The History Trapped Within Try That in a Small Town: The Legacy of Racial Fears in the Early American Republic

Seth Whitty

February 4, 2025

On May 22, 2023, country music singer Jason Aldean released a song titled “Try That in a Small Town” about the supposed violence and hatred that is prevalent in large cities. Throughout the verses, Aldean describes a variety of urban crimes and unpatriotic acts, from carjacking to assaulting police officers to burning the American flag. The response in the chorus dares criminals to “Try That in a Small Town,” where, the singer promises, punishment for such misdeeds awaits. The music video intercuts Aldean’s performance with footage of protests, like Black Lives Matter, along with shots of people committing petty crimes. These scenes are contrasted with images of patriotic and happy white families in small towns. In its music video, Aldean and his band perform the song in front of the Maury County Courthouse in downtown Columbia, Tennessee. As critics pointed out when the song was first released, the filming location is the site where nineteen-year-old Henry Choate was murdered by a white lynch mob in 1927.[1]

Image of Maury County Courthouse at night

Maury County Courthouse, scene of the lynching of Henry Choate, featured heavily in Aldean’s music video for “Try That in a Small Town.” KFlanz, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Beyond the brutal murder of Henry Choate, “Try That in a Small Town,” needs to be contextualized within the longer history of racial violence and fear in Columbia and greater Maury County dating back to the early nineteenth century. Established in 1808, Maury County was formed from nearby Williamson County and from its original inhabitants, the Shawnee and Chickasaw peoples. Slavery quickly became the main economic and political force in the county, and by 1860, enslaved people made up 45 percent of the population. Akin to the rest of the American South, human bondage created an environment of brutality and extreme terror. An anonymous Black woman from Maury County in the 1920s described bondage as “hell without fires.” She recalled the constant abuse she and many others experienced, such as seeing a white overseer killing a crying baby while its mother worked nearby. Her account is notable in that she described seeing the headless ghost of an enslaver who terrorized her, along with his cruel wife. Irrespective of this anecdote’s authenticity, it emphasizes the acute horror that this woman faced.[2]

Fear of enslaved agency and rebellion absorbed generations of white citizens of Maury County. The catalyst for this terror was the potential reality of losing their oppressive control via Black agency, such as running away or outright rebellion. Rumors, conspiracies, and lies of a coming racial revolution or “war of races” occurred throughout the Atlantic world. One of the earliest examples of this in Columbia occurred in the summer of 1830, when unverified gossip spread of a forthcoming insurrection that would result in the murder of the entire white population in Maury County.[3]

These fears would only increase in the coming decades. Emancipation during the Civil War greatly exasperated this dread, as many believed slavery was their only protection from a coming racial war or revolution. Sarah Hamilton, a white woman in Columbia, dreaded the presence of Black Union soldiers in the town would inspire former bondspeople to launch a rebellion. During Reconstruction, the Columbia-based off-shoot of the Ku-Klux, the Order of Pale Faces, terrorized Black residents for their actual and perceived resistance to white supremacy.[4]

Whether it’s the conspiracy in 1830, Sarah Hamilton’s anxiety, or the terrorism of the Pale Faces, these events reveal a lengthy history of dread and reprisals towards Black agency. The messaging of “Try That in a Small Town” has an eerie connection to this history. As Nashville author and journalist Andrea Williams notes, the song “reflects a desire to control the actions of people in and outside of these towns, people who have grown tired of the exclusionary, oppressive antics of Aldean and his ilk—people who are, most often, Black.”[5]

Jason Aldean shot, holding guitar and singing

Jason Aldean in concert, Night Train Tour 2014. Morgan Williams, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Despite the violence and trauma that has occurred in Columbia and Maury County, many (including Aldean) still endeavor to ignore or denigrate its influence. After the release of the music video of “Try That in a Small Town,” the internet exploded with social media posts and articles on the song and Columbia’s troubled past, especially Choate’s murder and the so-called “Columbia Race Riot” of 1946.[6] The outrage resulted in scenes of a Black Lives Matter protest being edited out of the video. However, many still love the song, and it topped the Billboard Hot 100 at the end of July 2023 and features a prominent place in Aldean’s set list while touring.

Jason Aldean, moreover, fiercely defended the lyrics and music video. He argues that it’s about a sense of community and safety and that “people of all color were doing stuff in the video.” While the video does show white and Black protestors, it only displays patriotic white families and is an unsubtle juxtaposition of who is law-abiding and who is violent or destructive. In an interview with Good Morning America, he said “honestly, if you’re in the south, you could probably go to any small-town courthouse and be hard-pressed to find one that hasn’t had a racial issue over the years.”[7]

The song and Aldean’s justification is emblematic of larger issues regarding how racial injustices are remembered. The singer’s minimization of Henry Choate’s murder largely matches Columbia and Maury County’s public history. Tourism in the area is centered around a narrow retelling of the past and focuses on numerous Confederate monuments and lavish plantations. Moreover, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a prominent neo-Confederate organization, is based in Columbia and uses the Elm Springs Plantation as its headquarters. SCV is dedicated to combatting, in their minds, a nefarious effort to erase their Lost Cause idolatry and control of the past. James Baldwin famously stated that “people are trapped within history and history is trapped in them.” Similarly, the insidious history of slavery is still “trapped” in Columbia, Maury County, and “Try That in a Small Town.”[8]


Endnotes

[1] Jason Aldean, vocalist, “Try That in a Small Town,” by Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy, Kurt Allison, track 5 on Highway Desperado, Broken Brow Records, 2023, Spotify Streaming audio.

[2] Anonymous, “Slavery Was Hell without Fires,” in God Struck Me Dead: Voices of Ex-Slaves, ed. Clifton H. Johnson (Cleveland, OH, 1969), 153–63. Her interview was conducted sometime between 1927 and 1929, but the exact date was not recorded.

[3] See Kay Wright Lewis, A Curse Upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World (Athens, GA, 2017). For a source that discusses a “war of races” in Tennessee, see Journal of the Convention of the State of Tennessee: Convened for the Purpose of Revising and Amending the Constitution Thereof. Held in Nashville (Nashville, 1834). See also “Columbia, (Tennessee) July 6,” Lynchburg Virginian, July 29, 1830, 3. Chronicling America, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

[4] “Sarah Hamilton to John B. Hamilton, November 8, 1863, or 1864,” Hamilton Family Papers, 1850–1871, Box 1; folder 17, Tennessee State Library & Archive, Nashville.

[5] Andrea Williams, interviewed by Amanda Marie Martinez, “Jason Aldean’s ‘Small Town’ is part of a long legacy with a very dark side,” July 22, 2023. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2023/07/22/1188908968/jason-aldean-small-town-vs-city.

[6] Although this remains the common epithet for this incident, describing the events of February 26–27, 1946, as a “race riot” is an inaccurate depiction of what occurred. The term “invasion” would be more applicable. Tennessee State Police pillaged the Black neighborhood of “The Bottoms” and enacted state-sponsored terrorism as they vandalized and attacked the section of town. For a detailed accounting of the event, see Gail Williams O’Brien, The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War II South (Chapel Hill, NC, 1999).

[7] Jason Aldean (@Jason_Aldean), “In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song,” July 18, 2023, 2:17 pm. https://x.com/Jason_Aldean/status/1681382697875144717. Jason Aldean in “Jason Aldean Claims ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Music Video Did Not Have ‘Racist Undertones’ Because ‘People of All Color’ Are ‘Doing Stuff’ in it,” ed. Zach Sharf, Variety, Oct. 31, 2023, https://variety.com/2023/music/news/jason-aldean-denies-try-that-in-a-small-town-video-racist-undertones-1235774562/. See also, Remy Tumin, “Protest Scene Removed from Jason Aldean ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Video,” July 26, 2023. New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/arts/music/jason-aldean-blm-protests-small-town-video.html.

[8] James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village,” in Notes of a Native Son, 3rd ed. (Boston, 2012), 167.