Its county seat is Memphis,[4] a port on the Mississippi River and the second most populous city in the state.

This area along the Mississippi River valley was long occupied by varying cultures of indigenous peoples.

[1] From 1827 to 1868, the county seat was located in then called Raleigh, Tennessee (now part of Memphis), on the Wolf River.

[5] After the American Civil War, in recognition of the growth of Memphis and its importance to the state economy, the seat was moved there.

)[1] The lowlands in the Mississippi Delta, closest to the Mississippi River, were developed before the war for large cotton plantations; their laborers were overwhelmingly enslaved African Americans, whom planters transported from the east or purchased in the domestic slave trade.

The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans moving from rural areas into Memphis or out of state to northern cities for work and social and political opportunities.

After World War II, highways were constructed that led to development of much new housing on the outskirts of Memphis where land was cheap.

[citation needed] With continued residential and suburban development, the population of the metropolitan area became majority white.

During Reconstruction following the American Civil War, Governor William G. Brownlow appointed a five-member commission to govern the county.

When the state drafted a new constitution in 1870, it required county officials to be elected by the people or the Quarterly Court.

By 1910 the Shelby County Quarterly Court had 50 members, making it inefficient; some prominent people complained it was "too democratic."

E. H. Crump, the political boss of Memphis who was also influential in the county and state, gained a 1911 legislative act creating a three-member executive commission for the Shelby County Commission, which could override the court on all issues except setting property taxes, which was protected by the state constitution.

[19] In 1964, the US Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. Carr that legislative districts had to be apportioned by population under the Equal Protection Clause, a principle known as one man, one vote.

[22] Shelby County and its Board of Commissioners as plaintiffs, joined by mayors of the six suburban municipalities, filed suit in 1996 against Plan C, arguing that their rights were violated under the "one person, one vote" principle embodied in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, as their vote would be diluted.

Thus Memphis representatives would dominate a system intended to serve only county residents and students who lived outside the city.

The current Shelby County mayor is Lee Harris, who was elected in 2018 after having served as the minority leader of the Tennessee Senate.

This neoclassical pile features a long portico topped by a cornice supported by massive Ionic columns.

Female allegorical figures can be found on the north facade cornice representing Integrity, Courage, Mercy, Temperance, Prudence and Learning.

Flanking the main entrances are over-life-sized seated figures embodying Wisdom, Justice, Liberty, Authority, Peace and Prosperity.

The courthouse was featured in the movie The Silence of the Lambs as the place where Dr. Hannibal Lecter was held and escapes custody.

In the twenty-first century, the county has become reliably Democratic, due mainly to the influence of Memphis and being majority African American.

[27] Democratic strength is concentrated in Memphis itself, while the eastern suburbs are some of the most Republican areas in Tennessee and the South.

In 2014, the incorporated suburbs of Arlington, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland, and Millington (other than Memphis) broke away from the Unified System and formed their own municipal districts.

[31] On November 27, 2012, U.S. district court Judge Samuel Mays voided this vote since the state law passed at the time applied only to a specific area (which is unconstitutional).