The Greene County Courthouse in Eutaw was burned by arson in 1868, in a year with considerable election-associated violence throughout the South.

James Martin, a prominent black Republican, was shot and wounded by unidentified gunmen near his home in Union, Alabama.

[3] That same night, Republican County Solicitor, Alexander Boyd, a white native of South Carolina and Alabama resident, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in his hotel in Eutaw.

The prevailing theory by historians for the burning of the courthouse is that the records of some 1,800 suits by freedmen against planters were about to be prosecuted; the fire destroyed the documents.

[4] Although Governor William Hugh Smith sent a special agent, John Minnis, to explore these deaths, he said he was unable to identify Boyd's killers.

[5] On July 30, 1969, Greene County made history when it became "the first in the South since reconstruction with both the commission and the school board dominated by Negroes.

In the new vote, African-American candidates won four of the five seats on the Greene County Commission, and two additional seats on the five-member Greene County School Board, and the Montgomery Advertiser would note the next day that "the election gave blacks control of both major governing bodies— a first in Alabama.

"[7] The date of the vote would later be described as "a watershed for black political empowerment in Alabama,",[8] leading to African-American candidates finally winning the right to govern counties where white residents were the minority.

In the 20th century, there were population losses after agricultural decline and the migration of rural workers to cities in other areas.

Greene County is strongly Democratic, but the nature of the membership has changed since the late 20th century.

After being emancipated and gaining the franchise, African Americans generally joined the Republican Party of President Abraham Lincoln.

After African Americans were disfranchised in Alabama in 1901 and other former Confederate states, the Democratic Party was even more exclusively white in Greene County and throughout the South.

In the late 20th century, after civil rights legislation enabled African Americans to vote again, they joined the national Democratic Party.