On September 15, 1897, Isaiah H. Lofton, Hogansville's black postmaster, was the victim of an attempted assassination after leaving the city's post office in the black business district known locally as Cross Town. The appointment of African Americans to local positions by Republicans in the U.S. government exacerbated political animosity between the federal government and the post-Reconstruction white South. In Hogansville, white citizens boycotted the post office to resist Lofton's appointment, and tensions eventually led to the attempt on his life. Acts of violence against federally appointed African-American officials, including this attack and the murder of South Carolina postmaster Frazier Baker and his family, may have contributed to the creation of the National Afro-American Council in 1898, a precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.