Place:Macon, Alabama, United States

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Macon County is a county located in the east central part of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,532. Its county seat is Tuskegee. Its name is in honor of Nathaniel Macon, a member of the United States Senate from North Carolina.

Developed for cotton plantation agriculture in the nineteenth century, the county is considered within the Black Belt of the South. It has had a majority-black population since before the American Civil War.

Since 1972, no non-Democrat on a presidential level has ever gotten more than 19% of the vote.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

For thousands of years, this area was inhabited by varying cultures of indigenous peoples. The historic tribes encountered by European explorers were the Creek people, descendants of the Mississippian culture.

Macon County was established by European Americans on December 18, 1832, from land ceded by the Creek, following the US Congress' passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Creek were removed to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. The new settlers brought slaves with them from eastern areas of the South or purchased them in slave markets, such as at New Orleans. They developed the county for large cotton plantations.

In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of African-Americans migrated out of the county to industrial cities in the North and Midwest for job opportunities, and the chance to escape legal segregation. Those who remained have struggled for employment in the mostly rural county, and population has declined by about one-third since 1950.

Before 1983, Macon County was primarily known as the home of historic Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, and its noted founder and first president, Dr. Booker T. Washington.

Timeline

Population History

source: Source:Population of States and Counties of the United States: 1790-1990

Cemeteries

Cemeteries of Macon County, Alabama, United States

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