McIntosh County, Georgia

In 1760, the British built Fort Barrington on the north side of the Altamaha River about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of present-day Darien.

[8] From the end of the Civil war to Georgia's 1907 disenfranchisement laws, McIntosh County was a base of black political power in the state.

[10] In March 1865, Tunis G. Campbell Sr. was put in supervision of land claims at the Freedmen's Bureau for a group of Georgia barrier islands, including Sapelo in McIntosh County.

After the land in question was returned to plantation owners by President Andrew Johnson, “Campbell quickly purchased 1,250 acres at Belle Ville in McIntosh County and there established an association of black landowners to divide parcels and profit from the land.”[10] After the military registration carried out in early 1867, 600 black people and 307 white people were on the voter rolls in McIntosh.

[11][12] In late 1867, Campbell was elected as one of two delegates from the second senatorial district – Liberty, McIntosh, and Tattnall counties – to Georgia's constitutional convention.

[15] Despite its large number of black residents, McIntosh County politics continued to be dominated by whites well into the 1970s, even following the federal civil rights legislation of the previous decade.

In September 1975, the Georgia Legal Services Program, on behalf of the local NAACP, filed suit in United States District Court, alleging that women and blacks were systematically excluded from grand juries responsible for appointing members to the McIntosh County Board of Education.

The NAACP lost its suit against the city, but this decision was remanded and reversed in 1979 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

[17] Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction (ISBN 0-201-55048-2) by Melissa Fay Greene narrates the events surrounding the civil rights movement in McIntosh County, particularly the death of Sheriff Thomas H. Poppell and the 1978 election of black rights activist Thurnell Alston as county commissioner.

The more recent Seaboard Coast Line Railroad ran north to south along the western part of the county, through Townsend for most of the twentieth century.

Two of the dozens of historical markers in the county.
Sign about capture of 26 men
The Smallest Church in America [ 9 ]
Map of Georgia highlighting McIntosh County