[2] The county is named in honor of William Lowndes, a member of the United States Congress from South Carolina.

Historically it has been considered part of the Black Belt, known for its fertile soil, cotton plantations, and a high number of African American workers, enslaved and later freed.

White Democrats regained power and control of the state legislature in 1874 and drove the remaining office holders out.

Requirements were added for payment of a cumulative poll tax before registering to vote, difficult for poor people to manage who often had no cash on hand; and literacy tests (with a provision for a grandfather clause to exempt illiterate white voters from being excluded.)

[7] On July 31, 2016, a historical marker was erected at Letohatchee by the Equal Justice Initiative in coordination with the city to commemorate the people who had suffered these extrajudicial executions.

[7] Because of the shift in agriculture and the Great Migration of blacks to leave oppressive conditions, population in the rural county has declined by two thirds since the 1900 high of more than 35,000.

[11] Organized by the young civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in the summer of 1965 Lowndes residents launched an intensive effort to register blacks in the county to vote.

When he aimed his shotgun at one of the young black women (Ruby Sales) Jonathan Myrick Daniels pushed her down, taking the blast, which immediately killed the Episcopal seminarian.

He was indicted for the murder of Daniels; and an all-white jury quickly acquitted him after his claim of self-defense, although both men were unarmed.

[13][14] On May 3, 1966, over 900 registered black voters cast their ballots at the county seat in Hayneville as independent participants in the primary, with some driving over 25 miles to do so.

In retaliation for black sharecroppers engaging in civil rights work, white landowners evicted many of them from their rental houses and land plots.

Despite harassment, including shots regularly fired into the encampment, these black residents persevered for nearly two years as organizers helped them find new jobs and look for permanent housing.

In a December 1966 edition of The Liberator, a Black Power magazine, activist Gwendolyn Patton alleged the election had been subverted by widespread ballot fraud.

[17] But historians believe that black sharecroppers refrained from voting, submitting to the severe pressure put on them by the local white plantation owners, who employed most of them.

[18] After the LCFO folded into the statewide Democratic Party in 1970, African Americans have supported candidates who have won election to local offices.

In White v. Crook (1966), Federal District Judge Frank M. Johnson ruled in a class action suit brought on behalf of black residents of Lowndes County, who demonstrated they had been excluded from juries.

Johnson ordered that the state of Alabama must take action to recruit both male and female blacks to serve on juries, as well as other women, according to their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Today an Interpretive Center in the county, maintained by the National Park Service, memorializes the Tent City and LCFO efforts in political organizing.

According to the census[30] of 2000, the largest ancestry groups claimed by residents in Lowndes County were African American 73.37%, English 20.14%, and Scots-Irish 3.1%.

Opposition by the voting white minority to civil rights had resulted in the national Democratic candidate, Lyndon Johnson, being excluded from the ballot in the state.

Even after congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, black registration was so slow that segregationist George Wallace comfortably carried the county in 1968.