[2] Its name is in honor of Patrick R. Cleburne of Arkansas[3] who rose to the rank of major general in the Confederate States Army.

Cleburne County was established on December 6, 1866, by an act of the state legislature.

[5] Heflin was at one point thought of as a hub for nearby farmers to send their cotton.

[6] Shortly after the Civil War, a group of northern investors created the town of Fruithurst in Cleburne County as part of a wine-growing project.

As of the 2020 United States census, there were 15,056 people, 5,680 households, and 3,806 families residing in the county.

25.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

The racial makeup of the county was 89.74% White (non-Hispanic), 7.70% Black or African American, 0.30% Native American, 0.14% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.34% from other races, and 0.77% from two or more races.

23.00% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.30% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

[19] School districts include:[20] Although not to the same extent as Winston or Chilton Counties, Cleburne County was at least in Presidential elections a Republican island in overwhelmingly Democratic Alabama during the "Solid South" era due to its unsuitable terrain for slave-based plantation agriculture.

This led to considerable Populist support during the period of "Redemption" by white Democrats, which produced later support for the Republican Party even when in most of Alabama whites associated the "Party of Lincoln" with occupation and black political power.

Since the end of the dealigned political era of the 1960s and 1970s, Cleburne County has followed the same trajectory towards overwhelming Republican dominance as the rest of Appalachia: in 2020, Joe Biden gained nine percent of the county's vote, a figure less than George McGovern in his landslide 1972 defeat.