Taylor received a land grant of 80 acres from the U. By , the county seat was moved to Walker's Mill and Store from Claiborne , which had served as the county seat for 22 years. After becoming the county seat, the town's name was briefly changed to Centerville and then to Monroeville after all the legal papers were transferred from Claiborne.
In , the first courthouse burned and all records were lost. A new courthouse was constructed by enslaved laborers with bricks made locally in the s.
Despite its status as the county seat, Monroeville was not officially incorporated until April 15, The courthouse burned again in but was restored and remained in use until , when the current courthouse was built. At the Civil War's end in , Monroeville began a rebuilding effort that continued until The early years of the twentieth century were difficult economically. Many locals grew cotton on small farms , and northern companies exploited the area's timber.
Steamboat traffic along the Alabama River between Mobile and Selma initially was an important contributor to the economic development in the area. This proved to be a boon to Monroeville's economy, as many people began to move inland to the city because of the railroad. In , the first airport was built, but it did not have paved runways until or a hangar until This airport was used during World War II for military training and today serves as the Monroe County Airport, officially established in Also, in , city water and electric power were brought to Monroeville.
Sewage service for the town came around , although only the jail and courthouse had plumbing for some time. Call us: Known for being the home of acclaimed novelists Harper Lee and Truman Capote, Monroeville, Alabama is a vibrant little city brimming with historic charm and Southern charisma. Looking for things to do in Monroeville, AL?
Visitors to the Literary Capital of the South will find a number of things to do and see that are sure to make for a memorable stay. Monroeville, Alabama boasts an exciting history that stretches back more than years. Before planning your next trip, check out some favorite Monroeville attractions that can help make the most of your visit.
Settlers had occupied lands upon which the community is now built for many years before the city of Monroeville was ever incorporated. I learned this at the Interpretive Center outside town, where the docents who told me this shook their heads at the sorry fact. After all the bloodshed and sacrifice, voter turnout was lagging, and Selma itself was enduring an economy in crisis.
This went unremarked by the president and the civil rights stalwarts and the celebrities, most of whom took the next plane out of this sad and supine town. Driving out of Selma on narrow Highway 41, which was lined by tall trees and deep woods, I got a taste of the visitable past.
I passed through Camden, a ruinous town of empty shops and obvious poverty, just a flicker of beauty in some of the derelict houses, an abandoned filling station, the white-washed clapboards and a tiny cupola of old Antioch Baptist Church Martin Luther King Jr. After all this time-warp decay, Monroeville looked smart and promising, with its many churches and picturesque courthouse and fine old houses.
Its certain distinction and self-awareness and its pride were the result of its isolation. Nearly miles from any city, Monroeville had always been in the middle of nowhere—no one arrived by accident. As Southerners said, You had to be going there to get there. Hopewell C. McIntosh, and a firebrand named Ezra Cunningham, who had taken part in the Selma march. All this information came from H. Williams, who had brought me to a Hopewell pew. Minister Mary was funny and teasing in her sermon, and her message was simple: Be hopeful in hard times.
The Lord gonna fee-all you with hope. You might not have money—never mind. You need the Holy Spirit! Afterward, the hospitable gesture, my invitation to lunch at the Williams house, a comfortable bungalow on Golf Drive, near the gates to Whitey Lee Park, which was off-limits to blacks until the s, and the once-segregated golf course. I raised the subject of Mockingbird , which made Nannie Ruth shrug.
Forget the rest. The audience is paying more attention to the jokes than to what they see. In Monroeville, the dramas were intense but small-scale and persistent. The year the book came out all the schools were segregated and they remained so for the next five years. And once the schools were integrated in , the white private school Monroe Academy was established not long after. Race relations had been generally good, and apart from the Freedom Riders from the North which Nelle Lee disparaged at the time as agitators , there were no major racial incidents, only the threat of them.
And eating slowly he was provoked to a reminiscence, recalling how in December the Monroeville Christmas parade was canceled, because the Klan had warned that if the band from the black high school marched with whites, there would be blood.
To be fair, all the whites I spoke to in Monroeville condemned this lamentable episode. Later, in , the Klan congregated on Drewry Road, wearing sheets and hoods, 40 or 50 of them, and they marched down Drewry to the Old Courthouse. And what a sheriff.
Up to the late s, it was Sheriff Charlie Sizemore, noted for his bad temper. How bad? One example: A prominent black pastor, N. Smith, was talking to another black man, Scott Nettles, on the corner of Claiborne and Mount Pleasant, the center of Monroeville, and steps from the stately courthouse, just chatting.
To please the white folks, to build a reputation. As an act of atonement, Sizemore went down to Clausell, to the main house of worship, Bethel Baptist Church, and begged the black congregation for forgiveness. Out of curiosity, and against the advice of several whites I met in town, I visited Clausell, the traditionally black section of town.
Clausell was named for that black family. The projects was a cul-de-sac of brick bungalows, low-cost housing, but Irma was not in any of them. Sometimes we hear guns—people shooting in the woods. You see that cross down the road? He was shot and killed a few years ago right there, maybe drug-related. A white man in Monroeville told me that Clausell was so dangerous that the police never went there alone, but always in twos.
Yet Brittany, 22, mother of two small girls, said that violence was not the problem. Thomas Lane Butts, former pastor of the First United Methodist Church, where Nelle Lee and her sister, Alice, had been members of his congregation, and his dear friends. He was 85, and had traveled throughout the South, and knew what he was talking about.
I studied by oil lamp. The work paid off. After theology studies at Emory and Northwestern, and parishes in Mobile and Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and civil rights struggles, he became pastor of this Methodist church.
Butts had a volume of Freud in his lap the day I met him, searching for a quotation in Civilization and Its Discontents. His finger on the page, Rev. Man is a wolf to man.
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