Mississippi

Paleo-Indians arrived in present-day Mississippi about 12,000 years ago. The Mississippian culture began about AD 700, and its people built earthen mounds; Emerald Mound near Natchez was built between 1250 and 1600.⁠[1]

When Europeans arrived, three main Indigenous peoples lived in the region: the Choctaw, about 20,000 people mainly in southern and central Mississippi; the Natchez, about 4,500 people centred in the southwest; and the Chickasaw, about 5,000 people whose principal villages lay in the northeast and extended into present-day TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state in the southeast-central United States, with its capital at Nashville. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 6,910,840 residents.Open the full entry and KentuckyKentuckyKentucky is a U.S. state bordered by Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to the north, West Virginia and Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south and Missouri to the west; its capital is Frankfort and its largest city is Louisville. It entered the Union on June 1, 1792, as the 15th state and the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains, and had a population of 4,505,836 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry.⁠[2][1]

In 1540 the expedition of the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed northern Mississippi and wintered along the Pontotoc Ridge, reaching the Mississippi River the following spring. Finding no gold or silver, Spain turned its attention elsewhere.⁠[2][1]

In 1682 René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, claimed the land for France. In 1699 the expedition of Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d’Iberville, claimed the lower Mississippi valley for France and built Fort Maurepas on Biloxi Bay, and Biloxi was settled as part of French Louisiana; in 1716 Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville established Fort Rosalie at Natchez.⁠[1][2][3]

In a war with the French garrison at Fort Rosalie (now Natchez) in 1729–1731, the Natchez people were nearly wiped out.⁠[2]

When the French and Indian War ended in 1763, France ceded its lands east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans, to Great Britain. Britain divided FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, with West Florida lying between the Apalachicola and Mississippi rivers; Fort Rosalie was renamed Fort Panmure, the Natchez District was created within West Florida, and Natchez thrived in the early 1770s. Around 1773 English settlers set up the first schools in the Natchez and Vicksburg areas.⁠[2][1]

During the American Revolution Spain regained Florida and occupied Natchez. The northern part of the region was ceded to the United States in 1783, and the Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty) with Spain in 1795 set the 31st parallel as the boundary between Spanish Florida and the United States, although Spain held Natchez until 1798.⁠[2][3][4]

On April 7, 1798, Congress organized Mississippi Territory from land ceded by Georgia and South Carolina. The territory was about 100 miles (160 kilometres) from north to south and ran from the Mississippi River east to the Chattahoochee River on the Georgia border; in 1804 its northern boundary was extended to the Tennessee line, and in 1812 President James Madison annexed land along the Gulf Coast, so that it stretched from Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico.⁠[5][2][4]

Winthrop Sargent, a Federalist from MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, was the first of the territory’s four governors, and his laws were known as “Sargent’s Codes.” Natchez was the territory’s most important town and its seat of political power; after Sargent’s removal the capital moved to nearby Washington in 1802. The population rose from about 10,000 to just over 30,000 between 1798 and 1812, and the enslaved population grew from about 4,000 in 1798 to about 70,000 in 1817; by statehood the total exceeded 200,000, more than a third of whom were enslaved.⁠[4][2]

On March 1, 1817, President James Madison signed the enabling act under which the western part of the territory would become the state of Mississippi, while the eastern part was organized as Alabama Territory. In July 1817 forty-seven delegates from fourteen counties met at Washington under territorial governor David Holmes; the constitution, signed on August 15, 1817, took effect without being submitted to voters and named Natchez the state capital. Holmes was elected the first governor in September 1817.⁠[6][4]

President James Monroe signed the resolution admitting Mississippi, and the territory ceased to exist. The next day, December 11, 1817, Walter Leake and Thomas Hill Williams took the oath as the state’s first U.S. senators, Leake drawing Class 2 and Williams Class 3. The eastern part of the former territory entered the Union as AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a U.S. state in the Southeast on the Gulf of Mexico, with its capital at Montgomery. It was admitted to the Union on December 14, 1819, as the 22nd state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 5,024,279 residents.Open the full entry in 1819.⁠[5][6]

Between 1820 and 1830 the Choctaw surrendered their lands, and most were forced to move to Indian Territory; the Chickasaw ceded their lands in 1832. In the 1830s the Choctaw and Chickasaw were removed westward along the Trail of Tears.⁠[1][2]

In 1822 the state capital moved to Jackson.⁠[1][2]

Mississippi’s great cotton era began in 1806, and by the 1830s enslaved labour had made it one of the wealthiest states. In this slavery-based cotton economy, large landholders largely backed the Whig Party.⁠[1][2]

In 1832, about fifteen years after the first constitution, Mississippi wrote a new constitution to replace it.⁠[7]

On January 9, 1861, Mississippi became the second state, after South Carolina, to secede from the Union. On January 21 Jefferson Davis of Wilkinson County gave his farewell speech in the U.S. Senate, and he went on to serve as president of the Confederacy. In the Civil War the 1863 Vicksburg campaign was especially destructive, and the Union capture of Vicksburg became a turning point of the war; by its end the state was economically ruined.⁠[5][1][3][2]

After defeat in the Civil War, Mississippi wrote and adopted its third constitution in 1868, which renounced slavery and gave formerly enslaved people basic civil rights. Mississippi was readmitted to the Union in 1870, and on February 25, 1870, Hiram Revels took the oath as the first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate; he and Adelbert Ames were the state’s first two senators after its readmission to representation. Reconstruction lasted until 1877.⁠[7][1][5][2]

On February 14, 1879, Blanche Kelso Bruce of Mississippi became the only former slave ever to preside over the U.S. Senate.⁠[5]

The current constitution was adopted on November 1, 1890, and has since been amended. It institutionalized racial segregation and the economic dependency of the Black population, and restrictive measures such as literacy tests and poll taxes kept most Black citizens from voting; from the end of Reconstruction into the late 1940s the Democratic Party was essentially the only party in the state. Most formerly enslaved people stayed in Mississippi and became tenant farmers.⁠[8][2][1]

In 1894 the Legislature, on the recommendation of Governor John M. Stone, approved a flag of blue, white, and red bars with the Confederate battle flag in the upper left canton, and it declared a coat of arms. An earlier flag, with a white field, a magnolia in the centre, and a blue upper left corner, had been approved by the state convention in 1861 and served as the state flag from 1861 to 1865.⁠[9][10]

Mississippi endured the Mississippi River flood of 1927 and the Great Depression. An industrial programme was adopted in 1936, and in 1965 industrial employment surpassed agricultural employment for the first time.⁠[1]

In 1955 the Reverend George Lee was shot and killed in Belzoni for urging Black residents of the Mississippi Delta to vote, and no one was charged; in August of that year Lamar Smith was shot on the courthouse lawn in Brookhaven for the same reason, and his killer went free. In 1961 the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) was formed as an umbrella group of SNCC, CORE, the SCLC, the NAACP, and local groups, focusing on voter registration; on September 25, 1961, Herbert Lee was shot and killed in Liberty by the state legislator E. H. Hurst, who was never charged.⁠[11][12]

In 1962 James Meredith was admitted to the University of Mississippi after a night of rioting in which two people were killed. In 1963 COFO opened its state headquarters on John R. Lynch Street in Jackson, and nearly 80,000 African Americans cast ballots in that year’s Freedom Vote; that year Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP, was shot dead in the driveway of his Jackson home by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens Council.⁠[1][12][11]

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was formed in April 1964. During that summer’s Freedom Summer, volunteers, mostly white college students from northern states, joined voter registration efforts and helped set up freedom schools and community centres. The civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were arrested in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and then murdered by Klansmen with the complicity of a deputy sheriff; their bodies were found under an earthen dam weeks later. An all-white jury acquitted the seven accused, but later federal charges led to sentences of two to ten years. That year the MFDP’s 64 delegates challenged the all-white state delegation at the Democratic National Convention and rejected an offer of two seats.⁠[12][11]

The call for Black Power was first made in Greenwood in 1966. In 1969 the state’s schools were desegregated under a federal court order, and Charles Evers became mayor of Fayette, the first African American mayor in the state’s history.⁠[12][1][3]

In May 2000 the state Supreme Court ruled that Mississippi had no official coat of arms, and on February 7, 2001, Governor Ronnie Musgrove signed Senate Bill 2285 making the coat of arms official. In a referendum that year more than sixty percent of voters chose to keep the 1894 flag.⁠[10][9][1]

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina heavily damaged Gulfport and Biloxi.⁠[1]

On June 27, 2020, the Legislature approved a rules change allowing consideration of a new flag (House 84–35, Senate 36–14), and House Bill 1796, introduced the next day, passed the House 92–23 and the Senate 37–14. The bill created a commission to design a new flag, required “In God We Trust” on any design, barred the Confederate emblem, and repealed the law making the 1894 flag official. Governor Tate Reeves signed it on June 30, and on July 1 the 1894 flag was lowered for the last time and delivered to the Museum of Mississippi History.⁠[13][10]

The commission invited public submissions on July 13, 2020, and received nearly 3,000. The “In God We Trust” design, originally called the “New Magnolia Flag,” led by Rocky Vaughan with Sue Anna Joe, Kara Giles, and Dominique Pugh, was approved by voters on November 3, 2020. The House passed House Bill 1 by 119–1 on January 5, 2021, and the Senate by 43–7 on January 6; on January 11 the governor signed it at the Two Mississippi Museums and then, with Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn, raised the new flag at the State Capitol. The flag shows a magnolia surrounded by twenty white stars, for Mississippi as the twentieth state, and one gold star honouring the Native Americans who first settled the land, on a navy field bearing “In God We Trust,” flanked by red panels separated from the blue by gold stripes.⁠[10][14][13]

On April 26, 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 census apportionment results. Mississippi kept 4 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the same as after the 2010 census, with an average of 740,979 people per seat, giving it 6 electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[15][16][17]

The Mississippi Legislature consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives, with 52 and 122 districts respectively; members serve four-year terms, and sessions begin each January. The governor serves a four-year term and may be re-elected for one additional term; the lieutenant governor, also elected for four years, presides over the Senate and votes to break ties. The secretary of state, attorney general, state auditor, state treasurer, commissioner of agriculture and commerce, commissioner of insurance, and public service and transportation commissioners are also elected.⁠[8][18]

As of November 2026 the governor is Tate Reeves, Mississippi’s 65th governor, a former state treasurer and 32nd lieutenant governor, who delivered his second inaugural address on January 9, 2024; the lieutenant governor is Delbert Hosemann.⁠[19][20][21]

The Supreme Court has nine elected justices, three from each of three Supreme Court districts, serving staggered eight-year terms; the Court of Appeals, established in 1994, has ten judges, also serving eight-year terms. There are 20 chancery court districts and 22 circuit court districts, whose judges serve four-year terms.⁠[8]

Mississippi faces Arkansas and LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state in the southern United States on the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas; its capital is Baton Rouge and its largest city is New Orleans. It entered the Union on April 30, 1812, as the 18th state, and had a population of 4,657,757 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry across the Mississippi River to the west and borders Alabama to the east and Tennessee to the north, with 88 miles (142 kilometres) of coastline in the southeast. The state lies in the Gulf Coastal Plain and consists mostly of lowlands and low rolling hills; its narrow coast faces the shallow Mississippi Sound and its barrier islands. The 26-mile (42-kilometre) beach from Biloxi to Henderson Point is the longest artificial beach in the United States.⁠[1][22]

In the Census Bureau’s state area measurements (boundaries as of January 1, 2010), Mississippi has a total area of 48,432 square miles (125,438 square kilometres), of which 46,923 square miles (121,531 square kilometres) is land and 1,509 square miles (3,907 square kilometres) is water, comprising 769 square miles (1,992 square kilometres) of inland water, 616 square miles (1,596 square kilometres) of coastal water, and 123 square miles (318 square kilometres) of territorial water.⁠[23]

The highest point is Woodall Mountain near Iuka in the Tishomingo Hills of the northeast, at 806 feet (246 metres), and the lowest is sea level along the Mississippi Sound. The main regions are the Pine Belt (Piney Woods), the Northern Hills, the Gulf Coast, and the Yazoo Basin (Delta), with the Loess Bluff a distinct landform. The Mississippi and its tributaries the Yazoo, Big Black, and Homochitto drain the west, the Tennessee River basin covers the northeastern corner, and the Pearl, Pascagoula, and Tombigbee flow south to the Gulf. The Delta between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers holds more than 6,200 square miles (16,000 square kilometres) of very fertile black soil, protected by levees and reservoirs but still at risk of flooding.⁠[1][22]

The climate is humid subtropical, with average temperatures of 82 °F in July and 48 °F in January; annual rainfall is about 50 inches in the north and about 61 inches on the Gulf Coast. The growing season is about 270 days on the coast and 200 days in the northeast, and the hurricane season runs from June to October.⁠[22][1]

The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimate put Mississippi’s population at 2,954,160 on July 1, 2025, down 0.2% from the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 2,961,264; population density in 2020 was 63.1 people per square mile.⁠[24]

In QuickFacts population estimates, 22.3% of residents were under 18 and 19.3% were 65 or older; 58.0% were White alone, 36.8% Black alone, 0.8% American Indian and Alaska Native alone, 1.4% Asian alone, 4.6% Hispanic or Latino, and 54.7% White alone, not Hispanic or Latino. In American Community Survey data for 2020–2024, 2.4% of residents were foreign-born, 25.1% of people aged 25 and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher, median household income was $56,447, and 17.8% of people were in poverty. In the 2020 census African Americans made up about 36% of the population, the highest percentage of any state.⁠[24][1]

The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is the state’s only federally recognized Native American group, with reservation lands in 10 counties. Gulfport and Biloxi are Gulf resort and seafood centres, Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis Presley, Greenville and Vicksburg are major Mississippi River ports, and Southaven and Olive Branch are suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee.⁠[1]

Mississippi’s nominal GDP (all industry total, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data) was $162,824.8 million in 2025, $156,405.5 million in 2024, and $151,254.3 million in 2023.⁠[25]

Manufacturing and services are the largest sectors, and agriculture now makes up a tiny share; manufacturing accounted for about one-sixth of gross state product in the early 21st century. Nissan opened an assembly plant in 2003 and Toyota a facility in 2011. Livestock provides most farm income, the state is a leading producer of broiler chickens and eggs, and cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice remain major crops; Mississippi is a national leader in farm-raised catfish, and menhaden, shrimp, and oysters bring in the most fishing income. Casinos operate on the coast, in Natchez, Vicksburg, and Tunica County, and the Choctaw operate casinos near Philadelphia; the John C. Stennis Space Center tests NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry rocket engines.⁠[1]

The first public schools for African Americans were organized in 1862, a uniform public school system was established in 1870, the 1890 constitution created the state department of education, rural high schools began in 1910, and school districts were reorganized in 1953. The main public universities include the University of Mississippi in Oxford (with its medical centre in Jackson), Mississippi State University in Starkville, the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Jackson State University, Delta State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, and Alcorn State University near Lorman, the first land-grant college for African American students in the United States.⁠[1]

Writers from Mississippi include William Faulkner, winner of the 1949 Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry in Literature, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, and Richard Ford. The Mississippi Delta is the birthplace of the most influential style of the blues, with the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, the B.B. King Museum in Indianola, and the Howlin’ Wolf Blues Museum in West Point, while Greenville and Clarksdale host the Mississippi Delta Blues & Heritage Festival and the Juke Joint Festival. The first dramatic production west of the Allegheny Mountains was staged in Natchez in 1800; the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel was the state’s first art museum, and Jackson is home to the Two Mississippi Museums.⁠[1]

The state’s name shares an Ojibwa origin with the “great river” on its western side, which French explorers recorded far upstream in 1666 as “Messipi.” “Virtute et Armis,” suggested by James Rhea Preston, has appeared on the coat of arms since 1894, but the Legislature has never formally adopted it as a motto. The Great Seal has been in use since statehood in 1817, and in 2014 the Legislature added “In God We Trust” to it.⁠[22][10]

The magnolia is both state flower and state tree: it won 12,745 of 23,278 ballots in a 1900 schoolchildren’s vote and was designated the state flower by the 1952 Legislature. The state bird is the mockingbird (1944), the fish the largemouth bass (1974), and the reptile the American alligator (2005). English was designated the official language in 1987. “One Mississippi” by Steve Azar became the state song under House Bill 453, signed on April 14, 2022; the blueberry and the opal were named state fruit and gemstone in 2023, and the American Quarter Horse and Kemp’s ridley sea turtle became state horse and state turtle in 2024.⁠[10]

MS.GOV: Official website: https://www.ms.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

Office of Governor Tate Reeves: Official website: https://governorreeves.ms.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

Mississippi Secretary of State: Official website: https://www.sos.ms.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Mississippi Department of Archives and History: Official website: https://www.mdah.ms.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]