LUVERNE

A short history of Luverne

On July 2, 1880, the Montgomery and Southern Railway was created to construct a new railroad linking Montgomery to the Florida coast. The company completed around 30 miles (48 km) of narrow gauge track by September 18, 1882. The company was reorganized as the Montgomery and Florida Railway in May 1886, and a second time as the Northwest and Florida Railroad in 1888. In November 1888, the railroad reached the site of Luverne in the central part of Crenshaw County, near the Patsaliga River. Now totaling 51 miles (82 km), the line was converted to standard gauge by July 1889, and it was decided to proceed no further. The Alabama Terminal and Improvement Company, a subsidiary of the Alabama Midland Railway, controlled the railroad by 1889, and the line from Montgomery to Luverne was into the network of the latter.

The new railroad terminus attracted related development, and the town grew. It was incorporated in 1891 and became a center of timbering in the Piney Woods of southern Alabama, as the land was not fertile enough for large-scale cotton plantation agriculture.

On June 22, 1940, an African-American man named Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne for failing to address a white man with the title of "Mister". He was fatally shot, and his body was later found in the Patsaliga River. The Equal Justice Initiative documented that the white man Thornton had offended by his Jim Crow infraction was a police officer. This was the only lynching recorded in the county.

Adapted (trimmed) from the Wikipedia article Luverne, Alabama, revision 1378745847 by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.