[7] Rutherford was a North Carolina colonial legislator and an American Revolutionary War general, who settled in Middle Tennessee after the Revolution.

[8] Rutherford County strongly supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, having voted 2,392 to 73 in favor of Tennessee's Ordinance of Secession on June 8, 1861.

[9] Rutherford County's central location and proximity to Nashville during the Civil War made it a contested area.

In August 1869, rampaging white men drove close to 100 African American farmers from their homes, and out of the county, to Nashville.

[12] In 1884, Bradley Academy in Murfreesboro became Rutherford County's first accredited high school for African Americans.

Their efforts to develop a mosque, the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro (and its subsequent replacement) became the focus of intense local controversy and opposition from non-Muslims,[14][15][16][17] and were stymied by political and legal battles,[15][16][18][19] arson, bomb threats and vandalism.

[17][20][21][19][22] A federal court forced the local authorities to allow the mosque,[14][18][22] and opposition subsided, but sporadic incidents continued.

[33] Since the late 20th century, the majority of white conservatives in Rutherford County shifted toward the Republican Party.

In recent years, the county has favored Republican candidates for local, state, and national elections.

[36][35] In May 2016, Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold, his Chief Administrative Deputy Joe L. Russell and the sheriff's uncle were named in a 14-count federal indictment charging fraud, bribery, extortion, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy for operating an e-cigarette business, for personal gain, in the jail.

State officials reported that the JailCigs business gained over $110,000 in revenues pocketed by Arnold and Russell.

[40] Sheriff's Major Terry McBurney pleaded guilty to unrelated charges, losing his citizenship.

[34][47] As part of the $23 million development of the county jail, in 2008, a juvenile detention center (JDC) was added.

[36][49] The county released a marketing video, "What Can the Rutherford County Juvenile Detention Center Do For You?” featuring images of children in black-and-white striped prison uniforms, and narrated by Juvenile Court Judge Donna Scott Davenport, to solicit business for the JDC.

[49] It is alleged that in subsequent years, the singular Rutherford County juvenile judge and local authorities, including the county's Juvenile Detention Center director Lynn Duke, colluded in the arrest and incarceration of hundreds of children, some as young as seven years old, on various misdemeanor charges, including schoolyard fights, truancy and cursing.

[34][51][54] Class action federal lawsuits resulted in the county ending solitary confinement of children in custody.

[34][51] In June 2021, Rutherford County settled with plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit, agreeing to payments of up to $11 million, to up to 1,450 potential claimants for wrongful arrest or incarceration, but denying any wrongdoing.

[58] Rutherford County outsourced some of its probation administration to Providence Community Corrections, and, in 2015, the arrangement was alleged in court to have violated racketeering laws—jailing impoverished people who did not pay court fines for misdemeanor offenses and traffic violations, and refusing to waive fees for indigent convicts.

Seven probationers, many sick or disabled, living on food stamps, charged in court that they lost housing, jobs, cars—after multiple threats from Providence that they would be jailed for failing to pay.

[59][60] In 2017, Rutherford County consented to end the use of for-profit, private probation companies, and PCC agreed to pay $14 million, spread among up to 25,000 court-identified victims, to settle the class action lawsuit.