Fulton County, Kentucky: History
The rural county was not organized until 1845, from a portion of Hickman County. It was named for Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat. Hickman, Kentucky was designated as the county seat. The county was developed for agriculture, which was originally dependent on slave labor. Area farmers had ties to Tennessee planters, and shipped produce down the Mississippi River, which formed the county's western border. They supported the Confederacy, while Kentucky maintained official neutrality as a Border State.
During the post-Reconstruction period, there was considerable racial violence by whites against blacks in Fulton County; they exercised terrorism to re-establish and maintain white supremacy. Whites lynched 20 African Americans here from 1877 to 1950; most were killed around the turn of the 20th century. This was by far the highest total of any county in the state, more than 10 times the total in many other counties. Five men were lynched from 1883 to 1917, for alleged rape, assault, barn burning, and robbery and murder.
After the Civil War, some African Americans became landowners in the county. A notably egregious lynching was that on October 3, 1908, in Hickman of David Walker and his entire family by 50 Night Riders. This may have been part of anarchic violence that was directed at blacks arising from the "Reelfoot Lake Uprising", but it also appeared that whites coveted Walker's land. Walker and his wife, an infant in arms, and three children were shot multiple times; the eldest son burned to death in their farmhouse; seven in total were killed on the night of October 3, 1908, in Hickman. Walker owned a 21 1/2 acre farm; his white neighbor took it over after the killings, and later sold it to another white man. One of the latter's descendants continues to own the rural land.
On December 16, 1918, Private Charles Lewis, a veteran of World War I, was lynched at Tyler Station. Private Lewis was accused of robbery and while he was held in the local jail, a group of masked men forced their way into the jail, smashed the locks with a sledgehammer, then took him outside and hanged him from a tree.