| I | INTRODUCTION |
Mississippi, state in the Southeastern United States,
bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. Early explored by the Spanish and colonized by
the French, Mississippi’s warm climate and rich soil proved ideally suited to
cotton, which became the main crop even before 1800 and remained the mainstay of
its economy until the 20th century.
Anglo-Saxon settlers from the older seaboard
states flocked to Mississippi’s virgin lands, bringing black slaves to work
their fields, and until 1940 blacks outnumbered whites. Even today Mississippi
has a larger percentage of blacks than any other state. Relations between the
races have tended to shape Mississippi’s history and to foster a conservative
political philosophy and an insistence on state’s rights among its white
majority. In recent years, however, blacks have begun to enter political and
economic realms formerly virtually closed to them. At the same time, “king”
cotton has made room for a more diversified agriculture, and Mississippi has
undergone an industrial boom. Although Mississippians still cherish the columned
mansions and hallowed traditions of their past, they can now boast a diversified
industrial and agricultural economy.
Mississippi entered the Union on December 10,
1817, as the 20th state. Jackson, Mississippi’s capital and largest city, was
founded at about the same time. The state takes its name from the Mississippi
River, the great waterway that forms the state’s western boundary. The river’s
name was derived from an Algonquin term for “big river.” Mississippi is commonly
nicknamed the Magnolia State because of the great number of magnolia trees that
grow within its borders. The blossom of the magnolia is the state flower.
| II | PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY |
Mississippi ranks 32nd among the states in
size, with a total area of 125,433 sq km (48,430 sq mi), including 2,033 sq km
(785 sq mi) of inland water and 1,528 sq km (590 sq mi) of coastal waters over
which it has jurisdiction. It has a maximum length, from north to south, of
about 530 km (about 330 mi) and a maximum width of about 290 km (about 180 mi).
Its mean elevation is about 90 m (about 300 ft).
| A | Natural Regions |
Mississippi lies wholly within the Gulf
Coastal Plain, which is one of the principal natural regions, or physiographic
provinces, of the southern United States (see Coastal Plain). The state
can be divided into two sections, which, in order to distinguish clearly between
them, are treated as separate natural regions in this article. Covering the
western part of the state along the Mississippi River are the broad flat
lowlands of the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Covering the remainder of the state
are the low hills of the East Gulf Coastal Plain. Both natural regions extend
beyond the border of Mississippi into neighboring states and are but a small
part of the Gulf Coastal Plain.
The portion of the Mississippi Alluvial
Plain located in Mississippi is known as the Yazoo Basin. Locally referred to as
the Delta, this region covers the western margins of Mississippi. The plain
varies in width from about 105 km (about 65 mi) near Greenville to less than 1.5
km (less than 1 mi) south of Natchez. It includes the flat low-lying bottomlands
along the Mississippi, Tallahatchie, Yazoo, and Big Sunflower rivers. Elevations
are below 60 m (200 ft), the highest lands occurring on the natural levees along
the major rivers. Away from the levees the land is often swampy, and floods were
frequent until recent years, when reservoirs and channel improvements reduced
the problem. The plain has productive soils that are good for cotton, soybeans,
and rice.
The East Gulf Coastal Plain rises from sea
level along the marshy Gulf Coast to a high point of 246 m (806 ft) at Woodall
Mountain, in the Tennessee River Hills. Forming the western edge of the plain
are the Bluff Hills, a belt of low hills from 8 to 24 km (5 to 15 mi) wide that
extends the entire length of the state. Composed of fertile yellow soils known
as loess, the Bluff Hills, or Loess Hills, are generally too eroded for
profitable farming.
East of the Bluff Hills and curving in a
broad arc from Meridian to the area around Oxford is a broad belt of low hills
commonly designated as the North-Central Hills. Just east of the North-Central
Hills lies the Flatwoods, the Pontotoc Ridge, and the Black Prairie regions. The
Black Prairie is an extension of Alabama’s Black Belt, which is a narrow rolling
strip of prairie land. Beyond the Black Belt, in the extreme northeast, are the
steep hills and deep narrow ravines of the Tennessee River Hills. South of the
North-Central Hills lies another narrow strip of prairie, the Jackson Prairie,
and the Pine Hills and Coastal Meadows regions.
| B | Rivers and Lakes |
All the rivers of Mississippi drain into
the Gulf of Mexico, either directly or by way of the Mississippi River. The
Mississippi follows a meandering course along the state’s western edge. The
river was designated the state line in 1817, but subsequent shifts in its
sluggish course transferred small sections of Louisiana and Arkansas to points
east of the river, while some sections of Mississippi are now on the western
bank. During the flood season the surface of the river in its lower course is
elevated more than 3 m (10 ft) above the surface of the land. As a result,
artificial levees and other flood-control structures are needed to contain the
river.
The major tributaries of the Mississippi in
the state include the Yazoo, Big Black, and Homochitto rivers. The Yazoo River
flows generally southward across the Mississippi Alluvial Plain between the
Mississippi River and the Bluff Hills. It is formed by the junction of the
Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers and joins the Mississippi at Vicksburg.
The major rivers draining directly to the
gulf are the Pearl and Pascagoula. The Pearl is fed by the Yockanookany and the
Strong rivers. In its lower reaches the Pearl forms 187 km (116 mi) of the state
line between Louisiana and Mississippi, the boundary following the East Pearl
River when the river divides below Picayune. The West Pearl River flows through
Louisiana. The Pascagoula, fed by the Leaf and Chickasawhay rivers, enters the
Gulf of Mexico about 30 km miles (about 20 mi) east of Biloxi. The northeastern
section of the state is drained by tributaries of the Tennessee River and the
headwaters of the Tombigbee River.
Mississippi has no large natural lakes. The
chief lakes in the state are all artificially created reservoirs behind dams.
The largest lakes include Arkabutla Lake, on the Coldwater River, a tributary of
the Tallahatchie; Sardis Lake, on the Tallahatchie; Enid Lake, on the Yocona
River, a tributary of the Tallahatchie; Grenada Lake, on the Yalobusha; and Ross
Barnett Reservoir, on the Pearl River. In addition, there are numerous oxbow
lakes and other standing water bodies on the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Oxbow
lakes are formed when a river cuts through the neck of one of its loops, or
meanders, thus establishing a shorter course and leaving the former loop as a
lake separate from the river.
| C | Coastline |
Mississippi’s coastline on the Gulf of
Mexico measures only 71 km (44 mi) in a straight line, but has a total length,
including all bays, inlets, and promontories, of 578 km (359 mi). The coastline
is extremely irregular. Offshore lies a series of low barrier islands, of which
the largest are Cat, Ship, Horn, and Petit Bois islands. Behind the islands and
partly protected by them from the gulf lies Mississippi Sound, which is
traversed in part by the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.
| D | Climate |
The climate of Mississippi is characterized
by long, hot, and humid summers and generally mild winters. The higher lands in
the northeast are usually cooler than other areas of the state.
| D1 | Temperature |
Average January temperatures range from
about 6° C (about 42° F) in northeastern Mississippi to about 12° C (about 54°
F) along the Gulf Coast. No part of the state is entirely free from freezing
temperatures, but prolonged periods of extreme cold rarely occur. Temperatures
more than 15° C (30° F) below freezing have on occasion been recorded throughout
the north and in much of the southwest. The lowest official temperature ever
measured is -28° C (-19° F), recorded in 1966.
July average temperatures range from
about 26° C (about 78° F) in the northeast to about 24° C (about 75° F) in the
northwest. Days are generally hot and oppressive, with daytime highs often in
the mid 30s° C (high 90s°F). The highest official temperature is 46° C (115° F),
recorded in 1930. Nighttime temperatures afford little relief from the heat and
rarely fall below 21° C (70° F). However, sea breezes provide more tolerable
conditions along the coast.
| D2 | Precipitation |
Annual precipitation, or rainfall and
snowfall, ranges from less than 1,200 mm (48 in) in a few northwestern areas to
more than 1,500 mm (60 in) in most of the south. Most precipitation is in the
form of rain. Snow falls occasionally but rarely remains on the ground for more
than a few days.
Ice storms, though relatively rare, do
occur in the state and are extremely damaging to the economy. In February 1994 a
layer of ice, up to 15 cm (6 in) deep in some areas, coated north and western
parts of the state, destroying millions of dollars worth of trees and leaving
some people without electricity and water for several weeks. The state is also
affected by thunderstorms, lightning, hail, fog, and droughts. In the late
summer and the fall, the state is occasionally struck by hurricanes moving north
from the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi is also struck by tornadoes, especially
during the period from February to May.
| D3 | Growing Season |
The growing season, or period from the
last killing frost in the spring to the first killing frost in fall, is more
than 200 days throughout almost all of Mississippi. In the north it ranges from
180 to 220 days, and in the extreme south along the Gulf Coast up to 280 days of
the year are free of frost. The first major frost occurs in late October in the
northern areas of the state and about a month later along the Gulf Coast. The
last major frost can be expected in late February along the Gulf Coast and in
middle and late March farther north.
| E | Soils |
Most of Mississippi is covered by red and
yellow podzolic soils. These soils, developed from underlying clays, sands, and
loess, are finely textured and acidic in reaction due to heavy precipitation and
leaching. They are easily cultivated, and with the proper use of fertilizers
they can produce good yields of cotton. On hilly sites they are subject to
erosion.
Highly fertile alluvial soils cover the
Yazoo Basin and the floodplains of the major rivers of the state. When properly
drained and protected from flooding, these rich soils are capable of producing
large yields of cotton and other row crops.
The Black Belt and some other areas
contain fertile rendzina southern prairie soils. These soils are dark gray or
black, with abundant organic matter derived from the original natural grass
cover.
A narrow strip along the Gulf Coast, the
Coastal Plain Meadows, is covered by boglike soils that are too wet and heavy
for agricultural use. However, these soils support good stands of live
oaks.
| F | Plant Life |
Forests once covered nearly all of
Mississippi, but since the 18th century large areas have been cleared for
farming. In recent decades abandoned farmland has been replanted with trees, and
at present, forests cover 62 percent of the state’s land area. In recent years
the value of forest products has risen to nearly ten percent of Mississippi’s
manufacturing income.
The forests of the north consist of many
species of oaks, such as the white, red, black, post, and willow oaks, and
hickories, such as the bitternut, mockernut, and pignut. Other common hardwoods
include the tulip tree, sycamore, and honey locust. In the forests of the delta,
swamp oaks are common, occurring together with the bald cypress, sweet gum,
tupelo gum, and eastern cottonwood and, to a lesser extent, the swamp
cottonwood. North America’s largest cottonwood plantation is in the state, north
of Vicksburg.
In central Mississippi the oaks and
hickories are mixed with shortleaf pines and loblolly pines. The pines increase
in abundance toward the south, and in the Piney Woods, longleaf pines and slash
pines grow in nearly pure stands. Along the Gulf Coast, particularly in the
southwest, are live oaks, which are usually thickly draped with gray-green
Spanish moss. Common small trees and shrubs of Mississippi include the southern
magnolia, which is the state tree, the huckleberry, mountain laurel, sassafras,
American holly, hazel, and Hercules-club.
Natural grassland once covered most of the
Black Belt section of northeastern Mississippi and the Jackson Prairie in
central Mississippi. However, much of the land has been cleared for
farming.
In the spring the forests are bright with
wildflowers and flowering trees, such as the dogwood, redbud, red maple, azalea,
silver bell, rhododendron, cross vine, and trumpet honeysuckle. In the fall the
open fields are blanketed with such flowers as the black-eyed Susan, goldenrod,
aster, and ironweed. The blossom of the magnolia is the state flower.
| G | Animal Life |
There has been a considerable decline in
the wildlife population of Mississippi since the beginning of European
settlement. Of the big game the bison, wolf, and cougar, which once were common,
have disappeared. The white-tailed deer is now the largest relatively common
mammal in the state, and in recent years the deer population has grown greatly.
The most common small mammals in Mississippi are the fox, raccoon, opossum,
skunk, woodchuck, cottontail, squirrel, armadillo, and weasel and, in coastal
marshlands, the nutria.
Alligators, turtles, frogs, and terrapins
are found in the swampy coastal areas of Mississippi. The nonpoisonous snakes of
the state include the black, garter, king, and water snakes, and the poisonous
snakes are the coral snake, cottonmouth or water moccasin, copperhead, and the
pygmy, timber, and diamondback rattlesnakes.
The Mississippi flyway, one of the four
major migratory bird routes of the continent, passes through Mississippi.
Species of tropical land birds such as the wood thrush and the Kentucky warbler
breed in the coastal and inland portions of Mississippi, while many other birds
winter in the state’s marshes. Other migratory birds found in Mississippi during
at least part of the year include the Canada goose, dunlin, least tern, sandwich
tern, Bonaparte’s gull, and many species of ducks.
The principal birds of the pinewoods are
the pine warbler, brown-headed nuthatch, Bachman’s sparrow, and red cockaded
woodpecker, an endangered species. In the hardwood forests and open fields of
the state are found the prothonotary warbler, hooded warbler, indigo bunting,
and Swainson’s warbler. The southern pileated woodpecker is found in the forests
of the state.
Noted varieties of freshwater fish of
Mississippi are the largemouth bass, buffalo fish, carp, bullhead, bluegill,
channel catfish, paddle fish, and crappie. In the waters of the gulf can be
found the red and black drum, spotted sea trout, king and Spanish mackerel,
sheepshead, mullet, croaker, tarpon, pompano, and flounder. Shrimps, blue crabs,
and oysters are common shellfish.
| H | Conservation |
The major concerns of conservation
authorities in Mississippi are the prevention of soil erosion and water
pollution, reforestation, the reclamation of infertile and wet lands, and flood
control. The principal conservation agencies at work in the state include the
United States Forest Service, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the
United States Army Corps of Engineers, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
State agencies concerned with conservation are the Mississippi forestry
commission; the state game and fish commission; the state board of health; and
the state department of environmental quality, which houses the office of
geology and the office of pollution control.
Severe soil erosion has resulted in a
great loss of topsoil in some areas of the state and destruction of the land by
gullying in other areas. In addition, continuous cotton cropping during the 19th
and early 20th centuries robbed the land of its fertility. To restore soil
fertility and to reduce soil erosion in the state, large areas of eroded cotton
land have been taken out of cultivation and planted to pasture or trees. In
other areas such soil-conserving measures as contour plowing, strip-cropping,
crop rotation, and the use of cover crops have been instituted.
Reforestation measures in the state have
greatly replenished Mississippi’s forest resources, and because forest soils are
able to absorb much water, soil erosion and surface runoff have been reduced.
Much of the reforested land is in the state’s six national forests.
Some of the most disastrous floods in the
history of the United States have occurred along the lower Mississippi Valley.
To control the floods, the Congress of the United States in 1928 authorized the
Army Corps of Engineers to construct and maintain an extensive levee system
along the river. In addition to flood control, conservation measures to prevent
floods are widely used in the state. Major flood-prevention measures, all of
which aim to retard the runoff of water from the land, include reforestation of
watershed areas, contour plowing, strip-cropping, and the conversion of cotton
land to pasture.
The problem of pollution of rivers, lakes,
and streams by new and expanding industries, evidenced in particular by
incidents of large fish kills, prompted the formation in 1966 of the state’s air
and water pollution control commission, now the Office of Pollution Control. Its
scientists and engineers have developed water quality standards and have made
progress in abating water pollution. The major polluting industries are under
orders of the office to construct adequate pollution control facilities.
In 1998 the state had one hazardous waste
site on a national priority list for cleanup due to its severity or proximity to
people. Progress has been made in efforts to reduce pollution; during the period
1995–2000 the amount of toxic chemicals discharged into the environment was
reduced by 9 percent.
| III | ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES |
Agriculture first became well established
in the early 19th century, when the combination of cheap land and high cotton
prices induced widespread agricultural settlement. Numerous large plantations
were established, using slave labor to produce mainly cotton. However, they were
ruined by the American Civil War (1861-1865). After the Civil War, sharecropping
developed as a chief form of land tenure. In modern times, agriculture and
forestry have continued to be important.
In addition, Mississippi has undergone
considerable industrialization. Since the 1930s the state has developed its
resources of natural gas and petroleum, and TVA power has become available in
the northeast. In 1936 Mississippi established a pioneering regional development
promotion with its Balance Agriculture With Industry program. Manufacturing is
now the principal economic activity in the state, in terms of value of
production.
In 1965 industrial employment for the first
time exceeded employment in agriculture. By the early 1990s the number of those
working in manufacturing exceeded agricultural workers by five fold. Of the
1,307,000 workers in 2006, 35 percent worked in service industries such as
restaurants and data processing centers; 18 percent in wholesale or retail
trade; 21 percent in federal, state, or local government, including those in the
military; 15 percent in manufacturing; 3 percent in farming (including
agricultural services), forestry, or fishing; 5 percent in construction; 8
percent in finance, insurance, or real estate; 20 percent in transportation or
public utilities; and 0.8 percent in mining. In 2005, 7 percent of Mississippi’s
workers were members of labor unions.
| A | Agriculture |
In the late 1990s some two-fifths of
Mississippi’s land was in farms. Crops were raised on 20 percent of all land in
the state. There were 42,200 farms operating in 2005. The average size of a
Mississippi farm is 106 hectares (262 acres). Farms can average less than half
this size, especially in some parts of northeastern and southeastern
Mississippi; the largest farms are found in the delta.
Farm tenancy has declined greatly in
Mississippi since the 1940s, and in the late 1970s only about 10 percent of all
farms were tenant operated. The rate of tenancy is highest in the highly
productive farming areas of the delta. Farm living standards are below the
national average in most of Mississippi and are lowest in the central and
northwestern sections. Only 30 percent of farms produced annual income of more
than $10,000 in 2005.
| A1 | Crops |
Crops provided 34 percent of farm
income in Mississippi in the 2004. Cotton and soybeans are the leading crops.
Mississippi is the fourth most important producer of cotton in the country,
behind Texas, California, and Georgia. Although cotton is produced in many areas
of the state, most of it is grown in the Delta, where flatlands make mechanical
harvesting easier.
Acreage in cotton has declined under
government acreage controls, but improved farming methods have increased the
yield. Large areas once devoted to cotton now go into other crops, principally
soybeans. Soybeans are also often rotated with cotton on the same acres. By the
late 1990s soybeans brought in three-fourths as much income as cotton.
Mississippi ranks fifth in the nation for the income produced by its rice crop.
Corn is raised throughout the state as a feed crop, and its yield too has
increased as acreage declined, thanks to new hybrids and better cultivation.
Other crops are sweet potatoes, pecans, sorghum grain, hay, and wheat.
| A2 | Livestock and Livestock Products |
Livestock and livestock products
provided 66 percent of farm income in the state in the 2004. Cattle raising and
poultry farming are major sources of income in southern and eastern Mississippi.
Large areas of abandoned cotton land, ruined by erosion or boll weevil
infestation, are used for cattle. Milk production has increased as the quality
of dairy herds has risen. In the late 1990s, broilers were the leading source of
livestock income. Mississippi is among the leading states in commercial broiler
production. Poultry farming is particularly important in south-central
Mississippi. Large numbers of eggs and some hogs are also produced.
| B | Fisheries |
Shrimps, oysters, and menhaden are the
most important products of Mississippi’s offshore fishing industry, which
produced $44 million for the state’s economy in 2004. Biloxi is a major center
for both the shrimp and oyster fishing industries. Menhaden account for much of
the annual catch, by quantity and value. Menhaden are used in making livestock
feed, fertilizer, and other products. Pascagoula is a leading United States
menhaden port and processing center. With nearly 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres)
of catfish ponds, Mississippi is the leader among the states in the production
of freshwater catfish on farms. In 1998 growers earned $307 million, or five
times as much income from catfish as the next productive state, Alabama. Catfish
farming is centered in Humphreys County in the Delta. In 1998 Mississippi
produced more than one-half of farm-raised catfish in the United States. In
areas otherwise not suitable for agriculture, Mississippi has made catfish
farming the state’s fastest growing industry.
| C | Forestry |
The state’s forests are a source of vast
quantities of lumber and pulpwood. The longleaf pine is the principal commercial
tree in the densely forested sections of southern Mississippi. Farther north the
longleaf pine is gradually replaced by loblolly, slash, and shortleaf pines and
by hardwoods, such as oaks, hickories, and tulip trees.
Millions of acres of private and national
forest land have been reforested since the 1930s and are being managed as pine
plantations. The pine plantations of Mississippi produce large quantities of
pulpwood, as well as pine lumber. Naval stores, including turpentine, rosin,
tar, and pitch, are also produced.
| D | Mining |
Crude oil and natural gas account for
four-fifths of all mineral output, by value, in Mississippi. There are many
small oil fields scattered across southern Mississippi. Natural gas production
is also concentrated in the south. Most of the petroleum is refined elsewhere,
but there are several refineries in the state. Other minerals produced include
sand and gravel, portland cement, clays, and crushed stone.
| E | Manufacturing |
In the late 1990s Mississippi was home to
a well-diversified manufacturing sector. Food processors generated the most
income for the state, particularly those engaged in processing poultry and eggs,
making baked goods, preparing seafood, and meat packing. The production of
chemicals and synthetics, such as drugs, agricultural fertilizers, and plastics,
likewise contributed significantly to the economy. Lumber and wood products,
including the processes of milling, crafting hardwoods, and making plywood, was
another important industry. Other large industries were the makers of machinery,
such as engines and turbines, refrigeration and heating equipment, and farm and
garden tools; manufacturers of transportation equipment, including shipyards
producing United States Navy, merchant marine, and commercial vessels; and the
makers of upholstered, wood, and metal furniture, the industry that employed the
most workers in the state. Other major industries in Mississippi are apparel
manufacturers and textile mills, paper mills, electrical equipment
manufacturers, rubber processors, and firms making primary metal products, such
as structural supports used in construction.
Many industries have moved to Mississippi
from the Northeast because of tax advantages, a large labor supply, weak unions
and restrictions on organizing unions, and nearness to raw materials such as
cotton.
| F | Electricity |
Thermal plants burning coal, oil, or
natural gas for fuel produced 74 percent of the electricity in Mississippi in
2005. The state’s sole nuclear plant in Grand Gulf generated the remaining 22
percent. Electricity is supplied by private utility companies and by rural
electric power associations and municipalities. About half of the associations
and the municipalities in the north and east parts of the state buy power from
the Tennessee Valley Authority.
| G | Tourist Industry |
Tourism is of increasing importance to
the state’s economy. In 2002 spending by tourists totaled $5.3 billion. Parks,
reservoirs, the Gulf Coast, and historic sites draw many visitors. In the early
1990s legalized gambling along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast
increased the state’s attraction as a tourist destination.
| H | Transportation |
| H1 | Waterways |
The first important transportation
routes in Mississippi were the Mississippi River and its tributaries. In the
18th and 19th centuries, flatboats, steamboats, and other watercraft carried
cotton, lumber, and other products through Mississippi and down the river to New
Orleans, Louisiana. Waterways remain important in the state. The state’s chief
ports on the Mississippi River are Vicksburg, Greenville, and Natchez.
Paralleling Mississippi’s coastline on the Gulf of Mexico is a section of the
Intracoastal Waterway. Two busy ports on the Gulf Coast are Pascagoula, which
handles more tonnage than any other in the state, and Gulfport. The
Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in northeastern Mississippi, which opened in the
early 1980s, connects the Tennessee River and the Ohio River valley to the Gulf
of Mexico.
| H2 | Highways |
Among the state’s principal highways
are interstate routes 20 and 55, which focus on Jackson, the principal route
center of the state. In 2005 the state had 119,383 km (74,181 mi) of highway,
including 1,098 km (682 mi) of the federal interstate highway system.
| H3 | Railroads |
Most of the early rail lines in the
state were destroyed by Union forces during the Civil War, and the modern rail
network dates mainly from the 1880s. Jackson is the principal rail center. In
2004 lumber and wood products accounted for 27 percent of the railway freight
originating in the state, wood pulp and paper made up another 17 percent, and
chemicals another 26 percent. Mississippi had 3,993 km (2,481 mi) of railroad
track in 2004.
| H4 | Airports |
Mississippi had 10 airports and
airfields in 2007, many of which were private. Jackson International Airport is
the state’s busiest.
| IV | THE PEOPLE OF MISSISSIPPI |
| A | Population Patterns |
According to the 2000 national census,
Mississippi ranked 31st among the states in population, with a total of
2,844,658. This represented an increase of 10.5 percent since 1990, when the
state’s population was 2,573,216.
In 2006 Mississippi had an average
population density of 24 persons per sq km (62 per sq mi). The rural density was
greatest in the Delta. Southeastern Mississippi was the most sparsely settled
part of the state. Mississippi is a predominantly rural state with only 49
percent of the population living in urban areas in 2000, one of the lowest rates
in the nation. However, the urban population has been growing steadily since
1940, while the rural population has been declining as the number of small farms
has decreased. The population of the state’s small towns has remained relatively
stable.
As counted by the federal census in 2000,
whites constitute 61.4 percent of Mississippi’s population. Blacks are 36.3
percent, giving Mississippi a larger proportion of blacks in its population than
any other state. Until 1940 blacks were a majority in the state. Mississippi was
one of only four states that declined in population between 1940 and 1960,
largely because of black emigration. The black population is particularly large
in the Delta, where blacks constitute more than 60 percent of the population of
most counties. Only in the northeastern and southeastern corners of the state do
blacks account for less than 20 percent of the population. Asians are 0.7
percent of the population, Native Americans 0.4 percent, and those of mixed
heritage or not reporting race 1.2 percent. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific
Islanders numbered 667. Hispanics, who may be of any race, are 1.4 percent of
the people.
| B | Principal Cities |
Jackson, the state capital and the largest
city in Mississippi, had a 2005 population of 177,977. Besides serving as the
seat of government, Jackson is the state’s leading manufacturing, railroad, and
commercial center. Gulfport, with a population of 72,464, is primarily a
shipping center and resort. Biloxi, with a population of 50,209, is an important
fishing port and processing center for shrimp. Hattiesburg, with a population of
47,176, is a trade, transportation, and education center. Greenville had a
population of 38,724. It is principally a river port and trade center. Meridian
had a population of 38,605. It is the major trade center for eastern
Mississippi. Manufacturing is also important in Meridian.
Pascagoula is a fishing port and an oil
refining and shipbuilding center. Vicksburg and Natchez are river ports on the
Mississippi. Both cities are tourist attractions because of their historical
importance. Clarksdale and Greenwood are cotton markets and trade centers in the
Delta. Other cities of regional importance include Tupelo, Laurel, and
Columbus.
| C | Religion |
During the years of French rule, Roman
Catholicism was the official religion of the Mississippi region. The period of
British control from 1763 to 1783 made the Church of England the state church
and attracted numerous Protestant settlers. Protestantism continued to increase
even after part of the area passed to Spain and Roman Catholicism once more
became official. The first Baptist church in the region was founded in 1791, and
the first Methodist church in 1799. After the creation of the Mississippi
Territory in 1798 these two denominations rapidly increased their membership
among both whites and blacks in Mississippi. The first Presbyterian church in
the territory was established in 1804. The Episcopal faith was largely confined
to planters in the Mississippi River counties. Lutheranism was introduced into
the state in the 1840s.
At the present time the great majority of
church members in Mississippi are Protestants. Baptist congregations make up the
largest Protestant group. In addition, there are also substantial numbers of
Methodists. The Roman Catholic population is generally concentrated in the
coastal area and along the Mississippi River. There are also some Jewish
congregations in the state. At Jackson is the national headquarters of the
Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.
| V | EDUCATION AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS |
| A | Education |
The first schools in the Mississippi region
were set up by English settlers in the 18th century. The first free public
school in the state, Franklin Academy, was founded at Columbus in 1821. Efforts
to create a state school system were not made until the 1840s. Public schools
for black students were first established in 1862. A uniform statewide public
school system was finally established in 1870. In 1910 legislation was enacted
by the state to consolidate rural school districts and to provide for free
school transportation. School attendance was made compulsory in 1918.
Following the 1954 decision by the Supreme
Court of the United States that declared racial segregation in the public
schools unconstitutional, white Mississippians sought to maintain their racially
segregated schools. In an effort to assist them, the state abolished compulsory
school attendance in 1956. However, in 1962 the federal government compelled the
University of Mississippi to admit a black student, James Meredith. In 1964 it
forced 19 elementary schools to admit a total of 57 black students. In the early
1970s, desegregation under federal court orders became widespread.
In 1986 the state completed the adoption of
a new education program. The most important changes were the introduction of a
public kindergarten system and the restoration of compulsory school attendance.
Education is now compulsory for children ages 6 to 16. Private schools enroll 10
percent of the state’s children.
In the 2002–2003 school year Mississippi
spent $6,356 on each student’s education, compared to a national average of
$9,299. There were 15.1 students for every teacher (the national average was
15.9 students). Of those older than 25 years of age in 2006, 77.9 percent had a
high school diploma.
| A1 | Higher Education |
The first college established in
Mississippi was Jefferson College, which opened near Natchez in 1811.
Mississippi College, in Clinton, was founded in 1826 as Hampstead Academy and is
the oldest institution of higher education still in operation in Mississippi.
The oldest state-controlled institution of higher learning is the University of
Mississippi (founded in 1844), in Oxford. Other state-supported institutions are
Alcorn State University, in Lorman; Mississippi State University, near
Starkville; Mississippi University for Women, in Columbus; Jackson State
University, in Jackson; the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg;
Delta State University, in Cleveland; and Mississippi Valley State University,
in Itta Bena. In 2004–2005 the state had 25 public and 15 private institutions
of higher learning, including Millsaps College, in Jackson; William Carey
College, in Hattiesburg; and Tougaloo College, in Tougaloo.
| B | Libraries |
There are 49 county and regional public
library systems in Mississippi. Each year the libraries circulate an average of
3.3 books for every resident, one of the lowest circulation rates among the
states. The oldest library in Mississippi is the Mississippi State Law Library,
originally established as the State Library in Jackson in 1838. The Mississippi
Library Commission now functions as the state library agency. Also in Jackson is
the library of the state department of archives and history. Major university
libraries include those at the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State
University, and the University of Southern Mississippi.
| C | Museums |
Among the fine arts museums in the state
are the Lauren Rogers Library and Museum of Art, in Laurel; the Mississippi
Museum of Art, in Jackson; the Meridian Museum of Art; and the art museum of the
University of Mississippi. Other museum collections at the universities are
devoted to archaeology, geology, and the history of science. Three of the
best-known museums in Mississippi, all in Jackson, are the Old Capitol Museum of
Mississippi History, the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, affiliated with
the state department of wildlife conservation, and the Mississippi Agriculture
and Forestry/National Agricultural Aviation Museum, affiliated with the state
department of agriculture.
| D | Communications |
There were 20 daily newspapers published in
the state in 2002. The first three founded in Mississippi were the
Mississippi Gazette, which began operation in about 1800; the
Intelligencer, established in 1801; and the Mississippi Herald,
founded in 1802. All three papers were published in Natchez. The oldest existing
newspaper in Mississippi is the weekly Woodville Republican, which began
publication in 1824. The daily with the largest circulation is the Jackson
Clarion-Ledger. Other major daily papers include the Biloxi Sun
Herald, the Meridian Star, the Tupelo Northeast Mississippi
Daily Journal, the Pascagoula Mississippi Press, the
Hattiesburg American, and the Greenville Delta
Democrat-Times.
The first radio station in Mississippi,
currently known as WFOR, began operations as WDBT at Hattiesburg in 1925. The
first television station, WJTV, was established at Jackson in 1953. There were
68 AM and 85 FM radio stations and 21 television stations in the state in
2002.
| E | Music and Theater |
All-day singings, or community singings of
hymns and folk songs, are a popular tradition in Mississippi and are held
regularly on the local, regional, and statewide levels. Symphony orchestras are
found in some cities and towns in the state, including Jackson and Tupelo.
Little-theater groups are active in many communities and universities.
| VI | RECREATION AND PLACES OF INTEREST |
Mississippi’s abundant water resources and
mild climate provide residents and tourists with recreational opportunities
throughout the year. Facilities for water sports include boating, swimming, and
fishing in almost all the state-administered parks and recreation areas and in
the recreation areas administered by the federal government.
| A | National Parks |
The National Park Service administers
seven units in Mississippi. Four of them, Tupelo National Battlefield, Vicksburg
National Military Park, Vicksburg National Cemetery, and Brices Cross Roads
National Battlefield Site, are associated with the American Civil War
(1861-1865) (see Vicksburg, Campaign of; Brices Cross Roads, Battle of).
Vicksburg National Military Park commemorates the siege and defense of
Vicksburg, one of the most decisive battles of the Civil War. Today the
battlefield at Vicksburg includes more than 1,300 monuments and markers,
reconstructed trenches and earthworks, and cannon emplacements. The Vicksburg
National Cemetery, established in 1866, contains more than 18,000 graves. The
identities of those in nearly three-quarters of the graves are unknown. Soldiers
from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War (1898), World War I (1914-1918),
World War II (1939-1945), and the Korean War (1950-1953) are buried in the
cemetery. Natchez Trace Parkway, most, but not all, of which lies in
Mississippi, follows the route of a historic Native American and pioneer road.
The Mississippi section of the Gulf Islands National Seashore contains Fort
Massachusetts and several primitive offshore islands. The newest unit, Natchez
National Historical Park, is centered among one of the country’s best-preserved
concentrations of homes from the time before the Civil War, known as the
antebellum period.
| B | National Forests |
The six national forests in Mississippi
cover 467,000 hectares (1,153,000 acres). The largest, De Soto National Forest,
covers more than 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of dense pine forest in the
southeast. The other forests are Bienville, Delta, Holly Springs, Homochitto,
and Tombigbee. Most of them have camping, hunting, fishing, and boating
facilities.
| C | State Parks |
Mississippi had 27 state parks in the
mid-1990s. The oldest and among the largest is Leroy Percy State Park, set in a
bayou area along the Mississippi River. Another is Tishomingo, in the rolling
hills and woodlands of northeastern Mississippi. Percy Quin, in southern
Mississippi, has hiking trails through pine and oak forests. Tombigbee is in
pine-forested countryside in the northeast. Clarkco, in the east, is noted for
its plant and animal life.
The Sam Dale State Historic Site, near
Daleville, honors General Sam Dale, a frontiersman and hero of the War of 1812.
The Nanih Waiya State Historic Site, in east-central Mississippi, features a
mound considered by the Choctaw to be sacred.
| D | Other Places to Visit |
The Gulf Coast region is the most popular
resort area in the state and is the site of notable historic attractions. One of
them, the Old Spanish Fort, at Pascagoula, is said to be the oldest existing
building in the lower Mississippi Valley. Built in 1718 as a carpenter’s or
blacksmith’s shack, it and an associated museum adjoin a cemetery containing the
graves of early settlers. Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis, president
of the Confederacy, stands near Biloxi.
The Natchez area is the center of
antebellum architecture in Mississippi. Many of the mansions and their beautiful
gardens are open to visitors. Additional places of interest are found in and
around Jackson and Vicksburg. In Jackson are the Governor’s Mansion, completed
in 1842, and the former state capitol, which dates from the 1830s. The capitol
building, seat of the state legislature until 1903, now houses the Mississippi
State Historical Museum. Places to visit at Vicksburg include the Old Courthouse
Museum, which contains mementos of the Confederacy; and the Cairo, a
restored Civil War gunboat, which contains various historical artifacts from
that era. The casinos in Mississippi are all located, as required by law, on
naturally navigable waterways aboard permanently moored vessels. There are
concentrations of resort casinos along the Gulf Coast and at several sites on
the Mississippi River. The one exception is the casino not under state control
located on the Choctaw reservation in Neshoba County.
| E | Annual Events |
The annual Biloxi Shrimp Festival, one of
the most popular annual events in Mississippi, includes the crowning of a queen
and the blessing of the shrimp fleet in June. Earlier in the year, Mardi Gras is
celebrated at Pascagoula and Natchez. In March and April is the month-long
Natchez Spring Pilgrimage, which includes pageants and tours of the antebellum
mansions and their gardens. Similar pilgrimages are also held in spring at
Aberdeen, Port Gibson, Vicksburg, Holly Springs, and Columbus and in cities
along the Gulf Coast. Confederate Memorial Day is celebrated throughout the
state in April. The Mississippi Arts Festival is also held in April, in Jackson,
featuring a wide variety of performing artists. In May the Jubilee Jam Art and
Music Festival is held in Jackson. In midsummer at the Neshoba County Fair in
Philadelphia, townspeople move into cabins on the fairgrounds for a week; state
politicians traditionally open their campaigns there. Around Labor Day some 200
hot-air balloons lift off during the Mississippi Sky Parade in Jackson, which
includes an air show and balloon races. The Mississippi Fair and Dairy Show is
held at Meridian the first week in October; and the Mississippi State Fair, in
October at Jackson.
| VII | GOVERNMENT |
Mississippi has had four state
constitutions, adopted in 1817, 1832, 1869, and 1890. To be adopted, a proposed
amendment to the constitution must be approved by two-thirds of the members of
each house of the legislature and by a majority of the voters who vote on it in
a general election. The legislature may also call a constitutional convention to
revise the constitution.
| A | Executive |
Mississippi’s chief executive official,
the governor, is elected for a four-year term. A change in law effective in 1994
allowed for the first time the governor to serve consecutive terms, although a
two-term limit was imposed. The governor enjoys wide appointive powers. Alone or
subject to the approval of the senate, the governor appoints many of the members
of the state’s more than 100 agencies, departments, boards, and commissions. The
governor may veto proposed legislation, but the legislature can override a veto
by a vote of two-thirds of the membership of each house. Other elected
administrative officials, in addition to the governor, include the lieutenant
governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, auditor of public
accounts, superintendent of education, commissioner of insurance, and
commissioner of agriculture and commerce. All officials serve four-year terms.
The treasurer is prohibited from serving more than two consecutive terms.
| B | Legislative |
The Mississippi legislature consists of a
52-member Senate and a 122-member House of Representatives. All legislators are
elected for four-year terms. Regular sessions of the legislature are held
annually, limited to 125 days the first year a new governor takes office and
during even-numbered years of the governor’s term. Odd-year sessions are limited
to 90 days. The legislature may extend its sessions by a two-thirds vote,
however, and the governor may call special sessions.
| C | Judicial |
The highest court in Mississippi, the
Supreme Court, is composed of nine justices, who are elected from state
districts for eight-year terms. The senior member of the court serves as the
chief justice. The major trial courts in the state are the chancery courts,
which concern themselves mainly with civil suits, and the circuit courts, which
specialize in criminal cases. Some larger counties have county courts, which
handle minor civil and criminal cases. Circuit, chancery, and county court
judges are elected to four-year terms. Local courts in Mississippi include
municipal, justice, and family courts.
| D | Local Government |
Mississippi has 82 counties. The chief
governing body in each is the board of supervisors, composed of five members
elected for four-year terms. Other county officials, all elected to four-year
terms, include the sheriff, tax assessor, superintendent of education (sometimes
appointed), attorney, chancery clerk of court, and circuit clerk of court.
There are nearly 300 municipalities in
Mississippi, most of which have the mayor and alderman form of municipal
government. Most of the larger cities have the commission form of
government.
| E | National Representation |
Mississippi has four members in the U.S.
House of Representatives and elects two senators. The state casts six electoral
votes in Presidential elections.
| VIII | HISTORY |
| A | Early Inhabitants |
Mississippi had a sizable prehistoric
population. Many ceremonial mounds still stand throughout the state as reminders
of the Hopewell culture (about AD 1-800) and the Mississippian culture (about AD
800-1500), both popularly called Mound Builders, whose people lived in highly
organized farming communities.
In historic times, three nations of the
large Muskogean linguistic stock were the principal Native American residents of
the region. The Choctaw, the largest and most powerful, were dominant in most of
central and southern Mississippi. The Chickasaw controlled the northern part of
the state. The Natchez were dominant in southwestern Mississippi. Among these
major peoples lived a number of smaller groups. By 1840 the great majority of
Mississippi’s Native Americans had suffered fates common to most Native
Americans in the eastern United States: extermination, forced relocation to
other parts of the country, or assimilation with whites or with other Native
American peoples.
There are still a few thousand Choctaw
in the east-central part of the state, descendants of 5,000 who elected to stay
and claim individual pieces of land when the rest of the nation was moved.
Within 20 years they had been dispossessed of their claims, and for more than
100 years lived in poverty as sharecroppers and wage laborers. Recently they
have organized as the Mississippi Band of Choctaw, which runs several business
enterprises and holds a prominent yearly regional fair, the Choctaw Indian Fair.
They still speak the Choctaw language and play traditional stickball games.
| B | European Discovery and Settlement |
The first Europeans who entered the
area were from Spain. Among them were the Hernando de Soto expedition
(1539-1543) that explored large parts of the southern United States. De Soto is
believed to have led his expedition westward across northern Mississippi late in
1540. The diseases brought by de Soto and his troops were devastating to the
Native Americans, who lacked immunity to them. Their population dropped
disastrously in the years after the Spaniards’ visit.
For about 130 years following de Soto’s
expedition, there was no significant exploratory activity in the region. In
1673, the French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet traveled down the
Mississippi River to the mouth of the Arkansas River. Nine years later another
French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, traveled down the
Mississippi to its mouth and claimed for France all of the land drained by the
river and its tributaries. La Salle named that vast region Louisiane (in
English, Louisiana) in honor of the reigning French king, Louis XIV.
| C | The 18th Century |
| C1 | French Rule |
The French built forts and
settlements along the Gulf Coast and in the Mississippi valley. In 1699 they
established the first fort and permanent settlement in the Mississippi region.
Under the leadership of Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’Iberville, they built Fort
Maurepas and the settlement of Biloxi (later Old Biloxi) in the area of
present-day Ocean Springs. Biloxi became the first settlement in Louisiana,
which came to include various new settlements in the lower Mississippi valley
and along the Gulf Coast. In 1702 Fort Maurepas was practically abandoned in
favor of a new settlement on Mobile Bay in present-day Alabama. Mobile remained
the capital and principal settlement of Louisiana until 1722, when the center of
government was moved to New Orleans. Fort Rosalie, at the site of present-day
Natchez, was established 1716.
Louisiana struggled as a royal colony
from 1699 to 1712. As a result of fighting between France and Great Britain
during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the colonists were cut off
from France for years at a time. In 1712 the financially beleaguered French
monarchy awarded a monopoly over Louisiana to wealthy French financier Antoine
Crozat. Crozat did not develop the colony, and surrendered his rights to it in
1717. The colonist population remained quite small—only a few hundred—throughout
his proprietorship.
In 1717 the right to develop the
slow-growing colony was given to the Compagnie d’Occident (Company of the West),
headed by Scottish financier John Law. Law gained great influence at the French
court through his establishment of what became the French national bank. Because
the bank invested heavily in the Company of the West and because Louisiana was
the company’s greatest asset, Law needed to develop the colony rapidly to
maintain public confidence in the bank. He undertook a promotional campaign that
brought in several thousand settlers. Several hundred of them settled at or near
Fort Rosalie and along the nearby Gulf Coast.
Law’s promotional literature led
immigrants to anticipate quick profits from mining and other endeavors that
would require little effort and investment. However, the harsh world they found
was dramatically different. Many died because the overwhelmed colonial
government could not meet their needs for food, clothing, and shelter. Most of
the survivors stayed because they lacked the means to return to Europe. In the
following decades the economy of the region remained a haphazard mixture of fur
trading and small-scale agriculture.
Law’s promotional scheme, known as
the Mississippi Bubble, fell apart in 1720 as word of the brutal colonial
conditions reached France. The company survived, however, and continued to
administer the colony until 1731. In that year, as a result of French warfare
with the Natchez, Louisiana was returned to the French monarchy.
| C2 | Wars with Native Americans and the British |
War with the Natchez, who resented
the French for encroaching on their lands, had begun in 1729. In November of
that year the Natchez attacked Fort Rosalie, killing more than 200 French
settlers. In retaliation, the French, with help from the Choctaw, killed most of
the Natchez and, in the following years, enslaved or scattered the rest.
The animosity of the Natchez was
fueled by traders from Great Britain, which in the early 18th century was
engaged in a long struggle with France for control of North America. In
Mississippi the Chickasaw also sided with the British, and so eventually they
too clashed with the French. However, the Chickasaw were noted warriors and
proved a much tougher adversary than the Natchez. In 1736 the Chickasaw
decisively defeated a French force led by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de
Bienville, Iberville’s brother and the governor of Louisiana, in the Battle of
Ackia near the site of present-day Tupelo. Largely as a result of that defeat,
French control of Mississippi was restricted to the southern part.
In the early 1760s the lengthy
colonial struggle between France and Great Britain finally ended with France’s
defeat in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Under the terms of the treaty
ending the war, Great Britain acquired all of the former French claim east of
the Mississippi River, including all of the present state of Mississippi. New
Orleans and the territory west of the river had been ceded to Spain during the
war.
| C3 | British Rule |
Under the British that part of
Mississippi south of latitude 31° north was included in the province of West
Florida. The British moved the boundary northward and finally set it between
latitudes 32° and 33° north, near present-day Vicksburg, in 1767. The king of
Great Britain, by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, reserved the area north of
that line for Native Americans, and settlement by whites was forbidden there
without the permission of the Native American inhabitants. South of that line,
settlers came from the British Atlantic Seaboard colonies. They were attracted
particularly to the rich virgin bluffs around Natchez. During the American
Revolution (1775-1783) the rate of migration increased as Loyalists (colonists
loyal to the king) fled from the rebelling colonies.
Across the Mississippi River from
West Florida was the remainder of Louisiana, now governed by Spain. During the
American Revolution, Spain declared war on Great Britain. The governor of
Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, led Spanish forces that captured major
settlements in West Florida, including Baton Rouge, Natchez, and Pensacola. In
1781 Gálvez took over the administration of the region. Great Britain ceded West
Florida to Spain in the peace treaty of 1783.
| C4 | United States Rule |
By the peace treaty of 1783, the land
that had been reserved for Native Americans became United States territory. The
states to the east renewed their efforts to colonize it, claiming that swaths of
that territory had been granted to them in their old royal charters. Typically
these charters were vague about western boundaries or awarded the grantees all
lands “from sea to sea.” Georgia claimed all of Mississippi north of latitude
31° north, and the influx of settlers from Georgia increased.
The United States and Spain disagreed
about the northern boundary of West Florida. The United States maintained, on
the basis of language in the peace treaty of 1783, that the boundary line was
latitude 31° north. Spain insisted that it was the northern line set in 1767 by
the British, and refused to remove its soldiers from Natchez, which was in the
disputed area. The dispute, complicated by Georgia’s claim to land in
Mississippi, brought forth a welter of schemes and plots. Finally, in 1795,
under the terms of the Treaty of San Lorenzo, Spain accepted latitude 31° north
as the northern boundary of West Florida.
Three years later, in 1798, Spain
withdrew its forces from the area north of the boundary. The Congress of the
United States then created the Mississippi Territory on April 7, 1798. The new
territory was bounded on the north by a line drawn east from the mouth of the
Yazoo River, on the south by latitude 31° north, on the west by the Mississippi
River, and on the east by the Chattahoochee River, which now forms part of the
eastern border of Alabama. A former Georgia governor, George Matthews, was
appointed the territorial governor. Natchez was designated the first territorial
capital. In 1802 the capital was moved to nearby Washington.
Matthews, however, never served as
Mississippi governor because his land speculation activities evoked so much
local opposition that he was almost immediately replaced by Winthrop Sargent.
Matthews was the local agent of one of the four land companies that were granted
vast tracts of land by the Georgia legislature in the Yazoo Fraud of 1795. The
grant to Matthews’s company covered most of the Natchez district and, if
validated, would have dispossessed all previous grantees. Most of the
legislators held shares in the four companies, and the resulting public outcry
resulted in the election of a new Georgia legislature (1796) that canceled the
sale and offered refunds to the land companies. However, much of the land had
already been resold, and the new buyers insisted on keeping it.
| D | The 19th Century |
| D1 | Territorial Period |
In 1802 Georgia ceded its western
land claims to the federal government, which agreed to settle the issues in the
Yazoo Fraud. The cession included all the land then constituting the Mississippi
Territory, as well as the land northward to the southern boundary of Tennessee.
In 1804 that additional northern area was added to the Mississippi Territory.
However, the area south of latitude 31° north still remained part of
Spanish-held West Florida. Then, in 1810, United States settlers in West Florida
rebelled against Spanish rule and declared their independence. The territory was
subsequently annexed by the United States. In 1812 the part of the region west
of the Pearl River was made part of the Territory of Orleans (now the state of
Louisiana) and the region eastward to the Perdido River became part of the
Mississippi Territory. With that addition, the Mississippi Territory included
all the land now in the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
In Fletcher v. Peck (1810),
the Supreme Court of the United States declared that, whether or not the Yazoo
sale was proper, those later buyers who had bought in good faith from the
original grantees were entitled to keep their land. If it was not turned over to
them, they were entitled to damages for breach of contract. Thus, in 1814,
Congress authorized payment of more than $4 million to the claimants.
In the following years the
inhabitants of Mississippi Territory increased the pressure for statehood.
Settlers in the Natchez region, which had the heaviest concentration of
population and wealth, were the most insistent. Settlers east of the Pearl River
were generally wary of statehood; they feared that the wealthy Natchez interests
would control the state government. To accommodate the easterners, Congress in
1817 created the Alabama Territory out of what was formerly the eastern part of
the Mississippi Territory. On December 10 of that same year, Mississippi was
admitted to the federal Union as the 20th state. David Holmes, the last
territorial governor, was elected the first governor under statehood, and
Natchez was designated the state capital. In 1821 the capital was moved
temporarily to Columbia pending selection of a site nearer the state’s
geographic center. A site was selected on the P EarlRiver and was named Jackson
in honor of the famous general and later president of the United States, Andrew
Jackson. The capital was moved there in 1822.
| D2 | King Cotton |
During the first decades of the 19th
century, thousands of farmers migrated westward in search of land for growing
cotton. The population of the state grew from 7,600 in 1800 to 75,448 in 1820.
Then settlement accelerated, and the state’s population rose to 136,621 by 1830.
For the most part, the migrants settled in southern and west-central
Mississippi. Northern Mississippi—two-thirds of the state’s total area—remained
in the possession of the Choctaw and Chickasaw peoples.
By 1830 much of the good virgin land
east of the Mississippi River was occupied by settlers, and the state
legislature and courts put increasing pressure on the Choctaw and Chickasaw to
give up their lands. Within the next three years the Choctaw and Chickasaw ceded
their lands to the federal government and agreed to leave the state.
Subsequently, settlers in unprecedented numbers migrated to Mississippi by river
and road to settle on these vast newly ceded lands. By 1860 the state’s
population rose to 791,305, of which about 45 percent were white settlers and
the remainder black slaves, on whom the cotton economy depended. The state’s
cotton production increased greatly. By 1860 Mississippi was the leading
cotton-producing state in the nation, and cotton was the “king” of Mississippi’s
agricultural products.
Although cotton was planted in almost
every part of Mississippi, it was generally on the richest lands, such as those
in the Black Belt or the Bluff Hills, that the large cotton plantations were
concentrated. The rich alluvial lands of the Yazoo Basin, however, were
initially shunned by settlers because of the danger of floods from the nearby
Mississippi River. Then, in the 1850s, the state undertook an extensive program
to build levees along the river, and these lands too were brought into cotton
production.
| D3 | The Civil War |
Slavery was one of the most divisive
political issues in Congress in the first half of the 19th century. Members of
Congress from the Northern states pressed to end slavery, both because it was
considered immoral and because white labor could not compete with unpaid black
labor. Members from the Deep South (North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida) believed that slavery was
essential to their cotton-based agricultural system and that the North was
trying to dominate the national economy. Both the slaveowners and nonslaveowners
defended the system because they feared the consequences of abolitionism, the
movement to end slavery totally and immediately.
By the 1850s, Southerners saw their
power slipping in Congress, the clamor by Northern abolitionists was at a high
pitch, and many in the South came to believe that secession from the Union was
the only way to protect “Southern rights,” including the right to own slaves. A
secession movement, led by extremists in Mississippi and other slave states,
arose in 1850. It failed, however, when Congress passed the Compromise Measures
of 1850, temporarily reconciling North and South on the issue of slavery.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected
president as the candidate of the Republican Party, which opposed the spread of
slavery. The state of South Carolina, which had threatened to secede if the
Republicans won, did so in December 1860. On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became
the second state to secede. The next month, after five more states had seceded,
the breakaway states organized as the Confederate States of America and began
mobilizing for the war that was expected to follow. As their president the
Confederates elected Mississippi cotton planter Jefferson Davis, a U.S. senator
and former U.S. secretary of war. The American Civil War began officially on
April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery bombarded a federal fort in
Charleston harbor.
The major military campaign in
Mississippi during the war was the long Union Army drive leading to the capture
of Vicksburg in July 1863. The loss of Vicksburg was a shattering blow because
the city was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River.
Early the next year a Union Army force under General William T. Sherman marched
across the state from Vicksburg to Meridian. After the capture of Vicksburg,
most Confederate troops were withdrawn from Mississippi. Some remained, however,
under the leadership of Generals Nathan B. Forrest and Stephen D. Lee. These
forces defeated several Union attempts to capture northeastern Mississippi in
1864, most notably in the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, near Baldwyn, in June.
In all, about 80,000 Mississippians fought for the confederacy. About 25,000
Mississippi soldiers, or one out of every three, died in the war from wounds and
disease.
| D4 | Reconstruction |
Under President Andrew Johnson, the
federal government formed a plan for restoring the Union, called Reconstruction.
Johnson appointed William L. Sharkey as provisional governor of Mississippi in
June 1865 and directed him to reorganize the state government. Amendments to the
state constitution were made in August, formally abolishing slavery. A new
government, elected in October, was dominated by former Confederates. This
government enacted the so-called Black Code, which reimposed on the freed blacks
many of the old restrictions that had been placed on slaves. All blacks were
required to possess, every January, written evidence of employment for the
coming year. Laborers leaving their jobs before their contract expired would
forfeit wages already earned and would be subject to arrest. Freedmen could not
rent land in urban areas. Vagrancy was punishable by plantation labor. Blacks
were also denied the right to vote.
Similar codes were enacted by other
Southern legislatures. Partly for this reason, the Radical wing of the
Republican Party in Congress wrested control of Reconstruction from President
Johnson and imposed the harsher regime called Radical Reconstruction. In March
1867, Congress put all the ex-Confederate states except Tennessee under military
rule. Readmission to the Union was made conditional on the adoption of new
constitutions acceptable to Congress. In January 1868 another constitutional
convention, the so-called Black and Tan Convention, met in Jackson and drafted a
constitution guaranteeing the vote and other basic rights to blacks. The
proposed new constitution was defeated by the electorate in June 1868 but was
approved in November 1869. Mississippi was formally readmitted to the Union on
February 23, 1870.
The new state government was
Republican and consisted mainly of whites from the North (called carpetbaggers
by their enemies), white Southerners who were willing to cooperate (called
scalawags), and blacks. From the first, the administration faced a hostile white
population and economic disruption. Even so, it had positive achievements, among
them free public schools for all. However, the Democratic Party grew in strength
as former Confederates received federal pardons and were again allowed to
participate in politics. Also, increasing numbers of blacks and white
Republicans were intimidated by such terrorist organizations as the Ku Klux
Klan. Finally, in the elections of 1875, Democrats gained control of the state
legislature, and in 1876 the legislature undertook impeachment proceedings
against Republican Governor Adelbert Ames, Lieutenant Governor A. K. Davis, and
other officials. Ames resigned, Davis was removed from office, and the president
pro tempore of the state senate, a Democrat, became governor. Thus began more
than a century of one-party rule of the state by the Democratic Party.
| D5 | Hard Times |
The physical devastation caused by
the Civil War, the freeing of the slaves, and the chaos of the Reconstruction
era had ruinous effects on Mississippi’s economy. Money was scarce, and
bankruptcy was common. Massive poverty afflicted the newly freed blacks, many of
whom had no prospect of earning a livelihood. In some instances the former
slaves were granted small tracts of land by the federal government. More often
they became sharecroppers or tenant farmers on lands either still owned by
planters or recently purchased by large Northern corporations.
Sharecropping and tenant farming were
substitutes for paid labor where little cash was available to pay wages. A
sharecropper raised part of the landlord’s crop and was paid a share of the
profits after deductions for living expenses and the cost of tools and supplies.
A tenant farmer sold what he raised and paid the landlord a share of the profits
as rent. The landlord either owned the crop (in sharecropping) or had a lien on
it (in tenant farming); if the profit was low, he got his share first. The
cropper or tenant took what was left or, if none was left, got an advance to
keep going until the next harvest.
Desperate to recover financially,
landowners relied almost exclusively on their traditional cash crop, cotton.
Agriculture failed to diversify. By 1879, cotton production equaled its prewar
peak. However, the return of high levels of cotton production failed to improve
the lot of most Mississippians because the price for cotton declined through
most of the postwar decades, and living costs rose. Mounting debt forced many
small farmers to give up their land and become tenants or sharecroppers. Kept in
perpetual debt because they could seldom earn enough to pay off their yearly
advances, few were able to escape the sharecropping and tenant farming system.
Not until World War II (1939-1945), when widespread mechanization of cotton
production made sharecropping unprofitable, did the system begin to
disappear.
| E | The 20th Century |
| E1 | Populism and Reform |
In the years following
Reconstruction, the Democratic Party and state government were dominated by
wealthy landowners and business leaders. Then, in the last decades of the 19th
century, small independent farmers and, to a lesser extent, white tenant farmers
and sharecroppers became increasingly dissatisfied with the conservative
political leadership of the planters and industrialists. Farmers experienced a
sharp decline in income, and the Democratic Party did little to help them. Some
farmers deserted the Democrats and started a reform movement represented by the
Farmers’ Alliances and the People’s Party. This movement, called populism,
pressed for the unlimited issuance of silver and paper money to produce
inflation, raise farm prices, and allow farmers to pay off their debts with
cheap money. Populists supported farmers’ cooperatives, lower freight rates,
regulation of the railroads, a graduated income tax, direct popular elections of
U.S. senators, and an eight-hour workday.
With the adoption of popular primary
elections in the state shortly after the turn of the century, the small farmers
gained control of the state Democratic Party. Politicians appealed to the small
farmers with flamboyantly racist speeches; by attacking local and national
banking, railroads, and other corporate interests; and by advocating reforms
beneficial to the small farmers. Governors James K. Vardaman (1904-1908) and
Theodore G. Bilbo (1916-1920, 1928-1932) were characteristic of the politicians
who appealed to small farmers through most of the first three decades of the
20th century. Reforms enacted during that period included larger budgets for
education; lighter tax burdens on small farmers; state regulation of railroads,
banks, and other corporate enterprises; and reform of the state penal
system.
| E2 | The Great Depression and World War II |
The onset of the Great Depression,
the hard times of the 1930s, wreaked new havoc on the Mississippi economy.
However, by its very severity the depression spurred some long-needed economic
developments in the state. Federal farm programs initiated during that decade
encouraged better soil conservation practices and greater crop diversification.
For its part, the state government undertook its most concerted effort to
encourage industrial growth. The Balance Agriculture With Industry (BAWI)
program of Governor Hugh L. White, enacted in 1936, enabled the state and local
governments to issue bonds for the construction of industrial plants to be
leased to private industries. In addition, the program provided for five-year
tax exemptions for some industries. By 1940 the state had achieved modest
industrial growth.
World War II spurred some economic
growth in Mississippi. Because of the state’s mild climate, a number of army
camps and air force bases were built in Mississippi. The largest of these were
Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg and Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. Ingalls
Shipbuilding at Pascagoula helped create a wartime boom on the Gulf Coast. High
wartime wages and nearly full employment brought former sharecroppers into the
towns. Farm income soared, and when the war ended, most large farmers had
surplus funds which could be used for mechanization.
| E3 | The Civil Rights Movement |
Segregation remained a part of life
in Mississippi after the Civil War. Not until the civil rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s did change begin. Some of the key events of this movement took
place in Mississippi. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v.
Board of Education called for an end to racial segregation in public
schools throughout the United States. The Brown decision directly
affected Mississippi, where school segregation had long been required by state
law. However, total segregation of all state educational institutions was
maintained until 1962, when James Meredith became the first black to enroll in
the University of Mississippi. Meredith’s enrollment was accomplished only with
the help of marshals acting under a federal court order, after Governor Ross
Barnett refused to allow it and segregationists rioted on campus. Public schools
below the college level were first desegregated in 1964. Mississippi State
University, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Millsaps College were
desegregated in 1965.
Attempts were made to end segregation
in other areas of life. In 1961 the “freedom rides” were organized by a civil
rights activist organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to
challenge segregation at interstate bus stations in the South. The freedom rides
chartered buses for a trip through the South. They were mobbed and beaten, and
one of their buses burned, in Alabama. When they reached Jackson, Mississippi,
they were arrested and imprisoned for 45 days at the state penitentiary, thus
ending the protest. However, the freedom rides left the strong impression that
blacks were willing to subject themselves to violence to end segregation.
Voting by blacks in Mississippi had
been suspended by intimidation and violence in 1875 and made difficult by
registration requirements, such as the poll tax, in the state constitution of
1890. Starting in 1961, another activist organization, the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organized voter registration campaigns in
heavily-black, rural counties of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. In McComb,
Mississippi, Robert Moses of SNCC led a registration effort despite constant
terrorism. In 1962 and 1963 SNCC worked for voter registration in the
Mississippi Delta, where it found local supporters like activist farmworker
Fannie Lou Hamer. The rising tide of civil rights protest caused a violent
reaction from Mississippi’s white supremacists: In June 1963 Medgar Evers, state
field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), was shot dead in front of his Jackson home.
SNCC workers helped organize the
Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, an effort to focus national attention on
Mississippi’s racism by recruiting Northern college students to work in the
state. The project drew national scrutiny, especially after three project
participants—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner—were murdered
in Neshoba County.
The Summer Project led directly to
the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). When white
Democrats in Mississippi refused to accept black members in their delegation to
the Democratic National Convention, Fannie Lou Hamer and others went to the
convention and challenged their right to represent Mississippi. National party
officials offered two convention seats to the MFDP delegation, but they rejected
the compromise and went home. However, the MFDP challenge later resulted in more
openness to blacks and other minorities in the Democratic Party.
Much progress was made in registering
black voters after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The most
obvious effect was in the number of political offices opened to black
candidates. By 1996, 10 of the 52 members of the Mississippi Senate were black,
as were 34 of the 122 members of the House of Representatives. Law enforcement
was integrated, and many blacks began to hold local and county positions, both
elected and appointed.
| E4 | Revolution in Agriculture, 1945-1995 |
For more than a century before World
War II, Mississippi’s economy was dominated by agriculture, especially cotton.
The intense hand labor required in the cotton fields was supplied before the
Civil War by slaves and afterward by sharecroppers and tenant farmers.
Initially, most sharecroppers were black, but by the Great Depression most were
whites who had lost their small landholdings as cotton prices declined. Tenancy
kept all but the planters and merchants in perpetual poverty and ignorance.
After World War II Mississippi’s
agricultural economy underwent a revolution driven by mechanization, crop
diversification, and consolidation. Tractors appeared on some large plantations
in the 1920s, but after World War II federal crop subsidies and high commodity
prices provided money for rapid and complete mechanization. Tractors, mechanical
cotton pickers, and combines almost eliminated field labor. The introduction of
herbicides, defoliants, and pesticides completed the revolution. Plantations
that had provided livelihoods for dozens of tenant families quickly became
completely mechanized and today employ only a few machine operators. As the new
methods took hold, tenants were dispossessed and farms grew larger and more
centralized. In 1900, 75 percent of all Mississippians made their livings on
farms. In contrast, by 1990 only 2.7 percent of Mississippi’s labor force worked
on farms.
Within Mississippi’s agricultural
economy, cotton was challenged by such products as soybeans, cattle, rice,
poultry, and catfish. While cotton still produces more money than any other
single Mississippi crop, it no longer dominates the agricultural economy.
Soybeans, rice, poultry, and catfish together produce more than twice as much
farm income as cotton, and the value of poultry alone almost equals that of
cotton.
| E5 | Growth of Industry and Trade |
Governor White’s BAWI program in 1936
was the first serious effort to industrialize Mississippi’s economy. Every
governor since World War II has encouraged industrialization and has favored
bringing more industrial jobs to the state. The decline in agricultural
employment and the rise of industrial employment has been rapid. In 1951, 40 new
plants providing 5,200 new jobs located in Mississippi. In 1965 Governor Paul B.
Johnson, Jr., announced that for the first time in the state’s history,
industrial employment had surpassed agricultural employment. In 1977 more than
120 new plants brought more than 10,000 new industrial jobs. Mississippi’s
per-capita income rose from $830 (50 percent of the national average) in 1951 to
$5,529 (71 percent of the national average) in 1977. In 1993 Mississippi’s
per-capita income stood at $14,894, or 71.6 percent of the national average. By
1990 only 29,300 Mississippians, or 2.7 percent of the labor force, worked on
farms, while almost 250,000, or 22.7 percent, worked in factories. Trade and
service industries employed 363,700 Mississippians, while another 210,000 (20
percent) were employed by government.
The largest employers were
manufacturers of clothing, food products, furniture, and lumber and wood
products. Important parts of this industrial growth were linked to Mississippi’s
agricultural products. Among Mississippi’s largest employers today are plants
for processing poultry and catfish. Similarly, industries based on wood
products—paper and pulp mills, and an increasingly important furniture industry
in northeast Mississippi—all spring from timber, Mississippi’s most abundant
resource. Centers of heavy industry have arisen along the Gulf Coast. Litton
Shipbuilding at Pascagoula is the state’s single largest employer. Centers of
heavy industry have also developed in cities along the Mississippi River like
Natchez, Vicksburg, and Greenville.
| E6 | Persisting Economic Problems |
Some economic problems persist. Too
many Mississippians lack the technical and educational skills necessary for
high-wage, sophisticated industries. This is especially true in the Delta and
the central hill counties. Too many Mississippians depend for their livelihoods
on government: In many depressed counties the chief source of income is
government payments such as welfare and social security.
| E7 | Changing Population Patterns |
Changes in Mississippi’s economy have
been paralleled by major demographic changes. Beginning in World War II, large
numbers of black Mississippians migrated to Northern cities to find better pay
and freedom from segregation. Agricultural mechanization and consolidation
forced large numbers of black Mississippians from the countryside into nearby
towns.
The number of blacks in Mississippi’s
population has declined dramatically. In 1900 six of every ten Mississippians
were black. By 1990 Mississippi’s black population numbered 915,000, or 36
percent of the state’s total population of 2,578,000. This decline in black
population was entirely the result of black migration to Northern cities.
Meanwhile, another migration was occurring inside Mississippi. Before World War
II, most black Mississippians lived as tenants on plantations. Farm
mechanization forced them off the land and into nearby towns. Today in the old
plantation areas of Mississippi, the countryside is largely white while many of
the towns have black majorities.
The decline of agricultural
employment and the rise of manufacturing and trade have produced new living
patterns for Mississippians. Since World War II, Mississippi’s largest cities
have been growing, but most small towns and villages have been shrinking or
disappearing. The growth of three metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) accounts
for most of Mississippi’s urban growth. The Jackson MSA is Mississippi’s largest
urban area with a population of 395,000. On the Gulf Coast two urban areas,
Biloxi-Gulfport and Pascagoula-Moss Point-Jackson County, constitute one MSA and
account for a population of 315,000. DeSoto County in north Mississippi (68,000)
is part of the Memphis MSA. These MSAs account for 64 percent of Mississippi’s
urban dwellers.
Despite the growth of these large
urban areas, Mississippi remains a rural state. In 1970 only 45 percent of
Mississippians lived in cities. By 1990 that figure had risen to only 47
percent. The larger metropolitan areas are growing at the expense of smaller
towns and cities. A very large number of Mississippians continue to live in
rural areas and commute to jobs in nearby towns and cities.
| E8 | Changing Politics |
The civil rights issue assumed
overwhelming importance in Mississippi politics in the 1960s. In the 1964
presidential election, most white Mississippians supported the Republican
candidate, Barry M. Goldwater, largely because he championed states’ rights and
had opposed the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the time only about 6 percent
of blacks, who made up nearly 40 percent of the state’s population, were
registered to vote due to intimidation, phony literacy tests, and other
obstacles placed in their path.
Following the passage of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, racial politics continued to divide Mississippi. The
traditional allegiance of white Mississippi voters to the Democratic Party,
which at the national level had backed the civil rights legislation, began to
seriously erode during the 1960s. Black Mississippians, whose voter registration
increased to nearly 60 percent by 1968 and to 74 percent by 1998, largely
supported the Democratic Party. However, the black percentage of the population
had declined to 36 percent by 1990. In the eight presidential elections from
1964 through 1992, Mississippi voted for the Democratic candidate only once:
Jimmy Carter narrowly carried the state in 1976. In 1968 third-party states’
rights candidate George Wallace carried Mississippi. In the other six elections
the Republican candidate won.
Similarly, most white Mississippians
have swung to the Republicans in congressional elections. Both of Mississippi’s
senators and two of its four congresspeople are Republicans. In 1991 Kirk
Fordice became the first Republican to be elected governor in 120 years. Fordice
became the first Mississippi governor in the 20th century to serve consecutive
terms when he was reelected in 1995. In 2000, however, the Democrats regained
control of the governorship. After no candidate received a majority of the votes
in the 1999 general election for governor, the state House of Representatives,
following constitutional procedure, chose Democrat Ronnie Musgrove as governor.
Musgrove was defeated in a general election in 2003 by Republican Haley Barbour,
a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In 2005 Mississippi continued a
process that had begun in the early 1990s to hold accountable those who had
murdered civil rights activists during the 1960s. In 1994 Ku Klux Klan member
Byron De La Beckwith was finally convicted of the 1963 murder of NAACP field
secretary Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1998 Ku Klux Klan imperial
wizard Sam Bowers was convicted of the 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader
Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Then in January 2005 a former Ku Klux
Klan member was charged with murder and manslaughter in the 1964 murders of
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It was the first time state
murder charges had been filed. In June the former Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was
found guilty of manslaughter.
In August 2005 Hurricane Katrina
pummeled the Gulf Coast, causing the costliest natural disaster in United States
history. Harrison County, Mississippi, bore the brunt of the Category 3
hurricane, which slammed into the nearby Louisiana coast with maximum sustained
winds of 204 km/h (127 mph) before heading inland. The powerful winds and storm
surges completely or nearly destroyed coastal cities such as Biloxi and
Gulfport. Mississippi governor Haley Barbour estimated that it would take years
to rebuild the state following the “indescribable” destruction along the coast.
Due in part to the economic
importance of gambling casinos that lined the Mississippi coast, the rebuilding
effort quickly gained steam. Many casino operations were soon back up and
running and providing employment. Barbour enjoyed a reputation for adroit
handling of the crisis, and he was reelected in November 2007.
The History section of this article
was contributed by John Ray Skates, Jr. The remainder of the article was
contributed by Charles L. Wax.
No comments:
Post a Comment