Three major groups of indigenous peoples constituted the earliest inhabitants of present-day Mississippi. The largest of these groups, the Choctaw, numbered approximately 20,000 and were located primarily in the southern and central part of the state. The other two groups were the Natchez, who numbered about 4,500 and were centred in southwestern Mississippi, and the Chickasaw, who had a population of about 5,000 and ranged from their principal villages in the northeastern part of the state into what are now Tennessee and Kentucky. The Natchez were virtually annihilated during a war with the French garrison at Fort Rosalie (now the city of Natchez) in 1729–31, and the Choctaw and Chickasaw were eventually removed from Mississippi to the Oklahoma territory via the infamous Trail of Tears in the 1830s.

Some 130 years later a small group of French Canadians sailed down the Mississippi River and immediately recognized its commercial and strategic importance. In 1699 a French expedition led by Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville established France’s claim to the lower Mississippi valley. French settlements were soon established at Fort Maurepas, Mobile, Biloxi, Fort Rosalie, and New Orleans.

The original Mississippi Territory created by the U.S. Congress in 1798 was a strip of land extending about 100 miles (160 km) north to south and from the Mississippi River to the Chattahoochee on the Georgia border. The territory was increased in 1804 and 1812 to reach from Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1817 the western part achieved statehood as Mississippi (the eastern part became the state of Alabama in 1819). Natchez, the first territorial capital, was replaced in 1802 by nearby Washington, which in turn was replaced by Jackson in 1822.

Artillery captured at the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, during the American Civil War.

Courtesy Meserve-Kunhardt Collection

Throughout the period of Reconstruction (1865–77) following the Civil War and for more than a decade afterward, Mississippi’s former slaves and their former owners grappled with the political, social, and economic consequences of emancipation. The white minority could not or would not accept a biracial society based on equality of opportunity. In 1890 the ruling elite adopted a constitution that both institutionalized a system of racial segregation and established an economic order that kept the black population in a position of dependency. Mississippians had hoped to find economic recovery in the coming of industry and the railroads, but the hope was only partially realized. Emancipation had given the former slaves freedom of mobility, but most remained in the state and eventually were absorbed into the system of tenant farming, by which they were basically given rights to cultivate land in exchange for a share of the product. The continued economic interdependence of the black and white communities kept intact many of the social customs and traditions that had developed before the war.

New Albany, Miss.

New Albany, Miss., c. 1900.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Tupelo, Miss., U.S.: cotton mill

Cotton mill in Tupelo, Miss., U.S., 1911; photograph by Lewis Hine.

National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-nclc-02049)

Yazoo City, Miss., U.S.: yarn mills

Overseer supervising a girl operating a bobbin-winding machine at the Yazoo City Yarn Mills, Yazoo City, Miss., U.S., 1911; photograph by Lewis Hine.

National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-nclc-02093)

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional. That decision was followed by years of legal attacks against racial segregation and by large-scale registration of Southern black voters. In 1955 Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was brutally murdered in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman in a local grocery store, and his white murderers were acquitted of the crime; this event jolted the country and further fueled the movement for civil rights. White Mississippians reacted to black protests, marches, and demonstrations with increasing violence during the early 1960s. In 1962, state officials defied a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ordered the admission of a black student, James H. Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. Following a night of rioting during which two people were killed, Meredith was admitted and the colour barrier was officially broken in Mississippi. The violence continued, however, with the most serious incident occurring during the “long, hot summer” of 1964, when the Ku Klux Klan murdered three young civil rights workers—two white and one black—and deposited their bodies in a partially finished dam near the town of Philadelphia, Miss.

After accommodating themselves to the major social changes of the mid-20th century, Mississippians could at last turn their attention and energy to the development of the state’s human and natural resources. By the 1970s, economic development was proceeding at a moderate but steady pace. Out-migration of white Mississippians had virtually ceased, and among the black population it had declined significantly. Although per capita income remained below the national average, it had risen substantially as a result of urbanization, industrialization, and the decline in agricultural employment.

John N. Burrus David G. Sansing