It was designated as the seat in 1871, after being established the previous year as a station on the Macon and Brunswick Railroad.

As of the 2010 census, McRae had a population of 5,740,[4] up from 2,682 at the 2000 census, due largely to expansion of the city limits to incorporate the area and prison population of the McRae Correctional Institution, a privately owned and operated prison under contract to the federal government.

The prison is a low-security facility holding adult males; it is owned and operated by CoreCivic.

The community was named after Daniel M. McRae, the original owner of the town site.

[5] During the antebellum years and after the Civil War, the county had an economy largely based on cotton plantations, and McRae was a trading center.

[6] During the racial violence of the Red Summer of 1919 one Berry Washington, an elderly black man, was arrested and put in the McRae jail after defending two girls from assault.

On May 25 a large mob led by a Baptist minister[7] [8] conspired with a McRae deputy to seize Berry Washington from jail and lynch him over in Milan.

It has a replica of the Liberty Bell and a marble memorial to Telfair County residents who died in military service.

McRae was also the birthplace of Marion B. Folsom (1893–1976), a longtime executive of the Eastman Kodak Company who served as the United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare during the Eisenhower administration.