Introduction to History of Mississippi
Indians first entered the area several thousand years ago. These early inhabitants depended mainly on hunting, fishing, and food gathering for survival. Around 1000 B.C., a new group moved into the area and mixed with the earlier peoples. They constructed ceremonial mounds—and hence became known as Mound Builders—and introduced agriculture.
The eighth century A.D. marked the beginning of a new period, the Mississippian Era. The name of the era refers to a culture developed along the Mississippi River by Indians who lived in large villages and were involved in intensive corn agriculture. They also were mound builders. The Mississippian Era lasted until about the time of European exploration. The most important tribes at that time were the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez.
Important dates in Mississippi1540 Hernando de Soto entered the Mississippi region.1699 Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, established Mississippi’s first European settlement, at Old Biloxi.1763 Mississippi became British territory after the French and Indian War.1781 Spain occupied the Gulf Coast.1798 The Mississippi Territory was organized.1817 Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10.1858 Mississippi started a swamp drainage program in the Delta region to make the land suitable for farming.1861 Mississippi seceded from the Union.1863 Union forces captured Vicksburg in the American Civil War and gained control of the Mississippi River.1870 Mississippi was readmitted to the Union.1939 Petroleum was discovered at Tinsley.1954 The Mississippi legislature passed a law banning required union membership.1960 Mississippi passed laws that broadened the tax-free privilege of industrial properties.1964 Atomic scientists set off the first nuclear test explosion east of the Mississippi River at Baxterville.1969 A federal court ordered the desegregation of Mississippi's public schools.1969 Charles Evers became the first black mayor in Mississippi since Reconstruction. He was elected in Fayette.1992-2000 Kirk Fordice was governor, the first Republican to be elected governor of Mississippi since 1874.European Settlement
The Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto crossed what is now Mississippi in 1540-41. In the late 1600's French explorers from Canada reached the lower Mississippi Valley and claimed it for France under the name of Louisiana. Sieur d'Iberville established the first French settlement at Old Biloxi (now Ocean Springs) in 1699.
Under Sieur de Bienville, Iberville's brother, the French founded settlements at Mobile (in 1702, at a site north of the present-day city) and Natchez (1716). When the capital of the region called Louisiana was established at New Orleans in 1722, there were about 3,000 French and 2,000 blacks in the colony. The Natchez Indians, a small tribe, were being crowded off their land. In 1729 they massacred the settlers at Fort Rosalie (Natchez), and in reprisal were driven from the region.
Steps to Statehood
In 1763 Louisiana east of the Mississippi River was ceded to Great Britain. The area, reaching east to the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee rivers and north to a line drawn from the mouth of the Yazoo River, was named West Florida. During the Revolutionary War, Spain took possession of West Florida, and kept it under the peace treaty of 1783. The northern boundary, however, was moved almost 100 miles (160 km) south. Spain refused at first to withdraw from the 100-mile strip, but relinquished it to the United States in 1798. It was immediately organized as Mississippi Territory, with the capital first at Natchez and after 1802 at nearby Washington.
The land above the northern boundary belonged first to Georgia, but was added to Mississippi in 1804. The United States claimed West Florida as part of the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and in 1810 occupied the portion west of the Pearl River. In 1813 it seized the portion between the Pearl and Perdido rivers and added it to Mississippi Territory, which then included most of the present state of Alabama. In 1817 Mississippi with its present boundaries became the 20th state in the Union. The capital was moved to Jackson in 1821.
Civil War and Reconstruction
The growing of cotton, Mississippi's major crop, became highly profitable in the 19th century, with steamboats as the principal means of shipping. The bank of the Mississippi filled rapidly with river towns and luxurious plantation homes. The cotton economy was based on the use of slave labor. When the conflict over slavery came to a crisis, Mississippi was the second state to secede from the Union (January, 1861). Jefferson Davis, Mississippi soldier-statesman, became President of the Confederate States.
Struggle over control of the Mississippi River quickly brought the war into Mississippi. Most of the major cities were occupied by Union forces in 1862, and Vicksburg fell in 1863. The Reconstruction years were bitter ones. Most of the white population lost its vote, and the state government was in the hands of carpetbaggers and blacks until 1875.
20th Century
Grown under a sharecropping system, cotton no longer made Mississippi prosperous. In the hill country the white farmers, derisively called “rednecks" or “peckerwoods," became as impoverished as the black sharecroppers.
In the early 1900's more than half of Mississippi's population was black, but blacks were denied the vote by rigid application of a literacy-test requirement in the 1890 constitution. One of the state's most successful political leaders was Theodore Bilbo (1877-1947), who ran for office on a platform of white supremacy. He served twice as governor before being sent to the U.S. Senate in 1934, where he remained until his death.
By 1960 blacks no longer made up the majority of adults of voting age, but a movement to register blacks for voting met with uniform resistance. In 1962 a federal court ordered the University of Mississippi to enroll James Meredith as its first black student. Defiance of the order was led by Governor Ross Barnett, and serious rioting broke out at the university. Federal troops were needed to help Meredith enter the university. Other racial violence included the murder in 1963 of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, and in 1964 of three civil rights workers.
In the mid-1960's, the participation of blacks in politics increased. In 1969 Charles Evers, Medgar's brother, was elected mayor of Fayette—the first black mayor of a biracial Mississippi town since Reconstruction. Also in the late 1960's, white opposition to public school integration led to racial disturbances. By the early 1970's, court-ordered desegregation of public schools at all levels was under way.
In 1969, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians opened a construction company to build homes for tribe members. This greatly increased the wealth of the group and made this band one of the top employers in the state.
In the late 1980's, legislation was enacted to reform county government and increase funds for education. Voters elected the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, Kirk Fordice, in 1991.
In the early 2000s, the design of the state flag, adopted in 1894, became a topic of controversy because a corner displayed the Civil War emblem of the Confederate States; African-Americans and others objected because of the symbolism associated with slavery. A governor-appointed commission proposed a new design, but in 2001 voters rejected the new design in favor of the 1894 version.
Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast in 2005 and caused severe damage. Especially hard hit was the area around Biloxi and Gulfport.