Pickens County Courthouse (Alabama)

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Pickens County Courthouse
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage
Interactive map showing the location for Pickens County Courthouse
Location	Carrollton, Alabama
Coordinates	33°15′42.37″N 88°5′42.31″W / 33.2617694°N 88.0950861°W / 33.2617694; -88.0950861
Built	1877
Architectural style	Italianate
NRHP reference No.	94000441 [1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	May 19, 1994
Designated ARLH	July 23, 1976

The Pickens County Courthouse in the county seat of Carrollton, Alabama is the courthouse for Pickens County, Alabama. Built-in 1877-1878 as the third courthouse in the city, it is noted for a ghostly image that can be seen in one of its garret windows. This is claimed to be the face of freedman Henry Wells from 1878.

According to a common version of the myth, Wells was arrested in January 1878 on suspicion of burglary and arson, and lynched by a white mob soon after his arrest. He was alleged to have burned down the second courthouse in 1876 (built to replace one destroyed in 1865 by Union forces during the Civil War). Accounts in the story do not conform to historic facts; for instance, the windows were not installed until February through March 1878, so they could not contain his image.

This period was one of the continuing social and racial tensions. In 1877, the federal government ended Reconstruction and withdrew its troops from the South. White Democrats had regained control of state legislatures and passed measures to impose white supremacy. Wells was arrested in January 1878 and charged with the courthouse burning two years before. A local newspaper reported that Wells died of wounds after being shot while fleeing arrest for robbery in January 1878; he reportedly confessed to burning the courthouse before dying.^{[citation needed]}

A total of 15 African Americans were lynched in Pickens County, many in the courthouse square, from 1877 to 1917. This was the fifth-highest total of any county in the state. A mass lynching was committed by a white crowd who fatally shot four black men and a black woman in their cells in September 1893. They were suspects in the burning of a cotton gin owned by a white man.