In the town square of Eutaw, Alabama, the modern world hems in a relic of an older one that no longer exists.

The Eutaw Hotel is long gone. Even among older locals, the V.J. Elmore’s Five & Dime is nothing but a faint memory. Places like Mills Pharmacy or Main Street Diner get the foot traffic these days. But inside the square, the old Greene County Courthouse still stands, along with a towering oak tree just yards away.

The tree was much shorter when Earlean Isaac, then 15 years old, marched with others to the courthouse for voting rights in 1965. It was where Isaac, who would go on to become the first Black female probate judge in the county, was beaten by a police officer.

“He hit me with his Billy club,” Isaac said.

“He hit me with his Billy club,” Isaac said.

By 1969, with a newly ordered election mandated by the Supreme Court to recognize the National Democratic Party of Alabama, voters would elect four Black candidates—Harry Means, Franchie Burton, Vassie Knott, and Levi Morrow Sr.—to the Greene County Commission and put two new Black members, Robert Hines and James Posey, on the Greene County School Board. These six men put Greene County on the map as the first county across the country since Reconstruction to put a majority-Black government in office.

A year later, outside the very courthouse where Isaac was beaten, Thomas Gilmore, a minister who had returned to Greene County from Los Angeles a few years prior, was sworn in as the first Black sheriff in Greene County, going on to get the nickname of “The Sheriff Without a Gun.”

Today, across the street from the old courthouse sits the new one, named after William McKinley Branch, the first Black probate judge in Greene County. It’s a history that plays a crucial part in the area’s voter turnout, often among the highest across Alabama in any given year.

Leading the vote in Alabama

During the primary election in May, Greene County had a 51 percent voter turnout, compared with the 23.11 percent turnout statewide. Countywide, there are 6,332 registered voters.

“Usually, our voter turnout depends on who’s on the ballot that will really drive the votes out,” Isaac said.

There were several big local races in Greene County this spring, including races for a district judge and sheriff. But Greene County consistently outpaces the rest of the state for turnout. In the 2022 primary, 44.5 percent of the county’s eligible voters cast ballots. In 2020, Greene County’s turnout for the presidential election was 68.3 percent, compared to 62.8 percent statewide. In 2024, while the state as a whole posted its lowest voter turnout for a presidential election in over 30 years with 58.5 percent, nearly 61.7 percent of Greene County’s registered voters turned out to the........

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