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Native Americans
Mississippi was part of the
Mississippian culture
in the early part of the 2nd millennium AD; descendant
Native
American tribes include the
Chickasaw and Choctaw. Other
tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and gave
their names to local towns) include the
Natchez, the
Yazoo, and the
Biloxi.
The first
expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was
that of Hernando de
Soto, who passed through in 1540. However, the first
settlement was that of
Ocean Springs (or Old Biloxi), settled by
Pierre Le Moyne
d'Iberville in 1699. In 1716,
Natchez was founded on
the Mississippi River (as Fort
Rosalie); it became the dominant town and trading
post of the area. After spending some time under Spanish,
British, and French nominal jurisdiction, the Mississippi
area was deeded to the United
States after the French
and Indian War under the terms of the
Treaty of Paris.
Population
-
The
2000 Census reported Mississippi's population as
2,844,658. 2004 estimates show the population as having
risen to 2,902,966.
Territory and Statehood
The
Mississippi Territory
was organized on
April 7, 1798,
from territory ceded by
Georgia and South Carolina;
it was later twice expanded to include disputed territory
claimed by both the U.S. and
Spain. Land was purchased (generally
through unequal treaties) from Native American tribes from
1800 to about 1830.
Mississippi
was the 20th state admitted to the Union, on
December 10, 1817.
Ante-Bellum
When
cotton was king during the 1850s,
Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the
Delta and
Black Belt
regions—became increasingly wealthy due to the high
fertility of the soil and the high price of cotton on the
international market. The severe wealth imbalances and the
necessity of large-scale slave populations to sustain such
income played a heavy role in both state politics and in the
support for secession.
Civil War
Mississippi
was the second state to secede from the Union on
January 9, 1861;
it joined six other cotton states to form the
Confederate States
of America in February.
Reconstruction
After the
defeat of the Confederacy, President
Andrew Johnson appointed a
temporary government that repealed secession, ratified the
13th Amendment, and wrote new Black
Codes giving the African American
Freedmen an inferior legal status (and no votes.) The
Black Codes never took effect, however, and the legal
affairs of the Freedmen came under
the control of sympathetic
Freeman's Bureau representatives. Most of them were
former Army officers; many stayed and became political and
business leaders (and were called "Carpetbaggers".
The Johnson governments quickly enacted "black
codes", effectively giving freedmen only a limited set
of second-class civil rights, and no voting rights. The
state's black codes have been summarized:
-
"Negroes must make annual contracts for their labor in
writing; if they should run away from their tasks, they
forfeited their wages for the year. Whenever it was
required of them they must present licenses (in a town
from the mayor; elsewhere from a member of the board of
police of the beat) citing their places of residence and
authorizing them to work. Fugitives from labor were to
be arrested and carried back to their employers. Five
dollars a head and mileage would be allowed such negro
catchers. It was made a misdemeanor, punishable with
fine or imprisonment, to persuade a freedman to leave
his employer, or to feed the runaway. Minors were to be
apprenticed, if males until they were twenty-one, if
females until eighteen years of age. Such corporal
punishment as a father would administer to a child might
be inflicted upon apprentices by their masters. Vagrants
were to be fined heavily, and if they could not pay the
sum, they were to be hired out to service until the
claim was satisfied. Negroes might not carry knives or
firearms unless they were licensed so to do. It was an
offense, to be punished by a fine of $50 and
imprisonment for thirty days, to give or sell
intoxicating liquors to a negro. When negroes could not
pay the fines and costs after legal proceedings, they
were to be hired at public outcry by the sheriff to the
lowest bidder.…
The Black
codes outraged northern opinion and apparently were never
put into effect in any state. Congress responded in
September 1865 by refusing to seat the newly elected
delegation. In 1867 it put the state under U.S. Army rule.
The military governor general
Adelbert Ames deposed the civil government, enrolled
black men as voters, and did not allow 1000 or so former
Confederate leaders to vote or hold office. Ames had himself
elected Senator and the state was readmitted to the Union on
February 23, 1870.
The rich
planter James Lusk Alcorn
was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865 but, like all
southerners, was not allowed to take a seat. He supported
suffrage for Freedmen and endorsed
the Fourteenth Amendment,
as demanded by the Republicans in Congress. Alcorn became
the leader of the Scalawags, who
comprised about a third of the
Republican party in the state, in coalition with
carpetbaggers and Freedmen. He
was elected by the Republicans as governor in 1869, serving,
as Governor of
Mississippi from 1870 to 1871. As a modernizer, he
appointed many like-minded former Whigs, even if they were
now Democrats. He strongly supported education, including
public schools for blacks only, and a new college for them,
now known as Alcorn State
University. He maneuvered to make his ally
Hiram Revels its president.
Radical Republicans opposed Alcorn, angry at his patronage
policy. 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.
[Quoted in Eric Foner, Reconstruction (1988) p 298]
Alcorn
resigned the governorship to become a
U.S. Senator
(1871–1877), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first
African American senator. Senator Alcorn urged the removal
of the political disabilities of whites southerners and
rejected Radical Republican
proposals to enforce social equality by federal legislation
(Congressional Globe, 42 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 246-47);
he denounced the federal cotton tax as robbery (Ibid., pp.
2730-33) and defended separate schools for both races in
Mississippi. Although a former slaveholder, he characterized
slavery as "a cancer upon the body of the Nation" and
expressed the gratification which he and many other
Southerners felt over its destruction (Ibid., p. 3424).
Alcorn led
a furious political battle with Senator
Adelbert Ames, the carpetbagger
who led the other faction of the Republican party in
Mississippi. The fight ripped apart the Republican party. In
1873 they both sought a decision by running for governor.
Ames was supported by the Radicals and most African
Americans, while Alcorn won the votes of conservative whites
and most of the scalawags. Ames won by a vote of 69,870 to
50,490.
New South: 1877-1940
Mississippi
was considered to typify the Deep
South during the era of Jim
Crow. However, at the same time, Mississippi became a
center of rich, quintessentially American music traditions:
gospel music,
jazz music, blues,
and rock and roll all were
invented, promulgated, or heavily developed by Mississippi
musicians. Mississippi was noted for its authors, including
William Faulkner,
William Alexander Percy,
Walker Percy,
Shelby Foote,
Stark Young,
Eudora Welty and
Anne Moody.
John Lomax recorded some of its
rich musical history for the
Library of Congress, including a very young
Muddy Waters. He also recorded
convict blues songs and field chants at
Mississippi State
Penitentiary at
Parchman.
1945-2000
Mississippi
was a center of the
American Civil Rights Movement. Few white leaders in the
state supported the effort to secure voting and other rights
for African-Americans, the
vocal opposition of many politicians and officials and the
violent tactics of a few Ku Klux
Klan members and sympathizers gave
Mississippi a reputation as a reactionary state during
the 1960s.
The state
was the last to repeal prohibition
and to ratify the
Thirteenth Amendment, in 1966 and 1995 respectively.
On
August 17, 1969,
Category 5
Hurricane Camille hit the
Mississippi coast killing 248 people and causing US$1.5
billion in damage (1969 dollars).
Since 2000
On
August 29, 2005,
Hurricane Katrina caused
even greater destruction across the entire 90 miles of
Mississippi Gulf coast from Louisiana to Alabama.
Mississippi
in recent years has been noted for its political
conservatism, improved civil rights record, and increasing
industrialization. In addition, a decision in the 1990s to
permit riverboat gambling
has led to economic gains for the state. However, an
estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following
Hurricane Katrina's severe
damage to several riverboat
casinos in August 2005. Gambling towns in Mississippi
include the Gulf coast towns of
Gulfport and
Biloxi and the river
towns of Vicksburg and
Tunica. Prior to Katrina,
Mississippi was the second largest gambling state in the
Union, ahead of New Jersey and
behind Nevada.
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