Macon County, Alabama: History
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 at the slave market in Montgomery, New Orleans or Mobile. 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.
While Alabama has the 5th highest gun related death rate among states at 24 per 100 000, Macon County has one of the highest gun homicide rates in the nation at 44.5 per 100 000.
Before 1983, Macon County was primarily known as the home of historic Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, and its noted founder and first president, Booker T. Washington.