Mississippi
State in southeast USA; nicknamed Magnolia State/Bayou State
Area:
123,600 sq km/47,710 sq mi
Capital:
Jackson
Towns and Cities:
Biloxi, Meridian, Hattiesburg
Physical:
Mississippi, Pearl, and Big Black rivers; Mississippi Delta; Gulf Islands
National Seashore
Features:
Jackson, with many Greek Revival buildings, including the old capitol
building from the 1830s (now the State Historical Museum), City Hall
(1847), the Mississippi Governor's Mansion (1841), and Smith Robertson
Museum (formerly the first public school for black children in the city,
now a museum devoted to black life in the state); Oxford, with Courthouse
Square (including Lafayette County Courthouse), Rowan Oak (1844, the
home of William Faulkner), and the Centre for Study of Southern Culture
in Barnard Observatory (with the world's largest blues archive); Natchez,
with cotton plantation mansions built in the first half of the 19th
century, including Rosalie (1823), Magnolia Hall (1858), Stanton Hall
(1857), and Longwood (1860, the largest octagonal house in the USA);
Vicksburg National Military Park (Civil War site); Port Gibson, with
the First Presbyterian Church (1859, with a 3.6-m/12-ft hand pointing
up from the spire), restored houses and churches on Church Street, including
the Disharoon House and Gage House (1830s) and Temple Gemiluth Chassed
(1892, a synagogue in the Byzantine style); Grand Gulf Military Monument;
Emerald Mound, an Native American mound dating from about 1300; Civil
War sites at Corinth; University of Mississippi (1848); Elvis Presley's
birthplace at Tupelo, with the Elvis Presley Park and Elvis Presley
Memorial Chapel; Natchez Trace Parkway; the Biedenharn Candy Company,
Vicksburg, where Coca-Cola was first bottled 1894, now a Coca-Cola museum
Products:
Cotton, rice, soya beans, chickens, fish and shellfish, lumber and
wood products, petroleum and natural gas, transportation equipment,
chemicals
Population:
(1995) 2,697,200
Famous people:
Jefferson Davis, William Faulkner, John Lee Hooker, Elvis Presley,
Leontyne Price, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Howlin' Wolf, Richard
Wright
History:
First explored by Hernando de Soto for Spain in 1540; settled by the
French in 1699, the English in 1763; ceded to the USA in 1798;
became a state in 1817. After secession from the Union during
the Civil War, it was readmitted in 1870. Mississippi was the
scene of heavy fighting during the Civil War, which left it devastated.
Tenant farming replaced plantations, and only in the mid-1960s
did manufacturing exceed farming as a source of jobs. The legal
segregation of blacks was dismantled during this period. Mississippi
remains the poorest of the states in many respects, including
personal income per head of population.
|
