Harrison County, Texas: History
=== Early history ===
Settlement by immigrants from the United States began during the 1830s in the territory of present-day Harrison County. In 1835, the Mexican authorities granted a dozen land grants to U.S. immigrants. After the Texas Revolution, the Congress of the Texas Republic established Harrison County in 1839, formed from Shelby County. Harrison County was named for Texas revolutionary Jonas Harrison. The county was organized in 1842. The county's area was reduced in 1846, as territory was taken to establish Panola and Upshur Counties. Marshall was founded in 1841 and was designated as the county seat in 1842.
The area was settled predominantly by planters from the Southern United States, who developed this area for cotton plantations and brought enslaved African Americans with them for labor, or purchased them at regional markets. The planters repeated much of their culture and society here. East Texas was the location of most of the cotton plantations in the state, and correspondingly, of most of the enslaved African Americans. Most of the 14 black-majority, plantation counties were located in East Texas. By 1850, landowners in Harrison County held more slaves than in any other county in Texas until the end of the Civil War. The census of 1860 counted 8,746 slaves in Harrison County, 59% of the county's total population. In 1861, the county's voters (who were exclusively white males and mostly upper class) overwhelmingly supported secession from the United States.
Following defeat at the end of the American Civil War, the county was part of an area occupied by Federal troops under Reconstruction. The white minority in the county bitterly resented federal authority and the constitutional amendment granting the franchise to freedmen. A majority in the county, the freedmen elected a biracial county government dominated by Republican Party officeholders. Republican dominance in local offices continued in the county until 1880, but the conservative whites of the Democratic Party regained control of the state government before the official end of Reconstruction. In 1880, the Citizen's Party of Harrison County, amid charges of fraud and coercion, gained control of elected positions in the county government after winning on a technicality, which involved hiding a key ballot box. They retained such control of the county into the 1950s, aided by the state's disenfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the century by a variety of laws, including those to permit white primaries. In addition, during the post-Reconstruction era, white terrorist violence was directed at blacks to assert white supremacy. According to records of the Equal Justice Initiative, Harrison County had the third-highest number of lynchings of any county in Texas from 1877 to 1950.
In the 1870s, the county's nonagricultural sector increased when the Texas and Pacific Railway located its headquarters and shops in Marshall. It stimulated other industries and manufacturing in the county and also aided the transportation to market of the important cotton crop. From 1880 to 1930, though, Harrison County remained primarily agricultural and rural. It had a 60% black majority through 1930. During this period, most of the African Americans worked in agriculture as tenant farmers and sharecroppers. Harrison County had a total of 14 lynchings. Most were committed in the early 20th century, particularly in the 1910s, when the county suffered economic hard times. …