This website is an interactive venture dedicated to gathering and sharing stories, images, and creative work (songs, quilts, journal entries, etc.) from the Civil Rights era in Fayette County, Tennessee. Fayette County was the site of vigorous struggle during the 1960s, as many white residents used economic tactics to try to stop African Americans from registering to vote. Black county residents lost access to insurance, credit, and such basic goods as food and gasoline. Hundreds of sharecroppers and tenant farmers were evicted from the land on which they lived and worked. Several of these families moved into Tent Cities erected on land owned by supporters.

The movement in Fayette County lasted from 1959 into the early 1970s and ranged from elderly African Americans voting for the first time in their lives to young children integrating hostile environments in the county's previously all-white schools. It forged local leaders and also included civil rights workers from across the U.S. and Europe. It included not only painful relocations but also empowering journeys, as local activists traveled to meet with leaders in the federal government and to explore new forms of political action. And while African Americans argued over how best to overcome the obstacles they faced, white responses ranged from violent intimidation to support--if often secretive--for civil rights activists.

Though we cannot begin to tell (or even find) every individual's story from this era, we want to include a variety of perspectives here; this site provides a venue in which Fayette County residents can describe their memories of these events. But we are also interested in the relationship between history and the present. How do experiences from the 1960s affect people's feelings, hopes, or concerns about Fayette County today? What do these stories mean to young people who are just learning about the county's past?

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Sponsored by the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute at the University of Memphis, this website is being developed by faculty and students at Fayette-Ware High School, Iowa State University, and the University of Memphis. We hope many more people who live or have spent time in Fayette County will add to this website. We encourage everyone interested in these topics to browse and read the materials posted here. If you are interested in participating, please sign up for an account here and post inside the discussions and blogs. We would especially appreciate your sharing any photographs, documents or writings you may have from the 1960s.