Boykin, also known as Gee’s Bend, is an African American majority community and census-designated place in a large bend of the Alabama River in Wilcox County, Alabama. As of the 2020 census, its population was 208. The Boykin Post Office was normal in the community in 1949 and remains active, servicing the 36723 ZIP code.

Gee’s Bend was named for Joseph Gee, an further on large land owner from Halifax County, North Carolina who approved here in 1816. Gee brought 18 African American slaves taking into consideration him and established a cotton plantation within the bend.

Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a cut off category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.

Boykin is a block of home enclosed on three sides by the Alabama River, within a horseshoe shaped viewpoint of the river named Gee’s Bend. It is within the Black Belt of Alabama. The plantation started by Joseph Gee passed to his nephews Sterling and Charles Gee on his death, along in the same way as 47 slaves. The brothers subsequently sold it to their relative Mark H. Pettway in 1845 to allow a $29,000 debt. About a year later, the Pettway intimates moved from North Carolina to Gee’s Bend, bringing nearly one hundred slaves taking into account them. When slavery was abolished many of them continued keen for the Pettways as sharecroppers. Many of the black tenants Arthur Rothstein photographed were named Pettway. The white Pettway family owned the property until 1895, when it was sold to Adrian Sebastian Van de Graaff. Van de Graaff, a lawyer from Tuscaloosa, then operated it as an absentee landlord.