Tent City

The fight began with a jury. Burton Dodson, a Black farmer, was tried for a 1941 killing of a white man, and no Black resident could sit on the panel because none could vote. In 1959 Fayette and Haywood County residents formed civic and welfare leagues and began registering. Registered Black voters were turned away from the Democratic primary, and the leagues filed the first suit against a party primary under the Civil Rights Act of 1957. White Citizens Council and Klan members fired into the tents, and a 1962 federal injunction barred landowners from interfering with voting.

What the plaque says

Tent City A number of black Fayette County sharecroppers who participated in a voter registration drive were evicted from their lands in 1959-60. Many of them moved to "Tent City," also called "Freedom Village," where they lived in military surplus tents furnished by a local group. The first Tent City was established on County Road 195, 5 miles southwest of Somerville; a second one was located off Highway 57, approximately 4 miles east of Moscow, Tenn.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tina Turner Museum at Flagg Grove School — 23 mi
  The one-room Black school Tina Turner attended in Nutbush, moved to Brownsville in 2012 and opened as a museum in 2014 beside Sleepy John Estes's house.

More markers nearby

• Home of Lucy Holcombe Pickens — 13 mi
• Grierson's Raid — 14 mi
• "Mississippi" Fred McDowell — 17 mi
• Davies Manor — 23 mi