Bogue Chitto is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

in Dallas County,

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

. It was named for the nearby creek of the same name, which in the

Choctaw language The Choctaw language (Choctaw: ), spoken by the Choctaw, an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, US, is a member of the Muskogean languages, Muskogean language family. Chickasaw language, Chickasaw is a separate but closely related l ...

means "big stream."

History

In the early 1900s, the population consisted of black landowners whose ancestors had been enslaved on the cotton-producing plantations and had bought land there after the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

ended. Almost every man was registered to vote and did vote, from

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...

until their rights were taken away. A spirit of independence, caused by landownership, prevented even the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...

from infringing upon their rights: "Local lore had it that the Klan came calling one night, looking for a Bogue Chitto man who had refused to doff his hat to a white man and say 'Yessir'. They were met by a spray of bullets and did not come back". Inoculations against

typhoid Typhoid fever, also known simply as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella enterica'' serotype Typhi bacteria, also called ''Salmonella'' Typhi. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often ther ...

in 1930 were administered to over 900 people in Bogue Chitto. Amelia Platts, a "black home demonstration agent" ("community clubs" had been opened throughout Dallas County to help improve the lives of African-American farmers and their families) who attended the county nurse during the process, noted an active community spirit. It was one of the first places to welcome voter registration classes a decade later. Later, the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and later, the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emer ...

got four volunteers from Bogue Chitto and a minister from a church just south of the community to help with voter registration efforts in the area.

Geography

Bogue Chitto is located at and has an elevation of .

Notable residents

Redoshi Redoshi ( 1848 – 1937) was a West African woman who was enslaved and smuggled to the U.S. state of Alabama as a girl in 1860. Until a later surviving claimant, Matilda McCrear, was announced in 2020, she was considered to have been the la ...

, aka as Sally Smith, woman originally from Benin, West Africa, was kidnapped in 1860, transported on the '' Clotilda'', and sold to a Dallas County planter. *

Amelia Boynton Robinson Amelia Isadora Platts Boynton Robinson (August 18, 1905 – August 26, 2015) was an American activist and supercentenarian who was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama, and a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgom ...

, Civil Rights activist, based in Bogue Chitto

References

Alabama placenames of Native American origin Unincorporated communities in Alabama Unincorporated communities in Dallas County, Alabama {{DallasCountyAL-geo-stub