Free Tent City Exhibit Depicts Fayette County Civil Rights History

elementary school, Fayette County, Free, high school, middle school, Somerville, West TN February 12, 2024 Homeschool Roster

Some of the families displaced during the Civil Rights Movement living in the Tent City in Fayette County, Tennessee.

The Leadership Fayette and The Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change has brought the Tent City exhibit to the Fayette County Public Schools Central Administration Building to shed light on a bit of little-known history that happened right in that county.

Tent City, also called Freedom Village, was a location in Fayette County during the Civil Rights Movement where a local black landowner provided shelter for black sharecroppers who were evicted by their white landowners because they registered to vote. With the eviction, the sharecroppers were not only left without a place to live but were often blacklisted and prevented means to support their families financially. The Tent City Exhibit includes artifacts from that two-year period that give visitors a better insight into just another way black people experienced the struggles of inequality and racial discrimination during that time.

A welcome of the exhibit on Tuesday, January 30, 2024, when it was brought into Somerville, included traffic being halted by the Somerville Police Department at the Fayette County Courthouse, a memorial wreath being placed on the courthouse lawn, and a moment of silence in remembrance of the Civil Rights movement, and all the people who fought for those rights who are no longer with us.

The Tent City exhibit is free and open to the public on Thursdays and Fridays through Friday, February 23, 2024, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

There will also be a free mini session on the Tent City movement open to the public on Saturday, February 17, 2024, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Central Administration Building (CAB), 10425 Tennesse-76, Somerville, 38068. On Sunday, February 18, 2024, at 2 p.m. the Buckley-Carpenter Elementary School Choir will present a musical performance at the CAB.