GeorgiaAmericus has been Sumter County's seat since 1832, and the county has cycled through several courthouses, among them an 1887 brick building by the Atlanta firm Bruce & Morgan and the current courthouse completed in 2009. The downtown square figures in a documented history of racial violence: in June 1913 a mob seized Will Redding from the Americus jail and killed him, one of the Sumter County victims the Equal Justice Initiative memorializes at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. In recent years the community has reckoned with that history publicly through remembrance events and a soil-collection ceremony marking Redding's death. The historic square, courthouse, and jail thus carry a layered past that local historians now record soberly rather than obscure. The 2009 courthouse remains the working seat of county government at the heart of Americus.
Sumter County Courthouse
The stone-and-brick heart of every Georgia county.
Sumter County Courthouse is a courthouse in Americus, Sumter County. It is one of 91 historic sites cataloged in Sumter County on Georgia Roam.
The site sits at 32.0718, -84.2393 near Americus. The nearest cataloged historic site is Sumter County in the Civil Rights Movement (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Sumter County Courthouse Bell, Luther H. Story, and Sumter County.
This record is drawn from the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Use the map below for its exact position and turn-by-turn directions.
Americus has been Sumter County's seat since 1832, and the county has cycled through several courthouses, among them an 1887 brick building by the Atlanta firm Bruce & Morgan and the current courthouse completed in 2009. The downtown square figures in a documented history of racial violence: in June 1913 a mob seized Will Redding from the Americus jail and killed him, one of the Sumter County victims the Equal Justice Initiative memorializes at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery. In recent years the community has reckoned with that history publicly through remembrance events and a soil-collection ceremony marking Redding's death. The historic square, courthouse, and jail thus carry a layered past that local historians now record soberly rather than obscure. The 2009 courthouse remains the working seat of county government at the heart of Americus.
Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgamericustimesrecorder.comcourthouses.co
Get Georgia Roam — 12,000+ historic sites in your pocket
See this site and every marker, cemetery, courthouse, museum, battlefield and landmark across Georgia on one live map — find what's near you, get directions, and collect sites as you roam.
