Fayette County, Tennessee
Fayette County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 41,990.[2] Its county seat is Somerville.[3] The county was named after the Marquis de la Fayette, French hero of the American Revolution.[4] A part of the Memphis, TN-MS-AR Metropolitan Statistical Area, Fayette County is culturally alike to the Mississippi Delta and was a major area of cotton plantations dependent on slave labor in the nineteenth century.
Fayette County
United States
September 29, 1824
706 sq mi (1,830 km2)
705 sq mi (1,830 km2)
1.5 sq mi (4 km2) 0.2%
41,990 
56.8/sq mi (21.9/km2)
History[edit]
Fayette County was established by Tennessee General Assembly in 1824 from the neighboring counties of Shelby and Hardeman.[5] The same year, Somerville was selected as its county seat. The first churches in the county were the First Presbyterian Church in Somerville, established in 1829, and Immanuel Parish, established in 1832.
Herb Parsons 1908–1959) of Somerville, Tennessee, was Winchester's "Showman Shooter" for 30 years.
Following the emancipation of slaves on plantations, many of Fayette County's African-American residents worked as sharecroppers. In the 1960s and 1970s, civil rights activists fought for school integration and voting rights; and created tent cities to house displaced tenant farmers who had tried to register to vote.
In recent years, Fayette County has been transitioning from a rural area to accommodate the suburban sprawl from Memphis.[6]
Fayette County has a 19-seat legislative body referred to as the Board of County Commissioners representing 8 districts. All positions are elected every four years.
* District 1 (Somerville)
* District 2 (Laconia)
* District 3 (Gallaway/Braden/Garnett)
* District 4 (North Oakland)
* District 5 (Piperton/Rossville)
* District 6 (Moscow/Williston)
* District 7 (Moscow)
* District 8 (Hickory Withe/Eads)
* District 9 (South Oakland
* District 10 (Lagrange)
[18]
The County Mayor is currently Rhea "Skip" Taylor.[19]
Historically, Fayette County was part of the "Solid South" whereby the county's black majority was entirely disenfranchised. From the end of Reconstruction until Harry S. Truman's civil rights proposals during the 1940s, Democrats won over 85 percent of Fayette County's vote even in 1920 and 1928 when Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover carried the state's electoral votes. During the Civil Rights era, Fayette County's politics resembled that of Mississippi more than that of the rest of Tennessee, with Strom Thurmond winning over 83 percent of the county's limited electorate in 1948 and T. Coleman Andrews carrying the county as a "States' Rights" candidate in 1956. Once the county's blacks were enfranchised during the 1960s, Democrats would carry the county or only lose narrowly between 1976 and 1996, but in the twenty-first century as the county becomes increasingly white and suburban, its strongly conservative social views have made it strongly Republican. The first county Republican Primary was held in 2018.[21]