The county was settled by European Americans largely after the federal government hadremoved the indigenousCreek people (Muscogee) in the 1830s, under treaties by which they ceded most of their homelands to the United States. They were relocated toIndian Territory west of theMississippi River.
In the antebellum era, parts of the county were developed for cotton plantations, the premier commodity crop. Planters acquired numerous enslaved African Americans as laborers from the Upper South through the domesticslave trade.
Moonshiners were active in the mountain areas of the county in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Both whites and blacks took part in this, and were common drinking patrons.[4]
On January 22, 1912, a black woman and three black men werelynched inHamilton, the county seat, for the alleged murder of young local white landowner Norman Hadley. He was described by journalist Karen Branan in her 2016 book about these events as a white, "near penniless plowboy-playboy"[5] and "notorious predator of black women."[6]
Of this group, Dusky Crutchfield was the first woman lynched in Georgia.[5] The lynching case attracted attention of national northern newspapers.[7][8] Also murdered by the lynch mob were Eugene Harrington, Burrell Hardaway,[9] and Johnie Moore. (Note: There was confusion about the names of victims at the time, and variations in spelling have been published.)[4]
The four had been taken in for questioning about Hadley's murder by Sheriff Marion Madison "Buddie" Hadley, but never arrested. Lynched as scapegoats by a white mob of 100 men, they were later shown to have been utterly innocent. As an example of the complex relationships in the town and county, Johnie Moore was amixed-race cousin of the sheriff; and Norman Hadley was the sheriff's nephew.[5][4][9]
In 1947, prosperous farmer Henry "Peg" Gilbert, a married African-American man who owned and farmed 100 acres inTroup County, was arrested by officials from neighboring Harris County and charged with harboring a fugitive. The 47-year-old father was accused in the case of Gus Davidson, an African-American man accused of fatally shooting a white man in Harris County and who had disappeared. Four days later Gilbert was dead, shot while held in jail by the Harris County Sheriff, who said it was self-defense. No charges were filed against him.
In 2016 theCivil Rights and Restorative Justice Project ofNortheastern University reported on Gilbert'sdeath in custody. They had found that Henry Gilbert had been beaten severely before his death, and shot five times. They asserted he had been detained and killed because whites resented his success as a farmer.[10][11] Economic issues and competition were often at the bottom of lynchings. A white man took over Gilbert's land, cheating his family out of everything he had built.
According to theU.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 473 square miles (1,230 km2), of which 464 square miles (1,200 km2) are land and 9.1 square miles (24 km2) (1.9%) are covered by water.[12]
The county is located in thePiedmont region of the state, with forests, farmland, and rolling hills covering much of the county. ThePine Mountain Range begins in the county, and runs across the northernmost parts of the county, with the highest point on the range found atDowdell's Knob near the Meriwether County line.
The majority of Harris County is located in the middleChattahoochee River–Lake Harding subbasin of theACF River Basin (Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin), with the exception of the county's southeastern border area, south ofEllerslie, which is located in the middle Chattahoochee River–Walter F. George Lake subbasin of the same ACF River Basin as that part of the county is drained by Bull Creek, which flows into Upatoi Creek south of Columbus.[13]
Lake Harding andGoat Rock Lake both form much of the county's western border along the Chattahoochee, and both are very popular recreational destinations, especially for metro Columbus residents.
Like all of Georgia except theUnionistFannin,Towns,Pickens andGilmer counties, which were in the upland region and could not support plantations, Harris County was historically dominated by a majority of conservative white voters after the Civil War. They belonged to theDemocratic Party. From the end of Reconstruction to 1980, they supportedRepublican presidential candidates only twice, in 1964 (whenBarry Goldwater carried the state in a landslide) and 1972 (duringRichard Nixon's national landslide).
But the passage of civil rights legislation by the national Democratic Party and social and cultural disruption of the era resulted in white conservatives beginning to support the Republican Party. In 1984, the state swung from having given a 16.8 percent victory to the 'favorite son' of Georgia,Jimmy Carter, in 1976, to a nearly 20-point victory forRonald Reagan in his second term. In this, it was part of the realignment of white conservatives across the South. Since then, these voters in Harris County have voted for Republican presidential candidates. 1984 is the last time that a Democrat gained more than 40 percent of the vote. This trend has been attributed to the effect of Columbus's suburbs extending into the county, but it is part of the broader realignment among conservatives in the region.
United States presidential election results for Harris County, Georgia[25]
TheHarris County School District holds preschool to grade 12 and consists of four elementary schools, an intermediate school, a middle school, and a high school.[26] The district headquarters is located inHamilton, and has 274 full-time teachers and over 4,411 students spread out over seven schools.[27]
^Dunn, Tara; Kong, Ariel Goeun Lee (2016).Henry Gilbert.Northeastern University School of Law (Report). Boston, MA: Civil Rights Restorative Justice Project. Archived fromthe original on August 26, 2016. RetrievedAugust 25, 2016.
