Coordinates	50°59′27″N20°26′30″N
name	Mississippi
fullname	State of Mississippi
flag	Flag of Mississippi.svg
bird	Mockingbird
tree	Magnolia
flower	Magnolia Blossom
flaglink	Flag
seal	Mississippi-StateSeal.svg
seallink	Seal
map	Map of USA MS.svg
nickname	The Magnolia State; The Hospitality State
motto	Virtute et armis
mottoenglish	By Valor and Arms
former	Mississippi Territory
demonym	Mississippian
capital	Jackson
officiallang	English
largestcity	capital
largest metro	Jackson metropolitan area
governor	Haley Barbour (R)
lieutenant governor	Phil Bryant (R)
legislature	Mississippi Legislature
upperhouse	State Senate
lowerhouse	House of Representatives
senators	Thad Cochran (R)Roger Wicker (R)
Representative	3 Republicans, 1 Democrat
postalabbreviation	MS
tradabbreviation	Miss.
arearank	32nd
totalareaus	48,430
totalarea	125,443
landareaus	46,952
landarea	121,607
waterareaus	1,521
waterarea	3,940
pcwater	3%
poprank	31st
2000pop (old)	2,910,540
2000pop	2,967,297 (2010 US Census)
densityrank	32nd
2000densityus	60.7
2000density	23.42
Medianhouseholdincome	$36,338
incomerank	50th
admittanceorder	20th
admittancedate	December 10, 1817
timezone	Central: UTC-6/-5
latitude	30° 12′ N to 35° N
longitude	88° 06′ W to 91° 39′ W
widthus	170
width	275
lengthus	340
length	545
highestpoint	Woodall Mountain
highestelevus	806
highestelev	246
meanelevus	300
meanelev	91
lowestpoint	Gulf of Mexico
lowestelevus	0
lowestelev	0
isocode	US-MS
website	www.mississippi.gov }}

Mississippi () 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"). The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area, and its catfish aquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States. The state symbol is the magnolia grandiflora tree.

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 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:

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

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 50,000 (United States Census Bureau estimates as of 2008): #Jackson (173,861) #Gulfport (70,055) #Hattiesburg (51,993)

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 20,000 but fewer than 50,000 (United States Census Bureau estimates as of 2008):

Biloxi (45,670) Southaven (44,076) Meridian (38,232) Tupelo (36,233) Greenville (35,764)

Olive Branch (31,830) Clinton (26,313) Vicksburg (24,974) Horn Lake (24,669) Pearl (24,400)

Starkville (24,187) Columbus (23,798) Pascagoula (23,609) Brandon (22,160) Ridgeland (21,509)

Mississippi City Population Rankings of at least 10,000 but fewer than 20,000 (United States Census Bureau estimates as of 2008):

Laurel (18,693) Clarksdale (18,006) Madison (17,681) Oxford (17,265) Ocean Springs (17,149) Natchez (16,413) Gautier (16,306) Greenwood (16,084)

Grenada (14,664) Corinth (14,253) Moss Point (13,951) McComb (13,684) Brookhaven (13,296) Canton (12,520) Hernando (12,318) Long Beach (12,234)

Cleveland (12,218) Picayune (11,787) Yazoo City (11,425) West Point (11,292) Indianola (10,805) Petal (10,575)

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

Climate

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.

City

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Gulfport

Jackson

Meridian

Tupelo

Ecology

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

Flooding

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 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 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, and struggling to get established. 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 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. 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.

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. Nonetheless, the region was again flooded. Property, stock and crops all experiencing millions of dollars in damages due to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The most damage was in the lower Delta, including Washington and Bolivar counties.

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 levees have changed the nature of the river, removing the natural protection of wetlands and forest cover. The state and federal governments have been struggling for the best approaches to restoring some natural habitats in order to best interact with the original riverine ecology.

History

Nearly 10,000 B.C. Native Americans or Paleo-Indians arrived in what today is referred to as the South. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 developed.

White legislators created a new constitution in 1890, with 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. The loss of political influence contributed to the difficulties of African Americans in their attempts to obtain extended credit. 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. 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, consequent to provisions of the state constitution, which had been in place since 1890. 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.

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. Repeal occurred after then 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."

The state repealed its ban on interracial marriage (miscegenation) in 1987 (which the United States Supreme Court had ruled unconstitutional in 1967), and repealed 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 that had been enacted in 1964 but ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by federal courts. Republican Governor Haley Barbour signed the bill into law.

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

According to the 2010 US Census, Mississippi has a population of 2,967,297. Mississippi's population has a sizable proportion of African Americans, approximately 37% percent.

The 2000 Census reported Mississippi's population as 2,844,658. The center of population of Mississippi is located in Leake County, in the town of Lena.

Ethnic makeup and ancestry

The Census Bureau considers race and Hispanic ethnicity to be two separate categories. These data, however, are only for non-Hispanic members of each group: non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, etc. 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; it is estimated that up to 20% of Mississippi's population is of English ancestry and another large percentage of Scottish, 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 early 18th century. For more information on race and the Census, see here. On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed between the U.S. Government and Native American Choctaws. The Choctaws agreed to selling their traditional homelands in Mississippi and Alabama with just compensation, which opened it up for European-American immigrant settlement. Article 14 in the treaty allowed the Choctaws to remain in the state of Mississippi and to become the ''first'' major non-European ethnic group to become U.S. citizens. Today approximately 9,500 Choctaws live in Neshoba, Newton, Leake, and Jones counties. Federally recognized tribes include the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

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 to leave segregation and disfranchisement, and for better economic opportunities in the northern and western states, Mississippi's 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 higher birth rate than the state average. 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 the group owned land as farmers or worked on cotton plantations and farms.

According to the 2000 census, the largest ancestries 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.

Religion

Under French and Spanish rule beginning in the 17th century, the few Europeans in what is now Mississippi were Roman Catholics. The prosperity after 1815 brought in tens of thousands of European-American settlers each year, though few were Catholic. Due to such migration, there was rapid growth in Protestant churches, especially Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist. In 2000 the Southern Baptist Convention was the largest religious denomination in the state with 916,440 adherents, followed by the United Methodist Church with 240,576 and the Roman Catholic Church with 115,760.

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 African Americans.

In the post-Civil War years, religion became even more influential as the South became known as the ''"Bible Belt"''. 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. Prohibition, especially, was the favorite weapon to attack sin.

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; both sides cited religious reasons for their viewpoints. The end of Jim Crow led to the reintegration of some churches, but most today remain all black or all white. Since the 1970s, fundamentalist conservative churches have grown rapidly, fueling Mississippi's conservative political trends.

Other religions have a small presence in Mississippi, as by 2000, there were 3900 Muslims, 1400 Jews and 811 Bahá'í.

Same-sex couples

The 2000 United States Census counted 4,774 same-sex unmarried-partner households in Mississippi. Of these, 2,251 are male partner households and 2,523 are female partner households. 41% contained at least one child. South Dakota and Utah were the only other states in which 40 percent or more of same-sex couple households had at least one child living in the household. 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.

The 2010 United States Census counted 6,286 same-sex unmarried-partner households, or 5.6 same-sex couples per 1,000 households, in Mississippi. Of these, 4,231 - or 67% - are female partner households and 2,055 - or 33% - are male partner households. 2,077 - or 33% - of the same-sex households were raising at least one child making Mississippi number one in same-sex child rearing. The 2010 Census shows that the top five cities in the state with more than 50 same-sex couple households are Hattiesburg, Jackson, Natchez, Biloxi and Tupelo. The top five counties in the state with more than 50 same-sex couple households are Hancock, Marshall, Hinds, Adams and Itawamba.

Health and public safety

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. 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 obese. 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. In a 2008 study of African American women, contributing risk factors were shown to be: lack of knowledge about body mass index (BMI), dietary behavior, physical activity and lack of social support, defined as motivation and encouragement by friends. 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.

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. 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. A 2006 survey found nearly 95 percent of Mississippi adults considered childhood obesity to be a serious problem.

Economy

The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Mississippi's total state product in 2006 was $84 billion. 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. A 2009 report by the American Legislative Exchange Council ranked Mississippi as having the 19th best economic outlook of all U.S. states.

Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by cotton plantations along the rivers. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. Despite the state's building and reinforcing levees for years, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 broke through and caused massive flooding of 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. An estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue was lost following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several coastal casinos in August 2005. In 2007, Mississippi had the third largest gambling revenue of any state, behind New Jersey and Nevada. Federally recognized Native American tribes have established gaming casinos on their reservations, which are yielding revenue to support education and economic development.

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 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.

Mississippi collects personal income tax in three tax brackets, ranging from 3% to 5%. The retail sales tax rate in Mississippi is 7%. Additional local sales taxes also are collected. For purposes of assessment for ad valorem taxes, taxable property is divided into five classes.

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. The state had a median household income of $34,473.

As of January 2010, the state's unemployment rate is 10.9%.

Federal subsidies and spending

Despite 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 still 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.

A proportion of federal spending in Mississippi is directed toward large federal installations such as Camp Shelby, John C. Stennis Space Center, and Keesler Air Force Base, in a state with a relatively low population density and one of the lowest proportions of urban dwellers. In addition, 2005 was the year that Hurricane Katrina's unusually high storm surge devastated the Mississippi coast, and its winds struck much further inland than a typical hurricane.

Law and government

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 Haley Barbour (R). The Lieutenant Governor, currently Phil Bryant (R), is elected on a separate ballot. Both the governor and lieutenant governor are elected to four-year terms of office. Unlike the federal government, but like many other U.S. States, most of the heads of major executive departments are elected by the citizens of Mississippi rather than appointed by the governor.

Mississippi is one of 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. Thus, the last year when Mississippi elected a Governor was 2007, and the next gubernatorial election will occur in 2011.

Laws

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.

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."

Transportation

Road

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.

Mississippi is served by nine interstate highways: {| style="width:500px;" |- valign = top | | |}

and fourteen main U.S. Routes: {| style="width:500px;" |- valign = top | | |}

as well as a system of State Highways.

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

In 2011, Mississippi was tied with Colorado to be a top-five deadliest U.S. state for debris/litter–caused vehicle accidents per total number of registered vehicles and population size. Figures derived from the NHTSA showed at least 19 persons in Mississippi were killed each year in motor vehicle collisions with non-fixed objects, including debris, dumped litter, animals and their carcasses.

Rail

Passenger

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

Freight

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

Major rivers

Mississippi River

Big Black River

Pascagoula River

Pearl River

Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway

Yazoo River

Major bodies of water

Arkabutla Lake – of water; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District Bay Springs Lake – of water and of shoreline; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Grenada Lake – of water; became operational in 1954; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District Ross Barnett Reservoir – Named for Ross Barnett, the 52nd Governor of Mississippi; 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 – of water; became operational in October 1940; constructed and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District

Education

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.

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.

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.

Culture

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.

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

Musicians of the state's Delta region were historically significant to the development of the blues. Their laments arose out of the region's hard times after Reconstruction. Although by the end of the 19th century, two-thirds of the farm owners were black, continued low prices for cotton and national financial pressures resulted in most of them losing their land. More problems built up with the boll weevil infestation, when thousands of agricultural jobs were lost. Many Mississippi musicians migrated to Chicago and created new forms of jazz and other genres there.

Jimmie Rodgers, 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 are "Ground Zero" and "Madidi", 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 and Afroman, Mississippi musicians have been significant in all genres.

''(see: List of people from Mississippi)''

Sports

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

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, Thomas Harris, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, and Richard Wright, Charlaine Harris

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, 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, Randy Houser, and Tammy Wynette

Cultural references

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.

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."

On January 8, 1935, Elvis Aaron Presley was born in Tupelo.

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.

See also

Gulf of Mexico

List of National Register of Historic Places in Mississippi

List of people from Mississippi

U.S. state

References

External links

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.

Mississippi Travel and Tourism

Mississippi Development Authority

The "Mississippi Believe It" Campaign

Mississippi State Facts

University Press of Mississippi

Mississippi as Metaphor State, Region, and Nation in Historical Imagination," ''Southern Spaces'', 23 October 2006.

==Related information==

Category:States of the United States Category:States of the Confederate States of America Category:States of the Southern United States Category:States and territories established in 1817 Category:Former British colonies

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Coordinates	50°59′27″N20°26′30″N
name	James Meredith
birth date	June 25, 1933
birth place	Kosciusko, Mississippi
known for	becoming the first black student at the University of Mississippi
education	University of Mississippi; Columbia Law School, LL.B. }}

James H. Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights movement figure. He was the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement. Motivated by the broadcast of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address (which did not mention civil rights ''per se'') Meredith decided to exercise his democratic rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. Meredith's goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration as to the issue.

Entrance to the University of Mississippi

Meredith was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi of Native American (Choctaw) and Black American heritage. He enlisted in the United States Air Force immediately after high school and served from 1951 to 1960. He attended Jackson State University for two years, then applied to the University of Mississippi, saying that he wanted to make this move in the interest of his country, race, family, and himself. Meredith stated, "Nobody handpicked me...I believed, and believe now, that I have a Divine Responsibility... I am familiar with the probable difficulties involved in such a move as I am undertaking and I am fully prepared to pursue it all the way to a degree from the University of Mississippi." However, even after all the trouble he went through he was denied twice. On May 31, 1961, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a suit in the U.S. District Court alleging that the color of his skin was the only reason for Meredith not being accepted into the university. The case went through many hearings and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that he had the right to be admitted. Though Meredith was now allowed to register as a student at the school, the Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, attempted to block his entrance by having the Legislature pass a law that “prohibited any person who was convicted of a state crime from admission to a state school.” This law was directed at Meredith, who had been convicted of “false voter registration.”

A deal was finally reached between the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Governor Barnett and Meredith was allowed to attend the university. On October 1, 1962, he became the first black student at the University of Mississippi, after being barred from entering on September 20. His enrollment sparked riots on the Oxford campus, and required enforcement by U.S. Marshals. They were supported by the 70th Army Engineer Combat Battalion from Ft Campbell, Kentucky, who created a tent camp and kitchen for the US Marshalls. Thereafter, (federal) U.S. Army military police from the 503rd Military Police Battalion were sent in by President John F. Kennedy. Troops from Mississippi Army National Guard and U.S. Border Patrol were also called in, as well. The riots led to a violent clash which left two people dead, including French journalist Paul Guihard, on assignment for the London ''Daily Sketch'', who was found behind the Lyceum building with a gunshot wound to the back. 160 soldiers were injured, and 28 U.S. Marshals were wounded by gunfire. Barnett was fined $10,000 and sentenced to jail for contempt, but the charges were later dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bob Dylan sang about the incident in his song "Oxford Town". Meredith's actions are regarded as a pivotal moment in the history of civil rights in the United States. He graduated on August 18, 1963 with a degree in political science.

Many students harassed Meredith during his two semesters on campus. Though the majority of students accepted Meredith's presence, according to first person accounts chronicled in Nadine Cohodas's book ''The Band Played Dixie'', students living in Meredith's dorm bounced basketballs on the floor just above his room through all hours of the night. When Meredith walked into the cafeteria for meals, the students eating would all turn their backs. If Meredith sat at a table with other students, all of whom were white, the students would immediately get up and go to another table.

After graduation

Meredith continued his education, focusing on political science, at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He returned to the United States in 1965. He attended law school through a scholarship at Columbia University. There, Meredith received an LL.B (law degree) in 1968. Meredith ceased being a civil rights activist in the late 1960s.

He organized and led a civil rights march, the March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi on June 6, 1966. This was Meredith's attempt to draw people's attention to black voting rights in the South and to help blacks overcome fear of violence. During this march he was shot by Aubrey James Norvell, who attempted to assassinate Meredith. The photograph of Meredith after being shot won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1967. J. B. Lenoir sings about this incident in the song "Shot on James Meredith".

Politics

Meredith wrote a memoir of his days at the University of Mississippi entitled ''Three Years in Mississippi'', published by the Indiana University Press in 1966, and also self-published several books.

He was an active Republican and served for several years as a domestic advisor on the staff of United States Senator Jesse Helms. Faced with harsh criticism from the civil rights community for this alliance, Meredith said that he wrote every member of the Senate and House offering his services to them in order to gain access to the Library of Congress, and that only Helms replied.

In 1967, Meredith decided he would run against Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., but later withdrew. Meredith described the experience of running for Congress thusly: "The Republican Party [of New York] made me an offer: full support in every way, everything." He had full access to top New York Republicans. He ran against longtime Democratic senator James Eastland in 1972. Meredith conceded that he had little chance of winning unless Governor George Wallace of Alabama entered the race and split the white vote. Had he been elected, he would have been the second black Republican senator elected after Reconstruction.

In 2002, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his desegregation of the University of Mississippi, at the age of 69, Meredith was the proprietor of a small used car lot in Jackson, Mississippi. On the celebration activities surrounding the anniversary he said, "It was an embarrassment for me to be there, and for somebody to celebrate it, oh my God." Around this same time, Meredith was the special guest speaker for a seminar at Mississippi State University. Among other topics, Meredith spoke of his experiences at the school. During a question and answer session, a young white male in attendance stood up and asked Meredith if he had participated in a formal Rush program during his historic tenure at the University of Mississippi. Meredith replied, "Doesn't that have something to do with being in a fraternity?" The young man replied "Yes," and Meredith did not respond further. The audience found humor in Meredith's dismissal of the idea that he, who was accompanied by armed military personnel in order to safely attend the university, would be either allowed to or interested in gaining membership into a fraternity at that time.

Anti-Civil Rights stance

Meredith has characterized himself as an individual American citizen who demanded and received the rights properly extended to any American, not as a participant in the U.S. civil rights movement. There is considerable enmity between Meredith and the organized Civil Rights Movement. Meredith once said that "Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind".

In an interview for CNN, Meredith stated, "I was engaged in a war. I considered myself engaged in a war from Day One. And my objective was to force the federal government—the Kennedy administration at that time—into a position where they would have to use the United States military force to enforce my rights as a citizen".

New awareness was brought to Meredith and his work encouraging desegregation when the film ''Ghosts of Mississippi'' came out in 1996. The film portrayed the life of Medgar Evers, who was Meredith's advisor during the course of the integration of Ole Miss.

Personal life

Meredith was married to Mary June Wiggins Meredith, now deceased. They had one daughter, Jessica Meredith Knight, and three sons: James, John and Joseph Howard Meredith.

In 1989, the junior James Meredith (then 20) was sentenced to one year's house arrest for his role in a 1987 car crash in which two of his co-workers were killed and he suffered serious injuries.

In 2002, Joseph Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi as the most outstanding doctoral student in the School of Business Administration. Joseph had previously earned degrees from Harvard University and Millsaps College. James Meredith said of the occasion, "I think there's no better proof that White supremacy was wrong than not only to have my son graduate, but to graduate as the most outstanding graduate of the school...That, I think, vindicates my whole life." Joseph Meredith died in 2008 at age 39 of complications from lupus. At the time of his death, he was an assistant professor of finance at Texas A&M; International University. He left behind a daughter, Jasmine Victoria.

James Meredith currently lives in Jackson, Mississippi with his second wife, Judy Alsobrook Meredith.

References

Further reading

This book is readily available in the used book market and libraries. This self-published set is quite rare. This book is readily available. Contains revealing interviews with Meredith conducted by the author.

External links

University of Mississippi biography

James Meredith Collection (MUM00293) can be found at the University of Mississippi, Archives and Special Collections.

James Meredith Small Manuscripts (MUM00594) can be found also at the University of Mississippi.

CNN: "Mississippi and Meredith remember"

Associated Press: "Meredith ready to move on"

U.S. Marshals Service and the Integration of the University of Mississippi

BBC On this day in History 1 October 1962

Facsimiles of letters to the Justice Department and Thurgood Marshall from the Kennedy library

James Meredith's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project

James Meredith's website

Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:People from Kosciusko, Mississippi Category:American shooting survivors Category:Racially motivated violence against African Americans Category:American people of Choctaw descent Category:Columbia Law School alumni Category:History of African-American civil rights Category:Jackson State University alumni Category:Ku Klux Klan crimes Category:University of Mississippi alumni Category:Local civil rights history in the United States Category:Mississippi Republicans Category:School desegregation pioneers Category:20th-century African-American activists

ar:جيمس ميريديث de:James Meredith es:James Meredith fr:James Meredith ja:ジェームズ・メレディス pt:James Meredith sv:James Meredith

Coordinates	50°59′27″N20°26′30″N
Birthname	Ross Robert Barnett
Order	52nd
Office	Governor of Mississippi
Term start	January 19, 1960
Term end	January 21, 1964
Lieutenant	Paul B. Johnson, Jr.
Predecessor	James P. Coleman
Successor	Paul B. Johnson, Jr.
Birth date	January 22, 1898
Birth place	Standing Pine, Mississippi
Death date	November 06, 1987
Death place	Jackson, Mississippi
Spouse	Mary Pearl Crawford
Profession	Lawyer
Party	Democratic (Dixiecrat)
Religion	Baptist }}

Ross Robert Barnett (January 22, 1898 November 6, 1987) was the governor of the U.S. state of Mississippi from 1960 to 1964. He was a States' Rights Democrat.

Early life

Born in Standing Pine in Leake County, Barnett was the youngest of ten children of a Confederate veteran. He served in the United States Army during World War I, then worked in a variety of jobs while earning an undergraduate degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1922. Four years later, he followed that with an LL.B. from the University of Mississippi in Oxford. In 1929, he married Mary Pearl Crawford, a schoolteacher, with the couple's long-time union producing two daughters and a son.

Over the next quarter century, Barnett became one of the state's most successful trial lawyers, earning more than $100,000 per year while specializing in damage suits. He often donated his skills to causes, and served as president of the Mississippi Bar Association for two years beginning in 1943.

Political life

Using the income derived from his legal fees, Barnett sought to try his hand at politics, unsuccessfully running twice for Governor of Mississippi, in 1951 and 1955. On his third try in 1959, he won the election and was inaugurated on January 19, 1960. During his term in office he celebrated the centennial of the American Civil War. Barnett travelled to Civil War sites to pay homage to fallen "Sons Of Mississippi".

During his time as governor, Barnett, a staunch segregationist and Democrat, became noted for his tumultuous clashes with the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. While this approach was popular in the state, it was done in part to blunt the criticism he was receiving for a variety of reasons: failing to follow through with promises of jobs for office-seekers; filling those jobs with acquaintances, and attempting to wrest control of state agencies from the legislature.

In 1962, he actively opposed James Meredith's efforts to desegregate his alma mater, the University of Mississippi. As a result, Barnett was fined $10,000 and sentenced to jail for contempt but never paid the fine or served a day in jail. This was because the charges were terminated (civil) and dismissed (criminal) by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, due to "substantial compliance with orders of the court," and "in view of changed circumstances and conditions."

Barnett gave his famous fifteen-word "I Love Mississippi" speech at the University of Mississippi football game in Jackson. Ole Miss Rebels were playing Kentucky Wildcats. 41,000 fans cheered at the stadium waving thousands of Confederate flags. At halftime, a gigantic Confederate flag was unveiled on the field. The crowd shouted "We want Ross"! Barnett went to the field, grabbed the microphone at the 50-yard line and said:

"I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs. I love and respect our heritage."

The crowd went wild. This occurred the night before the riots at Ole Miss' Oxford campus over the admission of Meredith to the university.

The following year, he also actively tried to prevent the Mississippi State University basketball team from playing an NCAA Tournament game against the racially integrated team from Loyola of Chicago. The team defied Barnett by sneaking out of the state and playing the game, which they lost to the eventual national champions.

Barnett's term as governor officially expired on January 21, 1964, with the swearing-in of his successor, Paul B. Johnson, Jr..

Barnett was expected by many to run in the 1964 Democratic presidential primaries as a segregationist candidate against incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson, but he did not. Governor of Alabama George Wallace assumed this role in part, while not running openly against Johnson, but rather testing his popularity.

Shortly after he left office, Barnett's looming presence was clearly evident at the first trial of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith in February 1964. De La Beckwith was on trial for the murder of African American civil rights activist Medgar Evers, but an all-white jury was unable to agree on a verdict in both this and a subsequent re-trial. In the second subsequent re-trial, former Governor Ross Barnett interrupted the proceedings—while Myrlie Evers was testifying—to shake hands with Beckwith. De La Beckwith was eventually convicted at a subsequent trial three decades later, a case that was chronicled in the movie ''Ghosts of Mississippi''.

On March 18, 1966, former Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who frequently conversed by telephone with Barnett during the Meredith crisis in attempts to peacefully secure Meredith's enrollment at Ole Miss, visited the campus. In a speech before more than six thousand students and faculty, Kennedy discussed racial reconciliation and answered questions, including those about his role in Meredith's enrollment. To much laughter from the audience members, he told of a plan in which Barnett had asked that U.S. Marshals point their guns at him while Meredith attempted to enroll so that "a picture could be taken of the event." He also drew laughter by recounting another plan where Meredith would go to Jackson to enroll while Barnett remained in Oxford, "and when Meredith was registered, he (Barnett) would feign surprise." Both plans were approved by Kennedy and failed only because of the development of events. When Kennedy finished his speech and question-and-answer session, he was greeted by a standing ovation.

The next day Barnett bitterly attacked Kennedy's version of events, saying in part:

"It ill becomes a man who never tried a law suit in his life, but who occupied the high position of United States attorney general and who was responsible for using 30,000 troops and spent approximately six million dollars to put one unqualified student in Ole Miss to return to the scene of this crime and discuss any phase of this infamous affair. . . I say to you that Bobby Kennedy is a very sick and dangerous American. We have lots of sick Americans in this country but most of them have a long beard. Bobby Kennedy is a hypocritical, left-wing beatnik without a beard who carelessly and recklessly distorts the facts."

Later life

Barnett attempted a political comeback by running for governor again in 1967 but lost, finishing a distant fourth in the state primary. He then returned to the practice of law, but remained unrepentant about his past, saying, "Generally speaking, I'd do the same things again."

In 2007, his granddaughter, Judith Barnett, was a Democratic candidate for Justice Court judge in Hinds County, District One.

Ross Barnett Reservoir, north of Jackson, Mississippi, is named in his honor, as is Barnett Lake in Smith County, Mississippi.

Footnotes

References

External links

Ross Barnett at Find-A-Grave

Category:1898 births Category:1987 deaths Category:American military personnel of World War I Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Governors of Mississippi Category:Mississippi College alumni Category:Mississippi Democrats Category:Mississippi Dixiecrats Category:People from Leake County, Mississippi Category:United States presidential candidates, 1960 Category:University of Mississippi alumni

de:Ross Barnett la:Ross Robertus Barnett

Coordinates	50°59′27″N20°26′30″N
name	John Clements
birth name	John Selby Clements
birth date	April 25, 1910
birth place	London, England
death date	April 06, 1988
death place	Brighton, East Sussex, England
yearsactive	1935–1982
spouse	Kay Hammond (1946–1980) (her death)Inga Maria Lillemor Ahlgren (1936–1946) (divorced) }}

Sir John Selby Clements, CBE (25 April 1910 – 6 April 1988) was an English actor and producer who worked in theatre, television and film.

Clements attended St Paul's School and St John's College, Cambridge University then worked with Nigel Playfair and afterwards spent a few years in Ben Greet's Shakespearean Company. He made his first stage appearance in 1930. Clements founded the Intimate Theatre at Palmers Green in 1935, which is a combined repertory and try-out theatre. He appeared in almost 200 plays, and presented a number of plays in the West End as actor-manager-producer. He also started his film work in 1933. Clements was the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre from 1966 to 1973.

He married the actress Kay Hammond and together they became a critical success on stage with their West End revival of Noel Coward's play ''Private Lives'' in 1945. In 1952 they both appeared in Clements' own play ''The Happy Marriage'', an adaptation of Jean-Bernard Luc's ''Le Complexe de Philemon''. Clements starred as Edward Moutlon Barrett in the musical Robert and Elizabeth, a successful adaptation of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. His stepson is the actor John Standing.

As a film actor John Clements came to prominence when the film director Victor Saville chose him to star opposite Ralph Richardson in ''South Riding'' (1938). The two actors were reunited in the very successful ''The Four Feathers'' (1939). After this Clements' film career was somewhat intermittent although he made a series of British war films for Ealing Studios and British Aviation Pictures, such as ''Convoy'' (1940), ''Ships with Wings'' (1942), ''Tomorrow We Live'' (1943), and as Yugoslav guerrilla leader Milosh Petrovitch in ''Undercover'' (1943). He had a cameo role (as Advocate General) in ''Gandhi'' (1982).

Clements was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1956 and knighted in 1968.

Filmography

''Once in a New Moon'' (1935)

''The Divine Spark'' (1935)

''Things to Come'' (1936)

''Rembrandt'' (1936)

''Ticket of Leave'' (1936)

''Knight Without Armour'' (1937) as Poushkoff

''I, Claudius'' (1937)

''South Riding'' (1938)

''Housemaster'' (1938)

''Star of the Circus'' (1938)

''The Four Feathers'' (1939) as Harry Faversham

''Convoy'' (1940)

''This England'' (1941)

''Ships with Wings'' (1941)

''Tomorrow We Live'' (1943)

''Undercover'' (1943) as Milosh Petrovitch

''They Came to a City'' (1944)

''Train of Events'' (1949)

''Call of the Blood'' (1949)

''The Silent Enemy'' (1958)

''The Mind Benders'' (1963)

''Oh! What a Lovely War'' (1969)

''Gandhi'' (1982)

References

External links

John Clements archive at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, University of Bristol

Category:Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English theatre managers and producers Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Actors awarded British knighthoods Category:People from Hendon Category:Old Paulines Category:1910 births Category:1988 deaths

de:John Clements