Famous Mississippians

Jimmy Buffett (1946 - ) Singer, songwriter; born in Pascagoula.
Bo Diddley (1928 - ) Guitarist; born in McComb.
William Cuthbert Faulkner (1897 - 1962)Author, famous for works such as The Sound in the Fury and Go Down, Moses; born in New Albany.
Elizabeth Lee Hazen (1885 - 1975) Inventor, developed the world's first useful antifungal antibiotic, nystatin.
Faith Hill (1967 - ) Famous singer; grew up in Star.
B. B. King (1925 - ) Guitarist, often called the King of the Blues; born in Indianola.
James Earl Jones (1931 - ) Entertainer, possesses one of the most instantly recognizable voices in entertainment history; born in Arkabutla.
Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977) Popular rock-and-roll singer; born in East Tupelo.
Jerry Rice (1962 - ) Football player, considered the greatest wide receiver ever to play in the NFL; born and raised in Crawford.
Hiram R. Revels (1822 - 1901) Clergyman, first African American to sit in the U.S. Senate (1870 - 1871).
Sela Ward - (1956 - ) Star of the 1990's sitcom hits Sisters and Once & Again; born in Meridian.
Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983) Playwright, received Pulitzer prizes for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; born in Columbus.
Oprah Winfrey (1954 - ) Talk-show host; born in Kosciusko.

Red Barber sportscaster, Columbus
Lance Bass singer, Laurel
Theodore Bilbo public official, Poplarville
Craig Claiborne columnist, restaurant critic, Sunflower
Brett Farve football, Kiln
William Cuthbert Faulkner author, New Albany
Shelby Foote historian, Greenville
Richard Ford author, Jackson
Barry Hannah author, Clinton
Beth Henley playwright, actress, Jackson
Jim Henson puppeteer, Greenville
Simbi Khali actress, Jackson
B. B. King guitarist, Itta Bena
Willie Morris writer, Jackson
Brandy Norwood singer,actress, McComb
Walter Payton football player, Columbia
Charley Pride country singer, Sledge
Leontyne Price soprano, Laurel
William Raspberry columnist, Oklaona
LeAnn Rimes country music, Jackson
William Grant Still composer, Woodville
Conway Twitty country music, Friars Point
Muddy Waters singer, guitarist, Rolling Fork
Eudora Welty author, Jackson
Richard Wright author, Natchez
Tammy Wynette country music star, Tupelo

School Desegregation in Mississippi

Desegregation

In 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the gap between white and black education created by fifty years of support for white (only) education was exceedingly wide. While the Brown decision meant that the dual school system in Mississippi was now illegal, white Mississippians made clear that no attempts to abandon the dual school system would be tolerated. When groups of black Mississippians in Natchez, Vicksburg, Yazoo City, Clarksdale, and Jackson pressed for adherence to the decision in 1955, they were stopped swiftly, decisively, and repeatedly. And for a decade after Brown, white Mississippians resorted to private and state-sanctioned economic and, sometimes, physical intimidation to block black attempts to desegregate Mississippi schools. While squashing any efforts by black Mississippians to assert their new legal rights, the state of Mississippi also proposed, as an alternative to desegregated schools, a massive equalization program to improve black schools.
Lawsuits by black parents in Biloxi, Jackson, and Leake County, who were supported in their efforts by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, finally led to the first court-ordered school desegregation in the state in the fall of 1964. In the following year, because of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, most Mississippi school districts reluctantly adopted freedom-of-choice desegregation plans, which essentially provided that any student could choose to go to any school in a district. Freedom-of-choice desegregation, however, only offered five years of token desegregation and the preservation of largely segregated schools. The problem was that in the 1960s, most black Mississippians really did not have freedom of choice. Between 1964 and 1969, black parents who chose white schools for their children were subjected to numerous forms of intimidation: some were pressured or fired by their employers; some lost their housing; some lost their credit at the local bank; and others received threatening phone calls, had crosses burned on their lawns, or were victims of physical intimidation. In 1968, largely because of the continuing resistance of white Southerners to school desegregation, the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. County School Board that freedom of choice was ineffective and no longer an acceptable method of desegregation. In October 1969, the Supreme Court essentially said enough is enough, and in a landmark decision involving thirty Mississippi school districts, Alexander v. Holmes, the court ordered the immediate termination of dual school systems and the establishment of unitary ones. Thus, many Mississippi school districts had to begin the complete integration of their school systems in mid-year, during January and February of 1970.

White Citizen's Council

On July 11, 1954, the White Citizens Council, with Robert Patterson of Indianola as leader, was formed. Primarily made up of plantation owners, bankers, doctors, lawyers, legislators, preachers, teachers, and merchants, this organization sought to prevent the implementation of the Brown decision. Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, this organization "publicly" renounced the use of violence. Nevertheless, its actions often encouraged white violence against blacks. While there were occasions when members of the group employed violence, the Council's real success lay in its ability to levy economic reprisals on those who supported and actively pushed for desegregation. Indeed, the WCC was so successful that it was more than ten years after the Brown decision before any significant desegregation occurred in Mississippi.

Mississippi Blues Music

The blues and Mississippi are synonymous to music lovers. The repertoire of any blues or rock band is full of songs, guitar licks, and vocal inflections borrowed from Mississippi bluesmen – from Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, and Son House to Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, and Furry Lewis – just to mention some of the early ones. A couple of generations later, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, James Cotton, and many others were still making Mississippi blues and sending it out all over the world.
Birth of the blues
As far as historians can tell, the blues were born in the Mississippi Delta, an elaboration on work chants, “sorrow” slave songs, and the lyrical and haunting “field hollers.” As early as the American Civil War, white soldiers noted a different music created by black soldiers – songs about marching and other toils of war in which they “extemporized a half-dissonant middle part.” These songs were direct precursors to the blues, if not the real thing already.
By the 1890s, the blues form had been set and the sounds of a distinctive new music began to be heard beyond the work camps. The new music was filled with the polyrhythms and tonalities of African music and bore the nuances of many different tribes. Black Americans had borrowed substantially from white man’s music too – its scale, its rich folk traditions, its instruments. The blues did not emerge from Africa; it was born out of two musical cultures – black and white – that were thriving and growing separately and together. The result of this large-scale mixing was music that was to be the basis of mainstream popular music for the entire 20th century.
Juke joints
With the growth of the blues came the spread of a phenomenon known as the “juke joint.” In these makeshift buildings that served as social clubs, the blues developed and spread. Songs and lyrics were borrowed, adapted from musicians who traveled from joint to joint, and techniques and styles were copied and elaborated upon. Young bluesmen found mentors and left home to follow them in a life on the road.
The first Mississippian to emerge from the anonymous folk tradition was Charlie Patton. Born near Edwards about 1887, he moved to Dockery Plantation in the Mississippi Delta to work. He began playing around the Delta at juke joints, dances, fish fries, and house parties. During those years, 1897 to 1934, he traveled with another blues great, Son House, tutored the young Howlin’ Wolf, and inspired countless others.
Eddie “Son” House was born in Coahoma County in 1902. Often regarded as the quintessential blues singer, he did not begin performing until his mid-twenties, because he was first a preacher. Preaching was a powerful influence on his forceful singing style. In 1930 he recorded two songs for the Paramount label: “Preachin’ the Blues” and “Dry Spell Blues,” about a farming crisis in the Delta. Son House is famous for his bottleneck slide technique. This technique is characteristic of blues music – the musician uses the guitar as a second voice by sliding a bottleneck or other hard object along the strings to make a wailing sound. After he was rediscovered in the 1960s, House played for a decade to college audiences and at blues festivals.
Robert L. Johnson
The most potent legend in the blues was Robert L. Johnson. He was born near Hazlehurst and ran away from home as a teenager to learn guitar from Son House. Legend has it that Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent to play and sing the blues better than anyone else. He worked the Delta, then traveled the upper South and East. His recording sessions in 1936 and 1937 produced some of the richest music in the history of the blues: “Crossroads,” “Love in Vain,” “Hellhound on my Trail,” and “Dust My Broom,” among others. His guitar and vocal skills established a foundation on which generations of blues and rock musicians have been building ever since.
Tommy Johnson, like Robert Johnson (no relation), claimed he too had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his amazing guitar skills. The story is an old one, with roots in voodoo and African lore, but one that is effective only when the storyteller’s skills are as extraordinary as those of Tommy Johnson or Robert Johnson. Tommy Johnson, known for his song “Canned Heat,” a name taken by the 1960s blues band, was an early guitar stuntman. His contemporary, Houston Stackhouse, reported, “He’d kick the guitar, flip it, turn it back of his head and be playin’ it. Then he’d get straddled over it like he was ridin’ a mule – pick it that way.”
When African-American musicians emigrated northward to cities like Chicago, they heard the music of tin pan alley and jazz. They began to amplify their instruments electrically and to add drums and even horns. The single bluesman was transformed into the blues band, and a new era had begun.

Education

Education
The first schools in the Mississippi region were set up by English settlers in the 18th century. The first free public school in the state, Franklin Academy, was founded at Columbus in 1821. Efforts to create a state school system were not made until the 1840s. Public schools for black students were first established in 1862. A uniform statewide public school system was finally established in 1870. In 1910 legislation was enacted by the state to consolidate rural school districts and to provide for free school transportation. School attendance was made compulsory in 1918.
Following the 1954 decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that declared racial segregation in the public schools unconstitutional, white Mississippians sought to maintain their racially segregated schools. In an effort to assist them, the state abolished compulsory school attendance in 1956. However, in 1962 the federal government compelled the University of Mississippi to admit a black student, James Meredith. In 1964 it forced 19 elementary schools to admit a total of 57 black students. In the early 1970s, desegregation under federal court orders became widespread.
In 1986 the state completed the adoption of a new education program. The most important changes were the introduction of a public kindergarten system and the restoration of compulsory school attendance. Education is now compulsory for children ages 6 to 17. Private schools enroll 10 percent of the state’s children.
In the 2001–2002 school year Mississippi spent $5,719 on each student’s education, compared to a national average of $8,259. There were 15.6 students for every teacher (the national average was 15.9 students). Of those older than 25 years of age in 2004, 83 percent had a high school diploma.

Higher Education
The first college established in Mississippi was Jefferson College, which opened near Natchez in 1811. Mississippi College, in Clinton, was founded in 1826 as Hampstead Academy and is the oldest institution of higher education still in operation in Mississippi. The oldest state-controlled institution of higher learning is the University of Mississippi (founded in 1844), in Oxford. Other state-supported institutions are Alcorn State University, in Lorman; Mississippi State University, near Starkville; Mississippi University for Women, in Columbus; Jackson State University, in Jackson; the University of Southern Mississippi, in Hattiesburg; Delta State University, in Cleveland; and Mississippi Valley State University, in Itta Bena. In 2003–2004 the state had 26 public and 14 private institutions of higher learning, including Millsaps College, in Jackson; William Carey College, in Hattiesburg; and Tougaloo College, in Tougaloo.

Mississippi & Freedom Summer

Fannie Lou Hamer singing at a MFD rally.

(James Meredith) American civil rights advocate whose registration (1963) at the traditionally segregated University of Mississippi prompted a riot, which was spurred by state officials who defied federal pleas for peaceful integration.




http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/missippi.html



In the summer of 1964, about a thousand young Americans, black and white, came together in Mississippi for a peaceful assault on racism.
"They had to be prepared to go to jail, they had to be prepared to be beaten, and they had to be prepared to be killed," says Freedom Summer veteran Hollis Watkins.
It came to be known as Freedom Summer, one of the most remarkable chapters in the Southern Civil Rights movement.

Mississippi Government

State Elected Officials

Governor : Haley Barbour

Lieutenant Governor : Amy Tuck

Secretary of State : Eric Clark

Attorney General : Jim Hood

State Auditor : Phil Bryant

State Treasurer : Tate Reeves

Commissioner of Agriculture : Lester Spell

Commissioner of Insurance : Georg Dale

Federal Representatives

US Representative Roger Wicker, 1st District

US Representative Bennie G. Thompson, 2nd District

US Representative Charles W. Pickering, 3rd District

US Representative Gene Taylor, 4th District

US Senator Thad Cochran

US Senator Trent Lott

Mississippi's Flag

The Mississippi State Legislature adopted the present-day state flag in February 1894, replacing the Magnolia flag. This flag has a replica of the Confederate battle flag in the canton corner, although the language of the act creating the flag does not say so.

Amidst tumult over the flag, the late Aaron Henry, a member of the Mississippi Legislature and president of the Mississippi Conference of the NAACP, introduced a bill to remove the battle flag from the state flag at the beginning of the 1988 legislative session. This bill was never brought to the floor for a vote, nor were any of the others he introduced in 1990, 1992, and 1993.20
Following the failure of these bills, the Mississippi NAACP filed a lawsuit April 19, 1993, in the Hinds County Chancery Court seeking “an injunction against any future purchases, displays, maintenance or expenditures of state funds on the State Flag” on the grounds that its display violated the “constitutional rights [of African-Americans] to free speech and expression, due process and equal protection as guaranteed by the Mississippi Constitution.”21 (figure 17)
After the Chancery Court dismissed the suit June 14, 1993, the NAACP appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court. While adjudicating this case, the Court recognized the inadvertent 1906 repeal of the law establishing an official state flag.
Notwithstanding the fact that the state had no official state flag, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s dismissal of the suit. The Court further declared that the display of the flag, however offensive it might be to some citizens, “does not deprive any citizen of any constitutionally protected right.”
The Court further stated that a dispute over the adoption and display of a state flag is a political issue that must be resolved by the legislative and executive branches of state government and not the judiciary.22
Following this ruling handed down May 4, 2000, Governor Ronnie Musgrove, Lieutenant Governor Amy Tuck, and Speaker of the House of Representatives Tim Ford appointed a seventeen-member commission to consider the issue of an official state flag and a coat of arms.
Proposals for the new flag can be viewed at:
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/flag/