Mississippi
() is a state located in the Southern United States. 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 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. [1] The state symbol is the magnolia tree.
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MISSISSIPPI TICKETS
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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.
Major rivers in Mississippi, apart from its namesake, include the
Big Black River, the
Pearl River, the
Yazoo, the
Pascagoula, and the
Tombigbee. Major lakes include
Ross Barnett Reservoir,
Arkabutla Lake,
Sardis Lake and
Grenada Lake.
left
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 m) above sea level. The lowest point is sea level at the
Gulf coast. The mean elevation in the state is 300 feet (91 m) above sea level.
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
Alabama Black Belt.
The coastline includes large bays at
Bay St. Louis,
Biloxi and
Pascagoula. It is separated from the Gulf of Mexico proper by the shallow
Mississippi Sound, which is partially sheltered by
Petit Bois Island,
Horn Island,
East and West Ship Islands,
Deer Island,
Round Island and
Cat Island.
The northwest remainder of the state consists of the
Mississippi Delta, a section of the
Mississippi Alluvial Plain. The plain is narrow in the south and widens north of
Vicksburg. The region has rich soil, partly made up of silt which had been regularly deposited by the floodwaters of the Mississippi River.
Areas under the management of the
National Park Service include:
[2]
- Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield Site near Baldwyn
- Gulf Islands National Seashore
- Natchez National Historical Park in Natchez
- Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail in Tupelo
- Natchez Trace Parkway
- Tupelo National Battlefield in Tupelo
- Vicksburg National Military Park and Cemetery in Vicksburg
Climate
Mississippi has a
humid subtropical climate with long summers and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 85°
F (about 28°
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 in the northeast, to 115 °F (46.1 °C), in 1930, at
Holly Springs in the north. Yearly
precipitation generally increases from north to south, with the regions closer to the
Gulf being the most humid. Thus,
Clarksdale, in the northwest, gets about 50 inches (about 1,270 mm) of precipitation annually and
Biloxi, in the south, about 61 inches (about 1,550 mm). Small amounts of snow fall in northern and central Mississippi, although snow is not unheard of around the southern part of the state.
The late summer and fall is the seasonal period of risk for
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,
Biloxi and
Pascagoula. As in the rest of the Deep South,
thunderstorms are common in Mississippi, especially in the southern part of the state. On average, Mississippi has around 27
tornadoes 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 corner of the state. About five F5 tornadoes have been recorded in the state, the last one being in 1971.
| Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures (°F) For Various Mississippi Cities
|
| City
| Jan
| Feb
| Mar
| Apr
| May
| Jun
| Jul
| Aug
| Sep
| Oct
| Nov
| Dec
|
| Gulfport
| 61/43
| 64/46
| 70/52
| 77/59
| 84/66
| 89/72
| 91/74
| 91/74
| 87/70
| 79/60
| 70/51
| 63/45
|
| Jackson
| 55/35
| 60/38
| 68/45
| 75/52
| 82/61
| 89/68
| 91/71
| 91/70
| 86/65
| 77/52
| 66/43
| 58/37
|
| Meridian
| 58/35
| 63/38
| 70/44
| 77/50
| 84/60
| 90/67
| 93/70
| 93/70
| 88/64
| 78/51
| 68/43
| 60/37
|
| Tupelo
| 50/30
| 56/34
| 65/41
| 74/48
| 81/58
| 88/66
| 91/70
| 91/68
| 85/62
| 75/49
| 63/40
| 54/33
|
|
|
Ecology
Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild trees; mostly
pine, as well as
cottonwood,
elm,
hickory,
oak,
pecan,
sweetgum and
tupelo.
Flooding and
littering are two major ecological issues confronting Mississippi statewide.
Due to seasonal flooding possible from December to June, the Mississippi River created a fertile floodplain in 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 laborers to ditch and drain their land.
The state took over levee building from 1858 to 1861, accomplishing it through contractors and hired labor. 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. Many of the Irish were relatively recent immigrants from the famine years, and struggling to get established.
[3] Before the
American Civil War, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.
thumb
Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history. It took a toll during the years after the
Civil War. Major floods swept down the valley in 1865, 1867, 1874 and 1882. Such floods regularly overwhelmed levees damaged by Confederate and Union fighting during the war, as well as those constructed after the war.
[4]
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.
After the flood of 1882, the levee system was expanded. In 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.
[5]
Flooding overwhelmed northwestern Mississippi in 1912–1913, causing heavy damage to the levee districts. Regional losses and the Mississippi River Levee Association's lobbying for a flood control bill helped gain passage of national 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 in the 1920s.
[6]
Nonetheless, the region was again 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, the most damage was in the lower Delta, including
Washington and
Bolivar counties.
[7]
Even as scientific knowledge about the Mississippi River has grown, upstream development and the levees themselves have caused more severe flooding in some years. In addition, the levees are now seen to have changed the nature of the river, removing the natural protection of wetlands and forest cover. The states and federal government have been struggling for the best approaches to restoring some natural habitats that might work with the original riverine ecology.
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.
[8]
History
Nearly 10,000
BCE,
Native Americans or
Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the
South.
[9] 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 valleys. Descendant
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, the
Yazoo and the
Biloxi.
The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was that of
Hernando de Soto, who passed through in 1540. The French, in April 1699, established the first European settlement at
Fort Maurepas
(also known as Old Biloxi), built at
Ocean Springs and settled by
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. In 1716, the French founded
Natchez on the Mississippi River (as
Fort Rosalie
); it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. The French called the greater territory "New Louisiana".
Through the next decades, the area was ruled by
Spanish,
British and
French colonial governments. Under French and Spanish rule, there developed a class of free people of color (
gens de couleur libres
), mostly descendants of European men and enslaved women, and their multiracial children. In the early days the French and Spanish colonists were chiefly men. Even as more European women joined the settlements, there continued to be interracial unions. Often the European men would help their children get educated, and sometimes settled property on them, as well as freeing slave children and their mothers. The free people of color became educated and formed a third class between the Europeans and enslaved
Africans in the French and Spanish settlements, although not so large a community as in
New Orleans. After
Great Britain's victory in the
French and Indian War (
Seven Years' War), the French deeded the Mississippi area to them under the terms of the
Treaty of Paris (1763).
After the
American Revolution, this area became part of the new
United States of America. The Mississippi Territory was
organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by
Georgia and
South Carolina. It was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. From 1800 to about 1830, the United States purchased some lands (generally through unequal treaties) from Native American tribes for new settlements of Americans.
On December 10, 1817, Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union.
When
cotton was king during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those of the Delta and
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.
[10] The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that land and villages were developed only along the riverfronts, which formed the main transportation corridors. Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were frontier and undeveloped.
[11] The state needed many more settlers for development.
On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to declare its secession from the
Union, and it was one of the founding members of the
Confederate States of America.
During
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 freedmen 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 civil rights in travel.
[12] Under the terms of Reconstruction, Mississippi was restored 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
freedmen, who achieved unusually high rates of land ownership in the Mississippi bottomlands. In the 1870s and 1880s, many black farmers succeeded in gaining land ownership.
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, thus losing the land into which they had put so much labor. By 1910, the majority of blacks in the Delta were
sharecroppers.
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.
[13] 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.
Starting about 1913, tens of thousands of black Americans left Mississippi for the
North in the
Great Migration to industrial cities such as
St. Louis,
Chicago,
Detroit,
Philadelphia and
New York. They sought jobs, better education for their children, the right to vote, relative freedom from discrimination, 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 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. The Second Great Migration included destinations in the
West, especially
California, where the buildup of the defense industry offered high-paying jobs to African Americans.
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.
Mississippi was a center of activity to educate and register voters during the
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.
[14] 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' Councils, and the violent tactics of the
Ku Klux Klan and its sympathizers, gained Mississippi a reputation in the 1960s as a reactionary state.
[15] [16]
In 1966, the state was the last to repeal
prohibition of alcohol.
The state repealed its
segregationist era poll tax in 1989 and its ban on interracial marriage in 1987. In 1995, it symbolically ratified the
Thirteenth Amendment, which had abolished slavery. In 2009, the legislature passed a bill to repeal other discriminatory civil rights laws that had been enacted in 1964 but ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by federal courts. Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill into law.
[17]
On August 17, 1969,
Category 5 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars). On August 29, 2005,
Hurricane Katrina, though a
Category 3 storm upon final landfall, caused even greater destruction across the entire of
Mississippi Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama.
Demographics
Population
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