History of Mississippi

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History of Mississippi
By year Pre-statehood U.S. Civil War Topics: African American – Cities – Politics
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The history of the state of Mississippi extends back to thousands of years of indigenous peoples. Evidence of their cultures has been found largely through archeological excavations, as well as existing remains of earthwork mounds built thousands of years ago. Native American traditions were kept through oral histories; with Europeans recording the accounts of historic peoples they encountered. Since the late 20th century, there have been increased studies of the Native American tribes and reliance on their oral histories to document their cultures. Their accounts have been correlated with evidence of natural events.

Initial colonization of the region was carried out by the French, though France would cede their control over portions of the region to Spain and Britain, particularly along the Gulf Coast. European-American settlers did not enter the territory in great number until the early 19th century. Some European-American settlers would bring many enslaved Africans with them to serve as laborers to develop cotton plantations along major riverfronts. On December 10, 1817, Mississippi became a state of the United States. Through the 1830s, the federal government forced most of the native Choctaw and Chickasaw people west of the Mississippi River. American planters developed an economy based on the export of cotton produced by slave labor along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers. A small elite group of planters controlled most of the richest land, the wealth, and politics of the state, which led to Mississippi seceding from the Union in 1861. During the American Civil War (1861–1865), its river cities particularly were sites of extended battles. Following the collapse of the Confederacy in 1865, Mississippi would enter the Reconstruction era (1865–1877).

The bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta were still 90% undeveloped after the Civil War. Thousands of migrants, both black and white, entered this area for a chance at land ownership. They sold timber while clearing land to raise money for purchases. During the Reconstruction era, many freedmen became owners of farms in these areas, and by 1900, composed two-thirds of the property owners in the Mississippi Delta. Democrats regained control of the state legislature in the late 19th century, and in 1890, passed a disfranchising constitution, resulting in the exclusion of African Americans from political life until the mid-1960s. Most African Americans lost their lands due to disenfranchisement, segregation, financial crises, and an extended decline in cotton prices. By 1920, most African Americans in the state were landless sharecroppers and tenant farmers. However, in the 1930s, some African Americans acquired land under low-interest loans from New Deal programs; in 1960 Holmes County still had 800 black farmers, the most of any county in the state. The state continued to rely mostly on agriculture and timber through the mid-20th century, but mechanization and acquisition of properties by megafarms would change the face of the labor market and state economy.

During the early through mid-20th century, the two waves of the Great Migration led to hundreds of thousands of rural blacks leaving the state. As a result, by the 1930s, African Americans were a minority of the state population for the first time since the early 19th century. They would remain a majority of the population in many Delta counties. Mississippi also had numerous sites of activism related to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, as African Americans sought to re-establish their constitutional rights for access to public facilities, including all state universities, and the ability to register, vote, and run for office.

By the early 21st century Mississippi had made notable progress in overcoming attitudes and attributes that had impeded social, economic, and political development. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina would cause severe damage along Mississippi's Gulf Coast. The tourism industry in Mississippi would help play a key role in helping build the states economy in the early 21st century. Mississippi would also expand its professional communities in cities such as Jackson, the state capital. Top industries in Mississippi today include agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, transportation and utilities, and health services.^[1]