Sabine County is a county located on the central eastern border of the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 9,894. The county was organized on December 14, 1837, and named for the Sabine River, which forms its eastern border.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (15%) is water.
Major highways
- 20px U.S. Highway 96
- 20px State Highway 21
- 20px State Highway 87
- 20px State Highway 103
- 20px State Highway 184
National Protected Areas
- Sabine National Forest (part)
Adjacent counties and parish
- Shelby County (north)
- Sabine Parish, Louisiana (east)
- Newton County (south)
- Jasper County (southwest)
- San Augustine County (west)
History
Like other eastern Texas counties, Sabine was originally developed as cotton plantations, which depended on the labor of numerous enslaved African Americans. After the Civil War and emancipation, many freedmen remained in the rural area, working as tenant farmers and sharecroppers. There was considerable violence by whites against blacks during and after Reconstruction. After 1877 and through the early 20th century, Sabine County had 10 lynchings of blacks by whites in acts of racial terrorism. This was the fourth-highest total in the state, where lynchings took place in nearly all counties through this period.
From 1930 to 1970, the population declined as many African Americans left this rural county and other parts of the South in the Great Migration to escape Jim Crow oppression and seek better jobs, especially in Northern industrial cities and on the West Coast, where the defense industry built up during World War II.