Bogue Chitto, Alabama


Bogue Chitto is an unincorporated community in Dallas County, Alabama. It was named for the nearby creek of the same name, which in the Choctaw language 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 ended. Almost every man was registered to vote, and did vote, from Reconstruction until their rights were taken away. A spirit of independence, caused by landownership, prevented even the Ku Klux Klan 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 in 1930 were administered to over 900 people in Bogue Chitto, and Amelia Platts, a "black home demonstration agent" who attended the county nurse during the process, noted an active community spirit. A decade later it was one of the first places to welcome voter registration classes. Later still, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 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 inhabitants