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'''MISSISSIPPI,''' a South Central state of [[the United States]], situated between 35° N. lat. and 31 0 N. lat., with its S.E. part extending to the [[Gulf Of Mexico|Gulf of Mexico]], the extreme southern point being in 30° 13' N. lat. near the mouth of [[the Pearl]] River. On the E. the line is mostly regular, its extreme E. point being at 88° 7' W. long. in the N.E. corner of the state; the W. boundary has its extreme W. point at 91 0 41' W. long. in the S.W. corner of the state. Mississippi is bounded N. by [[Tennessee]], E. by [[Alabama]], S. by the Gulf of [[Mexico]] and [[Louisiana]], W. by Louisiana, from which it is separated by the [[Pearl]] River and by the Mississippi, and by [[Arkansas]], from which also it is separated by the Mississippi. The total area is 46,865 sq. m., of which 503 sq. m. are water surface.
'''Mississippi''' ({{Audio-IPA|en-us-Mississippi.ogg|/ˌmɪsəˈsɪpi/}}) is a [[U.S. state|state]] located in the [[Deep South]] of the [[United States]]. [[Jackson, Mississippi|Jackson]] is the state capital and largest city. The state's name comes from the [[Mississippi River]], which flows along its western boundary, and takes its name from the [[Anishinaabe language|Ojibwe]] word ''misi-ziibi'' ("Great River"). The state is heavily forested outside of the [[Mississippi Delta]] area. Its [[catfish]] [[aquaculture]] farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States.<ref>[http://msucares.com/aquaculture/catfish/ "Aquaculture: Catfish"], Mississippi State University</ref> The state symbol is the [[Magnolia grandiflora|magnolia]].


''Physical'' Features. - Mississippi lies for the most part in the Mississippi embayment of the Gulf Coastal Plain. A feature of its surface is a [[strip]] of bottom land between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, known as the Yazoo [[Delta]]; it extends from north to south about 175 m., and has an average width of more than 60 m., and covers an area of about 7000 sq. m. With the exception of a few flat ridges running from north to south, it is so low that it requires, to protect it from overflows, an unbroken line of levees averaging 15 ft. in height; these were built and are maintained by the state in part from a special tax on the land and in part from the sale of swamp lands of the United States (under an act of 1850). Along the eastern border of this delta, and southward of it, along the Mississippi itself, extends a [[belt]] of hills or bluffs (sometimes called "[[cane]]-hills"), which is cut by deep ravines and, though very narrow in the north, has in the south an average width of about to m. East of the belt are level or gently rolling prairies, and along the Gulf Coast is a low, marshy tract. The highest elevations, from 800 to moo ft. above the sea, are on the Pontotoc ridge in Tippah and Union counties; and from this ridge there is an almost imperceptible slope south and west from the Appalachian Mountain system. Along the margins of valleys there are hills rising from 30 to 120 ft., but farther back from the water courses the differences of elevation are much less. The coast-line, about 85 m. long, is bordered by a [[beach]] of white [[sand]], and broken by several small and shallow indentations, among which are St Louis, [[Biloxi]]. Pascagoula and Point aux Chenes bays; separated from it by the shallow and practically unnavigable Mississippi [[Sound]] is a chain of low, long and narrow sand islands, the largest of which are Petit [[Bois Brules|Bois]], [[Horn]], Ship and [[Cat]]. The principal rivers are: the Mississippi on the western border, and its tributaries, the Yazoo and the Big Black; the Pearl and Pascagoula, which drain much of the southern portion of the state and flow into the Gulf; and the Tombigbee, which drains most of the north-eastern portion. The Pontotoc ridge separates the drainage system of the Mississippi from that of the Tombigbee; extending from the northeastern part of the state southward, this ridge divides in Choctaw county, the eastern branch separating the drainage basin in the Pascagoula from that of the Pearl, and the western branch separating the drainage basin of the Pearl from that of the Big Black and the Mississippi. The Delta is drained chiefly by the Yazoo. A small area in the north-eastern corner of the state is drained northward by the Tennessee and the Hatchie. Each of the larger rivers is fed by smaller streams; their fall is usually gentle and quite uniform. The valleys vary in width from a few hundred yards to several miles. In the east of the state much of the valley of each of the larger streams is several feet above the stream's present highwater [[mark]] and forms the "hommock" or "second bottom" lands. Most of the rivers flowing into the Gulf are obstructed by sand-bars and navigable only during high-water from January to April. Oxbow lakes and bayous are common only in the Delta.
==Geography==
Mississippi is bordered on the north by [[Tennessee]], on the east by [[Alabama]], on the south by [[Louisiana]] and a narrow coast on the [[Gulf of Mexico]], and on the west, across the Mississippi River, by Louisiana and [[Arkansas]].


==[[Geology]]==
Major rivers in Mississippi, apart from its namesake, include the [[Big Black River]], the [[Pearl River (Mississippi-Louisiana)|Pearl River]], the [[Yazoo River|Yazoo]], the [[Pascagoula River|Pascagoula]], and the [[Tombigbee River|Tombigbee]]. Major lakes include [[Ross Barnett Reservoir]], [[Arkabutla Lake]], [[Sardis Lake (Mississippi)|Sardis Lake]] and [[Grenada Lake]].
The older formations are nearly all overlaid by deposits of the [[Quaternary]] period, which will be described last. In the extreme north-east are found the oldest rocks in the state - lower [[Devonian system|Devonian]] (the New [[Scotland]] beds of New York) and, not so old, an extension of the Lower [[Carboniferous system|Carboniferous]] which underlies the Warrior coalfields of Alabama, and which consists of cherts, limestones, sandstones and shales, with a depth of 800 to 900 ft. The strata here show some traces of the upheaval which formed the Appalachian Mountain chain. When this chain formed the [[Atlantic]] mountainborder of the continent excepting this north-eastern corner, Mississippi had not emerged from the waters of the ancient Gulf of Mexico. As the shore line of the Gulf slowly receded southward and westward, the sediment at its bottom gradually came to the surface, and constituted the [[Cretaceous system|Cretaceous]] and [[Tertiary]] formations. Wherever stratification is observed in these formations in Mississippi, it shows a [[dip]] west and south of 20 or 30 ft. to the mile.
[[Image:Map of Mississippi NA.png|left|thumb|250px|Mississippi State Map]]
The state of Mississippi is entirely composed of lowlands, the highest point being [[Woodall Mountain]], in the foothills of the [[Cumberland Mountains]], only 806 feet (246&nbsp;m) above sea level. The lowest point is sea level at the [[Gulf of Mexico|Gulf]] coast. The mean elevation in the state is 300 feet (91&nbsp;m) above sea level.


The Cretaceous region includes, with the exception of the Lower Carboniferous, all that part of the state eastward of a line cutting the Tennessee boundary in 88° 50' W. long., and drawn southward and eastward near [[Ripley]], Pontotoc, and Starkville, crossing into Alabama in [[latitude]] 32° 45'. There are four formations of Cretaceous strata in Mississippi, defined by lines having the same general direction as the one just described. The oldest, bordering the Lower Carboniferous, is the [[Tuscaloosa]] formation of clays and sands arranged as follows: dark clays, thin [[lignite]] seams, lignitic clays, sands and chert, and light clays; this formation is 5-15 m. wide and reaches from about 33° 30' on the Alabama boundary north to the Tennessee boundary. It is about 270 ft. thick. Tuscaloosa clays are used in the manufacture of pottery. Overlying the Tuscaloosa are the Eutaw sands, characterized by sandy laminated clays, and yellow, orange, red and blue sands, containing lignite and fossil [[resin]]. The Eutaw formation is a strip about 5 to 12 m. wide with a maximum depth of 300 ft. Westward to [[Houston]] and southward to about 32° 48' on the Alabama boundary and occupying a much larger area than the other Cretaceous formations, is the [[Selma]] [[chalk]], called "Rotten [[Limestone]]" by Hilgard; it is made up of a material of great uniformity, - a soft chalky rock, white or pale blue, composed chiefly of tenacious [[clay]], and white carbonate of [[lime]] in minute crystals. Borings show that the thickness of this group varies from 35 o ft. in the north to about moo ft. at Starkville. Fossils are abundant, and forty species are recorded. The latest Cretaceous is the Ripley formation, which lies west of the northern part of the last-named, and, about Scooba, in a small strip, the most southerly of the Cretaceous - it is composed of coarse sandstones, hard crystalline white limestones, clays, sands, phosphatic greensands, and darkcoloured, micaceous, glauconitic marls; its greatest thickness is about 280 ft. Its marine fossils are admirably preserved, and one hundred and eight species have been described.
Most of Mississippi is part of the [[East Gulf Coastal Plain]]. The Coastal Plain is generally composed of low hills, such as the Pine Hills in the south and the North Central Hills. The [[Pontotoc Ridge]] and the Fall Line Hills in the northeast have somewhat higher elevations. Yellow-brown [[loess]] soil is found in the western parts of the state. The northeast is a region of fertile black earth that extends into the [[Black Belt (region of Alabama)|Alabama Black Belt]].


Deposits of the Tertiary period form the basis of more than half the state, extending from the border of the Cretaceous westward nearly to the Yazoo Delta and the Mississippi Bottom, and southward to within a few miles of the Gulf coast. Seven formations (or groups) of the Tertiary strata have been distinguished in Mississippi. The oldest is the Midway limestone and clays in a narrow strip whose western limit is nearly parallel to the western boundary of the Selma chalk; it includes: the Clayton formation, characterized by the hard blue Turritella limestone (so named from the frequent fossil (''Turritella mortoni);'' and Porters [[Creek]] (previously called Flatwoods) clay, which is grey, weathering white, and is occasionally overlain by grey fossiliferous [[sandstone]]. The Wilcox formation (called Lignitic by Hilgard, and named by Safford the Lagrange group) lies to the west of the last, and its western limit is from about 32° 12' on the Alabama boundary about due north-west; in its north-westernmost part it is on the western edge of the Tertiary in this state. Its minimum depth is 850 ft. It is marked by grey clays and sands, lignitic fossiliferous clays, beds of lignite or brown [[coal]], sometimes 8 ft. in thickness, and brownish clays. The siliceous Claiborne (or Tallahatta Buhrstone) formation lies south-westward from the last-named in a strip 10-30 m. wide, whose south-eastern extremity is the intersection of the 32nd [[meridian]] with the Alabama boundary, is characterized by beds of aluminous grey and white sandstone, aluminous and siliceous clay-stone, quartzitic sandstone, and green sand and marls. The calcareous Claiborne or ClaiborneLisbon formation-group lies south of the last, in a [[wedge]]-like strip with the [[apex]] on the Alabama boundary; it is a series of clays and sands, richly fossiliferous. The [[Jackson]] formation south-west of the [[Lisbon]] beds, is made up chiefly of grey calcareous clay marls, bluish lignitic clays, green-sand and grey siliceous sands. ''Basilosaurus'' (or ''Zeuglodon'') bones are found only in the Jackson marls, and other marine fossils are abundant. The minimum thickness of the formation is 240 ft. The [[Vicksburg]] formation lies next in order south-west, in a narrow strip of fairly regular width which alone of the Tertiary formations runs as far west as the [[Mississippi River]]; it is probably nowhere more than 110 ft. deep. It is characterized by semi-crystalline limestones and blue and white sandy marls. Marine fossils are very abundant in the [[marl]]. The Grand Gulf group, of formations of different ages, consisting of sands, sandstones and clays, and showing a few fossil plants, but no marine fossils, extends southward from the last to within a few miles of the coast, and is 750-800 ft. deep.
The coastline includes large bays at [[Bay St. Louis, Mississippi|Bay St. Louis]], [[Biloxi, Mississippi|Biloxi]] and [[Pascagoula, Mississippi|Pascagoula]]. It is separated from the Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow [[Mississippi Sound]], which is partially sheltered by [[Petit Bois Island (Mississippi)|Petit Bois Island]], [[Horn Island (Mississippi)|Horn Island]], [[Ship Island (Mississippi)|East and West Ship Islands]], [[Deer Island (Mississippi)|Deer Island]], [[Round Island (Mississippi)|Round Island]] and [[Cat Island (Mississippi)|Cat Island]].


The older formation of the Quaternary period is the [[Lafayette]] (also called "Orange-sand" or "stratified [[drift]]"), which immediately overlies all the Cretaceous groups except the prairies of the Selma chalk, and all the Tertiary except the Porters Creek and Vicksburg formations and parts of the Jackson. Its depth varies from a few feet to over 200 ft. (in the southern part of the state), and it forms the body of most of the hills in the state. Its materials are pebbles, clays and sands of various' colours from white to deep red, tinged with peroxide of [[iron]], which sometimes cements the pebbles and sands into compact rocks. The shapes of these ferruginous sandstones are very fantastic - tubes, hollow spheres, plates, &c., being common. The name stratified drift has been used to indicate its connexion with the northern drift. The fossils are few, and in some cases probably derived from the underlying formations. Well-worn pebbles of amorphous [[quartz]] (agate, [[chalcedony]], [[jasper]], &c.) are found in the stratified drift along the western side of the Tertiary region of the state, and from [[Columbus]] northward. The second Quaternary formation is the [[Port Hudson]], occurring within 20 m. of the Gulf coast, and, with [[alluvium]], in the Yazoo Delta. Heavy clays, [[gravel]] and sands, containing [[cypress]] stumps, driftwood and [[mastodon]] bones, are characteristic. The [[loess]] or [[bluff]] formation lies along the bluffs bordering the Bottom, nearly continuously through the state. Its fine-grained, unstratified silt contains the remains of many terrestrial animals, including fifteen mammals.
The northwest remainder of the state is made up of a section of the [[Mississippi Alluvial Plain]], also known as the Mississippi Delta. The Mississippi Alluvial Plain is narrow in the south and widens north of [[Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg]]. The region has rich soil, partly made up of silt which had been regularly deposited by the floodwaters of the Mississippi River.


==[[Fauna]]==
Areas under the management of the [[National Park Service]] include:<ref>{{cite web |title=Mississippi |publisher=National Park Service |accessdate=2008-07-16 |url=http://www.nps.gov/state/ms}}</ref>
Among the more common species of game are squirrels, opossums, [[musk]]-rats, rabbits, racoons, wild turkeys, ", partridges" (quail, or Bob White), geese, and ducks; [[deer]], black bears, grey (or timber) wolves, black wolves and "wild cats" (lynx), once common, have become rare. Alligators inhabit the southern river-bottoms, and there are some rattlesnakes on the uplands. Among a great variety of song-birds the [[mocking-bird]] is prominent; the parakeet is found in the southern part of the state. [[Buffalo]]-[[fish]], [[paddle]]-fish, [[cat-fish]], [[drum]], crappie, black [[The Bass Rock|bass, rock]] [[bass]], German [[carp]], [[sturgeon]], [[Pike-Perch|pike, perch]], eels, suckers and [[shrimp]] inhabit the waters of the Mississippi and its tributaries, and oysters, shrimp, [[trout]], Spanish [[mackerel]], channel bass, black bass, [[sheepshead]], [[mullet]], croakers, pompano, [[pin]]-fish, blue-fish, flounders, crabs and terrapin are obtained from the Mississippi Sound and the rivers flowing into it.
*[[Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site]] near [[Baldwyn, Mississippi|Baldwyn]]
*[[Gulf Islands National Seashore]]
*[[Natchez National Historical Park]] in [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]]
*[[Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail]] in [[Tupelo, Mississippi|Tupelo]]
*[[Natchez Trace Parkway]]
*[[Tupelo National Battlefield]] in Tupelo
*[[Vicksburg National Military Park|Vicksburg National Military Park and Cemetery]] in [[Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg]]


===Climate===
==[[Flora]]==
Originally Mississippi was almost entirely covered with a growth of forest trees of large size, mostly [[deciduous]]; and in 1900 about seven-tenths of its area was still classed as [[timber]]-land. The north central part of the state, known as the "flat woods," is level and heavily forested. There are more than 120 species of trees in the state, 15 of [[oak]] alone. The most valuable species for [[lumber]] are the long-[[leaf]] [[pine]] which is predominant in the low southern third of the state, sometimes called the "cow-country"; the short-leaf pine, found farther north; the white oak, quite widely distributed; [[cotton]]-wood and red [[gum]], found chiefly on the rich alluvial lands; and the cypress, found chiefly in the marshes of the Delta. The beautiful live oaks and magnolias grow only in the south of the state; the [[holly]] in the lowlands; and the finest species of pecan, in the Delta. The sassafras, [[persimmon]], wild [[cherry]] and Chickasaw [[plum]] are found in all parts of the state. The [[grape]], Ogeechee lime (''Nyssa capitata'') and pawpaw are also native fruits. Among indigenous shrubs and vines are the [[blackberry]], [[dewberry]], [[strawberry]], yellow [[jasmine]], [[mistletoe]] and poisonoak; and among medicinal herbs are [[horehound]], [[ginger]] and [[peppermint]]. Here, too, grows Spanish [[moss]], used by upholsterers.
Mississippi has a [[humid subtropical climate]] with long summers and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 95-100 °[[Fahrenheit|F]] (about 28 °[[Celsius|C]]) in July and about 48 °F (about 9 °C) in January. The temperature varies little statewide in the summer, but in winter the region near Mississippi Sound is significantly warmer than the inland portion of the state. The recorded temperature in Mississippi has ranged from -19 °F (-28.3 °C), in 1966, at [[Corinth, Mississippi|Corinth]] in the northeast, to 115 °F (46.1 °C), in 1930, at [[Holly Springs, Mississippi|Holly Springs]] in the north. Yearly [[Precipitation (meteorology)|precipitation]] generally increases from north to south, with the regions closer to the [[Gulf of Mexico|Gulf]] being the most humid. Thus, [[Clarksdale, Mississippi|Clarksdale]], in the northwest, gets about 50 inches (about 1,270&nbsp;mm) of precipitation annually and [[Biloxi, Mississippi|Biloxi]], in the south, about 61 inches (about 1,550&nbsp;mm). Small amounts of snow fall in northern and central Mississippi, although snow is not unheard of around the southern part of the state.


==Climate==
The late summer and fall is the seasonal period of risk for [[Tropical cyclone|hurricanes]] moving inland from the Gulf of Mexico, especially in the southern part of the state. [[Hurricane Camille]] in 1969 and [[Hurricane Katrina]] in 2005, which killed 238 people in the state, are the most devastating hurricanes to hit the state, both causing nearly total storm surge damage around [[Gulfport, Mississippi|Gulfport]], [[Biloxi, Mississippi|Biloxi]] and [[Pascagoula, Mississippi|Pascagoula]]. As in the rest of the Deep South, [[thunderstorm]]s are common in Mississippi, especially in the southern part of the state. On average, Mississippi has around 27 [[tornado]]es annually; the northern part of the state has more tornadoes earlier in the year and the southern part a higher frequency later in the year. Two of the five deadliest tornadoes in US history have occurred in the state. These storms struck Natchez, in southwest Mississippi (see [[The Great Natchez Tornado]]) and Tupelo, in the northeast of the state.
The southern latitude, the low elevation and the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico produce in southern Mississippi a rather mild and equable climate, but to the northward the extremes increase. The normal annual temperature for the state is 64° F.; on the coast it is 67° F., and on the northern border it is 61° F. During a period of twenty years, from January 1887 to December 1906, extremes of temperature at Biloxi, on the coast, ranged from 1 ° F. to 100° F.; during nearly the same period at Pontotoc, in the north-eastern part of the state, they ranged from - i 1 ° F. to 105° F. The greatest extremes recorded were - 15° F. at [[Aberdeen]], Monroe county, on the 13th of February 1899, and 107° F. at several places in July and August of different years. January is the coldest month, and July is the warmest. During the winter the normal temperature decreases quite steadily from south to north; thus the mean temperature in January at Biloxi is 51° F., at Meridian, in the east central part, it is 46° F., and at Pontotoc it is 43° F. But during the summer, temperatures are affected as much by [[altitude]] as by latitude, and the coast is cooled at night by breezes from the Gulf. The July mean is 82° F. at several places in the southern part of the state, and at Yazoo city, in the west central part, it is 83° F. The normal annual precipitation for Mississippi is about 51 in.; for the southern half, 54 in., and for the northern half, 49 in. An average of 4 in. of [[snow]] falls in the northern half, but south of [[Natchez]] snow is seldom seen. Nearly one-third of the [[rain]] falls in January, February and March; July, also, is one of the wet months. The driest season is in September and October. The prevailing winds are from the south-east; but the rain-bearing winds are chiefly from the southwest, and the high winds from the west and north-west.


==Soils==
{| class="wikitable" "text-align:center;font-size:90%;"
The most fertile soil is the alluvium of the' Delta, deposited during the overflows of the Mississippi. Others that are exceedingly productive are the black calcareous [[loam]] of the prairies, the calcareous silt of the bluff belt along the eastern border of the Delta, and the brown loam of the tableland in the central part of the state. Of inferior quality are the yellow loam of the hills in the north-east and the sandy loam in the pine belt of the south. Throughout the southern portion sand is a large ingredient, and to the northward there is more or less lime.
| colspan = "13" style="text-align:center;font-size:120%;background:#E8EAFA;" | Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures For Various Mississippi Cities
|-
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color: #000000" height="17" | City
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Jan
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Feb
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Mar
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Apr
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | May
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Jun
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Jul
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Aug
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Sep
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Oct
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Nov
! style="background: #E5AFAA; color:#000000;" | Dec
|-
! style="background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" height="16;" | Gulfport
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 61/43
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 64/46
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 70/52
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 77/59
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 84/66
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 89/72
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 91/74
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 91/74
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 87/70
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 79/60
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 70/51
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 63/45
|-
! style="background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" height="16;" | Jackson
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 55/35
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 60/38
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 68/45
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 75/52
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 82/61
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 89/68
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 91/71
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 91/70
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 86/65
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 77/52
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 66/43
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 58/37
|-
! style="background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" height="16;" | Meridian
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 58/35
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 63/38
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 70/44
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 77/50
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 84/60
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 90/67
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 93/70
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 93/70
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 88/64
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 78/51
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 68/43
| style="text-align:center; background: #C5DFE1; color:#000000;" | 60/37
|-
! style="background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" height="16;" | Tupelo
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 50/30
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 56/34
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 65/41
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 74/48
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 81/58
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 88/66
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 91/70
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 91/68
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 85/62
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 75/49
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 63/40
| style="text-align:center; background: #F8F3CA; color:#000000;" | 54/33
|-
| colspan = "13" style="text-align:center;font-size:90%;background:#E8EAFA;" | ''[http://www.ustravelweather.com/weather-mississippi/]''
|}


===Ecology===
==[[Agriculture]]==
Mississippi is devoted largely to the cultivation of cotton. Of the total land area of the state, 18,240,736 acres (61.3%) were, in 1900, included in farms, and the improved [[farm]] land increased from 4,209,146 acres in 1870 to 7,594,428 acres (41.6% of all farm land) in 1900. After the abolition of [[slavery]], farms greatly decreased in size and increased in number; the number grew from 68,023 in 1870 to 220,803 in 1900; the average size fell from 369.7 acres in 1860 to 82.6 acres in 1900. Of the total number of farms in 1900, 81,412 were worked by owners or part owners (60,585 by whites and 20,827 by negroes); 70,699 were worked by [[cash]] tenants (13,505 by whites and 57,194 by negroes); and 67,153 were worked by share tenants (16,748 by whites and 50,405 by negroes).
Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild trees; mostly [[pine]], but also [[cottonwood]], [[elm]], [[hickory]], [[oak]], [[pecan]], [[sweetgum]] and [[tupelo]]. Lumber is a prevalent industry in Mississippi.


The acreage of cotton increased from 2,106,215 acres in 1879 to 3,220,000 in 1907; the yield increased from 936,111 bales in 1879 to 1,468,177 bales in 1907. Cotton is grown in every county of the state, but the large yields are in the Delta (Bolivar, Coaohma, [[Washington]], Yazoo and Leflore counties), the greatest cotton-producing region of the world, and in Monroe, Lowndes and Noxubee counties on the Alabama border. The acreage of Indian [[corn]] in 1907 was 2,500,000 acres and the [[crop]] 42,500,000 bushels. The production of other cereals decreased during the latter half of the 19th century: oats, from 1,959,620 bushels in 1879 to 1,611,000 bushels in 1907; [[wheat]], from 587,925 bushels in 1859 to 22,000 in 1907; [[rye]], from 39,474 bushels in 1859 to 963 bushels in 1899, after which year the crop has been negligible; and [[rice]], from 2,719,856 lb in 1849 to about 1,080,000 lb in 1907. The largest Indian-corn producing districts are nearly the same as those which produce the most cotton; oats and wheat are grown chiefly in the north-eastern quarter of the state, and rice in the south-western quarter.
[[Flooding]] and [[Littering]] are two major ecological issues confronting Mississippi statewide.


Between 1850 and 1907 [[dairy]] cows increased from 214,231 to 330,000; other neat [[cattle]] from 519,739 to 589,000; sheer decreased from 304,929 to 181,000; [[swine]] decreased from 1,582,734 to 1,316,000; horses increased from 115,460 to 260,000, and mules from 54,547 to 279,000.
Due to seasonal flooding possible from December to June, the Mississippi River created a fertile floodplain in what is called the Mississippi Delta, including tributaries. Early planters used slaves to build [[levees]] along the Mississippi River to divert flooding. They built on top of the natural levees that formed from dirt deposited after the river flooded. As cultivation of cotton increased in the Delta, planters hired [[Irish people|Irish]] laborers to ditch and drain their land. The state took over levee building from 1858–1861, accomplishing it through contractors. In those years, planters considered their slaves too valuable to hire out for such dangerous work. Contractors hired gangs of Irish immigrant laborers to build levees and sometimes clear land.<ref>David R. Roediger, ''The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.''New York: Verso, 1999, p.146</ref> Before the war, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.


[[Sugar]]-cane is grown principally in the southern part of the state, but [[sorghum]]-cane is grown to some extent in nearly every county. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes and onions also are important crops. The greatest relative advance between 1889 and 1899 in any branch of agriculture was made in the growth of market-[[garden]] produce and small fruits; for old pine lands, formerly considered useless, had been found valuable for the purpose. The number of [[orchard]] trees increased nearly 100% within the same decade. At Crystal Springs tomatoes were first successfully grown for the market (1874-1876). Orchard trees and grape-vines are widely distributed throughout the state, but with the exception of peaches their yield is greater in the northern portion.
[[Image:Mississippi.JPG|thumb|400px|Mississippi state welcome sign]]


[[Image:mississippi-1.jpg|frame]]
Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history. It took a toll during the years after the [[American Civil War|Civil War]]. Major floods swept down the valley in 1865, 1867, 1874 and 1882, regularly overwhelming levees damaged by Confederate and Union fighting during the war, and also those repaired or constructed after the war. In 1877, the [[Mississippi Levee District]] was created for southern counties. In 1879, the [[United States Congress]] created the [[Mississippi River Commission]], whose responsibilities included aiding state levee boards in the construction of levees. Both white and black transient workers built the levees in the late 19th century. By 1882, levees averaged seven feet in height, but many in the southern Delta were severely tested by the flood that year.<ref>John Otto Solomon,''The Final Frontiers, 1880–1930: Settling the Southern Bottomlands''. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999, pp.10-11</ref>


{| border=1
After the flood of 1882, the levee system was expanded. By 1884, the [[Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee District]] was established to oversee levee construction and maintenance in the northern Delta counties. Also included were counties in [[Arkansas]].<ref name="autogenerated2">[http://www.leveeboard.org/about_the_levee/history/physical_development.html, ''The New York Times'', The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board: Physical development of a levee system, accessed 11/13/2007]</ref>
| <p>abena uTKEQCartollto</p>

Flooding overwhelmed northwestern Mississippi in 1912–1913, causing heavy financial costs to the levee districts. Regional losses and the Mississippi River Levee Association's lobbying for a flood control bill helped gain passage of bills in 1917 and 1923 to provide Federal matching funds for local levee districts, on a scale of 2:1. Although US participation in World War I interrupted funding of levees, the second round of funding helped raise the average height of levees in the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta to {{convert|22|ft|m}} in the 1920s.<ref>John Otto Solomon,''The Final Frontiers, 1880–1930: Settling the Southern Bottomlands''. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999, p.50</ref>

Nonetheless, the region was severely flooded and suffered millions of dollars in damages due to the [[Great Mississippi Flood of 1927]]. Property, stock and crops were all lost. In Mississippi, most damage was in the lower Delta, including [[Washington County, Mississippi|Washington]] and [[Bolivar County, Mississippi|Bolivar]] counties.<ref>John Otto Solomon,''The Final Frontiers, 1880–1930: Settling the Southern Bottomlands''. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999, p.70</ref>

In 2008, The American State Litter Scorecard, presented at the [[American Society for Public Administration]] national conference, ranked Mississippi "worst" of the 50 United States for removing litter from statewide public roadways and properties.<ref>http://www.aspanet.org S.Spacek,
American State Litter Scorecard, 2008 ASPA Conference, Dallas.</ref>

==History==
{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Mississippi/MississippiSymbols}}
{{main|History of Mississippi}}
Nearly 10,000 [[Common Era|BCE]], or [[Before Christ|BC]], [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] or [[Paleo-Indians]] appeared in what today is referred to as the [[Southern United States|South]].<ref name="guy_prentice">
{{cite web |url=http://www.nps.gov/history/seac/SoutheastChronicles/NISI/NISI%20Cultural%20Overview.htm |title=Pushmataha, Choctaw Indian Chief |accessdate=2008-02-11 |author=Guy Prentice |last=Prentice |first=Guy |year=2003 |format=HTML |publisher=Southeast Chronicles}}
</ref> Paleoindians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the [[megafauna]] that became extinct following the end of the [[Pleistocene]] age. After thousands of years, the Paleoindians developed a rich and complex agricultural society. Archaeologists called these people the Mississippians of the [[Mississippian culture]]; they were [[Mound Builders]], whose large earthworks related to political and religious rituals still stand throughout the Mississippi and [[Ohio River|Ohio]] valleys. Descendant [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] tribes include the [[Chickasaw]] and [[Choctaw]]. Other tribes who inhabited the territory of Mississippi (and whose names were honored in local towns) include the [[Natchez people|Natchez]], the [[Yazoo tribe|Yazoo]], and the [[Tunica-Biloxi|Biloxi]].

The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of [[Hernando de Soto (explorer)|Hernando de Soto]], who passed through in 1540. The first European settlement was French, [[Fort Maurepas]] (also known as Old Biloxi), built at [[Ocean Springs, Mississippi|Ocean Springs]] and settled by [[Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville]] in April 1699. In 1716, [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]] was founded on the Mississippi River (as ''[[Fort Rosalie]]''); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. After being ruled by Spanish, British, and French colonial governments, the Mississippi area was deeded to the [[Kingdom of Great Britain|British]] after the [[French and Indian War]] ([[Seven Years' War]]) under the terms of the [[Treaty of Paris (1763)]].

After the [[American Revolution]], it became part of the new [[United States of America]]. The Mississippi Territory was [[Territories of the United States|organized]] on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] and [[South Carolina]]. It was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. The United States purchased land (generally through unequal treaties) from Native American tribes from 1800 to about 1830.{{Fact|Jul 2008|date=July 2008}}

On December 10, 1817, Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union.

When [[King Cotton|cotton was king]] during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the Delta and [[Black Belt (region of Alabama)|Black Belt]] regions—became wealthy due to the high fertility of the soil, the high price of cotton on the international market, and their assets in slaves. The planters' dependence on hundreds of thousands of slaves for labor, and the severe wealth imbalances among whites, played strong roles both in state politics and in planters' support for secession. By 1860, the enslaved population numbered 436,631 or 55% of the state's total of 791,305. There were fewer than 1000 [[free people of color]].<ref>http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/state.php Historical Census Browser</ref> The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that much of the state away from the riverfronts was still wilderness and needed many more settlers for development.

Mississippi was the second state to secede from the Union as one of the [[Confederate States of America]] on January 9, 1861.

During [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]], the first constitutional convention in 1868 framed a constitution whose major elements would last for 22 years. The convention was the first political organization to include colored representatives, 17 among the 100 members. Although 32 counties had black majorities, they elected whites as well as blacks to represent them. The convention adopted universal suffrage; did away with property qualifications for suffrage or for office, which benefited poor whites, too; provided for the state's first public school system; forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; and prohibited limiting of civil rights in travel.<ref>W.E.B. DuBois,''Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880''. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935; reprint New York: The Free Press, 1998, p.437</ref> Under the terms of Reconstruction, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union on February 23, 1870.

While Mississippi typified the Deep South in passing [[Jim Crow laws]] in the early 20th century, its history was more complex. Because the Mississippi Delta contained so much fertile bottomland which had not been developed before the Civil War, 90 percent of the land was still frontier. After the Civil War, tens of thousands of migrants were attracted to the area. They could earn money by clearing the land and selling timber, and eventually advance to ownership. The new farmers included [[freedman|freedmen]], who achieved unusually high rates of land ownership in the Mississippi bottomlands. In the 1870s and 1880s, many black farmers succeeded in gaining ownership of land.<ref name="autogenerated4">John C. Willis, ''Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000</ref>

By the turn of the century, two-thirds of the farmers in Mississippi who owned land in the Delta were African American. Many were able to keep going through difficult years of falling cotton prices only by extending their debts. Cotton prices fell throughout the decades following the Civil War. As another agricultural depression lowered cotton prices into the 1890s, however, numerous African-American farmers finally had to sell their land to pay off debts, and thus lost the land into which they had put so much labor. By 1910, the majority of blacks in the Delta were landless laborers.<ref name="autogenerated4"/>

White legislators created a new constitution in 1890, with provisions that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. Estimates are that 100,000 blacks and 50,000 whites were removed from voter registration rolls over the next few years.<ref> Stephen Edward Cresswell, ''Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi after Reconstruction'', Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006, p.124</ref> The loss of political influence contributed to the difficulties of African Americans' getting extended credit. Together with Jim Crow laws, increased lynchings in the 1890s, failure of the cotton crops due to boll weevil infestation, successive severe flooding in 1912 and 1913 created crisis conditions for many African Americans. With control of the ballot box and more access to credit, white planters expanded their ownership of Delta bottomlands and could take advantage of new railroads.

By 1910, a majority of black farmers in the Delta had lost their land and were sharecroppers. By 1920, the third generation after freedom, most African Americans in Mississippi were landless laborers again facing poverty.<ref name="autogenerated4"/> Starting about 1913, tens of thousands of African Americans left Mississippi to migrate North in the [[Great Migration]] to industrial cities such as [[New York City|New York]], [[Chicago]], [[Detroit]], [[Philadelphia]], and [[St. Louis]], seeking jobs, better education for their children, the right to vote, and better living. In the migration of 1910–1940, they left a society that had been steadily closing off opportunity. Most migrants from Mississippi took trains directly north to Chicago and often settled near former neighbors.

The [[Second Great Migration (African American)]] from the South started in the 1940s, lasting until 1970. Almost half a million people left Mississippi in the second migration, three-quarters of them black. Nationwide during the first half of the 20th century, African Americans became rapidly urbanized and many worked in industrial jobs.

Mississippi generated rich, quintessentially American music traditions: [[gospel music]], [[country music]], [[jazz]], [[blues]], and [[rock and roll]]. All were invented, promulgated, or heavily developed by Mississippi musicians, and most came from the Mississippi Delta. Many musicians carried their music north to Chicago, where they made it the heart of that city's jazz and blues.

The state's complex history has generated great storytellers. Mississippi is noted for award-winning twentieth-century authors native to or associated with the state, including [[Nobel Prize]]-winner [[William Faulkner]], playwrights [[Tennessee Williams]] and [[Beth Henley]], authors [[Eudora Welty]], [[Richard Wright]], Ellen Douglas, [[Walker Percy]], [[Willie Morris]], [[Margaret Walker]], [[Ellen Gilchrist]], and [[Alice Walker]], and historian [[Shelby Foote]].

Mississippi was a center of activity to educate and register voters during the [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)|Civil Rights Movement]]. Although 42% of the state's population was African American in 1960, discriminatory voter registration processes still prevented most of them from voting. These provisions had been in place since 1890.<ref>[http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/state.php Historical Census Browser, 1960 US Census, University of Virginia], accessed 13 Mar 2008</ref> Students and community organizers from across the country came to help register voters and establish Freedom Schools. Resistance and harsh attitudes of most white politicians (including the creation of the [[Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission]]), the participation of many Mississippians in the [[White Citizens' Council]]s, and the violent tactics of the [[Ku Klux Klan]] and its sympathizers, gained Mississippi a reputation in the 1960s as a reactionary state.<ref>[http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2006/crespino/1a.htm Joseph Crespino, "Mississippi as Metaphor: State, Region and Nation in Historical Imagination", ''Southern Spaces'', 23 Oct 1996], accessed 15 Mar 2008</ref><ref>[http://www.queenspress.com/archives/nfp/2002/1018/nfp.htm Michael Schenkler, "Memories of Queens College and an American Tragedy", ''Queens Press'', 18 Oct 2002], accessed 15 Mar 2008</ref>

In 1966, the state was the last to repeal [[prohibition of alcohol]]. In 1995, it symbolically ratified the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]], which had abolished slavery. While the state was late in ratifying the amendments, it had obeyed them.

On August 17, 1969, [[Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale|Category 5]] [[Hurricane Camille]] hit the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars). On August 29, 2005, [[Hurricane Katrina]], though a [[Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale|Category 3]] storm upon final landfall, caused even greater destruction across the entire {{convert|90|mi|km|0}} of [[Mississippi Gulf Coast]] from Louisiana to Alabama.

==Demographics==
[[Image:Mississippi population map.png|thumb|left|200px|Mississippi Population Density Map]]

===Population===
{{USCensusPop
| 1800 = 7600
| 1810 = 31306
| 1820 = 75448
| 1830 = 136621
| 1840 = 375651
| 1850 = 606526
| 1860 = 791305
| 1870 = 827922
| 1880 = 1131597
| 1890 = 1289600
| 1900 = 1551270
| 1910 = 1797114
| 1920 = 1790618
| 1930 = 2009821
| 1940 = 2183796
| 1950 = 2178914
| 1960 = 2178141
| 1970 = 2216912
| 1980 = 2520638
| 1990 = 2573216
| 2000 = 2844658
| estyear = 2008
| estimate = 2938618
}}
As of 2008, Mississippi has an estimated population of 2,938,618<ref name="2008 Population Estimates"/>. Mississippi's population has the largest proportion of [[African American]]s of any U.S. state, currently nearly 37%.

The 2000 Census reported Mississippi's population as 2,844,658 [http://www.censusscope.org/us/s28/chart_popl.html]. The [[center of population]] of Mississippi is located in [[Leake County, Mississippi|Leake County]], in the town of [[Lena, Mississippi|Lena]].<ref>{{cite web | title = Population and Population Centers by State - 2000 | publisher = United States Census Bureau | accessdate = 2008-12-05 | url = http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cenpop/statecenters.txt}}</ref>

===Racial makeup and ancestry===
The Census Bureau considers [[Race and ethnicity in the United States Census|race]] and Hispanic ethnicity to be two separate categories. These data, however, are only for non-Hispanic members of each group: non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, etc. For more information on race and the Census, see [[Race and ethnicity in the United States Census|here]].
{{US Demographics}}
On September 27, 1830, the [[Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek]] was signed between the U.S. Government and Native American [[Choctaws]]. The Choctaws agreed to selling their traditional homelands in Mississippi and Alabama with just compensation, which opened it up for [[European-American]] immigrant settlement. Article 14 in the treaty allowed the Choctaws to remain in the state of Mississippi and to become the ''first'' major non-European ethnic group to become U.S. citizens.<ref name="us_citizenship">
{{cite web
| url = http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/cho0310.htm#mn15
| title = INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES Vol. II, Treaties
| accessdate = 2008-04-16
| author = Charles Kappler
| last = Kappler
| first = Charles
| year = 1904
| format = HTML
| publisher = Government Printing Office
}}
</ref><ref name="david_baird">
{{cite book
| last = Baird
| first = David
| title = The Choctaw People
| origdate = 1973
| publisher = Indian Tribal Series
| location = United States
| chapter = The Choctaws Meet the Americans, 1783 to 1843
| page = 36
|id = Library of Congress 73-80708
}}
</ref> Today approximately 9,500 Choctaws live in Neshoba, Newton, Leake, and Jones counties.

Until the 1930s, [[African American]]s made up a majority of Mississippians. Due to the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]], when more than 360,000 African Americans left the state during the 1940s and after to leave segregation and disfranchisement, and for better economic opportunities in the northern and western states, Mississippi's African-American population declined.

The state has the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation. Recently, the African-American percentage of population has begun to increase due mainly to a higher [[birth rate]] than the state average. Due to patterns of settlement, in many of Mississippi's public school districts, a majority of students are of African descent. [http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/profile.asp] African Americans are the majority ethnic group in the northwestern Yazoo Delta and the southwestern and the central parts of the state, chiefly areas where the group owned land as farmers or worked on cotton plantations and farms.

According to the 2000 census, the largest ancestries are:
*{{flagicon|USA}} American (14.2%)
*{{flagicon|Republic of Ireland}} [[Irish American|Irish]] (6.9%)
*{{flagicon|England}} [[English American|English]] (6.1%)
*{{flagicon|Germany}} [[German American|German]] (4.5%)
*{{flagicon|France}} [[French American|French]] (2.3%)
*[[Image:NIShape.png|29px]] [[Scots-Irish American|Scots-Irish]] (1.9%)
*{{flagicon|Italy}} [[Italian American|Italian]] (1.4%)
*{{flagicon|Scotland}} [[Scottish American|Scottish]] (1.2%)

People of [[French American|French Creole]] ancestry form the largest demographic group in [[Hancock County, Mississippi|Hancock County]] on the Gulf Coast. The African-American; [[Choctaw]], mostly in Neshoba County; and [[Chinese American|Chinese-American]] segments of the population are also almost entirely native born.

Although some ethnic Chinese were recruited as indentured laborers from Cuba during the 1870s and later 19th c., the majority immigrated directly from China to Mississippi between 1910–1930. They were recruited as laborers. While planters first made arrangements with the Chinese for sharecropping, most Chinese soon left that work. Many became small merchants and especially grocers in towns throughout the Delta.<ref>http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/asianamerican/vivian-wong.html, Vivian Wu Wong, "Somewhere between White and Black: The Chinese in Mississippi", ''Magazine of History'', v10, n4, pp33-36, Summer 1996, accessed 11/15/2007</ref>

According to recent statistics, Mississippi leads the country in the rate of increase of immigrants, but that is compared to years when it attracted no immigrants. Most recent immigrants are Hispanic from Mexico, Central and South America.

===Health===
For three years in a row, more than 30 percent of Mississippi's residents have been classified as [[obese]]. The state's pronounced poverty leads to poor nutrition habits. These are affected by the increase in costs for fresh produce while prices of high calorie, high fat foods have fallen.<ref name="TFSOTU"/> Many of the poorest residents rely on small convenience stores where all foods are pre-packed.<ref name="TFSOTU">{{cite web |title=The fattest state of the union: If you want to look at obesity trends, then the US is the place to visit. |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7151951.stm |author=Fergus Walsh |publisher=BBC |date=[[2008-01-03]] |accessdate=2008-12-20}}</ref> In a 2006 study, 22.8 percent of the state's children were classified as obese. Mississippi had the [[Obesity in the United States|highest rate of obesity of any U.S. state]] from 2005-2008 and also ranks first in the nation for [[high blood pressure]], [[diabetes]], and [[Sedentary lifestyle|adult inactivity]].<ref>{{cite web |title=We-the-Fat |url=http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/we_the_fat_120308/ |author=Ronni Mott |publisher=Jackson Free Press |date=[[2008-12-03]] |accessdate=2008-12-20}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Mississippi heads list of fattest states |url=http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/215983.html |author=Thomas M. Maugh |publisher=Los Angeles Times |date=[[2007-08-28]] |accessdate=2007-08-28}}{{Dead link|date=December 2008}}</ref> In a 2008 study of African American women, contributing risk factors were shown to be: lack of knowledge about [[body mass index]] (BMI), dietary behavior, physical activity and lack of social support, defined as motivation and encouragement by friends.<ref>{{cite web |title=Impact of Social, Behavioral and Environmental Factors on Overweight and Obesity among African American Women in Mississippi |url=http://apha.confex.com/apha/136am/techprogram/paper_172848.htm |author=Victor Sutton, PhD, and Sandra Hayes, MPH, Bureau of Health Data and Research, Mississippi Department of Health |publisher=American Public Health Association: APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing at 2008 136th Annual Meeting |date=[[2008-10-29]] |accessdate=2008-12-20}}</ref> A 2002 report on African American adolescents noted a third of children were obese, with higher ratios for those in the Delta.<ref name ="OATAAA">{{cite web |title=Obesity and the African American Adolescent, The Mississippi Delta Report |url=http://apha.confex.com/apha/130am/techprogram/paper_46137.htm |author=Gail D. Hughes, DrPH, MPH and Gloria Areghan, MSN both with Department of Preventive Medicine-Epidemiology, University of Mississippi Medical Centre; Bern'Nadette Knight, MSPH with Department of General Internal Medicine, University of Mississippi Medical Center and Abiodun A. Oyebola, MD with Department of Public Health, Jackson State University |publisher=American Public Health Association: 2002 130th Annual APHA Meeting |date=[[2008-11-11]] |accessdate=2008-12-20}}</ref>

The study stressed that "obesity starts in early childhood extending into the adolescent years and then possibly into adulthood". It noted impediments to needed behavioral modification included the Delta likely being "the most undeserved region in the state" with African Americans the major ethnic group; lack of accessibility and availability of medical care; and an estimated 60% of residents living below the poverty level.<ref name ="OATAAA"/> Additional risk factors were that most schools had no physical education curriculum and nutrition education is not emphasized. Previous intervention strategies may have been largely ineffective due to not being culturally sensitive or practical.<ref name ="OATAAA"/> A 2006 survey found nearly 95 percent of Mississippi adults considered childhood obesity to be a serious problem.<ref name ="PPCOMA">{{cite web |title=Public Perception of Childhood Obesity among Mississippi Adults |url=http://apha.confex.com/apha/136am/techprogram/paper_178329.htm |author=Lei Zhang, PhD MBA, Office of Health Data and Research, Mississippi State Department of Health; Jerome Kolbo, PhD ACSW, College of Health, Bonnie Harbaugh, PhD RN, School of Nursing and Charkarra Anderson-Lewis, PhD MPH, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Southern Mississippi |publisher=American Public Health Association: : APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing at 2008 136th Annual Meeting |date=[[2008-10-29]] |accessdate=2008-12-20}}</ref>

===LGBT communities===
[[Image:Gay rights marcher in Jackson Mississippi.jpg|right|thumb|A [[gay rights]] activist at the state capitol building in Jackson holds a modified [[Rainbow flag (LGBT movement)|rainbow pride flag]].]]
The [[United States Census, 2000|2000 United States census]] counted 4,774 same-sex couple households in Mississippi.<ref> [http://www.gaydemographics.org/USA/states/mississippi/2000Census_state_ms.htm Gay Demographics 2000 Census Data]</ref><ref name="autogenerated1"> [http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-5.pdf Census.gov: Married-Couple and Unmarried-Partner Households 2000]</ref> Of these households, 41% contained at least one child. [[South Dakota]] and [[Utah]] were the only other states in which 40 percent or more of same-sex couple households had at least one child living in the household.<ref name="autogenerated1"/> Mississippi also has the largest percentage of [[African-American]] same-sex couples among total households. The state capital, Jackson, ranks tenth in the nation in concentration of African-American same-sex couples. The state also ranks fifth in the nation in the percentage of [[Hispanic]] same-sex couples among all Hispanic households and ninth in the highest concentration of same-sex couples who are [[old age|seniors]].<ref> [http://www.urban.org/publications/900695.html Facts and Findings from ''The Gay and Lesbian Atlas'']</ref>

In response to a murder and legislation including a state constitutional amendment to ban [[same-sex couple]]s in the state from marrying and adopting children, a statewide [[gay rights]] organization formed in March 2000. Originally called Mississippi Gay Lobby, the organization changed its name in 2001 to [[Equality Mississippi]]. In 2004, Mississippi voters approved a state [[constitutional amendment]] banning [[same-sex marriage]] and prohibiting Mississippi from recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The amendment passed 86% to 14%, the largest margin in any state.<ref name="USAT1">{{cite news |title=Amendment banning gay marriage passes |url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/2004-11-02-ms-intiative-gay-marriage_x.htm |work=USA Today |date=[[2004-11-02]] |accessdate=2007-10-12}}</ref><ref name="MSNBCgay">{{cite news |title=Voters pass all 11 bans on gay marriage |url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6383353/ |work=AP via MSNBC |date=[[2004-11-03]] |accessdate=2007-12-07 }}</ref>

===Religion===
The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2000 were the [[Southern Baptist Convention]] with 916,440; the [[United Methodist Church]] with 240,576; and the [[Roman Catholic Church]] with 115,760. Members of the latter church are often concentrated in former French and Spanish colonial areas of settlement, especially along the Gulf Coast and other southern counties of the state.<ref>http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/state/28_2000.asp</ref>

==Economy==
[[Image:Mississippi quarter, reverse side, 2002.jpg|thumb|right|A Mississippi [[Quarter (United States coin)|U.S. quarter]]]]
[http://www.bea.gov/ The Bureau of Economic Analysis] estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2006 was $84 billion. Per capita personal income in 2006 was only $26,908, the lowest per capita personal income of any state, but the state also has the nation's lowest living costs. Although the state has one of the lowest per capita income rates in the United States, Mississippians consistently rank as one of the highest per capita in charitable contributions.<ref>[http://www.catalogueforphilanthropy.org/cfp/generosity_index/ Generosity Index]</ref>

Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, wealth generated by cotton plantations along the rivers.<ref>{{cite web |title="Mississippi Almanac Entry" |url=http://travel2.nytimes.com/2004/07/15/travel/NYT_ALMANAC_US_MISSISSIPPI.html?ex=1162094400&en=27939e8b35b285fa&ei=5070}}, The New York Times Travel Almanac (2004) </ref>
Slaves were then counted as property and the rise in the cotton markets since the 1840s had increased their value. A majority - 55 percent - of the population of Mississippi was enslaved in 1860.<ref>[ttp://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/php/sate.php Historical Census Browser]</ref> Ninety percent of Most of the Delta bottomlands were undeveloped and the state had low population overall.

Largely due to the domination of the [[plantation]] economy, focused on the production of [[agriculture|agricultural]] [[cotton]] only, the state was slow to use its wealth to invest in infrastructure such as public schools, roads and railroads. [[Industrialization]] did not come in many areas until the late 20th century. The planter [[aristocracy]], the elite of [[antebellum]] Mississippi, kept the tax structure low for themselves and made private improvements. Before the war the most successful planters, such as [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] President [[Jefferson Davis]], owned riverside properties along the Mississippi River. Most of the state was undeveloped frontier away from the riverfronts.

During the Civil War, 30,000 mostly white Mississippi men died from wounds and disease, and many more were left crippled and wounded. Changes to the labor structure and an agricultural depression throughout the South caused severe losses in wealth. In 1860 assessed valuation of property in Mississippi had been more than $500 million, of which $218 million (43 percent) was estimated as the value of slaves. By 1870, total assets had decreased in value to roughly $177 million.<ref>W.E.B. DuBois,''Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880''. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1935; reprint New York: The Free Press, 1998, p.432</ref>

Poor whites and landless former slaves suffered the most from the postwar economic depression. The constitutional convention of early 1868 appointed a committee to recommend what was needed for relief of the state and its citizens. The committee found severe destitution among the laboring classes.<ref>Du Bois, Ibid., p.437</ref> It took years for the state to rebuild levees damaged in battles. The upset of the commodity system impoverished the state after the war. By 1868 an increased cotton crop began to show possibilities for free labor in the state, but the crop of 565,000 bales produced in 1870 was still less than half of prewar figures.<ref>Du Bois, Ibid., p.432 and 434</ref>

Blacks sold timber and developed bottomland to achieve ownership. In 1900, two-thirds of farm owners in Mississippi were blacks, a major achievement for them and their families. Due to the poor economy, low cotton prices and difficulty of getting credit, many of these farmers could not make it through the extended financial difficulties. Two decades later, the majority of African Americans were sharecroppers. The low prices of cotton into the 1890s meant that more than a generation of African Americans lost the result of their labor when they had to sell their farms to pay off accumulated debts.<ref>John C. Willis, ''Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War''. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000</ref>

Mississippi's rank as one of the poorest states is related to its dependence on cotton agriculture before and after the Civil War, late development of its frontier bottomlands in the Mississippi Delta, repeated natural disasters of flooding in the late 19th and early 20th century requiring massive capital investment in levees, heavy capital investment to ditch and drain the bottomlands, and slow development of railroads to link bottomland towns and river cities.<ref name="autogenerated3">John Otto Solomon,''The Final Frontiers, 1880–1930: Settling the Southern Bottomlands''. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999, pp.10-11, 42-43, 50-51, and 70</ref> In addition, when conservative white Democrats regained control, they passed the 1890 constitution that discouraged industry, a legacy that would slow the state's progress for years.<ref>V.S. Naipaul, ''A Turn in the South''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989</ref>

Democratic militias and groups such as the White Camellia terrorized African American Republicans and Democrats regained political control in the 1870s. The legislature passed legislation to establish segregation and effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites by changes to electoral and voter registration rules.<ref> Stephen Edward Cresswell, ''Rednecks, Redeemers, and Race: Mississippi after Reconstruction'', Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006, p.124</ref> The state refused for years to build human capital by fully educating all its citizens. In addition, the reliance on agriculture grew increasingly costly as the state suffered loss of crops due to the devastation of the boll weevil in the early 20th century, devastating floods in 1912–1913 and 1927, collapse of cotton prices after 1920, and drought in 1930.<ref name="autogenerated3"/>

It was not until 1884, after the flood of 1882, that the state created the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta District Levee Board and started successfully achieving longer term plans for levees in the upper Delta.<ref name="autogenerated2"/> Despite the state's building and reinforcing levees for years, the [[Great Mississippi Flood of 1927]] broke through and caused massive flooding of {{convert|27000|sqmi|km2}} throughout the Delta, homelessness for hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars in property damages. With the Depression coming so soon after the flood, the state suffered badly during those years. In the [[Great Migration]], tens of thousands of African Americans migrated North and West for jobs and chances to live as full citizens.

The legislature's 1990 decision to legalize casino gambling along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast has led to economic gains for the state. An estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following [[Hurricane Katrina]]'s severe damage to several coastal casinos in August 2005.{{Fact|date=December 2007}} Gambling towns in Mississippi include the Gulf Coast towns of [[Bay St. Louis, Mississippi|Bay St. Louis]], [[Gulfport, Mississippi|Gulfport]] and [[Biloxi, Mississippi|Biloxi]], and the Mississippi River towns of [[Tunica Resorts, Mississippi|Tunica]] (the third largest gaming area in the United States), [[Greenville, Mississippi|Greenville]], [[Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg]] and [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]]. Before Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was the second largest gambling state in the Union, after [[Nevada]] and ahead of [[New Jersey]].{{Fact|date=June 2008}} In 2007, Mississippi had the third largest gambling revenue of any state, behind New Jersey and Nevada.<ref>[http://www.americangaming.org/Industry/state/statistics.cfm Industry Information: State Statistics]. American Gaming Association. Last accessed December 23, 2008. </ref>

On October 17, 2005, Governor [[Haley Barbour]] signed a bill into law that now allows casinos in Hancock and Harrison counties to rebuild on land (but within {{convert|800|ft|m}} of the water). The only exception is in [[Harrison County, Mississippi|Harrison County]], where the new law states that casinos can be built to the southern boundary of [[U.S. Route 90]].{{Facts|date=December 2007}}

Mississippi collects personal [[income tax]] in three tax brackets, ranging from 3% to 5%. The retail [[sales tax]] rate in Mississippi is 7%. Additional local sales taxes also are collected. For purposes of assessment for [[ad valorem tax]]es, taxable [[property tax|property]] is divided into five classes.{{Facts|date=December 2007}}

On August 30, 2007, a report by the [[United States Census Bureau]] indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country. Many white cotton farmers in the Delta have large, mechanized plantations, some of which receive extensive Federal subsidies, yet many African Americans still live as poor, rural, landless laborers. Of $1.2 billion from 2002–2005 in Federal subsidies to farmers in the Bolivar County area of the Delta, only 5% went to small farmers. There has been little money apportioned for rural development. Small towns are struggling. More than 100,000 people, mostly African American, have left the region in search of work elsewhere.<ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/19/AR2007061902193.html Gilbert M. Gaul and Dan Morgan, "A Slow Demise in the Delta: US Farm Subsidies Favor Big Over Small and White Over Blacks", ''The Washington Post''], accessed 29 Mar 2008</ref> The state had a median household income of $34,473 and a per capita of $9,432. <ref>{{cite web |url=http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/103432/The-Richest-(and-Poorest)-Places-in-the-U.S.?mod=oneclick |title=The Richest (and Poorest) Places in the U.S. |author=Les Christie |date=August 30, 2007 |publisher=CNNMoney.com |accessdate=2007-09-22}}</ref>

==Transportation==
===Road===
Mississippi is served by eight [[Interstate Highway System|interstate highways]]:
{| width="500px"
|- valign = top
|
*[[Image:I-10.svg|20px]][[Interstate 10]]
*[[Image:I-20.svg|20px]][[Interstate 20]]
*[[Image:I-22.svg|20px]][[Interstate 22]] (Future)
*[[Image:I-55.svg|20px]][[Interstate 55]]
*[[Image:I-59.svg|20px]][[Interstate 59]]
|
*[[Image:I-69.svg|20px]][[Interstate 69]]
*[[Image:I-110.svg|20px]][[Interstate 110 (Mississippi)|Interstate 110]]
*[[Image:I-220.svg|20px]][[Interstate 220 (Mississippi)|Interstate 220]]
*[[Image:I-269.svg|20px]][[Interstate 269]] (Future)
|}

and fourteen main [[United States Numbered Highways|U.S. Routes]]:
{| width="500px"
|- valign = top
|
*[[U.S. Route 11]]
*[[U.S. Route 45]]
*[[U.S. Route 49]]
*[[U.S. Route 51]]
*[[U.S. Route 61]]
*[[U.S. Route 72]]
*[[U.S. Route 78]]
|
|
*[[U.S. Route 80]]
*[[U.S. Route 82]]
*[[U.S. Route 84]]
*[[U.S. Route 90]]
*[[U.S. Route 98]]
*[[U.S. Route 278]]
*[[U.S. Route 425]]
|}
|}


[[Image:mississippi-2.jpg|frame]]
as well as a system of [[List of state highways in Mississippi|State Highways]].


==Lumber==
For more information, visit the [http://www.gomdot.com/ Mississippi Department of Transportation] website.
Mississippi ranks high among the southern states in the production of lumber. Its timber-land in 1900 was estimated at 32,300 sq. m. From the extreme south most of the merchantable timber had been cut, but immediately north of this there were still vast quantities of valuable long-leaf pine; in the marshes of the Delta was much cypress, the cotton-wood was nearly exhausted, and the gum was being used as a substitute for it; and on the rich upland soil were oak and red gum, also cotton-wood, [[hickory]] and [[maple]]. The lumber and timber product increased in value from $1,920,335 in 1880 to $ 2 4, 0 35,539 in 1905. Pine stumps and waste limbs are utilized, notably at [[Hattiesburg]], for the manufacture of [[charcoal]], [[tar]], creosote, [[turpentine]], ''&c. [[Fisheries]] Fishing'' is a minor industry, confined for the most part to the Mississippi Sound and neighbouring waters and to the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. The most valuable branch is the [[oyster]] N ,;: E, A i=De;I{1a iladelphia ', o K E .' fhage ?% ° ° Neshoba y ° S o '
? `` 4 ockhar? L°? c1tuf el) D E ° ' ?


Quitman 1?
===Rail===
====Passenger====
[[Amtrak]] provides scheduled passenger service along two routes, the [[Crescent (Amtrak)|Crescent]] and [[City of New Orleans]].


[[Image:mississippi-3.jpg|frame]]
====Freight====
All but one of the United States [[Class I railroad]]s serves Mississippi (the sole exception is the [[Union Pacific]]):
*[[Canadian National Railway]]'s [[Illinois Central Railroad]] subsidiary provides north-south service.
*[[BNSF Railway]] has an east-west line across northern Mississippi.
*[[Kansas City Southern Railway]] provides east-west service in the middle of thee state and north-south service along the [[Alabama]] state line.
*[[Norfolk Southern Railway]] provides service in the extreme north and southeast.
*[[CSX Transportation|CSX]] has a line along the Gulf Coast.


===Water===
====Major rivers====
*[[Big Black River]]
*[[Pascagoula River]]
*[[Pearl River (Mississippi-Louisiana)|Pearl River]]
*[[Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway]]
*[[Yazoo River]]


====Major lakes====
*[[Arkabutla Lake]] - {{convert|19550|acre|km2}} of water; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District<ref>[http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Lakes/arkabutlalake/ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District: Arkabutla Lake]</ref>
*[[Grenada Lake]] - {{convert|35000|acre|km2}} of water; became operational in 1954; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District<ref>[http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Lakes/grenadalake/ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District: Grenada Lake]</ref>
*[[Ross Barnett Reservoir]] - Named for [[Ross Barnett]], the 52nd [[List of Governors of Mississippi|Governor of Mississippi]]; {{convert|33000|acre|km2}} of water; became operational in 1966; constructed and managed by The Pearl River Valley Water Supply District, a state agency; Provides water supply for the City of Jackson.
*[[Sardis Lake]] - {{convert|98520|acre|km2}} of water; became operational in October 1940; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District<ref>[http://www.mvk.usace.army.mil/Lakes/sardislake/ U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District: Sardis Lake]</ref>


[[Image:mississippi-4.jpg|frame]]
==Law and government==
As with all other U.S. states and the federal government, Mississippi's government is based on the [[Separation of powers|separation of legislative, executive and judicial power]]. Executive authority in the state rests with the Governor, currently [[Haley Barbour]] (R). The [[Lieutenant Governor]], currently [[Phil Bryant]] (R), is elected on a separate ballot. Both the governor and lieutenant governor are elected to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the heads of major executive departments are elected by the citizens of Mississippi rather than appointed by the governor.


Mississippi is one of only five states that elects its state officials in odd numbered years (The others are [[Kentucky]], [[Louisiana]], [[New Jersey]], and [[Virginia]]). Mississippi holds elections for these offices every four years in the years preceding Presidential election years. Thus, the last year when Mississippi elected a Governor was 2007, and the next gubernatorial election will occur in 2011.


''(See: [[List of Governors of Mississippi]])''<br>
''(See: [[List of Lieutenant Governors of Mississippi]])''<br>
''(See: [[State Treasurer of Mississippi|List of State Treasurers of Mississippi]])''<br>
''(See: [[Attorneys-General of Mississippi|List of Attorneys-General of Mississippi]])''<br/>
''(See: [[Mississippi general election, 2007]])''


[[Image:mississippi-5.jpg|frame]]
Legislative authority resides in the [[Mississippi Legislature|state legislature]], composed of the [[Mississippi Senate|Senate]] and [[Mississippi House of Representatives|House of Representatives]]. The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate, while the House of Representatives selects their own Speaker. The state constitution permits the legislature to establish by law the number of senators and representatives, up to a maximum of 52 senators and 122 representatives. Current state law sets the number of senators at 52 and representatives at 122. The term of office for senators and representatives is four years.


'hlatherv i W A WoodVillef w Scale, 1:2,200,000 English Miles 20 30 40 [[Longitude]] [[Nest]] gi of [[Greenwich]] z fishery on the reefs in the Sound, much developed since 1880. The shrimp fishery, too, grew during the same period. About 40% of the total catch of the state is made by the inhabitants of Harrison county on the Gulf of Mexico.
''(See: [[List of U.S. state legislatures]].)''


==Minerals.==
===Judicial branch===
The'' mineral wealth of the state is limited. Clays and [[Mineral Waters|mineral waters]] are, however, widely distributed. Large quantities of mineral water, [[sulphur]], chalybeate and lithia, bottled at Meridian, Raymond and elsewhere, are sold annually. The state contains deposits of iron, [[gypsum]], marl, phosphate, lignite, ochre, [[glass]]-sand, [[tripoli]], [[Fuller's Earth|fuller's earth]], limestones and sandstones; and there are small [[gas]] flows in the Yazoo Delta.
Supreme judicial authority rests with the [[Mississippi Supreme Court|state Supreme Court]], which has statewide authority. In addition, there is a statewide [[Mississippi Court of Appeals|Court of Appeals]], as well as Circuit Courts, Chancery Courts and Justice Courts, which have more limited geographical jurisdiction. The nine judges of the Supreme Court are elected from three districts (three judges per district) by the state's citizens in non-partisan elections to eight-year staggered terms. The ten judges of the Court of Appeals are elected from five districts (two judges per district) for eight-year staggered terms. Judges for the smaller courts are elected to four-year terms by the state's citizens who live within that court's jurisdiction.


==Manufactures==
===Federal representation===
The lack of mineral resources, especially of coal and iron, of a good harbour (until the improvement of Gulfport), and of an adequate supply of labour has discouraged most kinds of manufacturing. The value of the total factory product was $57,45 1 ,445 in 1905, when a little more than three-fourths was represented by lumber and timber products, cotton-[[seed]] oil and cake, and [[Cotton goods and yarn|cotton goods]]. The leading manufacturing centres are Meridian, Vicksburg, Jackson, Natchez and Biloxi.
Mississippi has two U.S. Senate seats. One is currently held by [[Thad Cochran]] (Republican) and the other is held by [[Roger Wicker]] (Republican) who was appointed on December 31, 2007 by Mississippi governor [[Haley Barbour]] due to [[Trent Lott]] resigning on December 18, 2007 and who was elected to finish Lott's term on November 4, 2008 (see [[United States Senate special election in Mississippi, 2008]]).


==Transport==
As of the 2001 [[Apportionment (politics)|apportionment]], the state has four [[member of Congress|congressmen]] in the [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. House of Representatives]], currently [[Chip Pickering]] (Republican), [[Bennie Thompson]] ([[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]]), [[Gene Taylor (Mississippi)|Gene Taylor]] (Democrat), and [[Travis Childers]] (Democrat).
Along the entire western border of the state the Mississippi River is navigable for river steamboats. On the southern border, the Mississippi Sound affords safe navigation for small [[coasting]] vessels, and from Gulfport (13 m. W.S.W. of Biloxi) to Ship Island, which has one of the best harbours on the entire Gulf Coast, the Gulf & Ship Island Railroad Company, with the [[co-operation]] of the United States Government, in 1901 began to dredge a channel 300 ft. wide and 19 ft. at mean low water, and to construct an anchorage basin (completed in 1906) at Gulfport, 2 m. long and 4 m. wide, and 19 ft. deep. In June 1908 the maximum low-water draft of the channel and the basin was 19 ft. The Gulfport project reduced [[freight]] rates between Gulfport and the Atlantic seaboard cities and promoted the trade of Gulfport, which is the port of entry for the Pearl River customs district. Its imports for 1909 were valued at $82,028 and its exports at $8,581,471. The Yazoo, Tallahatchie, Yalobusha, [[Sunflower]], Big Black, Pascagoula and Pearl rivers are also navigable to a limited extent. The first [[Railways|railway]] in Mississippi was completed from Vicksburg to [[Clinton]] in 1840, but the state had suffered severely from the panic of 1837, and in.1850 it had only 75 m. of railway. This was increased to 862 m. by 1860. The Civil War then interfered, and in 1880 the mileage was only 1127 m. During the next decade it was a little more than doubled, and at the close of 1908 it was 3916.85 m. The principal lines are the [[Illinois]] Central, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, the Southern, the [[Mobile]] & [[Ohio]], the [[New Orleans]] & North-eastern, the [[Kansas City]], Memphis & [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], the Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City, the Alabama & Vicksburg, and the Gulf & Ship Island.


==Population==
''(See: [[List of United States Senators from Mississippi]]; [[List of United States Representatives from Mississippi]]; [[List of United States congressional districts#Mississippi|Congressional districts map]])''
The population increased from 1,131,597 in 1880 1 to 1,289,600 in 1890, of 14% within the decade, and by 'goo it had grown to 1 i 551,270 (9 9.4 8% native-born), and by 1 9 10 to 1,7 9 7,11 4. The [[density]] of population in 1900 was 33.5 per sq. m.; 641,200, or 41
3%, were whites; 907,630, or 58.5%, were negroes; 2203 were Indians, and 237 were Chinese; in eight counties of the Delta the ratio of negroes to whites was almost ''7'' to 1. The Indians are descendants of the Choctaw tribe; they are all subject to [[taxation]], and most of them live in the east central part of the state. The principal religious denominations are the Baptist (371,518 in 1906) and the Methodist (212,105 in 1906). The cities and towns having a population in 1900 of 4000 or more were: Vicksburg, Meridian, Natchez, Jackson, [[Greenville]], Columbus, Biloxi, Yazoo City, McComb and Hattiesburg.


===Politics===
==Government==
The chief special object of the present constitution, adopted on the 1st of November 1890, was to preserve in a legal manner the supremacy of the whites over the ignorant negro majority. In addition to the ordinary [[suffrage]] qualifications of age, [[sex]], and residence, the voter must have paid all taxes due from him for the two years immediately preceding the election, and he must be able to read any section of the constitution or "be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof." The former provision, strengthened by a [[Poll-Tax|poll-tax]] for school purposes assessed on adult males, affects both white and blacks; the latter, owing to the discretion vested in the election officers, affects (in practice) mainly the blacks. The chief executive officials are the governor, lieutenant-governor, [[Secretary Of State|secretary of state]], treasurer, auditor, [[attorney-general]], and [[superintendent]] of education. All are chosen for terms of four years, and the governor, treasurer, and auditor are ineligible for immediate re-election.
====Federal politics====
{| align="right" border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;"
|+ '''Presidential elections results'''
|- bgcolor = lightgrey
! Year
! [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]]
! [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]]
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 2008|2008]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''56.18%''' ''724,597
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 43.00% ''554,662
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 2004|2004]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''59.55%''' ''684,981
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 39.75% ''458,094
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 2000|2000]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''57.62%''' ''573,230
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 40.70% ''404,964
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1996|1996]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''49.21%''' ''439,838
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 44.08% ''394,022
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1992|1992]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''49.68%''' ''487,793
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 40.77% '' ''400,258
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1988|1988]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''59.89%''' ''557,890
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 39.07% ''363,921
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1984|1984]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''61.85%''' ''581,477
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 37.46% ''352,192
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1980|1980]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''49.42%''' ''441,089
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 48.09% ''429,281
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | [[United States presidential election, 1976|1976]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | 47.68% ''366,846
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | '''49.56%''' ''381,309
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1972|1972]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''78.20%''' ''505,125
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 19.63% ''126,782
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="lightgrey" | [[United States presidential election, 1968|1968]]*
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | 13.52% ''88,516
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 23.02% ''150,644
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | [[United States presidential election, 1964|1964]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | '''87.14%''' ''356,528
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | 12.86% ''52,618
|-
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | [[United States presidential election, 1960|1960]]
| align="center" bgcolor="#fff3f3" | 24.67% ''73,561
| align="center" bgcolor="#f0f0ff" | '''36.34%''' ''108,362
|-
| align="center" colspan="3" bgcolor="lightgrey" | *State won by [[George Wallace]]<br>of the [[American Independent Party]],<br>at 63.46%, or 415,349 votes
|}


1 The population at each of the preceding censuses was: 8850 in 1800; 40,352 in 1810; 75,448 in 1820; 136,621 in 1830; 375,651 in 1840; 606,526 in 1850; 791,305 in 1860; and 827,922 in 1870.
Mississippi white residents, as in the rest of the South, long supported the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]]. The policies of [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]], which included federally appointed [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] governors, led to white Southern resentment toward the Republican Party. Following the [[Compromise of 1877]], federal troops enforcing the provisions of Reconstruction were pulled out of the South. The Democratic Party regained political control of the state, partly by using methods designed to suppress black voter turnout, which had understandably favored Republican candidates and the party of Lincoln.


The method of election is peculiar, being based in part upon the national presidential model. Each county or legislative district casts as many electoral votes as it has members in the state house of representatives, and a majority of both the electoral and the popular vote is required. If no one has such a majority, the house of representatives chooses one of the two who have received the highest number of popular votes; but this is really a provision never executed, as the Democratic nominees are always elected without any serious opposition. The governor is empowered to call extraordinary sessions of the legislature, to grant pardons and reprieves, and to exercise a power of [[veto]] which extends to items in [[appropriation]] bills; a two-thirds majority of the legislature is necessary to pass a bill over his veto. His appointing power is not very extensive, as nearly all officials, except judges, are elected by popular vote.
In 1890, the elite white-dominated Mississippi legislature created a new constitution, the first in the South of what were called [[disfranchisement after Reconstruction era (United States)|disfranchising]] constitutions. They contained provisions, such as [[poll taxes]] and [[literacy test]]s, that in practice effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. When Mississippi's constitution passed a Supreme Court challenge in ''[[Williams v. Mississippi]]'' (1898), other Southern states quickly included such provisions in their own new constitutions. By 1900, these measures effectively disfranchised nearly all black voters in the state. When the [[grandfather clause]] was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in ''[[Guinn v. United States]]'' (1915), Mississippi and other states which had used it quickly passed other statutes to restrict black registration and voting. Disfranchisement of blacks and poor whites continued for six decades.


The legislature consists of a [[senate]] and a house of representatives, chosen every four years. It meets in regular [[session]] quadrennially, in special sessions in the middle of the interval to pass the appropriation and revenue bills, and in extraordinary session whenever the governor sees fit to call it. Revenue measures may originate in either house, but a three-fifths vote in each is necessary to their enactment. The constitution goes into minute detail in prohibiting local, private and special legislation.
During the fall of 1963, civil rights activists registered 80,000 black voters in Mississippi for the straw Freedom Vote, to demonstrate the people's ambition and eagerness to vote.<ref>[http://www.africanaonline.com/orga_cofo.htm Council of Federated Organizations, accessed 13 Mar 2008]</ref> In 1964, the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP) was formed, creating a list of candidates to challenge the official, all-white slate of the state's [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]]. The MFDP also mounted protests at the national convention, where they demanded to be seated as official delegates. Not until the late 1960s, following passage of the Federal [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965 under President [[Lyndon Johnson]], would most African-American men and women have the chance to vote in Mississippi and other Southern states.


The judiciary consists of a [[Supreme Court Of Judicature|supreme court of]] three judges, thirteen (1908) [[circuit]] courts, seven (1908) [[chancery]] courts, county courts and justice of thelpeace courts. Under the constitution of 1890 the governor, with the consent of the senate, appoints supreme court judges for a term of nine years, and circuit and chancery judges for four years. The local judicial authorities are the county board of supervisors of five members and the justices of the peace.
For 116 years (from 1876 to 1992), Mississippi was essentially a one-party state, electing Democratic [[governor]]s. Over the same period, the Democratic Party dominated state and federal elections in Mississippi. Until the late 1960s, the party was essentially all white. The enfranchisement of African Americans after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 happened with the support of the national Democratic Party. Most blacks joined the Democratic Party at the state level.


The other county officials are the [[sheriff]], [[coroner]], treasurer, [[assessor]], surveyor and superintendent of education. The superintendent is chosen by the state board of education except in those counties (now all or nearly all) in which the legislature has made the office elective. The courts have interpreted this to mean that the manner of selection need not be uniform (''Wynn '' v. ''State,'' 67 Miss. 312), a rule which would possibly apply to other local offices. The intention seemed to be to permit the appointment of officials in counties and districts where there was any likelihood of negro supremacy.
Since the 1960s, the Republican Party has become competitive in statewide elections. Many conservative white Democrats have switched parties, or at least become willing to support Republicans in national contests. In 1964, [[Barry Goldwater]] took an unheard-of 87 percent of the state's popular vote (before most African Americans could vote.) Since then, Mississippi has supported a Democrat for president only once, in 1976, when a son of the South ran. That year, [[Jimmy Carter]] narrowly carried the state by two percentage points.<ref>{{cite web |title=Presidential General Election Graph Comparison - Mississippi |publisher=www.uselectionatlas.org |accessdate=2007-12-01 |url=http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/comparegraphs.php?year=2004&fips=28&f=0&off=0&elect=0}}</ref>


Mississippi has taken a leading part in the movement to bring about the removal of the [[common law]] disabilities of married women, the first statute for that purpose having been passed in 1839. Under the present constitution they are "fully emancipated from all [[disability]] on account of [[coverture]]," and are placed on an equality with their husbands in acquiring and disposing of property and in making contracts relative thereto. A [[divorce]] may be granted only to one who has lived for at least one year in the state; among the recognized causes for divorce are [[desertion]] for two years, [[cruelty]], [[insanity]] or physical incapacity at time of marriage, habitual [[drunkenness]] or excessive use of [[opium]] or other drugs, and the conviction of either party of [[felony]]. The [[homestead]] of a householder (with a family) who occupies it may be held exempt from sale for the collection of debts other than those for purchase-money, taxes, or improvements, or for the [[satisfaction]] of a judgment upon a forfeited [[recognizance]] or [[bail]]-bond, but a homestead so exempted is limited to $3000 in value and to 160 acres of land. A considerable amount of [[Personal Property|personal property]], including furniture, a small library, provisions, tools, agricultural implements, livestock and the proceeds of a life [[insurance]] policy, is also exempt from seizure for the satisfaction of debts. Since 1909 the sale of intoxicating liquors has been prohibited by statute.
On September 26, 2008, presidential candidates [[Barack Obama]] and [[John McCain]] debated at the [[University of Mississippi]] in the first presidential debate ever hosted in Mississippi. It was also the first official debate for the election.<ref>[http://debate.olemiss.edu 2008 Presidential Debate | The University of Mississippi]</ref> The debate focused on [[Foreign policy of the United States|foreign policy]] and national security issues.<ref>[http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hH6zUr8Zq5qx_S9rqL_TCayRrs4gD92MMRNO0 McCain, Obama agree on fall debates]</ref>


==Penal and Charitable Institutions==
{{Further|[[Political party strength in Mississippi]]}}
The [[penitentiary]] at Jackson was established under an Act of 1836, was erected in 1838-1839, was opened in 1840, was burned by the Federals in 1863, and was rebuilt in 1866-1867. The board of control is composed of the governor, attorney-general and the three railroad commissioners. The convict [[lease]] system was abolished by the constitution of 1890 (the provision to take effect on the 31st of December 1894), and state farms were purchased in Rankin, Hinds and Holmes counties. As these were insufficient to give employment to all the prisoners, some were put to work on Yazoo Delta plantations on [[partnership]] contracts. Under an act of 1900, however, 13,889 acres of land were purchased in Sunflower county; and there and at Tchula, Holmes county, and at Oakley, Hinds county, the negro convicts - the white convicts are on the Rankin county farm - are kept on several large plantations, with saw-mills, cotton gins, &c. Under a law of 1906 these farm penitentiaries are controlled by a board of three trustees, elected by the people; they are managed by a superintendent, appointed once every four years by the governor. The charitable institutions of the state are supervised by separate boards of trustees appointed by the governor. The state insane [[hospital]], opened at Jackson in 1856 (act of 1848), in time became overcrowded and the East Mississippi insane hospital was opened, 2 m. west of Meridian in 1885 (act of. 1882). The state institution for the education of the [[deaf and dumb]] (1854) and the state institution for the blind (1848) are at Jackson. State aid is given to the hospitals at Vicksburg and Natchez.

====State politics====
Mississippi has 82 [[County (United States)|counties]]. Citizens of Mississippi counties elect the members of their county Board of Supervisors from single-member districts, as well as other county officials.

''(See: [[List of counties in Mississippi]])''

On some social issues, Mississippi is one of the more [[Conservatism|conservative]] states in the US, with religion often playing a large role in citizens' political views. Liquor laws are particularly strict and variable from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Liquor sales are frequently banned on Sunday. Many cities and counties allow no alcoholic beverage sales ("dry"), while others allow beer but not liquor, or liquor but not beer. Some allow beer sales, but only if it is not refrigerated.<ref>[http://www.oxfordms.net/recent/newordinances.htm Proposed New Ordinances, [[Oxford, Mississippi]]; note section 5-23 paragraph (b), which states in part, "It shall be unlawful in the City of Oxford, Mississippi, for any owner, proprietor, manager or employee of any establishment which has a permit or privilege license authorizing the sale of light wine or beer at retail to... Sell, give or dispense or permit to be consumed any light wine or beer which has been refrigerated."]</ref> In 2001, Mississippi banned adoption by same-sex couples and banned recognition of adoptions by same-sex couples which were done and recognized in other states or countries. In 2004, 86% of voter turnout amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage and ban state recognition of same-sex marriages which were done and recognized in other states and countries.

At the same time, Mississippi has been one of the more innovative states in the country, having been the first state to implement a sales tax and the first state to pass a [[Married Women's Property Act 1882|Married Women's Property Act]]. Also, Mississippi has elected more African-American officials than any other state in the United States. Mississippi is one of only a few states to have [[Decriminalization|decriminalized]] the possession of [[cannabis (drug)|marijuana]], so that possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana is punishable only by a fine of $100 - $250 for the first offense with no jail time.<ref>[http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?wtm_view=&Group_ID=4546 NORML State Guide to Marijuana Laws: Mississippi], accessed 20 Mar 2008</ref>

==Major cities and towns==
[[Image:JacksonMSSkylineAtNight.jpg|right|thumb|'''Jackson''', capital and largest city]]
[[Image:ClintonMSMainStreet1.jpg|right|thumb|'''Clinton''']]
[[Image:MeridianMSMS.jpg|right|thumb|'''Meridian''']]
Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 50,000 ([[United States Census Bureau]] estimates as of 2007):<ref name="U.S. Census Bureau">[http://www.census.gov/popest/cities/SUB-EST2007-4.html U.S. Census Bureau], accessed 23 August 2008</ref>

1. [[Jackson, Mississippi]] (175,710)<br>
2. [[Gulfport, Mississippi]] (66,271)<br>
3. [[Hattiesburg, Mississippi]] (50,233)

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 20,000 ([[United States Census Bureau]] estimates as of 2007):<ref name="U.S. Census Bureau"/>
<table><tr><td valign=top>
1. [[Biloxi, Mississippi]] (44,292)<br>
2. [[Southaven, Mississippi]] (42,567)<br>
3. [[Meridian, Mississippi]] (38,314)<br>
4. [[Greenville, Mississippi]] (36,178)<br>
5. [[Tupelo, Mississippi]] (36,058)<br>
</td><td valign=top>
6. [[Olive Branch, Mississippi]] (30,635)<br>
7. [[Clinton, Mississippi]] (26,405)<br>
8. [[Vicksburg, Mississippi]] (25,454)<br>
9. [[Horn Lake, Mississippi]] (24,133)<br>
10. [[Pearl, Mississippi]] (24,065)<br>
</td><td valign=top>
11. [[Columbus, Mississippi]] (24,025)<br>
12. [[Starkville, Mississippi]] (23,856)<br>
13. [[Pascagoula, Mississippi]] (23,452)<br>
14. [[Ridgeland, Mississippi]] (21,495)<br>
15. [[Brandon, Mississippi]] (20,584)<br>
</td></tr></table>

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 10,000 but less than 20,000 ([[United States Census Bureau]] estimates as of 2007):<ref name="U.S. Census Bureau"/>
<table><tr><td valign=top>
1. [[Laurel, Mississippi]] (18,405)<br>
2. [[Clarksdale, Mississippi]] (18,296)<br>
3. [[Madison, Mississippi]] (17,483)<br>
4. [[Ocean Springs, Mississippi]] (17,246)<br>
5. [[Natchez, Mississippi]] (16,637)<br>
6. [[Greenwood, Mississippi]] (16,151)<br>
7. [[Gautier, Mississippi]] (16,096)<br>
</td><td valign=top>
8. [[Oxford, Mississippi]] (14,911)<br>
9. [[Grenada, Mississippi]] (14,682)<br>
10. [[Corinth, Mississippi]] (14,288)<br>
11. [[Moss Point, Mississippi]] (14,199)<br>
12. [[McComb, Mississippi]] (13,557)<br>
13. [[Canton, Mississippi]] (12,519)<br>
14. [[Cleveland, Mississippi]] (12,447)<br>
</td><td valign=top>
15. [[Picayune, Mississippi]] (11,591)<br>
16. [[Yazoo City, Mississippi]] (11,520)<br>
17. [[West Point, Mississippi]] (11,372)<br>
18. [[Hernando, Mississippi]] (11,110)<br>
19. [[Indianola, Mississippi]] (10,924)<br>
20. [[Petal, Mississippi]] (10,617)<br>
</td></tr></table>
''(See: [[List of cities in Mississippi]])''<br/>
''(See: [[List of towns and villages in Mississippi]])''<br/>
''(See: [[List of census-designated places in Mississippi]])''<br/>
''(See: [[List of metropolitan areas in Mississippi]])''<br/>
''(See: [[List of micropolitan areas in Mississippi]])''


==Education==
==Education==
Educational interests were almost entirely neglected during the colonial and territorial periods. The first school established in the state was Jefferson College, now Jefferson Military College, near Natchez, Adams county, incorporated in 1802. Charters were granted to schools in Claiborne, Wilkinson and Amite counties in 1809-1815, and to Port Gibson Academy and Mississippi College, at Clinton, in 1826. The public school system, established in 1846, never was universal, because of special legislation for various counties; public education was retarded during the Civil War and the Reconstruction period (when immense sums appropriated for schools were grossly mismanaged), but conditions gradually improved after 1875, especially through the concentration of schools. The sessions are still too short, teachers are poorly paid and attendance is voluntary. The long lack of normal training for white teachers (from 1870 to 1904 there was a normal school for negroes at Holly Springs) lasted until 1890, when a teacher's training course was introduced into the curriculum of the state university. There are separate schools for whites and blacks, and the equipment and service are approximately equal, although the whites pay about nine-tenths of the school taxes. The schools are subject to the supervision of a state superintendent of public education and of a board of education, composed of the superintendent, the secretary of state, and the attorney-general, and within each county to a county superintendent. The schools are supported by a poll-tax, by general appropriations, by local levies, and by the Chickasaw school fund. An act of Congress of the 3rd of March 1803 reserved from sale section sixteen of the public lands in each township for educational purposes. When the [[Chickasaws]] ceded their lands to the national government, in 1830 and in 1832, thestate made a claim to the sixteenth sections, and finally in 1856 received 174,550 acres - one thirty-sixth of the total cession of 6,283,804 acres. The revenue derived from the sales and leases of this land constitutes an endowment fund upon which the state as trustee pays 6% interest. It is used for the support of the schools in the old Chickasaw territory in the northern part of the state.
Until the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] era, Mississippi had only a small number of schools and no educational institutions for black people. The first school for black people was established in 1862.


Among the institutions for higher education are the university of Mississippi (chartered 1844; opened 1848), at [[Oxford]], which was opened to women in 1882; the Agricultural and Mechanical College (opened 1880), at Agricultural College, near Starkville, Oktibbeha county; the Industrial Institute and College for Girls (opened 1885), at Columbus; and the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College for negroes (1871; reorganized in 1878), at Westside. In 1819 Congress granted thirty-six sections of public land for the establishment of a university. This land was sold in 1833 for $277,332.52, but the entire sum was lost in the failure of the Planters' [[Bank (game)|Bank]] in 1840. In 1880 the state assumed liability for the full amount plus interest, and this balance, $544,061.23, now constitutes an endowment fund, upon' which the state pays 6% interest. Congress granted another township (thirty-six sections) for the university in 1892, and its income is supplemented by legislative appropriations for current expenses and special needs. The two agricultural and mechanical colleges were founded by the sale of public lands given by Congress under the Morrill Act of 1862. An agricultural experiment station established in 1887 under the Hatch Act, is at Agricultural College; and there are branch experiment stations at McNeill, Pearl River county (1906), near [[Holly Springs]], and at Stoneville, near Greenville.
During Reconstruction in 1870, black and white Republicans were the first to establish a system of [[public education]] in the state. The state's dependence on agriculture and resistance to taxation limited the funds it had available to spend on any schools. As late as the early 20th century, there were few schools in [[rural]] areas. With seed money from the [[Julius Rosenwald]] Fund, many rural black communities across Mississippi raised matching funds and contributed public funds to build new schools for their children. Essentially, many black adults taxed themselves twice and made significant sacrifices to raise money for the education of children in their communities.<Ref>James D. Anderson,''The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1988, pp.160-161</ref>


==[[Finance]]==
Blacks and whites attended separate [[public school]]s in Mississippi until the 1960s, when they began to be integrated following the 1954 [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] ruling in ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' that racially segregated public schools were [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]]. Population settlement patterns have resulted in many districts that are de facto segregated.
The chief sources of revenue are taxes on realty, personalty and corporations, a poll-tax, and licences. The more important expenditures are for public schools, state departments, educational and charitable institutions and pensions for Confederate veterans. The early financial history of the state is not very creditable. The Bank of Mississippi, at Natchez, incorporated by the Territorial legislature in 1809, was rechartered by the state in 1818, and was guaranteed a [[monopoly]] of the banking business until 1840. In violation of this [[pledge]], and in the hope that a new bank would be more tractable than the Bank of Mississippi, the Planters' Bank was established at Natchez, in 1830, with a capital of $3,000,000, two-thirds of which was subscribed by the state. During the wild era of [[speculation]] which followed (especially in 1832 - upon the opening of the Chickasaw Cession to settlement) a large number of [[banks]] and railroad corporations with banking privileges were chartered. The climax was reached in 1838 with the [[incorporation]] of the Union Bank. This, the most pretentious of all the state banks of the period, was capitalized at $15,500,000. The state subscribed $5,000,000, which was raised on bonds sold to [[Nicholas Biddle]], president of the United States Bank of [[Pennsylvania]]. As the Union Bank was founded in the midst of a financial panic and was mismanaged, its failure was a foregone conclusion. Agitation for repudiation was begun by Governor A. G. McNutt (1801-1848), and that question became the chief issue in the gubernatorial campaign of 1841, Tilghman M. Tucker (1802-1859), the Democratic candidate, representing the repudiators and David O. Shattuck, [[Whig Party|Whig]], representing the anti-repudiators. The Democrats were successful, and the bonds were formally repudiated in 1842. In 1853 the High Court of Appeals and Errors of the state in the case of ''Mississippi'' v. ''Hezion Johnson (35 Miss. Reports,'' 625) decided unanimously that nothing could absolve the state from its [[obligation]]. The decision was disregarded, however, and in the same year the Planters' Bank bonds were also repudiated by popular vote. These acts of repudiation were sanctioned by the constitution of 1890. The $7,000,000 saved in this manner has doubtless been more than offset by the additional interest charges on subsequent loans, due to the loss of public confidence. Mississippi suffered less than most of the other Southern states during the Reconstruction period; but expenditures [[rose]] from $463,219.71 in 1869 to $1,729,046.34 in 1871. At the close of the Republican regime in 1876 its total indebtedness was $2,631,704.24, of which $814,743 belonged to the Chickasaw fund (see above) and $718,946.22 to the general school fund. As the principal of these funds is never to be paid, the real debt was slightly over $1,000,000. On the 1st of October 1907 the payable debt was $1,253,029.07, the non-payable $ 2 ,33 6, 1 97.5 8, 1 a total of $3,589,226.65. Since the Civil War the banking laws have become more stringent and the national banks have exercised a wholesome influence. There were, in 1906, 24 national banks and 269 state banks, but no [[trust]] companies, private banks or [[Savings Banks|savings banks]].


==History==
In the late 1980s, the state had 954 public elementary and [[secondary school]]s, with a total yearly enrollment of about 369,500 elementary pupils and about 132,500 secondary students. Some 45,700 students attended [[private school]]s. In 2004, Mississippi was ranked last among the fifty states in academic achievement by the [[American Legislative Exchange Council]]'s [http://www.alec.org/meSWFiles/pdf/2004_Report_Card_on_Education.pdf Report Card on Education], with the lowest average [[ACT (examination)|ACT]] scores and spending per pupil in the nation.
At the beginning of the 16th century the territory included in the present state of Mississippi was inhabited by three powerful native tribes: the Natchez in the south-west, the [[Choctaws]] in the south-east and centre, and the Chickasaws in the north. In addition, there were the Yazoos in the Yazoo valley, the Pascagoulas, the Biloxis, and a few weaker tribes on the borders of the Mississippi Sound. The history of Mississippi may be divided into the period of exploration (154 1699), the period of French rule (1699-1763), the period of English rule (1763-1781), the period of Spanish rule (1781-1798), the territorial period (1798-1817), and the period of statehood (1817 seq.).

In 2007, Mississippi students scored the lowest of any state on the National Assessments of Educational Progress in both math and science.<ref>{{cite web |title="Study Compares States' Math and Science Scores With Other Countries'" |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/education/14students.html}}, ''The New York Times'' (2007) </ref>

===Colleges, universities and community colleges===
<table><tr><td valign=top>
*[[Alcorn State University]]
*[[Belhaven College]]
*[[Blue Mountain College]]
*[[Coahoma Community College]]
*[[Copiah-Lincoln Community College]]
*[[Delta State University]]
*[[East Central Community College]]
*[[East Mississippi Community College]]
*[[Hinds Community College]]
*[[Holmes Community College]]
*[[Itawamba Community College]]
*[[Jackson State University]]
*[[Jones County Junior College]]
*[[Magnolia Bible College]]
*[[Meridian Community College]]
*[[Millsaps College]]
*[[Mississippi College]]
</td><td valign=top>
*[[Mississippi Delta Community College]]
*[[Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College]]
*[[Mississippi State University]]
*[[Mississippi University for Women]]
*[[Mississippi Valley State University]]
*[[Northeast Mississippi Community College]]
*[[Northwest Mississippi Community College]]
*[[Pearl River Community College]]
*[[Reformed Theological Seminary]]
*[[Rust College]]
*[[Southwest Mississippi Community College]]
*[[Tougaloo College]]
*[[University of Mississippi]] (Ole Miss)
*[[University of Mississippi Medical Center]]
*[[University of Southern Mississippi]] (Southern Miss)
*[[Wesley Biblical Seminary]]
*[[Wesley College, Florence|Wesley College]]
*[[William Carey University]]
</td></tr></table>
''(see: [[List of colleges and universities in Mississippi]])''

==Culture==
While Mississippi has been especially known for its music and literature, it has embraced other forms of art, too. Its strong religious traditions have inspired striking works by [[Outsider Art|outsider artists]] who have been shown nationally.

Jackson established the [[USA International Ballet Competition]], which is held every four years. This [[ballet]] competition attracts the most talented young dancers from around the world.<ref>[http://www.usaibc.com/ USA International Ballet Competition<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>

The [[Magnolia Independent Film Festival]], still held annually in [[Starkville, Mississippi|Starkville]], is the first and oldest in the state.

===Music===
<!-- NOTE: THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A COMPLETE LIST! It needs to stay reasonably short. INSTEAD, ADD NEW ENTRIES TO [[List of people from Mississippi]] -->
Musicians of the state's Delta region were historically significant to the development of the [[blues]]. Their laments arose out of the region's hard times after Reconstruction. Although by the end of the 19th century, two-thirds of the farm owners were black, continued low prices for cotton and national financial pressures resulted in most of them losing their land. More problems built up with the boll weevil infestation, when thousands of agricultural jobs were lost. Many Mississippi musicians migrated to [[Chicago]] and created new forms of jazz and other genres there.

[[Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)|Jimmie Rodgers]], a native of Meridian and white guitarist/singer/songwriter known as the "Godfather of Country", also played a significant role in the development of the blues. He and [[Chester Arthur Burnett]] were friends and admirers of each other's music. Rodgers was supposed to have given Burnett his nickname of Howlin' Wolf. Their friendship and respect is an important example of Mississippi's musical legacy. While the state has had a reputation for being the most racist in America, individual musicians created an integrated music community. Mississippi musicians created new forms by combining and creating variations on musical traditions from Africa with the musical traditions of white Southerners, a tradition largely rooted in Scots–Irish music.

The state is creating a [[Mississippi Blues Trail]], with dedicated markers explaining historic sites significant to the history of blues music, such as [[Clarksdale, Mississippi|Clarksdale]]'s Riverside Hotel, where [[Bessie Smith]] died after her auto accident on [[Highway 61]]. The Riverside Hotel is just one of many historical blues sites in Clarksdale. The [[Delta Blues Museum]] there is visited by tourists from all over the world. Close by are "Ground Zero" and "Madidi", a contemporary blues club and restaurant co-owned by actor [[Morgan Freeman]].

Mississippi has also been fundamental to the development of American music as a whole. [[Elvis Presley]], who created a sensation in the 1950s as a crossover artist and contributed to rock 'n' roll, was a native of [[Tupelo, Mississippi|Tupelo]]. From opera star [[Leontyne Price]] to the [[alternative rock]] band [[3 Doors Down]], to [[Gulf and western (music genre)|gulf and western]] singer [[Jimmy Buffett]], to rappers [[David Banner]] and [[Afroman]], Mississippi musicians have been significant in all genres.
''(see: [[List of people from Mississippi]])''
<!-- NOTE: THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A COMPLETE LIST! It needs to stay reasonably short. INSTEAD, ADD NEW ENTRIES TO [[List of people from Mississippi]] -->

==Sports==
<!-- NOTE: THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A LIST OF DEFUNCT/OUT OF BUSINESS PRO TEAMS! It needs to only list pro and semi-pro teams that are in business and playing. INSTEAD, ADD defunct/out of business teams to the related city article where the team was based. -->
*[[Biloxi, Mississippi|Biloxi]] is home to one of two Mississippi-based professional ice hockey teams, the [[Mississippi Sea Wolves]]. The Sea Wolves are a minor league team based at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. The [[ECHL]]'s 1998–1999 Kelly Cup Champions returned to the ice for the 2007–2008 season after a two-year hiatus due to Hurricane Katrina damage in 2005 at the Coliseum.
*[[Southaven, Mississippi]] hosts the [[Mississippi RiverKings]] of the [[Central Hockey League|CHL]], who changed their name from the Memphis Riverkings after an online fan vote to select a new team name.
*[[Pearl, Mississippi]] is the home of the [[Mississippi Braves]]. The Braves are a AA minor league affiliate of the [[Atlanta Braves]]. They play in the [[Southern League (baseball)|Southern League]].
*[[Tupelo, Mississippi]] hosts the [[Mississippi Mudcats]] of the [[American Indoor Football Association]].
*The NBHA (National Barrel Horse Association) holds the annual Youth World [[Barrel Racing]] competition in Jackson during the last week of July.

==Famous Mississippians==
<!-- NOTE: THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A COMPLETE LIST! It needs to stay reasonably short. INSTEAD, ADD NEW ENTRIES TO [[List of people from Mississippi]]. -->
{{main|List of people from Mississippi}}
Mississippi has produced a number of notable and famous individuals, especially in the realm of music and literature. Among the most notable are:
* Actors: [[Jim Henson]], [[Oprah Winfrey]], [[Morgan Freeman]], [[James Earl Jones]], [[Gerald McRaney]], [[Parker Posey]] and [[Sela Ward]].
*Artists: [[Walter Inglis Anderson]] and [[George E. Ohr]]
*Athletes: [[Archie Manning]], [[Brett Favre]], [[Cool Papa Bell]], [[Jerry Rice]], [[Walter Payton]], [[Deuce McAllister]] and [[Steve McNair]].
*Authors: [[William Faulkner]], [[Tennessee Williams]], [[John Grisham]], [[Thomas Harris]], [[Eudora Welty]] and [[Richard Wright]].
* Civil Rights Leaders: [[Medgar Evers]], [[Aaron Henry]], [[Fannie Lou Hamer]], and [[Charles Evers]].
*Musicians: [[B.B. King]], [[Elvis Presley]], [[Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)|Jimmie Rodgers]], [[Bo Diddley]], [[Robert Johnson (musician)|Robert Johnson]], [[Jimmy Buffett]], [[Charlie Pride]], [[Muddy Waters]], [[Conway Twitty]], [[Tammy Wynette]], [[Leontyne Price]], [[Faith Hill]], [[3 Doors Down]], [[LeAnn Rimes]], [[Lance Bass]] and [[Brandy (entertainer)|Brandy]].


Hernando [[de Soto]] and a body of Spanish adventurers crossed the Tombigbee river, in December 1540, near the present city of Columbus, marched through the north part of the state, and reached the Mississippi river near Memphis in 1541. In 1673 a French expedition organized in [[Canada]] under [[Jacques Marquette]] and Louis [[Joliet]] sailed down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, and nine years later (1682) [[Rene Robert Cavelier La Salle|Rene Robert Cavelier]], sieur de [[la Salle]], reached the mouth of the river, took formal possession of the country which it drains, and named it Louisiana in honour of [[Louis XIV]]. The first European settlement in Mississippi was founded in 1699 by Pierre Lemoyne, better known as Iberville, at Fort Maurepas (Old Biloxi) on the north side of Biloxi Bay, in what is now Harrison county. The site proving unfavourable, the [[colony]] was transferred to Twentyseven Mile Bluff, on the Mobile River, in 1702, and later to Mobile (1710). The oldest permanent settlements in the state are (New) Biloxi (''c.'' 1712), situated across the bay from Old Biloxi and nearer to the Gulf, and Natchez or Fort Rosalie (1716). During the next few years Fort St [[Peter]] and a small adjoining colony were established on the Yazoo River in Warren county, and some attempts at settlement were made on Bay St Louis and Pascagoula Bay. The efforts (1712-1721) to foster colonization and commerce through trading corporations established by Antoine Crozat and [[John Law]] failed, and the colony soon came again under the direct control of the king. It grew very slowly, partly because of the hostility of the Indians and partly because of the incapacity of the French as colonizers. In1729-1730the Natchez tribe destroyed Fort St Peter, and some of the small outposts, and almost destroyed the Fort Rosalie (Natchez) settlement.
==Trivia and modern culture related==
Children in the United States and Canada often count "One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi" during informal games such as [[hide and seek]] to approximate counting by seconds.


At the close of the [[Seven Years' War]] (1763) [[France]] ceded to Great [[Britain]] all her territory east of the Mississippi except New [[Orleans]], and [[Spain]] ceded [[Florida]] to Great Britain. By a royal [[proclamation]] (Oct. 7, 1763) these new possessions were divided into East Florida and West Florida, the latter lying S. of the 3 ist parallel and W. of the Chattahoochee and [[Apalachicola]] rivers. [[Crown]] orders of 1764 and 1767 extended the limits N. to 1 The increase is due mainly to the assumption of the university obligations in 1880.
In 1891, the Biedenharn Candy Company bottled the first [[Coca-Cola]] in Vicksburg, Mississippi. [[Root beer]] was invented in [[Biloxi, Mississippi|Biloxi]] in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, the namesake of [[Barq's|Barq's Root Beer]].


a line due E. from the mouth of the Yazoo at about 32° 28' N. lat. Under English rule there was an extensive [[immigration]] into this region from [[England]], [[Ireland]], [[Georgia]] and [[South Carolina]]. A settlement was made on the Big Black, 17 m. from its mouth, in 1774 by Phineas Lyman (1716-1774) of [[Connecticut]] and other "military adventurers," veterans of the [[Havana]] campaign of 1762; this settlement was loyal during the War of Independence. Spain took military possession in 1781, and in the Treaty of [[Paris]] (1783) both of the Floridas were ceded back to her. But Great Britain recognized the claims of the United States to the territory as far south as the 31st parallel, the line of 1763. Spain adhered to the line of 1764-1767, and retained possession of the territory in dispute. Finally, in the treaty of San Lorenzo el Real (ratified 1796) she accepted the 1763 (31°) boundary, and withdrew her troops in 1798. Mississippi Territory was then organized, with [[Winthrop]] Sargent as governor. The territorial limits were extended on the north to the state of Tennessee in 1804 by the acquisition of the west cessions of South Carolina and Georgia, and on the south to the Gulf of Mexico by the seizure of West Florida in 1810-1813, 1 but were restricted on the east by the formation of the Territory of Alabama in 1817. Just after the uprising of1729-1730the French, with the help of the Choctaws, had destroyed the Natchez nation, and the shattered remnants were absorbed by the neighbouring tribes. The Chickasaws ceded their lands to the United States in 1816 and the Choctaws theirs in 1830-1832; and they removed to the Indian Territory. The smaller tribes have been exterminated, absorbed or driven farther west.
The [[Teddy bear]] gets its name from President [[Theodore Roosevelt|Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt]]. On a 1902 hunting trip to [[Sharkey County, Mississippi]], he refused to shoot a captured [[bear]].


An Enabling Act was passed on the 1st of March 1817, and the state was formally admitted into the Union on the 10th of December. The first state constitution (1817) provided a high property qualification for governor, senator and representative, and empowered the legislature to elect the judges and the more important state officials. In 1822 the capital was removed to Jackson from [[Columbia]], Marion county. 2 The constitution of 1832 abolished the property qualification for holding office and provided for the popular election of judges and state officials. Mississippi thus became one of the first states in the Union to establish an elective judiciary. 3 The same constitution prohibited the importation of negro slaves from other states; but this [[prohibition]] was never observed, and the United States Supreme Court held that it was ineffective without an act of the legislature. On the death of John C. Calhoun in 1850 the state, under the leadership of [[Jefferson Davis]], began to rival South Carolina as leader of the extreme pro-slavery States' Rights [[faction]]. There was a brief reaction: [[Henry Benedict Maria Clement Stuart|Henry Stuart]] Foote (1800-1880), Unionist, was elected governor in 1851 over Davis, the States' Rights candidate, and in the same year a Constitutional Convention had declared almost unanimously that "the asserted right of [[secession]]". .. "is utterly unsanctioned by the Federal Constitution." But the particularistic sentiment continued to grow. An [[ordinance]] of secession was passed on the 9th of January 1861, and the constitution was soon amended to conform to the new constitution of the [[Confederate States Of America|Confederate States]]. During the Civil War battles were fought at [[Corinth]] (1862), Port Gibson (1863), Jackson (1863) and Vicksburg (1863). In 1865 President Johnson appointed as provisional governor William Lewis Sharkey (1797-1873), who had been [[Lord Chief Justice|chief justice]] of the state in 1832-1850, and a convention which assembled on the 14th of August recognized the "destruction" of slavery and declared the ordinance of secession null and void. The first reconstruction legislature met on the 16th of October 1865, and at once proceeded to enact stringent [[vagrancy]] laws and other measures against the freedmen; these laws the North 1 South Carolina ceded its western lands to the United States in 1787 and Georgia in 1802. The government added them to Mississippi in 1804. The seizure of West Florida was supplemented by the treaty of 1819-1821, in which Spain surrendered all of her claims.
In [[1935]], the world's first night [[rodeo]] held outdoors under electric lights was produced by [[Earl Bascom]] and Weldon Bascom in [[Columbia, Mississippi|Columbia, Marion County, Mississippi]]


The seats of government have been Natchez (1798-1802), Washington (1802-1817), Natchez (1817-1821), Columbia (1821-1822), Jackson (1822 seq.).
In 1936, [[J. H. Rush|Dr. Leslie Rush]], of Rush Hospital in [[Meridian, Mississippi]] performed the first bone pinning in the United States. The "Rush Pin" is still in use.


This system proved unsatisfactory, and in 1869 was abandoned.
[[Burnita Shelton Matthews]] from near [[Hazlehurst, Mississippi]] was the first woman appointed as a judge of a [[United States district court|U.S. district court]]. She was appointed by [[Harry S. Truman]] on October 21, 1949.


interpreted as an effort to restore slavery. Under the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March 1867 Mississippi with Arkansas formed the fourth military district, commanded successively by Generals E. O. C. Ord (1867), Alvan C. Gillem (1868) and Irvin McDowell (June-July 1868), and by Gillem (1868-1869) and Adelbert [[Ames]] (1869-1870). The notorious "Black and Tan Convention" of 1868 adopted a constitution which conferred suffrage upon the negroes and by the [[imposition]] of test oaths disfranchised the leading whites. It was at first rejected at the polls, but was finally ratified in November 1869 without the disfranchising clauses. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Fedc al Constitution were ratified in 1870, and the state was formally readmitted into the Union on the 23rd of February of that year.
[[Marilyn Monroe]] won the Miss Mississippi finals in the 1952 movie ''[[We're Not Married]]''.


From 1870 to 1875 the government was under the control of "[[carpet]]-baggers," negroes and the most disreputable element among the native whites. Taxes were increased - expenditure increased nearly threefold between 1869 and 1871 - and there was some official corruption; but the state escaped the heavy [[burden]] of debt imposed upon its neighbours, partly because of the higher character of its reconstruction governors, and partly because its credit was already impaired by the repudiation of obligations contracted before the war. The Democrats carried the legislature in 1875, and preferred [[impeachment]] charges against Governor Adelbert Ames (b. 1835), a native of [[Maine]], a [[graduate]] of the United States Military Academy (1861), a soldier in the Union army, and military governor of Mississippi in 1868-1870. The lieutenant-governor, A. K. Davis, a negro, was impeached and was removed from office; T. W. Cardoza, another negro, superintendent of education under Ames, was impeached on twelve charges of malfeasance, but was permitted to resign. Governor Ames, when the impeachment charges against him were dismissed on the 29th of March 1876, immediately resigned. The whites maintained their supremacy by very dubious methods until the adoption of the constitution of 1890 made it no longer necessary. The state has always been Democratic in national politics, except in the presidential elections of 1840 (Whig) and 1872 (Republican). The electoral vote was not counted in 1864 and 1868.
Texas Rose Bascom, of [[Columbia, Mississippi]], became the most famous female trick roper in the world, performing on stage and in Hollywood movies. She toured the world with [[Bob Hope]], billed as the "Queen of the Trick Ropers," and was the first Mississippian to be inducted into the [[National Cowgirl Hall of Fame]].


In 1963, Dr. James D. Hardy of the University of Mississippi Medical Center performed the first human lung transplant in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1964, Dr. Hardy performed the first heart transplant, transplanting the heart of a chimpanzee into a human, where it beat for 90 minutes.


==Governors==
Several warships have been named [[USS Mississippi|USS ''Mississippi'']].
''Territorial Period'' (1798-1817).


Winthrop Sargent..1798-1801William C. C. Claiborne1801-1805[[Robert Williams Buchanan|Robert Williams]]1805-1809David Holmes1809-1817''Statehood Period'' (1817 seq.).
The comic book character [[Rogue (comics)|Rogue]], from the well-known series ''[[X-Men]]'', is a Mississippian and self-declared [[southern belle]]. Her home town is located in the fictional county of Caldecott.


David Holmes Democrat1817-1820George Poindexter.. &#8222;1820-1822Walter Leake. Democrat (died in office)1822-1825[[Gerard (Archbishop)|Gerard]] C. Brandon (ad int.). Democrat1825-1826David Holmes. Democrat (resigned) 1826 Gerard C. Brandon (ad int. 1826-1828)
For the past seven years, the Sundancer Solar Race Team from [[Houston, Mississippi|Houston, MS]], has won first place in the Open Division of the [[Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge]].<ref>[http://www.mississippibelieveit.com Mississippi, Believe It!]</ref>
1826-1832 Abram M. Scott Democrat (died in office)
1832-1833 Charles Lynch 4 (ad int.). .. Democrat 1833 Hiram G. Runnels
&#8222;1833-1835[[Fenton John Anthony Hort|John Anthony]] Quitman (ad int.) Whig1835-1836Charles Lynch Democrat1836-1838Alexander Gallatin McNutt. &#8222;1838-1842Tilghman M. Tucker.. &#8222;1842-1844[[Albert Gallatin]] Brown. &#8222;1844-1848Joseph W. Matthews John Anthony Quitman 51850-1851John Isaac Guion 6 (ad int.).. 1851 James Whitfield (ad int.)..1851-1852Henry [[Stuart Stewart|Stuart]] Foote Unionist1852-1854[[John Jones]] Pettus 7 (ad int.). Democrat 1854 John J. McRae. ..1854-1857William McWillie1857-1859John Jones Pettus1859-18634 Under the constitution of 1832 the president of the senate succeeded the governor in case of a vacancy.


6 Governor Quitman resigned because of charges against him of aiding Lopez's expedition against [[Cuba]].
The sale of sex toys is banned in Mississippi.<ref>[http://feministing.com/archives/002976.html Mississippi: Vibrators outlawed, guns a-okay - Feministing<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>


On the 4th of November the term for which Guion had been elected as a senator expired and he was succeeded in the governorship by Whitfield, elected by the senate to be its president.
==See also==
*[[List of Mississippi-related topics]]
{{portal|Mississippi|Flag of Mississippi.svg|left=yes}}
{{clear}}
<!-- Please place links to all topics directly related to the State of Mississippi in the [[List of Mississippi-related topics]] -->


7 Served from the 5th of January (when Foote resigned) to the 10th, when McRae was inaugurated.
==References==
{{reflist|2}}


Charles Clark' Democrat1863-1865William Lewis Sharkey. ... Provisional 1865 Benjamin Grubb Humphreys 2. Republican1865-1868Adelbert Ames.. Republican (Military Governor)1868-1870James Lusk Alcorn'.. Republican1870-1871Ridgley [[Ceylon]] Powers (ad int.) &#8222; Adelbert Ames 4 &#8222; [[John Marshall]] Stone (ad int. 1876-78) Democrat Robert Lowry &#8222; J. M. Stone [[Anselm]] Joseph McLaurin Andrew Houston Longino James Kimble Vardaman Edmund Favor Noel .
==External links==
{{sisterlinks}}
*[http://www.ms.gov State of Mississippi]
*[http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/Mississippi Mississippi State Databases] - Annotated list of searchable databases produced by Mississippi state agencies and compiled by the Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association.
*[http://www.visitmississippi.org/ Mississippi Travel and Tourism]
*[http://www.mississippi.org/ Mississippi Development Authority]
*[http://www.mississippibelieveit.com The "Mississippi Believe It" Campaign]
*[http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/MS.htm Mississippi State Facts]
*[http://www.upress.state.ms.us/ University Press of Mississippi]


See T. A. Owen, "A Biography of Mississippi," in the ''Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1 899,'' i. 633-828 (Washington, 1900); "Report of the Mississippi Historical Commission" in the ''Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society,'' v. 52310 (Oxford, Miss., 1902). J. F. H. Claiborne's ''Mississippi as a Province, Territory and State'' (Jackson, 1880), gives the best account of the period before the Civil War. R. Lowry and W. H. McCardle, ''History of Mississippi'' ([[New York (disambiguation)|New York]], 1893), is useful for local history. Of most value for the history are the writings of P. J. [[Hamilton]], J. W. Garner and F. L. Riley. Hamilton's ''Colonial Mobile'' (Boston and [[New York]], 1898), and the ''Colonization of the South'' (Philadelphia, 1904) are standard authorities for the French and English periods (1699-1781). Garner's ''Reconstruction Mississippi'' (New York, 1902) is judicial, scholarly and readable. Most of Riley's work is in the ''Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society'' (Oxford, 1898 seq.), which he edited; see his ''Spanish Policy in Mississippi-after the Treaty of San Lorenzo,'' i. 50-66; ''Location of the Boundaries of Mississippi,'' iii. 167-184; and ''Transition from Spanish to American Rule in Mississippi,'' iii. 261-311. There is much material in the ''[[Encyclopaedia]] of Mississippi History'' (2 vols., [[Madison]], [[Wisconsin]], 1907), edited by [[Dunbar]] Rowland. There is a state Department of Archives and History
{{Template group
| list =
{{Mississippi|expand}}
{{United States}}
{{US South}}
{{Confederate States of America}}
{{coord|display=title|33|N|90|W|region:US-MS_type:adm1st_scale:3000000}}
}}
{{succession
| preceded = [[Indiana]]
| office = [[List of U.S. states by date of statehood]]
| years = Admitted on December 10, 1817 (20th)
| succeeded = [[Illinois]]
}}


[[Category:Mississippi| ]]
[[Category:Mississippi| ]]

Revision as of 17:37, 31 December 2008

For other uses, see the U.S. state.
Mississippi
State
CountryUnited States
Admitted to the UnionDecember 10, 1817 (20th)
CapitalJackson
Largest cityJackson
Largest metro and urban areasJackson metropolitan area
Government
 • GovernorHaley Barbour (R)
 • Lieutenant GovernorPhil Bryant (R)
 • Upper house{{{Upperhouse}}}
 • Lower house{{{Lowerhouse}}}
U.S. senatorsThad Cochran (R)
Roger Wicker (R)
Population
 • Total2,938,618 (Jul 1 2,008 est.)[1]
 • Density60.7/sq mi (23.42/km2)
Language
 • Official languageEnglish
Traditional abbreviationMiss.
Latitude30° 12′ N to 35° N
Longitude88° 06′ W to 91° 39′ W

MISSISSIPPI, a South Central state of the United States, situated between 35° N. lat. and 31 0 N. lat., with its S.E. part extending to the Gulf of Mexico, the extreme southern point being in 30° 13' N. lat. near the mouth of the Pearl River. On the E. the line is mostly regular, its extreme E. point being at 88° 7' W. long. in the N.E. corner of the state; the W. boundary has its extreme W. point at 91 0 41' W. long. in the S.W. corner of the state. Mississippi is bounded N. by Tennessee, E. by Alabama, S. by the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana, W. by Louisiana, from which it is separated by the Pearl River and by the Mississippi, and by Arkansas, from which also it is separated by the Mississippi. The total area is 46,865 sq. m., of which 503 sq. m. are water surface.

Physical Features. - Mississippi lies for the most part in the Mississippi embayment of the Gulf Coastal Plain. A feature of its surface is a strip of bottom land between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, known as the Yazoo Delta; it extends from north to south about 175 m., and has an average width of more than 60 m., and covers an area of about 7000 sq. m. With the exception of a few flat ridges running from north to south, it is so low that it requires, to protect it from overflows, an unbroken line of levees averaging 15 ft. in height; these were built and are maintained by the state in part from a special tax on the land and in part from the sale of swamp lands of the United States (under an act of 1850). Along the eastern border of this delta, and southward of it, along the Mississippi itself, extends a belt of hills or bluffs (sometimes called "cane-hills"), which is cut by deep ravines and, though very narrow in the north, has in the south an average width of about to m. East of the belt are level or gently rolling prairies, and along the Gulf Coast is a low, marshy tract. The highest elevations, from 800 to moo ft. above the sea, are on the Pontotoc ridge in Tippah and Union counties; and from this ridge there is an almost imperceptible slope south and west from the Appalachian Mountain system. Along the margins of valleys there are hills rising from 30 to 120 ft., but farther back from the water courses the differences of elevation are much less. The coast-line, about 85 m. long, is bordered by a beach of white sand, and broken by several small and shallow indentations, among which are St Louis, Biloxi. Pascagoula and Point aux Chenes bays; separated from it by the shallow and practically unnavigable Mississippi Sound is a chain of low, long and narrow sand islands, the largest of which are Petit Bois, Horn, Ship and Cat. The principal rivers are: the Mississippi on the western border, and its tributaries, the Yazoo and the Big Black; the Pearl and Pascagoula, which drain much of the southern portion of the state and flow into the Gulf; and the Tombigbee, which drains most of the north-eastern portion. The Pontotoc ridge separates the drainage system of the Mississippi from that of the Tombigbee; extending from the northeastern part of the state southward, this ridge divides in Choctaw county, the eastern branch separating the drainage basin in the Pascagoula from that of the Pearl, and the western branch separating the drainage basin of the Pearl from that of the Big Black and the Mississippi. The Delta is drained chiefly by the Yazoo. A small area in the north-eastern corner of the state is drained northward by the Tennessee and the Hatchie. Each of the larger rivers is fed by smaller streams; their fall is usually gentle and quite uniform. The valleys vary in width from a few hundred yards to several miles. In the east of the state much of the valley of each of the larger streams is several feet above the stream's present highwater mark and forms the "hommock" or "second bottom" lands. Most of the rivers flowing into the Gulf are obstructed by sand-bars and navigable only during high-water from January to April. Oxbow lakes and bayous are common only in the Delta.

Geology

The older formations are nearly all overlaid by deposits of the Quaternary period, which will be described last. In the extreme north-east are found the oldest rocks in the state - lower Devonian (the New Scotland beds of New York) and, not so old, an extension of the Lower Carboniferous which underlies the Warrior coalfields of Alabama, and which consists of cherts, limestones, sandstones and shales, with a depth of 800 to 900 ft. The strata here show some traces of the upheaval which formed the Appalachian Mountain chain. When this chain formed the Atlantic mountainborder of the continent excepting this north-eastern corner, Mississippi had not emerged from the waters of the ancient Gulf of Mexico. As the shore line of the Gulf slowly receded southward and westward, the sediment at its bottom gradually came to the surface, and constituted the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations. Wherever stratification is observed in these formations in Mississippi, it shows a dip west and south of 20 or 30 ft. to the mile.

The Cretaceous region includes, with the exception of the Lower Carboniferous, all that part of the state eastward of a line cutting the Tennessee boundary in 88° 50' W. long., and drawn southward and eastward near Ripley, Pontotoc, and Starkville, crossing into Alabama in latitude 32° 45'. There are four formations of Cretaceous strata in Mississippi, defined by lines having the same general direction as the one just described. The oldest, bordering the Lower Carboniferous, is the Tuscaloosa formation of clays and sands arranged as follows: dark clays, thin lignite seams, lignitic clays, sands and chert, and light clays; this formation is 5-15 m. wide and reaches from about 33° 30' on the Alabama boundary north to the Tennessee boundary. It is about 270 ft. thick. Tuscaloosa clays are used in the manufacture of pottery. Overlying the Tuscaloosa are the Eutaw sands, characterized by sandy laminated clays, and yellow, orange, red and blue sands, containing lignite and fossil resin. The Eutaw formation is a strip about 5 to 12 m. wide with a maximum depth of 300 ft. Westward to Houston and southward to about 32° 48' on the Alabama boundary and occupying a much larger area than the other Cretaceous formations, is the Selma chalk, called "Rotten Limestone" by Hilgard; it is made up of a material of great uniformity, - a soft chalky rock, white or pale blue, composed chiefly of tenacious clay, and white carbonate of lime in minute crystals. Borings show that the thickness of this group varies from 35 o ft. in the north to about moo ft. at Starkville. Fossils are abundant, and forty species are recorded. The latest Cretaceous is the Ripley formation, which lies west of the northern part of the last-named, and, about Scooba, in a small strip, the most southerly of the Cretaceous - it is composed of coarse sandstones, hard crystalline white limestones, clays, sands, phosphatic greensands, and darkcoloured, micaceous, glauconitic marls; its greatest thickness is about 280 ft. Its marine fossils are admirably preserved, and one hundred and eight species have been described.

Deposits of the Tertiary period form the basis of more than half the state, extending from the border of the Cretaceous westward nearly to the Yazoo Delta and the Mississippi Bottom, and southward to within a few miles of the Gulf coast. Seven formations (or groups) of the Tertiary strata have been distinguished in Mississippi. The oldest is the Midway limestone and clays in a narrow strip whose western limit is nearly parallel to the western boundary of the Selma chalk; it includes: the Clayton formation, characterized by the hard blue Turritella limestone (so named from the frequent fossil (Turritella mortoni); and Porters Creek (previously called Flatwoods) clay, which is grey, weathering white, and is occasionally overlain by grey fossiliferous sandstone. The Wilcox formation (called Lignitic by Hilgard, and named by Safford the Lagrange group) lies to the west of the last, and its western limit is from about 32° 12' on the Alabama boundary about due north-west; in its north-westernmost part it is on the western edge of the Tertiary in this state. Its minimum depth is 850 ft. It is marked by grey clays and sands, lignitic fossiliferous clays, beds of lignite or brown coal, sometimes 8 ft. in thickness, and brownish clays. The siliceous Claiborne (or Tallahatta Buhrstone) formation lies south-westward from the last-named in a strip 10-30 m. wide, whose south-eastern extremity is the intersection of the 32nd meridian with the Alabama boundary, is characterized by beds of aluminous grey and white sandstone, aluminous and siliceous clay-stone, quartzitic sandstone, and green sand and marls. The calcareous Claiborne or ClaiborneLisbon formation-group lies south of the last, in a wedge-like strip with the apex on the Alabama boundary; it is a series of clays and sands, richly fossiliferous. The Jackson formation south-west of the Lisbon beds, is made up chiefly of grey calcareous clay marls, bluish lignitic clays, green-sand and grey siliceous sands. Basilosaurus (or Zeuglodon) bones are found only in the Jackson marls, and other marine fossils are abundant. The minimum thickness of the formation is 240 ft. The Vicksburg formation lies next in order south-west, in a narrow strip of fairly regular width which alone of the Tertiary formations runs as far west as the Mississippi River; it is probably nowhere more than 110 ft. deep. It is characterized by semi-crystalline limestones and blue and white sandy marls. Marine fossils are very abundant in the marl. The Grand Gulf group, of formations of different ages, consisting of sands, sandstones and clays, and showing a few fossil plants, but no marine fossils, extends southward from the last to within a few miles of the coast, and is 750-800 ft. deep.

The older formation of the Quaternary period is the Lafayette (also called "Orange-sand" or "stratified drift"), which immediately overlies all the Cretaceous groups except the prairies of the Selma chalk, and all the Tertiary except the Porters Creek and Vicksburg formations and parts of the Jackson. Its depth varies from a few feet to over 200 ft. (in the southern part of the state), and it forms the body of most of the hills in the state. Its materials are pebbles, clays and sands of various' colours from white to deep red, tinged with peroxide of iron, which sometimes cements the pebbles and sands into compact rocks. The shapes of these ferruginous sandstones are very fantastic - tubes, hollow spheres, plates, &c., being common. The name stratified drift has been used to indicate its connexion with the northern drift. The fossils are few, and in some cases probably derived from the underlying formations. Well-worn pebbles of amorphous quartz (agate, chalcedony, jasper, &c.) are found in the stratified drift along the western side of the Tertiary region of the state, and from Columbus northward. The second Quaternary formation is the Port Hudson, occurring within 20 m. of the Gulf coast, and, with alluvium, in the Yazoo Delta. Heavy clays, gravel and sands, containing cypress stumps, driftwood and mastodon bones, are characteristic. The loess or bluff formation lies along the bluffs bordering the Bottom, nearly continuously through the state. Its fine-grained, unstratified silt contains the remains of many terrestrial animals, including fifteen mammals.

Fauna

Among the more common species of game are squirrels, opossums, musk-rats, rabbits, racoons, wild turkeys, ", partridges" (quail, or Bob White), geese, and ducks; deer, black bears, grey (or timber) wolves, black wolves and "wild cats" (lynx), once common, have become rare. Alligators inhabit the southern river-bottoms, and there are some rattlesnakes on the uplands. Among a great variety of song-birds the mocking-bird is prominent; the parakeet is found in the southern part of the state. Buffalo-fish, paddle-fish, cat-fish, drum, crappie, black bass, rock bass, German carp, sturgeon, pike, perch, eels, suckers and shrimp inhabit the waters of the Mississippi and its tributaries, and oysters, shrimp, trout, Spanish mackerel, channel bass, black bass, sheepshead, mullet, croakers, pompano, pin-fish, blue-fish, flounders, crabs and terrapin are obtained from the Mississippi Sound and the rivers flowing into it.

Flora

Originally Mississippi was almost entirely covered with a growth of forest trees of large size, mostly deciduous; and in 1900 about seven-tenths of its area was still classed as timber-land. The north central part of the state, known as the "flat woods," is level and heavily forested. There are more than 120 species of trees in the state, 15 of oak alone. The most valuable species for lumber are the long-leaf pine which is predominant in the low southern third of the state, sometimes called the "cow-country"; the short-leaf pine, found farther north; the white oak, quite widely distributed; cotton-wood and red gum, found chiefly on the rich alluvial lands; and the cypress, found chiefly in the marshes of the Delta. The beautiful live oaks and magnolias grow only in the south of the state; the holly in the lowlands; and the finest species of pecan, in the Delta. The sassafras, persimmon, wild cherry and Chickasaw plum are found in all parts of the state. The grape, Ogeechee lime (Nyssa capitata) and pawpaw are also native fruits. Among indigenous shrubs and vines are the blackberry, dewberry, strawberry, yellow jasmine, mistletoe and poisonoak; and among medicinal herbs are horehound, ginger and peppermint. Here, too, grows Spanish moss, used by upholsterers.

Climate

The southern latitude, the low elevation and the proximity to the Gulf of Mexico produce in southern Mississippi a rather mild and equable climate, but to the northward the extremes increase. The normal annual temperature for the state is 64° F.; on the coast it is 67° F., and on the northern border it is 61° F. During a period of twenty years, from January 1887 to December 1906, extremes of temperature at Biloxi, on the coast, ranged from 1 ° F. to 100° F.; during nearly the same period at Pontotoc, in the north-eastern part of the state, they ranged from - i 1 ° F. to 105° F. The greatest extremes recorded were - 15° F. at Aberdeen, Monroe county, on the 13th of February 1899, and 107° F. at several places in July and August of different years. January is the coldest month, and July is the warmest. During the winter the normal temperature decreases quite steadily from south to north; thus the mean temperature in January at Biloxi is 51° F., at Meridian, in the east central part, it is 46° F., and at Pontotoc it is 43° F. But during the summer, temperatures are affected as much by altitude as by latitude, and the coast is cooled at night by breezes from the Gulf. The July mean is 82° F. at several places in the southern part of the state, and at Yazoo city, in the west central part, it is 83° F. The normal annual precipitation for Mississippi is about 51 in.; for the southern half, 54 in., and for the northern half, 49 in. An average of 4 in. of snow falls in the northern half, but south of Natchez snow is seldom seen. Nearly one-third of the rain falls in January, February and March; July, also, is one of the wet months. The driest season is in September and October. The prevailing winds are from the south-east; but the rain-bearing winds are chiefly from the southwest, and the high winds from the west and north-west.

Soils

The most fertile soil is the alluvium of the' Delta, deposited during the overflows of the Mississippi. Others that are exceedingly productive are the black calcareous loam of the prairies, the calcareous silt of the bluff belt along the eastern border of the Delta, and the brown loam of the tableland in the central part of the state. Of inferior quality are the yellow loam of the hills in the north-east and the sandy loam in the pine belt of the south. Throughout the southern portion sand is a large ingredient, and to the northward there is more or less lime.

Agriculture

Mississippi is devoted largely to the cultivation of cotton. Of the total land area of the state, 18,240,736 acres (61.3%) were, in 1900, included in farms, and the improved farm land increased from 4,209,146 acres in 1870 to 7,594,428 acres (41.6% of all farm land) in 1900. After the abolition of slavery, farms greatly decreased in size and increased in number; the number grew from 68,023 in 1870 to 220,803 in 1900; the average size fell from 369.7 acres in 1860 to 82.6 acres in 1900. Of the total number of farms in 1900, 81,412 were worked by owners or part owners (60,585 by whites and 20,827 by negroes); 70,699 were worked by cash tenants (13,505 by whites and 57,194 by negroes); and 67,153 were worked by share tenants (16,748 by whites and 50,405 by negroes).

The acreage of cotton increased from 2,106,215 acres in 1879 to 3,220,000 in 1907; the yield increased from 936,111 bales in 1879 to 1,468,177 bales in 1907. Cotton is grown in every county of the state, but the large yields are in the Delta (Bolivar, Coaohma, Washington, Yazoo and Leflore counties), the greatest cotton-producing region of the world, and in Monroe, Lowndes and Noxubee counties on the Alabama border. The acreage of Indian corn in 1907 was 2,500,000 acres and the crop 42,500,000 bushels. The production of other cereals decreased during the latter half of the 19th century: oats, from 1,959,620 bushels in 1879 to 1,611,000 bushels in 1907; wheat, from 587,925 bushels in 1859 to 22,000 in 1907; rye, from 39,474 bushels in 1859 to 963 bushels in 1899, after which year the crop has been negligible; and rice, from 2,719,856 lb in 1849 to about 1,080,000 lb in 1907. The largest Indian-corn producing districts are nearly the same as those which produce the most cotton; oats and wheat are grown chiefly in the north-eastern quarter of the state, and rice in the south-western quarter.

Between 1850 and 1907 dairy cows increased from 214,231 to 330,000; other neat cattle from 519,739 to 589,000; sheer decreased from 304,929 to 181,000; swine decreased from 1,582,734 to 1,316,000; horses increased from 115,460 to 260,000, and mules from 54,547 to 279,000.

Sugar-cane is grown principally in the southern part of the state, but sorghum-cane is grown to some extent in nearly every county. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes and onions also are important crops. The greatest relative advance between 1889 and 1899 in any branch of agriculture was made in the growth of market-garden produce and small fruits; for old pine lands, formerly considered useless, had been found valuable for the purpose. The number of orchard trees increased nearly 100% within the same decade. At Crystal Springs tomatoes were first successfully grown for the market (1874-1876). Orchard trees and grape-vines are widely distributed throughout the state, but with the exception of peaches their yield is greater in the northern portion.

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Lumber

Mississippi ranks high among the southern states in the production of lumber. Its timber-land in 1900 was estimated at 32,300 sq. m. From the extreme south most of the merchantable timber had been cut, but immediately north of this there were still vast quantities of valuable long-leaf pine; in the marshes of the Delta was much cypress, the cotton-wood was nearly exhausted, and the gum was being used as a substitute for it; and on the rich upland soil were oak and red gum, also cotton-wood, hickory and maple. The lumber and timber product increased in value from $1,920,335 in 1880 to $ 2 4, 0 35,539 in 1905. Pine stumps and waste limbs are utilized, notably at Hattiesburg, for the manufacture of charcoal, tar, creosote, turpentine, &c. Fisheries Fishing is a minor industry, confined for the most part to the Mississippi Sound and neighbouring waters and to the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. The most valuable branch is the oyster N ,;: E, A i=De;I{1a iladelphia ', o K E .' fhage ?% ° ° Neshoba y ° S o ' ? `` 4 ockhar? L°? c1tuf el) D E ° ' ?

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'hlatherv i W A WoodVillef w Scale, 1:2,200,000 English Miles 20 30 40 Longitude Nest gi of Greenwich z fishery on the reefs in the Sound, much developed since 1880. The shrimp fishery, too, grew during the same period. About 40% of the total catch of the state is made by the inhabitants of Harrison county on the Gulf of Mexico.

Minerals.

The mineral wealth of the state is limited. Clays and mineral waters are, however, widely distributed. Large quantities of mineral water, sulphur, chalybeate and lithia, bottled at Meridian, Raymond and elsewhere, are sold annually. The state contains deposits of iron, gypsum, marl, phosphate, lignite, ochre, glass-sand, tripoli, fuller's earth, limestones and sandstones; and there are small gas flows in the Yazoo Delta.

Manufactures

The lack of mineral resources, especially of coal and iron, of a good harbour (until the improvement of Gulfport), and of an adequate supply of labour has discouraged most kinds of manufacturing. The value of the total factory product was $57,45 1 ,445 in 1905, when a little more than three-fourths was represented by lumber and timber products, cotton-seed oil and cake, and cotton goods. The leading manufacturing centres are Meridian, Vicksburg, Jackson, Natchez and Biloxi.

Transport

Along the entire western border of the state the Mississippi River is navigable for river steamboats. On the southern border, the Mississippi Sound affords safe navigation for small coasting vessels, and from Gulfport (13 m. W.S.W. of Biloxi) to Ship Island, which has one of the best harbours on the entire Gulf Coast, the Gulf & Ship Island Railroad Company, with the co-operation of the United States Government, in 1901 began to dredge a channel 300 ft. wide and 19 ft. at mean low water, and to construct an anchorage basin (completed in 1906) at Gulfport, 2 m. long and 4 m. wide, and 19 ft. deep. In June 1908 the maximum low-water draft of the channel and the basin was 19 ft. The Gulfport project reduced freight rates between Gulfport and the Atlantic seaboard cities and promoted the trade of Gulfport, which is the port of entry for the Pearl River customs district. Its imports for 1909 were valued at $82,028 and its exports at $8,581,471. The Yazoo, Tallahatchie, Yalobusha, Sunflower, Big Black, Pascagoula and Pearl rivers are also navigable to a limited extent. The first railway in Mississippi was completed from Vicksburg to Clinton in 1840, but the state had suffered severely from the panic of 1837, and in.1850 it had only 75 m. of railway. This was increased to 862 m. by 1860. The Civil War then interfered, and in 1880 the mileage was only 1127 m. During the next decade it was a little more than doubled, and at the close of 1908 it was 3916.85 m. The principal lines are the Illinois Central, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, the Southern, the Mobile & Ohio, the New Orleans & North-eastern, the Kansas City, Memphis & Birmingham, the Mobile, Jackson & Kansas City, the Alabama & Vicksburg, and the Gulf & Ship Island.

Population

The population increased from 1,131,597 in 1880 1 to 1,289,600 in 1890, of 14% within the decade, and by 'goo it had grown to 1 i 551,270 (9 9.4 8% native-born), and by 1 9 10 to 1,7 9 7,11 4. The density of population in 1900 was 33.5 per sq. m.; 641,200, or 41 3%, were whites; 907,630, or 58.5%, were negroes; 2203 were Indians, and 237 were Chinese; in eight counties of the Delta the ratio of negroes to whites was almost 7 to 1. The Indians are descendants of the Choctaw tribe; they are all subject to taxation, and most of them live in the east central part of the state. The principal religious denominations are the Baptist (371,518 in 1906) and the Methodist (212,105 in 1906). The cities and towns having a population in 1900 of 4000 or more were: Vicksburg, Meridian, Natchez, Jackson, Greenville, Columbus, Biloxi, Yazoo City, McComb and Hattiesburg.

Government

The chief special object of the present constitution, adopted on the 1st of November 1890, was to preserve in a legal manner the supremacy of the whites over the ignorant negro majority. In addition to the ordinary suffrage qualifications of age, sex, and residence, the voter must have paid all taxes due from him for the two years immediately preceding the election, and he must be able to read any section of the constitution or "be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation thereof." The former provision, strengthened by a poll-tax for school purposes assessed on adult males, affects both white and blacks; the latter, owing to the discretion vested in the election officers, affects (in practice) mainly the blacks. The chief executive officials are the governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, attorney-general, and superintendent of education. All are chosen for terms of four years, and the governor, treasurer, and auditor are ineligible for immediate re-election.

1 The population at each of the preceding censuses was: 8850 in 1800; 40,352 in 1810; 75,448 in 1820; 136,621 in 1830; 375,651 in 1840; 606,526 in 1850; 791,305 in 1860; and 827,922 in 1870.

The method of election is peculiar, being based in part upon the national presidential model. Each county or legislative district casts as many electoral votes as it has members in the state house of representatives, and a majority of both the electoral and the popular vote is required. If no one has such a majority, the house of representatives chooses one of the two who have received the highest number of popular votes; but this is really a provision never executed, as the Democratic nominees are always elected without any serious opposition. The governor is empowered to call extraordinary sessions of the legislature, to grant pardons and reprieves, and to exercise a power of veto which extends to items in appropriation bills; a two-thirds majority of the legislature is necessary to pass a bill over his veto. His appointing power is not very extensive, as nearly all officials, except judges, are elected by popular vote.

The legislature consists of a senate and a house of representatives, chosen every four years. It meets in regular session quadrennially, in special sessions in the middle of the interval to pass the appropriation and revenue bills, and in extraordinary session whenever the governor sees fit to call it. Revenue measures may originate in either house, but a three-fifths vote in each is necessary to their enactment. The constitution goes into minute detail in prohibiting local, private and special legislation.

The judiciary consists of a supreme court of three judges, thirteen (1908) circuit courts, seven (1908) chancery courts, county courts and justice of thelpeace courts. Under the constitution of 1890 the governor, with the consent of the senate, appoints supreme court judges for a term of nine years, and circuit and chancery judges for four years. The local judicial authorities are the county board of supervisors of five members and the justices of the peace.

The other county officials are the sheriff, coroner, treasurer, assessor, surveyor and superintendent of education. The superintendent is chosen by the state board of education except in those counties (now all or nearly all) in which the legislature has made the office elective. The courts have interpreted this to mean that the manner of selection need not be uniform (Wynn v. State, 67 Miss. 312), a rule which would possibly apply to other local offices. The intention seemed to be to permit the appointment of officials in counties and districts where there was any likelihood of negro supremacy.

Mississippi has taken a leading part in the movement to bring about the removal of the common law disabilities of married women, the first statute for that purpose having been passed in 1839. Under the present constitution they are "fully emancipated from all disability on account of coverture," and are placed on an equality with their husbands in acquiring and disposing of property and in making contracts relative thereto. A divorce may be granted only to one who has lived for at least one year in the state; among the recognized causes for divorce are desertion for two years, cruelty, insanity or physical incapacity at time of marriage, habitual drunkenness or excessive use of opium or other drugs, and the conviction of either party of felony. The homestead of a householder (with a family) who occupies it may be held exempt from sale for the collection of debts other than those for purchase-money, taxes, or improvements, or for the satisfaction of a judgment upon a forfeited recognizance or bail-bond, but a homestead so exempted is limited to $3000 in value and to 160 acres of land. A considerable amount of personal property, including furniture, a small library, provisions, tools, agricultural implements, livestock and the proceeds of a life insurance policy, is also exempt from seizure for the satisfaction of debts. Since 1909 the sale of intoxicating liquors has been prohibited by statute.

Penal and Charitable Institutions

The penitentiary at Jackson was established under an Act of 1836, was erected in 1838-1839, was opened in 1840, was burned by the Federals in 1863, and was rebuilt in 1866-1867. The board of control is composed of the governor, attorney-general and the three railroad commissioners. The convict lease system was abolished by the constitution of 1890 (the provision to take effect on the 31st of December 1894), and state farms were purchased in Rankin, Hinds and Holmes counties. As these were insufficient to give employment to all the prisoners, some were put to work on Yazoo Delta plantations on partnership contracts. Under an act of 1900, however, 13,889 acres of land were purchased in Sunflower county; and there and at Tchula, Holmes county, and at Oakley, Hinds county, the negro convicts - the white convicts are on the Rankin county farm - are kept on several large plantations, with saw-mills, cotton gins, &c. Under a law of 1906 these farm penitentiaries are controlled by a board of three trustees, elected by the people; they are managed by a superintendent, appointed once every four years by the governor. The charitable institutions of the state are supervised by separate boards of trustees appointed by the governor. The state insane hospital, opened at Jackson in 1856 (act of 1848), in time became overcrowded and the East Mississippi insane hospital was opened, 2 m. west of Meridian in 1885 (act of. 1882). The state institution for the education of the deaf and dumb (1854) and the state institution for the blind (1848) are at Jackson. State aid is given to the hospitals at Vicksburg and Natchez.

Education

Educational interests were almost entirely neglected during the colonial and territorial periods. The first school established in the state was Jefferson College, now Jefferson Military College, near Natchez, Adams county, incorporated in 1802. Charters were granted to schools in Claiborne, Wilkinson and Amite counties in 1809-1815, and to Port Gibson Academy and Mississippi College, at Clinton, in 1826. The public school system, established in 1846, never was universal, because of special legislation for various counties; public education was retarded during the Civil War and the Reconstruction period (when immense sums appropriated for schools were grossly mismanaged), but conditions gradually improved after 1875, especially through the concentration of schools. The sessions are still too short, teachers are poorly paid and attendance is voluntary. The long lack of normal training for white teachers (from 1870 to 1904 there was a normal school for negroes at Holly Springs) lasted until 1890, when a teacher's training course was introduced into the curriculum of the state university. There are separate schools for whites and blacks, and the equipment and service are approximately equal, although the whites pay about nine-tenths of the school taxes. The schools are subject to the supervision of a state superintendent of public education and of a board of education, composed of the superintendent, the secretary of state, and the attorney-general, and within each county to a county superintendent. The schools are supported by a poll-tax, by general appropriations, by local levies, and by the Chickasaw school fund. An act of Congress of the 3rd of March 1803 reserved from sale section sixteen of the public lands in each township for educational purposes. When the Chickasaws ceded their lands to the national government, in 1830 and in 1832, thestate made a claim to the sixteenth sections, and finally in 1856 received 174,550 acres - one thirty-sixth of the total cession of 6,283,804 acres. The revenue derived from the sales and leases of this land constitutes an endowment fund upon which the state as trustee pays 6% interest. It is used for the support of the schools in the old Chickasaw territory in the northern part of the state.

Among the institutions for higher education are the university of Mississippi (chartered 1844; opened 1848), at Oxford, which was opened to women in 1882; the Agricultural and Mechanical College (opened 1880), at Agricultural College, near Starkville, Oktibbeha county; the Industrial Institute and College for Girls (opened 1885), at Columbus; and the Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College for negroes (1871; reorganized in 1878), at Westside. In 1819 Congress granted thirty-six sections of public land for the establishment of a university. This land was sold in 1833 for $277,332.52, but the entire sum was lost in the failure of the Planters' Bank in 1840. In 1880 the state assumed liability for the full amount plus interest, and this balance, $544,061.23, now constitutes an endowment fund, upon' which the state pays 6% interest. Congress granted another township (thirty-six sections) for the university in 1892, and its income is supplemented by legislative appropriations for current expenses and special needs. The two agricultural and mechanical colleges were founded by the sale of public lands given by Congress under the Morrill Act of 1862. An agricultural experiment station established in 1887 under the Hatch Act, is at Agricultural College; and there are branch experiment stations at McNeill, Pearl River county (1906), near Holly Springs, and at Stoneville, near Greenville.

Finance

The chief sources of revenue are taxes on realty, personalty and corporations, a poll-tax, and licences. The more important expenditures are for public schools, state departments, educational and charitable institutions and pensions for Confederate veterans. The early financial history of the state is not very creditable. The Bank of Mississippi, at Natchez, incorporated by the Territorial legislature in 1809, was rechartered by the state in 1818, and was guaranteed a monopoly of the banking business until 1840. In violation of this pledge, and in the hope that a new bank would be more tractable than the Bank of Mississippi, the Planters' Bank was established at Natchez, in 1830, with a capital of $3,000,000, two-thirds of which was subscribed by the state. During the wild era of speculation which followed (especially in 1832 - upon the opening of the Chickasaw Cession to settlement) a large number of banks and railroad corporations with banking privileges were chartered. The climax was reached in 1838 with the incorporation of the Union Bank. This, the most pretentious of all the state banks of the period, was capitalized at $15,500,000. The state subscribed $5,000,000, which was raised on bonds sold to Nicholas Biddle, president of the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. As the Union Bank was founded in the midst of a financial panic and was mismanaged, its failure was a foregone conclusion. Agitation for repudiation was begun by Governor A. G. McNutt (1801-1848), and that question became the chief issue in the gubernatorial campaign of 1841, Tilghman M. Tucker (1802-1859), the Democratic candidate, representing the repudiators and David O. Shattuck, Whig, representing the anti-repudiators. The Democrats were successful, and the bonds were formally repudiated in 1842. In 1853 the High Court of Appeals and Errors of the state in the case of Mississippi v. Hezion Johnson (35 Miss. Reports, 625) decided unanimously that nothing could absolve the state from its obligation. The decision was disregarded, however, and in the same year the Planters' Bank bonds were also repudiated by popular vote. These acts of repudiation were sanctioned by the constitution of 1890. The $7,000,000 saved in this manner has doubtless been more than offset by the additional interest charges on subsequent loans, due to the loss of public confidence. Mississippi suffered less than most of the other Southern states during the Reconstruction period; but expenditures rose from $463,219.71 in 1869 to $1,729,046.34 in 1871. At the close of the Republican regime in 1876 its total indebtedness was $2,631,704.24, of which $814,743 belonged to the Chickasaw fund (see above) and $718,946.22 to the general school fund. As the principal of these funds is never to be paid, the real debt was slightly over $1,000,000. On the 1st of October 1907 the payable debt was $1,253,029.07, the non-payable $ 2 ,33 6, 1 97.5 8, 1 a total of $3,589,226.65. Since the Civil War the banking laws have become more stringent and the national banks have exercised a wholesome influence. There were, in 1906, 24 national banks and 269 state banks, but no trust companies, private banks or savings banks.

History

At the beginning of the 16th century the territory included in the present state of Mississippi was inhabited by three powerful native tribes: the Natchez in the south-west, the Choctaws in the south-east and centre, and the Chickasaws in the north. In addition, there were the Yazoos in the Yazoo valley, the Pascagoulas, the Biloxis, and a few weaker tribes on the borders of the Mississippi Sound. The history of Mississippi may be divided into the period of exploration (154 1699), the period of French rule (1699-1763), the period of English rule (1763-1781), the period of Spanish rule (1781-1798), the territorial period (1798-1817), and the period of statehood (1817 seq.).

Hernando de Soto and a body of Spanish adventurers crossed the Tombigbee river, in December 1540, near the present city of Columbus, marched through the north part of the state, and reached the Mississippi river near Memphis in 1541. In 1673 a French expedition organized in Canada under Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, and nine years later (1682) Rene Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, reached the mouth of the river, took formal possession of the country which it drains, and named it Louisiana in honour of Louis XIV. The first European settlement in Mississippi was founded in 1699 by Pierre Lemoyne, better known as Iberville, at Fort Maurepas (Old Biloxi) on the north side of Biloxi Bay, in what is now Harrison county. The site proving unfavourable, the colony was transferred to Twentyseven Mile Bluff, on the Mobile River, in 1702, and later to Mobile (1710). The oldest permanent settlements in the state are (New) Biloxi (c. 1712), situated across the bay from Old Biloxi and nearer to the Gulf, and Natchez or Fort Rosalie (1716). During the next few years Fort St Peter and a small adjoining colony were established on the Yazoo River in Warren county, and some attempts at settlement were made on Bay St Louis and Pascagoula Bay. The efforts (1712-1721) to foster colonization and commerce through trading corporations established by Antoine Crozat and John Law failed, and the colony soon came again under the direct control of the king. It grew very slowly, partly because of the hostility of the Indians and partly because of the incapacity of the French as colonizers. In1729-1730the Natchez tribe destroyed Fort St Peter, and some of the small outposts, and almost destroyed the Fort Rosalie (Natchez) settlement.

At the close of the Seven Years' War (1763) France ceded to Great Britain all her territory east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, and Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain. By a royal proclamation (Oct. 7, 1763) these new possessions were divided into East Florida and West Florida, the latter lying S. of the 3 ist parallel and W. of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Crown orders of 1764 and 1767 extended the limits N. to 1 The increase is due mainly to the assumption of the university obligations in 1880.

a line due E. from the mouth of the Yazoo at about 32° 28' N. lat. Under English rule there was an extensive immigration into this region from England, Ireland, Georgia and South Carolina. A settlement was made on the Big Black, 17 m. from its mouth, in 1774 by Phineas Lyman (1716-1774) of Connecticut and other "military adventurers," veterans of the Havana campaign of 1762; this settlement was loyal during the War of Independence. Spain took military possession in 1781, and in the Treaty of Paris (1783) both of the Floridas were ceded back to her. But Great Britain recognized the claims of the United States to the territory as far south as the 31st parallel, the line of 1763. Spain adhered to the line of 1764-1767, and retained possession of the territory in dispute. Finally, in the treaty of San Lorenzo el Real (ratified 1796) she accepted the 1763 (31°) boundary, and withdrew her troops in 1798. Mississippi Territory was then organized, with Winthrop Sargent as governor. The territorial limits were extended on the north to the state of Tennessee in 1804 by the acquisition of the west cessions of South Carolina and Georgia, and on the south to the Gulf of Mexico by the seizure of West Florida in 1810-1813, 1 but were restricted on the east by the formation of the Territory of Alabama in 1817. Just after the uprising of1729-1730the French, with the help of the Choctaws, had destroyed the Natchez nation, and the shattered remnants were absorbed by the neighbouring tribes. The Chickasaws ceded their lands to the United States in 1816 and the Choctaws theirs in 1830-1832; and they removed to the Indian Territory. The smaller tribes have been exterminated, absorbed or driven farther west.

An Enabling Act was passed on the 1st of March 1817, and the state was formally admitted into the Union on the 10th of December. The first state constitution (1817) provided a high property qualification for governor, senator and representative, and empowered the legislature to elect the judges and the more important state officials. In 1822 the capital was removed to Jackson from Columbia, Marion county. 2 The constitution of 1832 abolished the property qualification for holding office and provided for the popular election of judges and state officials. Mississippi thus became one of the first states in the Union to establish an elective judiciary. 3 The same constitution prohibited the importation of negro slaves from other states; but this prohibition was never observed, and the United States Supreme Court held that it was ineffective without an act of the legislature. On the death of John C. Calhoun in 1850 the state, under the leadership of Jefferson Davis, began to rival South Carolina as leader of the extreme pro-slavery States' Rights faction. There was a brief reaction: Henry Stuart Foote (1800-1880), Unionist, was elected governor in 1851 over Davis, the States' Rights candidate, and in the same year a Constitutional Convention had declared almost unanimously that "the asserted right of secession". .. "is utterly unsanctioned by the Federal Constitution." But the particularistic sentiment continued to grow. An ordinance of secession was passed on the 9th of January 1861, and the constitution was soon amended to conform to the new constitution of the Confederate States. During the Civil War battles were fought at Corinth (1862), Port Gibson (1863), Jackson (1863) and Vicksburg (1863). In 1865 President Johnson appointed as provisional governor William Lewis Sharkey (1797-1873), who had been chief justice of the state in 1832-1850, and a convention which assembled on the 14th of August recognized the "destruction" of slavery and declared the ordinance of secession null and void. The first reconstruction legislature met on the 16th of October 1865, and at once proceeded to enact stringent vagrancy laws and other measures against the freedmen; these laws the North 1 South Carolina ceded its western lands to the United States in 1787 and Georgia in 1802. The government added them to Mississippi in 1804. The seizure of West Florida was supplemented by the treaty of 1819-1821, in which Spain surrendered all of her claims.

The seats of government have been Natchez (1798-1802), Washington (1802-1817), Natchez (1817-1821), Columbia (1821-1822), Jackson (1822 seq.).

This system proved unsatisfactory, and in 1869 was abandoned.

interpreted as an effort to restore slavery. Under the Reconstruction Act of the 2nd of March 1867 Mississippi with Arkansas formed the fourth military district, commanded successively by Generals E. O. C. Ord (1867), Alvan C. Gillem (1868) and Irvin McDowell (June-July 1868), and by Gillem (1868-1869) and Adelbert Ames (1869-1870). The notorious "Black and Tan Convention" of 1868 adopted a constitution which conferred suffrage upon the negroes and by the imposition of test oaths disfranchised the leading whites. It was at first rejected at the polls, but was finally ratified in November 1869 without the disfranchising clauses. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Fedc al Constitution were ratified in 1870, and the state was formally readmitted into the Union on the 23rd of February of that year.

From 1870 to 1875 the government was under the control of "carpet-baggers," negroes and the most disreputable element among the native whites. Taxes were increased - expenditure increased nearly threefold between 1869 and 1871 - and there was some official corruption; but the state escaped the heavy burden of debt imposed upon its neighbours, partly because of the higher character of its reconstruction governors, and partly because its credit was already impaired by the repudiation of obligations contracted before the war. The Democrats carried the legislature in 1875, and preferred impeachment charges against Governor Adelbert Ames (b. 1835), a native of Maine, a graduate of the United States Military Academy (1861), a soldier in the Union army, and military governor of Mississippi in 1868-1870. The lieutenant-governor, A. K. Davis, a negro, was impeached and was removed from office; T. W. Cardoza, another negro, superintendent of education under Ames, was impeached on twelve charges of malfeasance, but was permitted to resign. Governor Ames, when the impeachment charges against him were dismissed on the 29th of March 1876, immediately resigned. The whites maintained their supremacy by very dubious methods until the adoption of the constitution of 1890 made it no longer necessary. The state has always been Democratic in national politics, except in the presidential elections of 1840 (Whig) and 1872 (Republican). The electoral vote was not counted in 1864 and 1868.


Governors

Territorial Period (1798-1817).

Winthrop Sargent..1798-1801William C. C. Claiborne1801-1805Robert Williams1805-1809David Holmes1809-1817Statehood Period (1817 seq.).

David Holmes Democrat1817-1820George Poindexter.. „1820-1822Walter Leake. Democrat (died in office)1822-1825Gerard C. Brandon (ad int.). Democrat1825-1826David Holmes. Democrat (resigned) 1826 Gerard C. Brandon (ad int. 1826-1828) 1826-1832 Abram M. Scott Democrat (died in office) 1832-1833 Charles Lynch 4 (ad int.). .. Democrat 1833 Hiram G. Runnels „1833-1835John Anthony Quitman (ad int.) Whig1835-1836Charles Lynch Democrat1836-1838Alexander Gallatin McNutt. „1838-1842Tilghman M. Tucker.. „1842-1844Albert Gallatin Brown. „1844-1848Joseph W. Matthews John Anthony Quitman 51850-1851John Isaac Guion 6 (ad int.).. 1851 James Whitfield (ad int.)..1851-1852Henry Stuart Foote Unionist1852-1854John Jones Pettus 7 (ad int.). Democrat 1854 John J. McRae. ..1854-1857William McWillie1857-1859John Jones Pettus1859-18634 Under the constitution of 1832 the president of the senate succeeded the governor in case of a vacancy.

6 Governor Quitman resigned because of charges against him of aiding Lopez's expedition against Cuba.

On the 4th of November the term for which Guion had been elected as a senator expired and he was succeeded in the governorship by Whitfield, elected by the senate to be its president.

7 Served from the 5th of January (when Foote resigned) to the 10th, when McRae was inaugurated.

Charles Clark' Democrat1863-1865William Lewis Sharkey. ... Provisional 1865 Benjamin Grubb Humphreys 2. Republican1865-1868Adelbert Ames.. Republican (Military Governor)1868-1870James Lusk Alcorn'.. Republican1870-1871Ridgley Ceylon Powers (ad int.) „ Adelbert Ames 4 „ John Marshall Stone (ad int. 1876-78) Democrat Robert Lowry „ J. M. Stone Anselm Joseph McLaurin Andrew Houston Longino James Kimble Vardaman Edmund Favor Noel .

See T. A. Owen, "A Biography of Mississippi," in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1 899, i. 633-828 (Washington, 1900); "Report of the Mississippi Historical Commission" in the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, v. 52310 (Oxford, Miss., 1902). J. F. H. Claiborne's Mississippi as a Province, Territory and State (Jackson, 1880), gives the best account of the period before the Civil War. R. Lowry and W. H. McCardle, History of Mississippi (New York, 1893), is useful for local history. Of most value for the history are the writings of P. J. Hamilton, J. W. Garner and F. L. Riley. Hamilton's Colonial Mobile (Boston and New York, 1898), and the Colonization of the South (Philadelphia, 1904) are standard authorities for the French and English periods (1699-1781). Garner's Reconstruction Mississippi (New York, 1902) is judicial, scholarly and readable. Most of Riley's work is in the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society (Oxford, 1898 seq.), which he edited; see his Spanish Policy in Mississippi-after the Treaty of San Lorenzo, i. 50-66; Location of the Boundaries of Mississippi, iii. 167-184; and Transition from Spanish to American Rule in Mississippi, iii. 261-311. There is much material in the Encyclopaedia of Mississippi History (2 vols., Madison, Wisconsin, 1907), edited by Dunbar Rowland. There is a state Department of Archives and History

  1. ^ http://www.census.gov/popest/states/NST-ann-est.html 2008 Population Estimates
  2. ^ a b "Elevations and Distances in the United States". U.S Geological Survey. 29 April 2005. Retrieved November 6. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
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