Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. [23] Fear that white supremacy might be lost were among the reasons that men joined the Confederate Army. The disease, sometimes known as "Yellow Jack" or "Bronze John", produced so many fatalities that it devastated the society both socially and economically. After Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the government forced the tribes to accept lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. As part of New France, Mississippi was also ruled by the Spanish after France's defeat in the Seven Years' War (175663). For decades an unusually large dependent population, a predominantly agricultural economy, and a prevailing resistance to change have kept Mississippis per capita income low and created an inadequate standard of living for many families. Beginning in the 1930s, the ravages of the boll weevil and federal crop restrictions and conservation programs encouraged many farmers to turn from cotton farming to growing other crops, such as soybeans; to sowing grasses for livestock; and to planting trees for timber. Their accounts have been correlated with evidence of natural events. Whites believed they were under attack from the federal government. Mississippi - HISTORY This way of life was manifest in part in a culture of gentility, the legacy of which is still evident in the many historic mansions located in such old towns as Columbus, Biloxi, Natchez, Vicksburg, and Holly Springs. Mississippi produces some 60 percent of Americas farm-raised catfish. HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. Arching between Tennessee and Alabama, these hills form the only area in Mississippi in which the terrain is reminiscent of the mountains of the southeastern United States. Baptist and some other denominations embraced fundamentalism and rejected liberal ideas such as evolution and the Social Gospel. [4] As more Mississippian culture influences were absorbed the Plaquemine area as a distinct culture began to shrink after 1350 CE. Gen. Gregg had an over-strength brigade, but they had endured a grueling march from Port Hudson, Louisiana, arriving in Raymond late on May 11. The vast majority were enslaved African Americans brought by settlers or shipped by slave traders. Before 1798 the state of Georgia claimed the entire region extending west from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi River and tried to sell lands there, most notoriously in the Yazoo land scandal of 1795. The women coped by focusing on survival. Democrats regained control of the state legislature in the late 19th century, and in 1890, passed a disfranchising constitution, resulting in the exclusion of African Americans from political life until the mid-1960s. The bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta were still 90% undeveloped after the Civil War. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. the Hospitality State (which appears on the license plates). Some European-American settlers would bring many enslaved Africans with them to serve as laborers to develop cotton plantations along major riverfronts. Legal racial segregation was imposed in Mississippi primarily following the Reconstruction era. Mississippi, constituent state of the United States of America. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina would cause severe damage along Mississippi's Gulf Coast. He maneuvered to make his ally Hiram Revels its president. Alcorn became the leader of the "scalawags", local residents who comprised about a third of the Republican Party in the state, in coalition with "carpetbaggers" (migrants from the North) and freedmen. Mississippi joined the Union as the 20th state in 1817 and gets its name from the Mississippi River, which forms its western border. Afterward, a satirical cartoon of the event was published, inspiring a Brooklyn candy shop owner to create a stuffed Teddys Bear.. [54] According to Democrat James K. Vardaman, Mississippi's governor, the purpose of the 1890 constitution was "to eliminate the nigger from politics. Governor Ames appealed to the federal government for armed assistance, which was refused. He strongly supported education, conceding segregation of public schools to get them started. It appears to show the de Soto expedition encountering Indians on the Mississippi River in 1541 and is one of the earliest illustrations of the River which de Soto named the "Rio del Espiritu. In Mississippi some modernizers encouraged crop diversification, and production of vegetables and livestock increased, but King Cotton prevailed. In September 1865 Congress was under the control of more Radical Republicans from the North, and refused to seat the newly elected Mississippi delegation. Evidence of their cultures has been found largely through archeological excavations, as well as existing remains of earthwork mounds built thousands of years ago. Otherwise, segregation arose by local custom more than it did by state or municipal law. In every county whites allowed a handful of prominent black ministers and local leaders to vote.[52]. Jackson is the state capital. the Indians was the name that was used on Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle's An elite slave-owning class arose that wielded disproportionate political and economic power. Mississippi has been noted for its authors, including Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner, as well as William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Stark Young, Eudora Welty and Anne Moody. Loewen, James W. and Charles Sallis, eds. Freedmen tried to support him, coming in from the rural areas on December 7, but he advised them to return home peacefully. Where did the Mississippi River get its name? | Almanac.com After 1966 the blacks moved into the Democratic party, where they organized politically to vote, to nominate candidates for office, and win their elections. These were based on slave labor, and developed most intensively along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, bordering the Mississippi Delta. The other county seat is Charleston, located east of the river. This sometimes led to improved treatment for the enslaved. The next day he tried to ambush a small Union raiding party. The name means "best people." Illinois is the spelling . Mississippi is smaller than most of the U.S. states and is bounded on the north by Tennessee, on the east by Alabama, on the south by Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west by Louisiana and Arkansas. Omissions? As Americans entered the territory, they brought their strongly Protestant tradition. The 2010 US Census put the population of Jackson at 173,514 and the Metropolitan . Economic disasters always lurked, such as failure of the cotton crop due to boll weevil infestation, and successive severe flooding in 1912 and 1913. The rivers offered the best transportation to markets.[8]. Mississippi means "large river" to the Chippewa Indians. Its name derives from a Native American word meaning great waters or father of waters. Mississippi became the 20th state of the union in 1817. The federal government wanted to keep up cotton production to fulfill the North's needs, and some planters sold their cotton to Union Treasury agents for high prices. Poor whites organized against low prices, rising costs, and increasing tenancy brought about by the crop lien system. Tens of thousands of African Americans left Mississippi by train, foot, or boat to migrate north starting in the 1880s; migration reached its pinnacle during and after World War I. It Young men, white and black, were equally subject to the draft, but farmers were often exempt on occupational grounds. Jim Crow and disenfranchisement persisted in Mississippi for decades, sometimes enforced by violence and economic blackmail, particularly as African Americans organized to achieve civil rights. at some point due to the population of ground hogs in Mississippi. With increasing urbanization and industrialization, however, the leisurely approach to life in many ways became a hindrance to Mississippis economic and social development. [72] Rioters assaulted the federal and state forces with bricks, bottles, and gunfire before the federal and state forces responded with rifle fire and tear gas. Mississippi in recent years has been noted for its political conservatism, improved civil rights record, and increasing industrialization. Not all Mississippi was doing well. Mississippi continued to be governed by federal martial law. Jim Crow became the mainstay of the Mississippi social order. As the Panic of 1893 brought another depression and very low cotton prices, many farmers had to sell their land to pay off debts and become sharecroppers. Having lost the Indian population and having lost many men to the war, the remaining population packed up and moved to the new town of Amory. Armed white militia attacked the freedmen that day and in the following days, in what became known as the Vicksburg massacre. He resigned and fled the state, "marking the end of Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi. Expansion of cultivation of cotton into the Deep South was enabled by the invention of the cotton gin, which made processing of short-staple cotton profitable. In 1868 a biracial coalition (dominated by whites) drafted a new constitution for the state; it was adopted by referendum. Daily temperatures in January generally range from the low 30s F (about 0 C) to the mid-50s F (about 12 C). By 1900, racial segregation had become more rigid. In the Great Migration, they went North to leave the violence and a society that had closed off opportunity. How did Mississippi get its name? European-American settlers named it after the Ojibwe word - misi-ziibi (English: great river ). He enabled all black men of age to enroll as voters (not just veterans), and temporarily prohibited about a thousand or so former Confederate leaders to vote or hold state offices.[38]. Its slogan is, "The City with Soul" and it has spurned great musicians from the gospel, folk, and jazz genres. This led to the adaption of new pottery techniques, as well as new ceremonial objects and possibly new forms of social structuring. Population (2020) 2,961,279; (2022 est.) Some were shipped from the Upper South in the coastwise slave trade, while others were taken overland or forced to make the entire journey on foot. Answer The Native American communities that used the river for transportation and food long before any European knew of its existence called the massive river "The Father of Waters," or Misi Sipi (Big River). Mississippi is taken from an Indian word meaning "Father of Waters." Mississippi means "large river" to the Chippewa Indians. ", Mississippi is taken from an Indian word meaning "Father of Waters.". How wide is the Mississippi River? River"). Eagle on its coat of arms. [33], There were no slave insurrections, but many slaves escaped to Union lines. A flood. With international demand high, Mississippi and other Deep South cotton was exported to the textile factories of Britain and France, as well as those in New York and New England. It attempted to help the freedmen negotiate contracts and other relations in the new free labor market. [22] Most of these free people lived in wretched conditions near Natchez. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?". In 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, the government assigned the northern part of this cession to Mississippi Territory. Other tribes who inhabited the territory that became known as Mississippi (and whose names were given by colonists to local towns and features) include the Natchez, Yazoo, Pascagoula, and the Biloxi. [19], The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that much of the state was still frontier and needed many more settlers for development. The Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, begun in 1907 and also known as the Negro Rural School Fund, aimed to provide rudimentary education for rural Southern blacks. Following the Peace of Paris (1783) the southern third of Mississippi came under Spanish rule as part of West Florida. By this time, most planters in the Upper South had switched to mixed crops, as their lands were exhausted from tobacco and it was barely profitable as a commodity crop. The Confederates did not have better luck at the Battle of Raymond. Soldiers, Civilians, and Communities in Mississippi,", David Slay, "Abraham Lincoln and the United States Colored Troops of Mississippi,", M. Shannon Mallard, "'I Had No Comfort to Give the People': Opposition to the Confederacy in Civil War Mississippi,", William F. Winter, "Mississippi's Civil War Governors,", Walter E. Pittman, Jr. "Trading with the Devil: The Cotton Trade in Civil War Mississippi,", Marshall Scott Legan, "Disease and the Freedmen in Mississippi During Reconstruction,", Thomas D. Clark, "The Furnishing and Supply System in Southern Agriculture since 1865,", Deanne Stephens Nuwer, "The 1878 Yellow Fever Epidemic along the Mississippi Gulf Coast,", Thomas Adams Upchurch, "Why Populism Failed in Mississippi,". Ownby (1999), in his in-depth study of the state, identifies four American dreams that the new 20th-century consumer culture addressed. Nave of the Jackson Free Press in 2012 when the Republicans took control of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, "of course, the Republican Party of the 1880s was very different from the GOP that now rules the state."[79]. They would remain a majority of the population in many Delta counties. What kind of water fountain did the black people have to drink out of? In 1964, civil rights organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white slate from the state party, based as it was on disfranchisement of blacks. Gregg tried to hold Fourteen Mile Creek, and a sharp battle ensued for six hours, but the overwhelming Union force prevailed and the Confederates retreated. Brig. [31], After each battle, there was increased economic chaos and local societal breakdown. or Algonquin) name for the river, "Misi-ziibi," meaning "Great A small number of businessmen and professionals lived in the villages and small towns. River-county residents were especially vulnerable and apparently left their communities for safer areas (and sometimes moved out of the Confederacy) rather than face invasion.[24]. How much people had served for the military in Mississippi? Ownby demonstrates that poor black Mississippians shared in the new consumer culture. Commercial catfish production began in the state in the mid-1960s. Ask Rufus: The origin of 'Mississippi' - The Dispatch The Blues musical form originated in the Mississippi Delta after the Civil War. Etymology The state's name is derived from the Mississippi River, which flows along and defines its western boundary. Top industries in Mississippi today include agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, transportation and utilities, and health services. East of the Black Prairie, in the extreme northeast, are the Tennessee Hills. One complained that Alcorn's policy was to see "the old civilization of the South 'modernized'" rather than lead a total political, social and economic revolution. The legislature passed statutes requiring three restroom facilities in public buildings: one for white males, one for white females, and one for black males and females. Blacks numbered 437,000, making up 55% of the population; they were overwhelmingly enslaved. What Is the Capital of Mississippi? - WorldAtlas Georgia finally ceded the disputed area in 1802 to the United States national government for its management. They could go to towns and cities to do comparison shopping. Mississippi means "large river" to the Chippewa Indians. The attraction of vast amounts of high-quality, fertile and inexpensive cotton land attracted hordes of settlers, mostly from Georgia and the Carolinas, and from former tobacco areas of Virginia and North Carolina in the Upper South. The war presented both men with enormous challenges in providing an orderly, stable government for Mississippi. Many blacks headed to northern and western cities, particularly in California, as part of the second and larger wave of the Great Migration. Through the 1830s, the federal government forced most of the native Choctaw and Chickasaw people west of the Mississippi River. Thousands of migrants, both black and white, entered this area for a chance at land ownership. He attributes some of their desire to move to ambition, and acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of blacks moved to Memphis or Chicago in the Great Migration. Among other major artists, Bo Diddley, B.B. Various US leaders developed proposals for removal of all Native Americans to west of the Mississippi River. In 1890 the state adopted a new constitution that imposed a poll tax of $2 a year, which the great majority of blacks and poor whites could not pay to register to vote; they were effectively excluded from the political process. Others left for a while, hiding out for a couple of weeks in woods or nearby plantations. They were concerned by inflation of the price of slaves but were in no real distress. The postwar flood was catalyzed by various factors: high prices for cotton, the elimination of Indian titles to much land, new and improved roads, and the acquisition of new direct water outlets to the Gulf of Mexico. He intended to grant citizenship and voting rights first to Black veterans, while slowly integrating the remainder of the freedmen into the political and economic life in the nation and the "new South". Through the colonial period, the various tribes of Native Americans changed alliances trying to achieve the best trading and other conditions for themselves. Gravity finds a shorter, steeper path to the Gulf when sediments deposited by the river make the old path higher and flatter. Activists were threatened. The Jim Crow system became total after 1900, with disenfranchisement, coupled with increasingly restrictive racial segregation laws, and increased lynchings. Sumner, Mississippi - Wikipedia Area 48,441 square miles (125,460 square km). Mississippians had more prosperity in the 1920s than they had known for two generations, although the state was still poor and rural by national standards. All States > Mississippi > Indianola Indianola, Mississippi Tweet Overview Introduction to Indianola, Mississippi Indianola, Mississippi, in Sunflower county, is 84 miles N of Jackson, Mississippi and 122 miles S of Memphis, Tennessee. Mississippi - Wikipedia Later it was briefly part of West Florida under the British. As was noted by reporter R.L. Given the repressed state of its black population, Mississippi was a center of the Civil Rights Movement. 32nd most extensive and the 31st most populous of the 50 United States. map of the area in 1695. By 1920, most African Americans in the state were landless sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Quarantine regulations, passed to prevent the spread of the disease, brought trade to a stop. Three major groups of indigenous peoples constituted the earliest inhabitants of present-day Mississippi. Mississippi - Choctaw, Natchez, Chickasaw, and de Soto In 1945 the newly established Delta War Wage Board provided planters temporary relief by setting a maximum wage for farm workers, but President Harry S. Truman lifted wartime economic controls in 1946. [46], The Democratic Party had factions of the Regulars and New Departures, but as the state election of 1875 approached, they united and worked on the "Mississippi Plan", to organize whites to defeat both white and black Republicans. The French claimed the territory that included Mississippi as part of their colony of New France and started settlement along the Gulf Coast. Gambling towns in Mississippi include Gulfport and Biloxi on the Gulf Coast; Vicksburg, Natchez, Tunica Resorts, and Greenville on the Mississippi River; and the town of Philadelphia in the interior. In 1758, the French ethnographer Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz published The History of Louisiana, in which he wrote that the Mississippi River's name meant "the ancient father of rivers.". Americans pressed to gain more land for cotton, causing conflicts with the several tribes of Native Americans who historically occupied this territory of the Southeast. It used U.S. Army forces to occupy and manage various areas of the South in an effort to create a new order, and Mississippi was one of the areas designated to be under military control. Because of the abundance of magnolia flowers and trees in the state, and its Groups who appear to have absorbed more Mississippian influence were identified at the time of European contact as those tribes speaking the Tunican, Chitimachan, and Muskogean languages.[4]. Soon after the end of the war, chapters of the Ku Klux Klan were organized in Mississippi, working to intimidate blacks and their allies, such as schoolteachers, and suppress voting. She felt the new name symbolized a dove bringing a branch to the seagoing Noah. State," is not explained. The Populist movement failed to attract the large following in Mississippi that it did in Alabama, Georgia and other Southern states. They used economic and political pressure against scalawags and carpetbaggers, persuading them to change parties or leave the state. [57] The sharecropping system, as Cresswell (2006) shows, functioned as a compromise between white landowners' desire for a reliable supply of labor, and black workers' refusal to work in gangs. Though the Some black leaders emerged who had gained education in the North and were returning to the South. This covert action program sought to expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize Ku Klux Klan groups in Mississippi whose violent vigilante activities alarmed the national government. The tourism industry in Mississippi would help play a key role in helping build the states economy in the early 21st century. The states principal river systems include the Tombigbee, now joined with the Tennessee to form the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which links the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mexico; the Pascagoula in the southeast; the Pearl in the south-central section; and the Mississippi and its tributaries, notably the Yazoo and the Big Black, in the west. Mississippi also had numerous sites of activism related to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, as African Americans sought to re-establish their constitutional rights for access to public facilities, including all state universities, and the ability to register, vote, and run for office. While on a hunting expedition with Mississippi Governor Andrew Longino near Onward in November of 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been captured and tied to a tree. The Republican regime faced the determined opposition of the "unreconstructed" white Democrats in the population. [2] Paleo-Indians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age.

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