MAYFIELD

20th century

In 1907, Fulton County judge Herbert Carr recalled that the Mayfield Convention adopted a resolution for secession. An historical marker in front of the Graves County courthouse now proclaims this as fact. However, records of the meeting kept by a Union sympathizer do not mention any such resolution. Historian Berry Craig argues that the convention believed Kentucky would eventually secede and a resolution to break away was unnecessary. Surviving records do show that the convention adopted resolutions condemning President Abraham Lincoln for "waging a bloody and cruel war" against the South, urging Gov. Beriah Magoffin to resist Union forces, and praising him for refusing to answer Lincoln's demand for soldiers. They also condemned the Federal government for providing "Lincoln guns" to Union sympathizers in eastern Kentucky. The convention nominated Henry Burnett to represent Kentucky's First District in Congress. The Mayfield Convention was followed by the Russellville Convention, which created the provisional Confederate government of Kentucky.

During and after Reconstruction, there was considerable white violence against blacks in the county. In one week in late December 1896, four black men were lynched in Mayfield. After Jim Stone was lynched, whites became fearful after hearing that blacks were arming to retaliate. They called for reinforcements from Fulton County, and fatally shot Will Suett, a young innocent black man getting off the train. The large white mob killed two more African-American men before the violence ended. Whites also burned four houses of African Americans.

During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the local schools were slow to integrate, but they finally did so without violence. The "Mayfield Ten", ten black students from the segregated Dunbar High School, were allowed to register in 1956 at all-white Mayfield High School.

21st century

In 2000, local resident Jessica Currin was murdered. The case was finally closed nearly seven years later with the help of a local amateur investigator named Susan Galbreath and Tom Mangold, a British journalist.