State of Mississippi
Flag Seal
Nickname(s): The Magnolia State; The Hospitality State
Motto(s): Virtute et armis
Official language(s)	English
Demonym	Mississippian
Capital (and largest city)	Jackson
Area	Ranked 32nd in the U.S.
- Total	48,430 sq mi (125,443 km2)
- Width	170 miles (275 km)
- Length	340 miles (545 km)
- % water	3%
- Latitude	30° 12′ N to 35° N
- Longitude	88° 06′ W to 91° 39′ W
Population	Ranked 31st in the U.S.
- Total	2,978,512 (2011 est)[1]
- Density	63.5/sq mi  (24.5/km2) Ranked 32nd in the U.S.
- Median household income	$36,338[2] (50th)
Elevation
- Highest point	Woodall Mountain[3][4][5] 807 ft (246.0 m)
- Mean	300 ft  (90 m)
- Lowest point	Gulf of Mexico[4] sea level
Before statehood	Mississippi Territory
Admission to Union	December 10, 1817 (20th)
Governor	Phil Bryant (R)
Lieutenant Governor	Tate Reeves (R)
Legislature	Mississippi Legislature
- Upper house	State Senate
- Lower house	House of Representatives
U.S. Senators	Thad Cochran (R) Roger Wicker (R)
U.S. House delegation	3 Republicans, 1 Democrat (list)
Time zone	Central: UTC-6/-5
Abbreviations	MS Miss. US-MS
Website	www.mississippi.gov

Mississippi (ⁱ/ˌmɪsɨˈsɪpi/) is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi ("Great River"). Mississippi is the 32nd most extensive and the 31st most populous of the 50 United States. The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area, which was cleared for cotton cultivation in the 19th century. Today, its catfish aquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States.^[6] The state symbol is the magnolia grandiflora tree.

Geography[link]

Mississippi State Map

Bottomland hardwood swamp near Ashland, Mississippi.

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.

In addition to its namesake, major rivers in Mississippi include the Big Black River, the Pearl River, the Yazoo River, the Pascagoula River, and the Tombigbee River. Major lakes include Ross Barnett Reservoir, Arkabutla Lake, Sardis Lake and Grenada Lake. The largest lake in Mississippi is Grenada Lake.

The state of Mississippi is entirely composed of lowlands, the highest point being Woodall Mountain, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, 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:^[7]

• 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

Major cities and towns[link]

Meridian

Map with all counties and many cities and towns labeled.

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2010):^[8]

1. Jackson (173,514)
2. Gulfport (67,793)
3. Hattiesburg (51,993)

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 20,000 but fewer than 50,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2010):^[8]

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 10,000 but fewer than 20,000 (United States Census Bureau as of 2010):^[8]

(See: Lists of cities, towns and villages, census-designated places, metropolitan areas, micropolitan areas, and counties in Mississippi)

Climate[link]

Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate with long summers and short, mild winters. Temperatures average about 95°F (about 35°C) in July and about 48 °F (about 9 °C) in January. The temperature varies little statewide in the summer; however, 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. Heavy snowfall is possible across the state, such as during the New Year's Eve 1963 snowstorm. 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 occasional in 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 seven F5 tornadoes have been recorded in the state.

Ecology[link]

The Mississippi state sign located on Interstate 20.

Mississippi is heavily forested, with over half of the state's area covered by wild trees, including mostly pine, as well as cottonwood, elm, hickory, oak, pecan, sweetgum and tupelo.

Ecological problems[link]

Flooding[link]

Due to seasonal flooding, possible from December to June, the Mississippi River created a fertile floodplain in the Mississippi Delta, including tributaries. Slaves built levees along the Mississippi River to control 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, who immigrated in high numbers in the 1840s, 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 who were struggling to get established.^[9] Before the American Civil War, the earthwork levees averaged six feet in height, although in some areas they reached twenty feet.

Flooding has been an integral part of Mississippi history, but clearing of the land for cultivation and to supply fuel for steamboats took away the absorption of trees and undergrowth. 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.^[10] 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.^[10] After the 1882 flood, 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 some counties in Arkansas.^[11]

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 22 feet (6.7 m) in the 1920s.^[12] Scientists now understand the levees have increased flooding, and the region was severely damaged due to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. There were losses of millions of dollars in property, stock and crops. The most damage occurred in the lower Delta, including Washington and Bolivar counties.^[13]

Even as scientific knowledge about the Mississippi River has grown, upstream development and the consequences of the levees have caused more severe flooding in some years. Scientists now understand that the widespread clearing of land and building of the levees have changed the nature of the river by removing the natural protection of wetlands and forest cover and strengthening the current. The state and federal governments have been struggling for the best approaches to restore some natural habitats in order to best interact with the original riverine ecology.

History[link]

Mississippi State symbols
The Flag of Mississippi.
The Seal of Mississippi.
Animate insignia
Bird(s)	Mockingbird (1944) Wood Duck (1974)
Butterfly	Spicebush Swallowtail (1991)
Fish	Largemouth bass (1974)
Flower(s)	Magnolia (1952) Coreopsis (Tickseed) (1991)
Insect	Honey bee (1980)
Mammal(s)	White-tailed deer (1974) Red Fox (1997) Bottlenose dolphin (1974)
Reptile	American Alligator (2005)
Tree	Magnolia (1938)
Inanimate insignia
Beverage	Milk (1984)
Dance	American folk dance (1995)
Fossil	Prehistoric whale (1981)
Rock	Petrified wood (1976)
Shell	Oyster (1974)
Slogan(s)	Virtute et armis
Soil	Natchez silt loam (2003)
Song(s)	"Go, Mississippi" (1962)
Toy	Teddy bear (2003)
Other	Grand Opera House of Meridian (1993) Tupelo Auto Museum (1972) Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum (1972)
Route marker(s)
State Quarter
Released in 2002
Lists of United States state insignia

Front of D'Evereux. Built in 1840, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Confederate dead after the Battle of Corinth. Photo taken October 5, 1862

Child workers, Pass Christian, 1911

Dancing at a juke joint outside of Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1939

Nearly 10,000 B.C. Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the South.^[14] 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"; the Spanish continued to claim the Gulf coast.

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 surrendered 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 (Treaty of Doak's Stand) from Native American tribes for new settlements of European Americans, mostly from other Southern states.^[15] Many slaveholders brought slaves with them or purchased them through the internal slave market, especially New Orleans. They transported hundreds of thousands of slaves to the Deep South, including Mississippi. This was a forced internal migration that broke up many slave families of the Upper South, where planters were selling excess slaves.

On December 10, 1817, Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union. David Holmes became the first governor of the state.^[16] Plantations were along the rivers, where waterfront gave them access to the major transportation routes. This is also where early towns developed, linked by the steamboats that carried commercial products and crops to markets.

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. They used the profits to buy more cotton land and more 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.^[17] 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.^[18] 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 also benefited poor whites; 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.^[19] 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.^[18]

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 developed.^[18]

White legislators created a new constitution in 1890, with electoral and voter registration provisions that effectively disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. Estimates are that 100,000 black and 50,000 white men were removed from voter registration rolls over the next few years.^[20] The loss of political influence contributed to the difficulties of African Americans in their attempts to obtain extended credit in the late nineteenth century. Together with Jim Crow laws, increased frequency of lynchings beginning 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.^[18] 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 higher 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, many of them African American, 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 black 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, consequent to provisions of the state constitution, which had been in place since 1890.^[21] 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.^[22][23]

In 1966, the state was the last to officially repeal statewide prohibition of alcohol. Prior to that, Mississippi had taxed the illegal alcohol brought in by bootleggers. Governor Paul Johnson urged repeal and the sheriff "raided the annual Junior League Mardi Gras ball at the Jackson Country Club, breaking open the liquor cabinet and carting off the Champagne before a startled crowd of nobility and high-ranking state officials."^[24]

The state repealed its ban on interracial marriage (miscegenation) in 1987 (which the United States Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional in 1967), and repealed the segregationist-era poll tax in 1989. In 1995, it symbolically ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which had abolished slavery in 1865. In 2009, the legislature passed a bill to repeal other discriminatory civil rights laws which had been enacted in 1964 but ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by federal courts. Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill into law.^[25]

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 90 miles (145 km) of Mississippi Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama.

Demographics[link]

The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Mississippi was 2,978,512 on July 1, 2011, a 0.38% increase since the 2010 United States Census.^[1] Mississippi's population has a sizable proportion of African Americans, approximately 37 percent.^[26] The center of population of Mississippi is located in Leake County, in the town of Lena.^[27]

Ethnic makeup and ancestry[link]

At the 2010 US census, 59.1% of the population was White (58.0% non-Hispanic white), 37.0% African American or Black, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.9% Asian, 1.1% from two or more races. 2.7% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race).^[28] For more information on racial and ethnic clasifications in the United States see race and ethnicity in the United States Census.

Americans of Scots-Irish, English and Scottish ancestry are present throughout the state, and are thought to be much larger groups than are reported. English, Scottish and Scots-Irish are generally the most under-reported ancestry groups in both the South Atlantic States and the East South Central States. The historian David Hackett Fischer estimated that a minimum 20% of Mississippi's population is of English ancestry though the figure is probably much higher, and another large percentage is of Scottish ancestry, but many Mississippians of English and Scottish stock self-identify simply as American because their families have been in North America for so long, in many cases since the late 18th century.^[29][30] In the 1980 census 656,371 Mississippians out of a total of 1,946,775 claimed to be of English ancestry, making them 38% of the state at the time.^[31]

Mississippi population density map

On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed between the U.S. Government and the Choctaw. The Choctaw agreed to sell their traditional homelands in Mississippi and Alabama, for compensation and removal to reservations in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). This opened up land for sale to European-American immigrant settlement. Article 14 in the treaty allowed those Choctaw who chose to remain in the state to become U.S. citizens, the first major non-European ethnic group to do so.^[33][34] Today approximately 9,500 Choctaw live in Neshoba, Newton, Leake, and Jones counties. Federally recognized tribes include the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

From before the Civil War until the 1930s, African Americans made up a majority of Mississippians. Due to the Great Migration, when more than 360,000 African Americans left the state during the 1940s and after, the African-American population declined.

The state in 2010 had the highest proportion of African Americans in the nation. Recently, the African-American percentage of population has begun to increase due mainly to a younger population than the whites (the total fertility rates of the two races are approximately equal). Due to patterns of settlement, in almost all of Mississippi's public school districts, a majority of students are of African descent. 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, historically, African-Americans owned land as farmers or worked on cotton plantations and farms.^[35]

According to the 2000 census, the largest identified ancestries in the state are:

• American (14.2%)
• Irish (6.9%)
• English (6.1%)
• German (4.5%)
• French (2.3%)
• Scots-Irish (1.9%)
• Italian (1.4%)
• Scottish (1.2%)

People of French Creole ancestry form the largest demographic group in Hancock County on the Gulf Coast. The African-American; Choctaw, mostly in Neshoba County; and Chinese-American segments of the population are 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.^[36] As the small towns declined, many ethnic Chinese moved to cities or left the state.

Religion[link]

Under French and Spanish rule beginning in the 17th century, the few Europeans in what is now Mississippi were Roman Catholics. The growth of the cotton culture after 1815 brought in tens of thousands of Anglo-American settlers each year, most of whom were Protestants from Southeastern states. Due to such migration, there was rapid growth in Protestant churches, especially Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist.^[37]

The revivals of the Great Awakening in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries initially attracted the "plain folk" by reaching out to all members of society, including women and blacks. Both slaves and free blacks were welcomed into Methodist and Baptist churches. Independent black Baptist churches were established before 1800 in Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia, and later developed in Mississippi as well.

In the post-Civil War years, religion became even more influential as the South became known as the "Bible Belt". Freedmen withdrew from white-run churches in favor of setting up their own. Many left the Southern Baptist Church, and by 1895 had established numerous black Baptist state associations and the National Baptist Convention of black churches. They wanted to be independent of white supervision. In addition, independent black denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (established in Philadelphia) and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (established in New York), sent missionaries to the South in the postwar years. They quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of converts and founded new churches across the South. Southern congregations brought their own influences to those denominations as well.^[38][39]

By 1900 many ministers, especially in the towns, subscribed to the Social Gospel movement, which attempted to apply Christian ethics to social and economic needs of the day. Many strongly supported Prohibition, believing it would help alleviate many sins.^[40]

African-American Baptist churches grew to include more than twice the number of members as their white Baptist counterparts. The African-American call for social equality resonated throughout the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the 1940s. The American Civil Rights Movement had many roots in religion, and the strong community of churches helped supply volunteers and moral purpose for their activism. The end of legal segregation and Jim Crow led to the reintegration of some churches, but most today remain all black or all white.^[41] Since the 1970s, fundamentalist conservative churches have grown rapidly, fueling Mississippi's conservative political trends.^[37]

As of 2012, Mississippi is widely considered the most religious state in the United states of America, with 59% of Mississippians considering themselves "very religious"^[42]. In 2000 the Southern Baptist Convention had 916,440 adherents and was the largest religious denomination in the state, followed by the United Methodist Church with 240,576; and the Roman Catholic Church with 115,760.^[43] Other religions have a small presence in Mississippi, as by 2000, there were 3900 Muslims, 1400 Jews and 811 Bahá'í.^[43]

LGBT[link]

The 2010 United States census counted 6,286 same-sex unmarried-partner households in Mississippi, an increase of 1,512 since the 2000 United States census.^[44][45] 33% contained at least one child, giving Mississippi the distinction of leading the nation in the percentage of same-sex couples raising children.^[46] Mississippi 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 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 seniors.^[47]

Health and public safety[link]

The state is ranked 50th or last place among all the states for health care, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation working to advance performance of the health care system.^[48] For three years in a row, more than 30 percent of Mississippi's residents have been classified as obese. In a 2006 study, 22.8 percent of the state's children were classified as such. Mississippi had the 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 adult inactivity.^[49][50] 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 inactivity and lack of social support, defined as motivation and encouragement by friends.^[51] A 2002 report on African American adolescents noted a 1999 survey which suggests that a third of children were obese, with higher ratios for those in the Delta.^[52]

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 underserved 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.^[52] 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.^[52] A 2006 survey found nearly 95 percent of Mississippi adults considered childhood obesity to be a serious problem.^[53]

Economy[link]

A Mississippi U.S. quarter

The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2010 was $98 billion.^[54] Per capita personal income in 2006 was $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.^[55] A 2009 report by the American Legislative Exchange Council ranked Mississippi as having the 19th best economic outlook of all U.S. states.^[56]

Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by cotton plantations along the rivers.^[57] 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.^[58] Ninety percent 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 agricultural cotton, 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 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.^[59]

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.^[60] 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.^[61]

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.^[18]

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.^[62] 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.^[63]

Democratic Party paramilitary militias and groups such as the Red Shirts and the Knights of the White Camelia terrorized African American Republicans and suppressed voting. The Democrats regained political control of the state in 1877. The legislature passed statutes to establish segregation and a new constitution that effectively disfranchised most blacks, Native Americans and many poor whites by changes to electoral and voter registration rules.^[64] 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.^[62]

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.^[11] Despite the state's building and reinforcing levees for years, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke through and caused massive flooding of 27,000 square miles (70,000 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. Gambling towns in Mississippi include the Gulf Coast resort towns of Bay St. Louis, Gulfport and Biloxi, and the Mississippi River towns of Tunica (the third largest gaming area in the United States), Greenville, Vicksburg and 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.^{[citation needed]} An estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several coastal casinos in August 2005.^{[citation needed]} In 2007, Mississippi had the third largest gambling revenue of any state, behind New Jersey and Nevada.^[65] Federally recognized Native American tribes have established gaming casinos on their reservations, which are yielding revenue to support education and economic development.^{[citation needed]}

On October 17, 2005, Governor Haley Barbour signed a bill into law that allows casinos in Hancock and Harrison counties to rebuild on land (but within 800 feet (240 m) of the water). The only exception is in Harrison County, where the new law states that casinos can be built to the southern boundary of U.S. Route 90.^{[citation needed]}

Mississippi collects personal income tax in three tax brackets, ranging from 3% to 5%. The retail sales tax rate in Mississippi is 7%. A local sales tax of 2.5% is levied in Tupelo.^[66] For purposes of assessment for ad valorem taxes, taxable property is divided into five classes.^{[citation needed]}

On August 30, 2007, a report by the United States Census Bureau indicated that Mississippi was the poorest state in the country. Many cotton farmers in the Delta have large, mechanized plantations, some of which receive extensive federal subsidies, yet many other residents 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, 5% went to small farmers. There has been little money apportioned for rural development. Small towns are struggling. More than 100,000 people have left the region in search of work elsewhere.^[67] The state had a median household income of $34,473.^[68]

As of January 2010, the state's unemployment rate was 10.9%.^[69]

Federal subsidies and spending[link]

With Mississippi's fiscal conservatism, in which Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, and other social programs are often cut, eligibility requirements are tightened, and stricter employment criteria are imposed, Mississippi ranks as having the 2nd highest ratio of spending to tax receipts of any state. In 2005, Mississippi citizens received approximately $2.02 per dollar of taxes in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 2nd highest nationally, and represents an increase from 1995, when Mississippi received $1.54 per dollar of taxes in federal spending and was 3rd highest nationally.^[70] It should be noted, however, that this figure comes from the year that large portions of the state were devastated by Hurricane Katrina, leading to large influxes of federal aid from FEMA.

A proportion of federal spending in Mississippi is directed toward large federal installations such as Camp Shelby, John C. Stennis Space Center, Meridian Naval Air Station, Columbus Air Force Base, and Keesler Air Force Base. Three of these installations are located in the area affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Law and government[link]

As with all other U.S. states and the federal government, Mississippi's government is based on the separation of legislative, executive and judicial power. Executive authority in the state rests with the Governor, currently Phil Bryant (R). The Lieutenant Governor, currently Tate Reeves (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 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, always in the year preceding Presidential elections, the most recent of which was in 2011.

Uniquely, Mississippi was the last state to give shares of its popular vote exceeding 85% and 90% to one candidate in a presidential election: in 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt won nearly 94% of Mississippi's popular vote, and in 1964, Barry M. Goldwater carried the state with 87% of votes.

Laws[link]

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.^[71][72] The ban could potentially be upset by the federal court case Perry v. Brown, which questions the validity of bans on gay marriage under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Section 265 of the Constitution of the State of Mississippi declares that "No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state."^[73] This provision is unenforceable but is de facto considering the electorate demographic profile of the state's counties.

Transportation[link]

Interstate 59 in Mississippi

Road[link]

In March 2011, Mississippi ranked as the third bottom "Worst" state (next to Louisiana and Kentucky) in the American State Litter Scorecard. The Hospitality State suffers from an overall poor effectiveness and quality of its statewide public space cleanliness (primarily from roadway and adjacent litter/debris)--in state and related eradication standards.^[74]

Mississippi is served by nine interstate highways:

and fourteen main U.S. Routes:

as well as a system of State Highways.

For more information, visit the Mississippi Department of Transportation website.

Rail[link]

Passenger[link]

Amtrak provides scheduled passenger service along two routes, the Crescent and City of New Orleans.

Freight[link]

All but two of the United States Class I railroads serve Mississippi (the exceptions are the Union Pacific and Canadian 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 the state and north-south service along the Alabama state line.
• Norfolk Southern Railway provides service in the extreme north and southeast.
• CSX has a line along the Gulf Coast.

Water[link]

Major rivers[link]

• Mississippi River
• Big Black River
• Pascagoula River
• Pearl River
• Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway
• Yazoo River

Major bodies of water[link]

• Arkabutla Lake – 19,550 acres (79.1 km²) of water; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District^[75]
• Bay Springs Lake – 6,700 acres (27 km²) of water and 133 miles (214 km) of shoreline; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers</ref>
• Grenada Lake – 35,000 acres (140 km²) of water; became operational in 1954; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District^[76]
• Ross Barnett Reservoir – Named for Ross Barnett, the 52nd Governor of Mississippi; 33,000 acres (130 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 – 98,520 acres (398.7 km²) of water; became operational in October 1940; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District^[77]

Education[link]

Until the Civil War era, Mississippi had a small number of schools and no educational institutions for African Americans. The first school for black people was established in 1862.

During Reconstruction in 1871, 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.^[78]

Blacks and whites attended separate public schools in Mississippi until the 1960s, when they began to be integrated following the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional.

In the late 1980s, the state had 954 public elementary and secondary schools, with a total yearly enrollment of about 369,500 elementary pupils and about 132,500 secondary students. Some 45,700 students attended private schools. In 2008, Mississippi was ranked last among the fifty states in academic achievement by the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on Education, with the lowest average ACT scores and sixth lowest spending per pupil in the nation. In contrast, Mississippi had the 17th highest average SAT scores in the nation. According to the report, 92% of Mississippi high school graduates took the ACT and 3% took the SAT, in comparison to the national averages of 43% and 45%, respectively.

In 2007, Mississippi students scored the lowest of any state on the National Assessments of Educational Progress in both math and science.^[79]

Mississippi is currently ranked at the bottom of the American Human Development Index.

Jackson, the state's capital city, houses the state residential school for deaf and hard of hearing students. The Mississippi School for the Deaf was established by the state legislature in 1854.

The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS) is a public residential high school for academically gifted students located in Columbus, Mississippi on the campus of the Mississippi University for Women. MSMS was founded in 1987 by appropriations from the Mississippi Legislature and is the fourth public, residential high school for academically gifted students in the United States.[3] The school only enrolls students in the last two years of high school. Tenth grade students from across the state interested in the school apply and are selected to attend.

The Mississippi School of the Arts (MSA) is an upper high school of literary, visual, and performing arts on historic Whitworth College Campus in Brookhaven, Mississippi, about sixty miles (100 km) south of Jackson, Mississippi.[1] MSA teaches 11th and 12th grade students. The site has 6 buildings designated as Mississippi Landmarks, and the campus is also notable as being on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.[1] The renovation or construction of the campus facilities, as a historic site, are ongoing and rely upon additional funding to make capital improvements.[2]

The Mississippi School of the Arts provides advanced programs of study in visual arts, vocal music, theatre, dance, and literary arts for "artistically gifted"[3] 11th/12th grade students from throughout Mississippi, within a residential school.[3][1] The proposed curriculum includes instrumental music majors. The curriculum at MSA focuses on the arts and humanities.[3] A comprehensive residential and academic curriculum prepares students for further studies or for the pursuit of employment. Some non-arts courses (some math, science, etc.) are taught in conjunction with Brookhaven High School, 6 blocks away, to provide a wider curriculum.[1] Students apply for admission during their sophomore year at other schools.[1]

Culture[link]

While Mississippi has been especially known for its music and literature, it has embraced other forms of art. Its strong religious traditions have inspired striking works by 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.^[80]

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

George Ohr, known as the "Mad Potter of Biloxi" and the father of abstract expressionism in pottery, lived and worked in Biloxi, MS.

The New Southern View Ezine, first published in the summer of 2001, is the state's first online magazine.

Music[link]

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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

Jimmie Rodgers, a native of Meridian and white guitarist/singer/songwriter known as the "Father of Country Music", 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 the United States, 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'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 is "Ground Zero", a contemporary blues club and restaurant co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman.

Mississippians have contributed to American music. Elvis Presley, who created a sensation in the 1950s as a crossover artist and contributed to rock 'n' roll, was a native of Tupelo. From opera star Leontyne Price to the alternative rock band 3 Doors Down, to gulf and western singer Jimmy Buffett, to rappers David Banner, Big K.R.I.T. and Afroman, Mississippi musicians have been significant in all genres.

Sports[link]

• Biloxi, Mississippi is home to the Mississippi Surge ice hockey team. The team is a member of the Southern Professional Hockey League and began its first season of play in 2009.
• Clinton, Mississippi is home to the Mississippi Brilla soccer team. The Brilla are a member of the USL Premier Development League.
• Pearl, Mississippi is home to the Mississippi Braves baseball team. The Braves are an AA minor league affiliate of the Atlanta Braves. They play in the Southern League.
• Southaven, Mississippi is home to the Mississippi RiverKings hockey team, formerly known as the Memphis RiverKings. The RiverKings are a member of Southern Professional Hockey League.

Notable natives[link]

Mississippi has produced a number of notable and famous individuals, especially in the realm of music and literature. Among the most notable are:

• Actors:Lacey Chabert, Morgan Freeman, Jim Henson, James Earl Jones, Gerald McRaney, Parker Posey, Sela Ward, and Oprah Winfrey
• Artists: Walter Inglis Anderson and George E. Ohr
• Athletes: Cool Papa Bell, Brett Favre, Al Jefferson, Archie Manning, Deuce McAllister, Steve McNair, Travis Outlaw, Walter Payton, and Jerry Rice
• Authors: William Faulkner, John Grisham, Charlaine Harris, Thomas Harris, Kathryn Stockett, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright
• Civil rights leaders: Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, and Anne Moody
• Musicians: 3 Doors Down, David Banner, Lance Bass, Brandy, Jimmy Buffett, Bo Diddley, Faith Hill, Mississippi John Hurt, Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Denise LaSalle, Elvis Presley, Leontyne Price, Charlie Patton, Charlie Pride, LeAnn Rimes, Jimmie Rodgers, Britney Spears, Conway Twitty, Muddy Waters, Hayley Williams, and Tammy Wynette

Cultural references[link]

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.

On March 12, 1894, the Biedenharn Candy Company bottled the first Coca-Cola in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Root beer was invented in Biloxi in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, the namesake of Barq's Root Beer.

The Teddy bear gets its name from President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt. On a 1902 hunting trip to Sharkey County, Mississippi, he ordered the mercy killing of a wounded bear.^[81]

In 1935, the world's first night rodeo held outdoors under electric lights was produced by Earl Bascom and Weldon Bascom in Columbia, Marion County, Mississippi

In 1936, 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.

Burnita Shelton Matthews from near Hazlehurst, Mississippi was the first woman appointed as a judge of a U.S. district court. She was appointed by Harry S. Truman on October 21, 1949.

Marilyn Monroe won the Mrs. Mississippi finals in the 1952 movie We're Not Married!.

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.

"At 10:00 a.m. on October 22, 1964, the United States government detonated an underground nuclear device in Lamar County, in south Mississippi. (...) The Project Salmon blast was about one-third as powerful as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. (...) The Project Sterling blast, on December 3, 1966, was considerably weaker than the blast two years earlier, as it was intended to be."^[82]

On January 8, 1935, Elvis Aaron Presley was born in Tupelo.^[83]

Several warships have been named USS Mississippi.

The comic book character 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.

For the past seven years, the Sundancer Solar Race Team from Houston, MS, has won first place in the Open Division of the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge.^[84]

See also[link]

	Book: United States
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Outline of history
• Outline of geography
  • Outline of North America
    • Outline of the United States
      • Outline of Mississippi
        • Index of Mississippi-related articles
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Mississippi

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Mississippi on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Official website
• Mississippi Travel and Tourism
• Mississippi Development Authority
• The "Mississippi Believe It" Campaign
• Mississippi State Facts
• University Press of Mississippi
• Mississippi at the Open Directory Project
• Mississippi as Metaphor State, Region, and Nation in Historical Imagination," Southern Spaces, 23 October 2006.
• Geographic data related to Mississippi at OpenStreetMap
• 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.

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Bill Maher
Maher at a ceremony to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2010
Birth name	William Maher, Jr.
Born	(1956-01-20) January 20, 1956 (age 56) New York, New York, U.S.
Medium	Stand-up, television, film, books
Nationality	American
Years active	1979–present
Genres	Satire, Political satire, News satire, Observational comedy
Subject(s)	American politics, current events, American culture, pop culture, freedom of speech, environmentalism, religion, human sexuality, recreational drug use, libertarianism, American liberalism, American conservatism
Influences	Steve Allen, George Carlin, Johnny Carson, David Frost, Robert Klein, Don Rickles, Gore Vidal, Lenny Bruce
Notable works and roles	Elliot on Charlie Hoover Host of Politically Incorrect Host of Real Time with Bill Maher Religulous
Website	BillMaher.com

William "Bill" Maher, Jr. ( /ˈmɑːr/; born January 20, 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, television host, political commentator, author, and actor. Before his current role as the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher hosted a similar late-night talk show called Politically Incorrect originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC.

Maher is known for his political satire and sociopolitical commentary, which targets a wide swath of topics including religion, politics, bureaucracies of many kinds, political correctness, the mass media, greed among people and persons in positions of high political and social power, and the lack of intellectual curiosity in the electorate.^[1] He supports the legalization of marijuana and same-sex marriage, and serves on the board of PETA.^[2] He is also a critic of religion and is an advisory board member of Project Reason, a foundation to promote scientific knowledge and secular values within society.^[3] In 2005, Maher ranked at number 38 on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time.^[4] Bill Maher received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star on September 14, 2010.^[5]

Early life and education[link]

Maher was born in New York City, the son of Julie (née Berman), a nurse, and William Maher, Sr., a network news editor and radio announcer.^[6] He was raised in his Irish American father's Catholic religion, remaining unaware that his mother was Jewish until his early teenage years.^{[7][8][9][10]} Due to Maher's father's disagreement with the Catholic Church's position on birth control, he stopped taking Maher and his sister to Catholic church services when Maher was thirteen.^[11]

Maher was raised in River Vale, New Jersey, and graduated from Pascack Hills High School in Montvale in 1974. He received a B.A. in English and history from Cornell University in 1978.^[12]

Early career[link]

Maher began his career as a stand-up comedian and actor. He was host of the New York City comedy club Catch a Rising Star in 1979. Thanks to Steve Allen, he began appearing on Johnny Carson's and David Letterman's shows in 1982. He made limited television appearances including a recurring role in Sara (1985), appeared in Max Headroom (1987), two separate appearances on Murder, She Wrote (1989, 1990), a recurring role in Charlie Hoover (1991) and other productions. He has also appeared in several films, usually in a comic role. His feature film debut was in D.C. Cab (1983), and he also appeared in Ratboy (1986) Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1988) and Pizza Man (1991), among others.

Television career[link]

[edit] Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher

Maher assumed the host role Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, a late-night political talk show that ran on Comedy Central from 1993 to 1997 and on ABC from 1997 to 2002. The show regularly began with a topical monologue by Maher preceding the introduction of four guests, usually a diverse group of individuals from show business, popular culture, political pundits, political consultants, authors, and occasionally news figures. The group would discuss topical issues selected by Maher, who also participated in the discussions.^[13] Jerry Seinfeld, a regular guest on the show, stated that Politically Incorrect reminded him of talk shows from the 1950s and 60s "when guests interacted with each other as much as with the host."^[14]

Politically Incorrect won an array of awards, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Technical Direction, two CableACE awards for Best Talk Show Series, and a Genesis Award for Best Television Talk Show. Maher earned numerous award nominations for his producing, writing and hosting of Politically Incorrect, including ten Emmy nominations, two TV Guide nominations, and two Writers Guild nominations. ABC decided against renewing Maher's contract for Politically Incorrect in 2002, after he made a controversial on-air remark shortly after the September 11 attacks.^[15] He agreed with his guest, conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza, that the 9/11 terrorists did not act in a cowardly manner (in rebuttal to President Bush's statement calling 9/11 hijackers cowards). Maher said, "We have been the cowards. Lobbing cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building. Say what you want about it. Not cowardly. You're right." Maher later clarified that his comment was not anti-military in any way whatsoever, referencing his well-documented longstanding support for the American military.^[16][17][18]

In the context of the attacks, some corporate advertisers found the comment too insensitive and controversial. Several companies, including FedEx and Sears Roebuck, pulled their advertisements from the show, costing the show more than it returned.

The show was cancelled on June 16, 2002, and the Sinclair Broadcast Group had dropped the show from its ABC-affiliated stations months prior. On June 22, 2002, just six days after the cancellation of Politically Incorrect, Maher received the Los Angeles Press Club president's award (for "championing free speech"). Maher was on the board of judges one year for the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.

Maher's remarks after 9/11 were not the first time he had sparked controversy on Politically Incorrect. In the same year, Maher was widely criticized for comparing dogs to retarded children. He apologized for his comments.^[19]

[edit] Real Time with Bill Maher

In 2003, Maher became the host, co-producer and co-writer of Real Time with Bill Maher, a weekly hour-long political comedy talk show on the cable television network HBO. During an interview, Maher told Terry Gross (on NPR's Fresh Air) that he much prefers having serious and well-informed guests on his program, as opposed to the random celebrities that fleshed out his roundtable discussions on Politically Incorrect.^[20]

As with his previous show, Politically Incorrect, Maher begins Real Time with a comic opening monologue based upon current events and other topical issues. He proceeds to a one-on-one interview with a guest, either in-studio or via satellite. Following the interview, Maher sits with three panelists, usually consisting of pundits, authors, activists and journalists, for a discussion of the week's events. In the segment "New Rules" at the end of each show, Maher delivers a humorous editorial on popular culture and American politics.

In late May 2005, Alabama Congressman Spencer Bachus sent a letter to Time Warner's board of directors requesting Real Time be cancelled after remarks Maher made after noting the military had missed its recruiting goals by 42 percent. Bachus said he felt the comments were demeaning to the military and treasonous. Maher stated his highest regard and support for the troops and asked why the congressman criticized him instead of doing something about the recruitment problem.^[21]

Real Time has earned widespread praise. It has been nominated for more than ten Primetime Emmy Awards and six Writer's Guild awards. In 2007, Maher and his co-producers were awarded the Television Producer of the Year Award in Variety Television by the Producers Guild of America.^[22] Maher holds the record for the most Emmy nominations without a win, having been nominated on 22 occasions and not winning once. Eleven of the nominations were for Politically Incorrect, while nine were for Real Time. The other two were nominations for two of his HBO comedy specials: Bill Maher: I'm Swiss and Bill Maher: The Decider.^[23]

HBO announced in July 2011 the show was renewed for a tenth season.^[24]

Christine O'Donnell[link]

On September 17, 2010, Maher aired a clip of Delaware Republican Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell from the October 29, 1999 episode of his old show Politically Incorrect on his current show Real Time with Bill Maher,^[25][26] where she discussed that she had "dabbled in witchcraft." This was one of the most notable of numerous controversial statements by O'Donnell that made her the most covered candidate in the 2010 mid-term election cycle.^[27][28]

Political commentator[link]

Maher is a frequent commentator on various cable news networks, namely CNN, MSNBC, and HLN. Maher has regularly appeared on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer^[29] and has also been a frequent guest on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews,^[30] The Rachel Maddow Show^[31] and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.^[32] Maher has also appeared as a guest on HLN's The Joy Behar Show.^[33]