so by 1980s they were forced to sell 1300 acres and the rest was lost to foreclosure. 

All wasn’t lost though because in 1999 they won a class action lawsuit for 375 million dollars against the US department of agriculture and in 2011 they were able to buy back 1600 acres of land. In 2025….

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