Enslavement & Racial Terror - Mt Willing, AL - Alabama Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Marker text:

The enslavement of black people in the United States was a brutal, dehumanizing system that lasted more than 200 years. Between 1819 and 1860, Alabama's enslaved population grew from 40,000 to 435,000. According to the U.S. Census, 2 out of 3 of Lowndes County's more than 27,000 residents were enslaved black people in 1860. The county had the fifth largest enslaved population in Alabama, and the 12th largest nationwide.

Mt. Willing Church was built at this site in 1832, constructed by enslaved people who were forced to sit in segregated sections when they attended service. “Slavery as it exists among us," read an Oct. 1860 letter in the Hayneville Chronicle,"is sanctioned by the Constitution, by the Bible, and it ought to be extended."

White landowners committed to a myth of racial inferiority used the domestic slave trade to build an agricultural economy dependent on the exploited labor of black people. After the South lost the Civil War in 1865, many white people remained committed to white supremacy and determined to use violence to continue oppressing and exploiting black people. Between 1877 and 1950, white mobs lynched thousands of African Americans to intimidate black communities and enforce racial hierarchy. Of the more than 350 racial terror lynching victims documented in Alabama, at least 16 were killed in Lowndes County.

Marker Name: Enslavement & Racial Terror Marker Type: Rural Roadside Addtional Information:: Erected by the Equal Justice Initiative Community Remembrance Project. Date Dedicated / Placed: 2019 Marker Number: N/A

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