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Blue Springs, Mississippi

Blue Springs is a village in Union County, Mississippi, United States. Located near Tupelo in northeastern Mississippi, the village had a population of 144 at the 2000 census. It is the site of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi, Toyota's eighth North American vehicle assembly plant.

History
Blue Springs was established in 1888 as a stop along the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad. Many of the first residents were from the older nearby community of Ellistown, which had been bypassed by the railroad.

Geography
Blue Springs is located at 34.40298°N, -88.87289°W. The village lies along Mississippi Highway 9 northwest of Tupelo. The town of Sherman lies just to the southeast. Interstate 22 and Mississippi Highway 178 pass southwest of Blue Springs, connecting the area with Tupelo to the southeast and New Albany to the northwest.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.0 sqmi, all land.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 144 people, 53 households, and 34 families residing in the village. The population density was 139.8 PD/sqmi. There were 56 housing units at an average density of 54.4 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the village was 93.06% White, 6.25% African American and 0.69% Native American. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.08% of the population.

There were 53 households, out of which 32.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 54.7% were married couples living together, 11.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.0% were non-families. 30.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.72 and the average family size was 3.46.

In the village, the population was spread out, with 21.5% under the age of 18, 10.4% from 18 to 24, 34.7% from 25 to 44, 20.1% from 45 to 64, and 13.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 89.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 94.8 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $41,250, and the median income for a family was $52,188. Males had a median income of $30,938 versus $26,000 for females. The per capita income for the village was $16,257. There were none of the families and 4.0% of the population living below the poverty line, including no under eighteens and 33.3% of those over 64.

Economy
Blue Springs is the site of Toyota's eighth North American vehicle assembly plant, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi. The plant was slated to produce the company's Prius hybrid vehicle beginning in 2010. Groundbreaking for the facility was held on April 18, 2007. After the economy collapsed the construction of the new plant was put on hold. Construction of the plant restarted in June 2010, with a promise of 2,000 jobs for the economically hard hit area. Due to falling gas prices, the Toyota Prius will no longer be produced there, but rather the Toyota Corolla which was previously produced at NUMMI.

Education
The Village of Blue Springs is served by the Union County School District.

title: Blue Springs, Mississippi


text:
Myrtle, Mississippi

Myrtle is a town in Union County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 490 at the 2010 census.

History
Myrtle is rooted in a settlement known as "Candy Hill," which was established about 2 mi south of the town's present location in 1857. When Candy Hill applied for a post office after the Civil War, it changed its name to "Myrtle," after the abundance of myrtle trees growing in the area. Following the construction of the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad in the 1880s, the town shifted northward to its present location.

Geography
Myrtle is located northwest of New Albany along Mississippi Highway 178. Interstate 22 passes through the southern part of town.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.6 sqmi, all land.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 407 people, 162 households, and 117 families residing in the town. The population density was 715.6 PD/sqmi. There were 183 housing units at an average density of 321.7 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 85.26% White, 13.02% African American, 1.72% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.72% of the population.

There were 162 households, out of which 42.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.1% were married couples living together, 19.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.2% were non-families. 25.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.51 and the average family size was 3.01.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 32.7% under the age of 18, 7.9% from 18 to 24, 27.8% from 25 to 44, 18.7% from 45 to 64, and 13.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 79.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 76.8 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $28,125, and the median income for a family was $34,583. Males had a median income of $25,227 versus $20,875 for females. The per capita income for the town was $11,268. About 12.1% of families and 15.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.5% of those under age 18 and 24.4% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The town of Myrtle is served by the Union County School District.

Notable people

 * Henry Clay Collins, Mississippi state senator (1916-1920, 1932-1936)
 * Armintie Price, WNBA Player

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Myrtle, Mississippi


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New Albany, Mississippi

New Albany is a city in and the county seat of Union County, Mississippi, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census, the population was 7,626.

History
New Albany was founded in 1840 at the site of a grist mill and sawmill on the Tallahatchie River near the intersection of two Chickasaw trade trails. The town developed as a river port and as a regional center for agriculture and commerce.

During the Civil War, the United States Cavalry under Benjamin Grierson passed through New Albany on their way to raid Vicksburg, when they encountered Confederate troops attempting to destroy the bridge over the Tallahatchie. The Confederate troops fled and the bridge was preserved.

Union County was formed from parts of neighboring Pontotoc, and Tippah Counties in 1870, with New Albany designated as county seat. In the late 1880s, two railroads (the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad and the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad) came to New Albany, about the time its population of 600 were rebuilding after a severe fire. In 2013, a section of railroad was paved to become the Tanglefoot Trail, following the path of a rail that was once operated by author William Faulkner's grandfather.

In 1925, L. Q. Ivy, a 17-year-old African American boy, was accused of beating and raping a 21-year old White woman. A crowd of 4,000 gathered in New Albany and despite efforts from the victim's father and US senator Hubert D. Stephens to prevent a lynching, the crowd gained control, torturing and killing Ivy.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 17.1 sqmi, of which 17.0 sqmi is land and 0.1 sqmi (0.35%) is water.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 7,626 people, 2,971 households, and 1,911 families residing in the city.

2010 census
As of the census of 2010, there were 8,526 people, 3,049 households, and 3,027 families residing in the city. The population density was 476.1 PD/sqmi. There were 3,329 housing units at an average density of 195.2 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 63.98% White, 32.98% African American, 0.17% Native American, 0.35% Asian, 1.54% from other races, and 0.97% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.83% of the population.

There were 3,049 households, out of which 31.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.0% were married couples living together, 17.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.5% were non-families. 30.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.42 and the average family size was 3.02.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 26.3% under the age of 18, 8.8% from 18 to 24, 27.1% from 25 to 44, 20.5% from 45 to 64, and 17.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 86.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 78.1 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $28,730, and the median income for a family was $38,750. Males had a median income of $29,457 versus $20,579 for females. The per capita income for the city was $16,507. About 14.7% of families and 18.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.0% of those under age 18 and 23.3% of those age 65 or over.

Education
From its inception until 1964, a segregated school system was maintained, with one set of schools for White students and another for Black students. In 1901, the first school building dedicated entirely to public education was built with 18 classrooms. The only high school in Union County for Black students was Union County Training School in New Albany, which was founded in 1812. Like other schools for African-American students, the Training School was not government funded. In 1964, the school system began a slow process of integrating the races. Elementary schools were integrated first, then higher grades were added. Integration was completed in 1970, and at that time African American students made up 29 percent of the district's students and 20 percent of faculty.

Almost all of the city of New Albany is served by the New Albany School District while small portions are in the Union County School District.

The city is the location of a satellite campus of Northeast Mississippi Community College located at 301 North Street.

The New Albany High School Bulldogs boys basketball team won consecutive state Class 3A titles in 1985, 1986, and 1987. Former NBA player John Stroud coached the 1987 team.

Transportation
New Albany is bisected by Interstate 22 (US Highway 78).

New Albany is connected to Ripley in the North and Pontotoc to the South by State Highway 15. Highway 30 connects New Albany and Oxford to the West and Booneville to the Northeast, although when traveling from Oxford towards Booneville an alternate route must be taken within the city limits.

New Albany is served by BNSF Railway (formerly St. Louis – San Francisco Railway) and the Ripley and New Albany Railroad (formerly Gulf, Mobile and Ohio). The two railroads cross downtown. A portion of rail has been paved to become the Tanglefoot Trail, the longest rail-trail in Mississippi.

New Albany was once a stop for Gulf, Mobile and Ohio's famous "Rebel" streamlined passenger train.

The town serves as the northern terminus of the Tanglefoot Trail, a major rail-trail within the state.

Notable people

 * Robert F. Boyd, physician, teacher, politician
 * Jack Carlisle, football coach
 * Milt Crain, football player
 * Sam Creekmore IV, politician
 * Willie Daniel, football player
 * William Faulkner, Nobel Prize-winning author
 * Marcus Green, football player
 * Napoleon Hayes, musician
 * Bobby Hogue, politician
 * Doc Marshall, baseball player
 * Ronnie McNutt, U.S. Army Veteran
 * Ethan Paquin, poet
 * Steve Patterson, politician
 * John Pennebaker, politician
 * Estus Pirkle, Baptist minister and filmmaker
 * Matthew Prater, musician
 * Mike Ratliff, basketball player
 * Stephanie Saul, journalist
 * Hubert D. Stephens, U.S. senator from Mississippi
 * John Stroud, basketball player
 * Channing Ward, football player
 * Eli Whiteside, catcher and coach for the San Francisco Giants
 * Bettie Wilson, woman who lived to 115
 * Mike Wilson, politician

title: New Albany, Mississippi


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Vicksburg, Mississippi

Vicksburg is a historic city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat. The population was 21,573 at the 2020 census. Located on a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River across from Louisiana, Vicksburg was built by French colonists in 1719. The outpost withstood an attack from the native Natchez people. It was incorporated as Vicksburg in 1825 after Methodist missionary Newitt Vick. The area that is now Vicksburg was long occupied by the Natchez Native Americans as part of their historical territory along the Mississippi. The first Europeans who settled the area were French colonists who built Fort Saint Pierre in 1719 on the high bluffs overlooking the Yazoo River at present-day Redwood. They conducted fur trading with the Natchez and others, and started plantations. During the American Civil War, it was a key Confederate river-port, and its July 1863 surrender to Ulysses S. Grant, along with the concurrent Battle of Gettysburg, marked the turning-point of the war.

After the war came Reconstruction and then a violent return to power by white supremacists and the Democratic Party in 1874 and 1875, including the Vicksburg massacre. Today, Vicksburg's population is majority African American. The city is home to three large installations of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which has often been involved in local flood control.

First people
The area that is now Vicksburg was long occupied by the Natchez Native Americans as part of their historical territory along the Mississippi. The Natchez spoke a language isolate not related to the Muskogean languages of the other major tribes in the area. Before the Natchez, other indigenous cultures had occupied this strategic area for thousands of years.

European settlement
The first Europeans who settled the area were French colonists who built Fort Saint Pierre in 1719 on the high bluffs overlooking the Yazoo River at present-day Redwood. They conducted fur trading with the Natchez and others, and started plantations. On 29 November 1729, the Natchez attacked the fort and plantations in and around the present-day city of Natchez. They killed several hundred settlers, including Jesuit missionary Paul Du Poisson. As was the custom, they took a number of women and children as captives, adopting them into their families.

The Natchez War was a disaster for French Louisiana, and the colonial population of the Natchez District never recovered. Aided by the Choctaw, traditional enemies of the Natchez, though, the French defeated and scattered the Natchez and their allies, the Yazoo.

The Choctaw Nation took over the area by right of conquest and inhabited it for several decades. Under pressure from the US government, the Choctaw agreed to cede nearly 2000000 acre of land to the US under the terms of the Treaty of Fort Adams in 1801. The treaty was the first of a series that eventually led to the removal of most of the Choctaw to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in 1830. Some Choctaw remained in Mississippi, citing article XIV of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek; they became citizens of the state and the United States. They struggled to maintain their culture against the pressure of the binary slave society, which classified people as only white or black.

In 1790, the Spanish founded a military outpost on the site, which they called Fort Nogales (nogales meaning "walnut trees"). When the Americans took possession in 1798 following the American Revolutionary War and a treaty with Spain, they changed the name to Walnut Hills. The small village was incorporated in 1825 as Vicksburg, named after Newitt Vick, a Methodist minister who had established a Protestant mission on the site.

The town of Vicksburg was incorporated in 1825, with a population of 3,000 people; of which approximately twenty people were Jewish and had immigrated from Bavaria, Prussia, and Alsace–Lorraine.

In 1835, during the Murrell Excitement, a mob from Vicksburg attempted to expel the gamblers from the city, because the citizens were tired of the rougher element treating the city residents with nothing but contempt. They captured and hanged five gamblers who had shot and killed a local doctor. Historian Joshua D. Rothman calls this event "the deadliest outbreak of extralegal violence in the slave states between the Southampton Insurrection and the Civil War."

In 1862, fifty Jewish families formed the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Anshe Chesed in Vicksburg, and received a charter from the state. Two years later in 1864, the Anshe Chesed Cemetery was formed, and it was the second Jewish cemetery in the city; not much is known about the first Jewish cemetery.

The Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was based at his family plantation at Brierfield, just south of the city.

Civil War
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the city finally surrendered during the Siege of Vicksburg, after which the Union Army gained control of the entire Mississippi River. The 47-day siege was intended to starve the city into submission. Its location atop a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River proved otherwise impregnable to assault by federal troops. The surrender of Vicksburg by Confederate General John C. Pemberton on July 4, 1863, together with the defeat of General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg the day before, has historically marked the turning point of the Civil War in the Union's favor.

From the surrender of Vicksburg until the end of the war in 1865, the area was under Union military occupation.

Celebrations of the 4th of July, the day of surrender, were irregular until 1947. The Vicksburg Evening Post of July 4, 1883, called July 4 "the day we don't celebrate", and another Vicksburg newspaper, the Daily Commercial Appeal, in 1888 hoped that a political victory would bring an enthusiastic celebration the following year. In 1902, the 4th of July saw only "a parade of colored draymen". In 1947, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger stated that the city of Vicksburg did not celebrate the 4th of July again until 1945, and then it was celebrated as Confederate Carnival Day. A recent scholar disagrees, stating that large Fourth of July celebrations were being held by 1907, and informal celebrations before that. A large parade was held in 1890.

Losing of Mississippi access and commercial status
Because of Vicksburg's location on the Mississippi River, it built extensive trade from the prodigious steamboat traffic in the 19th century. It shipped out cotton coming to it from surrounding counties and was a major trading city in West Central Mississippi.

However, in 1876, a Mississippi River flood cut off the large meander next to Vicksburg through the De Soto Point, which changed the Mississippi River's course away from the city. Vicksburg only retained access to an oxbow lake formed from the old channel of the river, which effectively isolated the city from accessing the Mississippi riverfront. The city's economy suffered greatly due to the lack of a functional river port; Vicksburg would not be a river town again until the completion of the Yazoo Diversion Canal in 1903 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Between 1881 and 1894, the Anchor Line, a prominent steamboat company on the Mississippi River from 1859 to 1898, operated a steamboat called the City of Vicksburg.

Political and racial unrest after Civil War
In the first few years after the Civil War, white Confederate veterans developed the Ku Klux Klan, beginning in Tennessee; it had chapters throughout the South and attacked freedmen and their supporters. It was suppressed about 1870. By the mid-1870s, new white paramilitary groups had arisen in the Deep South, including the Red Shirts in Mississippi, as whites struggled to regain political and social power over the black majority. Elections were marked by violence and fraud as white Democrats worked to suppress black Republican voting.

In August 1874, a black sheriff, Peter Crosby, was elected in Vicksburg. Letters by a white planter, Batchelor, detail the preparations of whites for what he described as a "race war," including acquisition of the newest Winchester guns. On December 7, 1874, white men disrupted a black Republican meeting celebrating Crosby's victory and held him in custody before running him out of town. He advised blacks from rural areas to return home; along the way, some were attacked by armed whites. During the next several days, armed white mobs swept through black areas, killing other men at home or out in the fields, in what would come to be known as the Vicksburg massacre. Sources differ as to total fatalities, with 29–50 blacks and 2 whites reported dead at the time. Twenty-first-century historian Emilye Crosby estimates that 300 blacks were killed in the city and the surrounding area of Claiborne County, Mississippi. The Red Shirts were active in Vicksburg and other Mississippi areas, and black pleas to the federal government for protection were not met.

At the request of Republican Governor Adelbert Ames, who had left the state during the violence, President Ulysses S. Grant sent federal troops to Vicksburg in January 1875. In addition, a congressional committee investigated what was called the "Vicksburg Riot" at the time (and reported as the "Vicksburg massacre" by northern newspapers.) Testimony from both black and white residents was given, as reported by the New York Times, but no one was ever prosecuted for the deaths. The Red Shirts and other white insurgents suppressed Republican voting by both whites and blacks; smaller-scale riots were staged in the state up to the 1875 elections, at which time white Democrats regained control of a majority of seats in the state legislature.

Under new constitutions, amendments and laws passed between 1890 in Mississippi and 1908 in the remaining southern states, white Democrats disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites by creating barriers to voter registration, such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. They passed laws imposing Jim Crow and racial segregation of public facilities. In 1908, a publication documented some of Vicksburg's leading African Americans including lawyer and banker W. E. Mollison.

On March 12, 1894, the popular soft drink Coca-Cola was bottled for the first time in Vicksburg by Joseph A. Biedenharn, a local confectioner. Today, surviving 19th-century Biedenharn soda bottles are prized by collectors of Coca-Cola memorabilia. The original candy store has been renovated and is used as the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum.

20th century
The exclusion of most blacks from the political system lasted for decades until after Congressional passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Lynchings of blacks and other forms of white racial terrorism against them continued to occur in Vicksburg after the start of the 20th century. In May 1903, for instance, two black men charged with murdering a planter were taken from jail by a mob of 200 farmers and lynched before they could go to trial. In May 1919, as many as a thousand white men broke down three sets of steel doors to abduct, hang, burn and shoot a black prisoner, Lloyd Clay, who was falsely accused of raping a white woman. From 1877 to 1950 in Warren County, 14 African Americans were lynched by whites, most in the decades near the turn of the century.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers diverted the Yazoo River in 1903 into the old, shallowing channel to revive the waterfront of Vicksburg. The port city was able to receive steamboats again, but much freight and passenger traffic had moved to railroads, which had become more competitive.

Railroad access to the west across the river continued to be by transfer steamers and ferry barges until a combination railroad-highway bridge was built in 1929. After 1973, Interstate 20 bridged the river. Freight rail traffic still crosses by the old bridge. North-south transportation links are by the Mississippi River and U.S. Highway 61. Vicksburg has the only crossing over the Mississippi River between Greenville and Natchez, and the only interstate highway crossing of the river between Baton Rouge and Memphis.

During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, in which hundreds of thousands of acres were inundated, Vicksburg served as the primary gathering point for refugees. Relief parties put up temporary housing, as the flood submerged a large percentage of the Mississippi Delta.

Because of the overwhelming damage from the flood, the US Army Corps of Engineers established the Waterways Experiment Station as the primary hydraulics laboratory, to develop protection of important croplands and cities. Now known as the Engineer Research and Development Center, it applies military engineering, information technology, environmental engineering, hydraulic engineering, and geotechnical engineering to problems of flood control and river navigation.

In December 1953, a severe tornado swept across Vicksburg, causing 38 deaths and destroying nearly 1,000 buildings.During World War II, cadets from the Royal Air Force, flying from their training base at Terrell, Texas, routinely flew to Vicksburg on training flights. The town served as a stand-in for the British for Cologne, Germany, which is the same distance from London, England as Vicksburg is from Terrell.

Particularly after World War II, in which many blacks served, returning veterans began to be active in the civil rights movement, wanting to have full citizenship after fighting in the war. In Mississippi, activists in the Vicksburg Movement became prominent during the 1960s.

Early 21st century
In 2001, a group of Vicksburg residents visited the Paducah, Kentucky, mural project, looking for ideas for their own community development. In 2002, the Vicksburg Riverfront murals program was begun by Louisiana mural artist Robert Dafford and his team on the floodwall located on the waterfront in downtown. Subjects for the murals were drawn from the history of Vicksburg and the surrounding area. They include President Theodore Roosevelt's bear hunt, the Sultana, the Sprague, the Siege of Vicksburg, the Kings Crossing site, Willie Dixon, the Flood of 1927, the 1953 Vicksburg, Mississippi tornado, Rosa A. Temple High School (known for integration activism) and the Vicksburg National Military Park. The project was finished in 2009 with the completion of the Jitney Jungle/Glass Kitchen mural.

In the fall of 2010, a new 55-foot mural was painted on a section of wall on Grove Hill across the street from the original project by former Dafford muralists Benny Graeff and Herb Roe. The mural's subject is the annual "Run thru History" held in the Vicksburg National Military Park.

On December 6–7, 2014, a symposium was held on the 140th anniversary of the 1874 riots. A variety of scholars gave papers and an open panel discussion was held on the second day at the Vicksburg National Military Park, in collaboration with the Jacqueline House African American Museum.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 35.3 sqmi, of which 32.9 sqmi are land and 2.4 sqmi (6.78%) are covered by water.

Vicksburg is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. Much of the city is on top of a high bluff on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Vicksburg is also served by Interstate 20. The interstate opens Vicksburg with a cloverleaf interchange that heads out to U.S. Route 61 North towards Rolling Fork, Mississippi, Clarksdale, Mississippi, and stretches out for another 77 miles towards Memphis, Tennessee. On the south part of the exit, it heads on Mississippi Highway 27 towards Utica, Mississippi. As the interstate goes on it makes interchanges with Clay Street, Indiana Avenue, and Halls Ferry Road. After the downtown interchanges are over, before finally crossing in Louisiana with a cloverleaf interchange, I-20 makes a directional T interchange with US-61, and US-61 heads south toward Port Gibson, Mississippi, Natchez, Mississippi, and then continues for another 92 miles into Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Louisiana's capital city. Interstate 20 then continues to head west towards Monroe, Louisiana, Shreveport, Louisiana, Dallas, and lastly after 445 miles, making a trumpet interchange with Interstate 10 in Toyah, Texas.

Climate
Vicksburg has a humid subtropical climate with mild winters and hot, humid summers.

2020 census
As of the 2020 census, there were 21,573 people, 8,969 households, and 4,864 families residing in the city.

Economy
The city is home to three large US Army Corps of Engineers installations: the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), which also houses the ERDC's Waterways Experiment Station; the Mississippi Valley Division headquarters; and the Vicksburg District headquarters.

The 412th Engineer Command of the US Army Reserve and the 168th Engineer Brigade of the Mississippi Army National Guard are also located in Vicksburg.

The United States Coast Guard's 8th District/Lower Mississippi River sector has an Aids To Navigation unit located in Vicksburg, operating the buoy tending vessel USCGC Kickapoo.

In 2017, Emma Green of The Atlantic stated, "The Army Corps of Engineers sustains the town economically". 12.3% of the local workforce is employed by the federal government.

Casinos
Vicksburg is the home of four casinos along the Mississippi River.

 * Ameristar Casino Vicksburg
 * Casino Vicksburg (formerly Lady Luck Casino Vicksburg)
 * Riverwalk Casino Hotel
 * Water View Casino

Annual cultural events
Every summer, Vicksburg plays host to the Miss Mississippi Pageant and Parade. Also every summer, the Vicksburg Homecoming Benevolent Club hosts a homecoming weekend/reunion that provides scholarships to graduating high-school seniors. Former residents from across the country return for the event.

Every summer since 1936, Vicksburg Theatre Guild has hosted Gold in the Hills, which holds the Guinness World Record for longest-running show.

Places of interest

 * Vicksburg City Hall, a 1902 Beaux-Arts Classical Revival design by architect James Riely Gordon.
 * Anchuca Mansion
 * Balfour House
 * McRaven House
 * Old Court House Museum
 * Vicksburg National Military Park
 * Pemberton's Headquarters
 * U.S.S. Cairo Gunboat & Museum
 * Vicksburg Riverfront Murals
 * Vicksburg Theatre Guild

Government
The city government consists of a mayor who is elected at-large and two aldermembers. The current mayor is George Flaggs Jr., who defeated former mayor Paul Winfield in the June 2013 election. The two aldermembers are elected from single-member districts, known as wards.

Education
The City of Vicksburg is served by the Vicksburg-Warren School District.

High schools

 * Vicksburg High School
 * 1988–1989 National Blue Ribbon School
 * Warren Central High School

Junior high schools

 * Vicksburg Junior High School
 * Warren Central Junior High School
 * Academy of Innovation

Elementary schools

 * Beechwood Elementary School
 * Bovina Elementary School
 * Bowmar Avenue Magnet School
 * Dana Road Elementary School
 * Redwood Elementary School
 * Sherman Avenue Elementary School
 * South Park Elementary School
 * Warrenton Elementary School
 * Vicksburg Intermediate School
 * Warren Central Intermediate School

Private schools

 * Porters Chapel Academy
 * Vicksburg Catholic School - St. Francis Xavier Elementary and Saint Aloysius Catholic High School (of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jackson)
 * Vicksburg Christian Academy
 * Vicksburg Buddhist Fellowship
 * Vicksburg Community School (K-12)

Former schools

 * Hall's Ferry Road Elementary School
 * 1985–1986, National Blue Ribbon School
 * Culkin Elementary School
 * Jett Elementary School
 * Cedars Elementary School
 * Vicksburg Middle School
 * All Saints' Episcopal School was a local boarding school located on Confederate Avenue, which closed in 2006 after 98 years in operation. The historic school is now a regional campus for AmeriCorps NCCC.
 * St. Mary's Catholic School served the African-American community.
 * McIntyre Elementary School served the African-American community.
 * Magnolia Avenue School serviced the African-American community and was renamed Bowman High School to honor a former principal.
 * Rosa A. Temple High School served the African-American community.
 * King's Elementary School served the African-American community.
 * Carr Central High School.
 * J.H. Culkin Academy (grades 1-12 until 1965, thereafter Culkin Elementary School).
 * H.V. Cooper High School. First graduating class 1959.
 * Jefferson Davis School.
 * Oak Ridge School.
 * Eliza Fox School (a.k.a. Grove Street School).
 * All Saints' College. An Episcopal college for white women. Opened in 1908 and closed in 1962.

Newspapers
Vicksburg Daily News, Vicksburg's only locally owned news source.

The Vicksburg Post, Corporate news, formerly the Vicksburg Evening Post.

Transportation
The Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad and then the Illinois Central Railroad for several decades had passenger service through the city, at two different stations, one on Levee Street, and the other on Cherry Street. The IC's Planter went north to Memphis, Tennessee and south to New Orleans. The Chery Street station hosted the Northeastern Limited and an unnamed train east to Jackson and Meridian (sleeping car passengers could continue to New York; coach passengers could transfer at Meridian's Union Station to an Atlanta and New York bound train there), and the Southwestern Limited and another train west to Monroe and Shreveport's Union Station. The final train serving Vicksburg was the Southwestern Limited/Northeastern Limited in 1967.

Interstate 20 runs east–west through the southern part of Vicksburg. U.S. Highway 80 runs east–west through the city. U.S. Highway 61 runs north–south through the city.

The nearest airport with commercial flights is Jackson–Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, 53.2 miles to the east of Vicksburg. Vicksburgh Tallulah Regional Airport and Vicksburg Municipal Airport, to the west and to the south of Vicksburg, are, on the other hand, two general aviation airports.

Notable people

 * Jonathan Lynn aka J-Walk, hip hop artist
 * William Wirt Adams, Confederate Army officer and member of the Mississippi House of Representatives
 * Katherine Bailess, actress, singer and dancer
 * Earle Basinsky, crime novelist
 * Edwin C. Bearss (1923–2020), American Civil War historian
 * Joseph A. Biedenharn (1866–1952), entrepreneur: first bottled Coca-Cola in 1894 at a location in Vicksburg
 * Johnny Brewer, football player
 * Margaret Hunt Brisbane (1858–1925), poet
 * Roosevelt Brown, former Major League Baseball outfielder for the Chicago Cubs
 * Ellis Burks, former MLB outfielder
 * Charles Burnett, filmmaker
 * Malcolm Butler, cornerback for the New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans
 * Odia Coates, pop singer
 * Rod Coleman, defensive tackle for the Atlanta Falcons
 * Caroline Russell Compton, Mississippi artist
 * Mart Crowley, playwright, TV executive
 * Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (previously U.S. Congressman, Senator, Secretary of War)
 * Bobby DeLaughter, Mississippi state judge and prosecutor
 * Willie Dixon, blues bassist, singer, songwriter, and producer
 * John "Kayo" Dottley, college All-American and professional football player
 * Myrlie Evers-Williams, civil rights activist and journalist
 * Charley Fuller, former NFL running back, Oakland Raiders
 * Mark Gray, country music singer, born in Vicksburg in 1952
 * Louis Green, linebacker for the Denver Broncos
 * DeMichael Harris, wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts
 * Milt Hinton, jazz bassist
 * Jay Hopson, football head coach, University of Southern Mississippi
 * Joseph Holt, longest-serving Judge Advocate General of the Army
 * Delbert Hosemann Jr., Lt Governor of Mississippi and former Secretary of State
 * Hank Jones, jazz pianist, born in Vicksburg
 * Martin F. Jue, amateur radio products inventor, entrepreneur
 * Patrick Kelly, fashion designer
 * Brad Leggett, football player, Seattle Seahawks center
 * George McConnell, former guitarist for Widespread Panic, Kudzu Kings, and Beanland
 * William Michael Morgan, country music singer
 * Michael Myers, defensive tackle for the Cincinnati Bengals
 * Key Pittman, U.S. Senator from Nevada, 1913–40; born in Vicksburg
 * Vail M. Pittman, 19th Governor of Nevada
 * Dave Plump, former NFL defensive back, San Diego Chargers
 * Evelyn Preer, African-American film actress
 * George Reed (1939–2023), former running back for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, CFL Hall of Fame member, Order of Canada member, Saskatchewan Order of Merit member
 * Beah Richards, African-American film and television actress
 * Kee Sloan, Episcopal priest and eleventh Bishop of Alabama
 * Roy C. Strickland, businessman and politician in Louisiana and Texas, born in Vicksburg in 1942
 * Taylor Tankersley, Florida Marlins relief pitcher
 * John Thomas, former MLB player (Colorado Rockies, New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Royals)
 * Mary T. Washington, the first African-American woman CPA
 * Carl Westcott, entrepreneur, founder of 1-800-Flowers and Westcott Communications
 * Delmon Young, outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies
 * Dmitri Young, first baseman for the Washington Nationals
 * Jaelyn Young, pleaded guilty to charges relating to her attempts to join ISIS

Cultural references

 * Vicksburg is mentioned in the Pulitzer Prize winning play Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley.
 * Several delta blues songs mention Vicksburg, for instance Charley Patton's "High Water Everywhere" and Robert Johnson's "Traveling Riverside Blues"
 * The city is mentioned multiple times in the series of books surrounding the Logan family, including Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1976) and Let The Circle Be Unbroken (1981), by Mildred Taylor.
 * A made-for-TV movie version of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, based on Maya Angelou's memoir, was filmed in Vicksburg.
 * O Brother, Where Art Thou? was filmed in Vicksburg. The Stokes campaign dinner was filmed in the Southern Cultural Heritage Center's auditorium.
 * The hospital stairway scene from Mississippi Burning was filmed in the Southern Cultural Heritage Convent (with Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe).
 * Vicksburg is featured in Robert A. Heinlein's 1982 science fiction novel Friday as a town in the Lone Star Republic, a leading smugglers' port between Texas and the Chicago Imperium. The book's protagonist Friday Baldwin stayed there, particularly in the riverfront Lowtown, while trying to find a way into the Imperium.
 * In the novel Underground to Canada the protagonists Julilly and Liza are slaves on a cotton plantation near Vicksburg.
 * Vicksburg was the focus of four episodes of the American television series Ghost Adventures during Season 19, with one episode dedicated to Champion Hill Battlefield.
 * On Elton John's 1974 album Caribou, the song Dixy Lily contains the lyrics "Down from Louisiana on the Vicksburg run." in the chorus.

title: Vicksburg, Mississippi


text:
Arcola, Mississippi

Arcola is a town in Washington County, Mississippi. The population was 304 at the 2020 census, down from 361 at the 2010 census.

History
According to linguist Keith Baca, the name Arcola may be derived from the Choctaw language meaning "jar".

In the 1900s, Leroy Percy owned the Trail Lake Plantation, a Southern plantation near Arcola.

In his 2015 travel book entitled Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads, author Paul Theroux describes it as a "ghost town."

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.2 sqmi, all land.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 304 people, 95 households, and 65 families residing in the town.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 563 people, 183 households, and 122 families residing in the town. The population density was 2,515.2 PD/sqmi. There were 220 housing units at an average density of 982.9 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 95.03% African American, 4.80% White and 0.18% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.18% of the population.

There were 183 households, out of which 36.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 23.0% were married couples living together, 36.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.3% were non-families. 27.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.08 and the average family size was 3.83.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 36.6% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 25.8% from 25 to 44, 18.5% from 45 to 64, and 8.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28 years. For every 100 females, there were 77.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 71.6 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $18,409, and the median income for a family was $18,594. Males had a median income of $22,321 versus $13,466 for females. The per capita income for the town was $6,827. About 43.4% of families and 49.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 63.2% of those under age 18 and 53.2% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The Town of Arcola is served by the Hollandale School District. It is also home to the Deer Creek Academy, an independent private school founded in the 1970s.

title: Arcola, Mississippi


text:
Greenville, Mississippi

Greenville is the ninth-most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi, and the largest city by population in the Mississippi Delta region. It is the county seat of Washington County. The population was 29,670 at the 2020 Census.

Early history
This area was occupied by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. When the French explored here, they encountered the historic Natchez people. As part of their colony known as La Louisiane, the French established a settlement at what became Natchez, Mississippi. Other Native American tribes also lived in what is now known as Mississippi.

The current city of Greenville is the third in the State to bear the name. The first, (known as Old Greenville) located to the south near Natchez, became defunct soon after the American Revolution, as European-American settlement was then still concentrated in the eastern states.

The second Greenville was founded in 1824 by American William W. Blanton, who filed for land from the United States government. He was granted section four, township eighteen, range eight west. This plot now constitutes most of downtown Greenville. It was named by its founders for General Nathanael Greene, friend of President George Washington, for whom the county was named.

Many migrants came to the area from the eastern and Upper South states, seeking land for developing cotton plantations. In 1830 the United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the government to make treaties to extinguish Native American land claims in exchange for lands west of the Mississippi River. They forced most of the Southeastern tribes to Indian Territory during the following decade.

The second town was thriving hamlet in the antebellum years, as cotton plantations developed in the area generated high profits for major planters. They built their wealth on the labor of enslaved African Americans.

Greenville was designated as the county seat in 1844. It had become a trading center for the region's plantations. The two previous county seats, New Mexico and Princeton, had also been located along the Mississippi River, and had been eroded by the waters, to the point that they were destroyed. As county seat, it was the trading, business, and cultural center for the large cotton plantations that surrounded it. Most plantations were located directly on the Mississippi and other major navigable tributaries. The interior bottomlands were not developed until after the Civil War.

The destruction of Greenville and the Civil War
The town was destroyed during the Union Army's actions related to the siege of Vicksburg. Troops from a Union gunboat landed at Greenville. In retaliation for being fired upon, they burned every building. The inhabitants took refuge in plantation homes of the area. When the war ended, veterans of Mississippi regiments returned to find Greenville in a state of ruin.

The former residents soon decided to build again. They chose a new site three miles away, at the highest point on the Mississippi River between the towns of Vicksburg and Memphis. Much of the land belonged to the Roach and Blanton families; the major part of the area selected was within property owned by Mrs. Harriet Blanton Theobald. She welcomed the idea of a new Greenville, and donated land for schools, churches and public buildings. She was called the "Mother of Greenville". Major Richard O’Hea, who had planned the wartime defense fortifications at Vicksburg, was hired to lay out the new town.

Greenville recovered prosperity, still based on cotton, despite the decline in world markets for this commodity. In the early 20th century, its elite families had considerable political influence in the state, and US Senator Leroy Percy was from here. Several residences and other buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was a center of Delta culture in the early 20th century. This city adapted the former site to serve as industrial fill.

Nelson Street
African Americans in the Delta developed rich varieties of innovative music. Nelson Street is a historic strip of blues clubs that drew crowds in the 1940s and 1950s to the flourishing club scene to hear Delta blues, big band, jump blues and jazz. Record companies came to Greenville to recruit talent. It was similar to Beale Street in mid-20th century Memphis.

In the early 21st century, the Mississippi Blues Commission was established to commemorate this music in the state's history and culture. It has identified sites throughout the Delta as part of the Mississippi Blues Trail.

Southern Whispers Restaurant on Nelson Street in Greenville was the second site identified on this trail; this was a stop on the Chitlin' Circuit in the early days of the blues. The historic marker in front of the restaurant commemorates its importance in the history of the blues in Mississippi.

21st century
In 2020 the city ordered churches to shut down to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and issued citations and fines to those attending a drive-in church gathering. The U.S. Justice Department intervened on behalf of the church.

Geography
Greenville is located on the eastern bank of Lake Ferguson, an oxbow lake left from an old channel of the Mississippi River.

One floating casino is located on the lake near the downtown area known as the Trop Casino Greenville, with a second just west of the city near the Greenville Bridge known as Harlow's Casino Resort. Chicago Mill and Lumber Co. operated a lumber mill on the lake two-tenths of a mile south of the casino levee parking lot; the mill specialized in making hardwood boxes until it closed.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 27.7 sqmi, of which 26.9 sqmi is land and 0.8 sqmi (2.82%) is water.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 29,670 people, 12,142 households, and 7,405 families residing in the city.

2013 ACS
As of the 2013 American Community Survey, there were 33,928 people living in the city. 75.9% were African American, 21.7% White, 0.0% Native American, 0.8% Asian, 0.9% from some other race and 0.7% from two or more races. 1.2% were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 41,633 people, 18,784 households, and 14,422 families living in the city. The population density was 1,548.8 PD/sqmi. There were 16,251 housing units at an average density of 604.6 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 28.92% White, 69.60% Black, 0.07% Native American, 0.71% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.20% from other races, and 0.49% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.71% of the population.

There were 14,784 households, out of which 35.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.8% were married couples living together, 27.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.5% were non-families. Of all households, 25.8% were made up of individuals, and 10.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.77 and the average family size was 3.34.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 31.4% under the age of 18, 10.1% from 18 to 24, 26.3% from 25 to 44, 20.5% from 45 to 64, and 11.8% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 85.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.5 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $25,928, and the median income for a family was $30,788. Males had a median income of $29,801 versus $20,707 for females. The per capita income for the city was $13,992. About 25.7% of families and 29.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38.2% of those under age 18 and 23.6% of those age 65 or over.

1990 census
As of the census of 1990, there were 45,226 people living in the city. The racial makeup of the city was 59.41% (26,867) Black or African American, 39.54% (17,881) White, 0.08% (37) Native American, 0.41% (185) Asian, and 0.01% (4) from other races. 0.56% (252) were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

Air
Greenville Mid Delta Regional Airport, located in unincorporated Washington County, northeast of downtown Greenville, serves the city and the Mississippi Delta region. Commercial passenger air service is currently provided by Contour Airlines with nonstop Embraer regional jet flights to Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and Nashville (BNA).

Transportation
U.S. Highway 61, U.S. Highway 82 and the Great River Road (Mississippi Highway 1) are the main transportation arteries through the Greenville area. U.S. Highway 82 is a major part of the Mississippi Delta's transportation network, as it connects to Interstate 55 and other major four-lane highways. In addition, the U.S. Highway 82 bypass is being constructed to provide a transportation route at the southern end of the Delta, connecting at the new Mississippi River Bridge and ending near Leland. The four-lane Greenville Bridge, a $206 million cable-stayed span crossing the Mississippi River into Arkansas, opened in 2010, replacing the two-lane Benjamin G. Humphreys Bridge, which opened in 1940.

Rail
The Columbus and Greenville Railway operates the Greenwood–Greenville rail line for freight traffic. North of Greenville, the Great River Railroad's line to Rosedale branches off.

Economy
Circa 2008 there were ten grocery stores operated by ethnic Chinese people. There were 42 such stores in the city in 1951, but since then there had been a flight of ethnic Chinese from the Delta.

Education
Most of Greenville is served by the Greenville Public School District, while a small portion of the city lies in the Western Line School District. Greenville High School is the public high school of the Greenville district, while O'Bannon High School serves Western Line residents.

The private schools, Washington School and Greenville Christian School, also serve the city, as well as St. Joseph Catholic School (K-12), a parochial school which is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Jackson. The diocese formerly operated Our Lady of Lourdes Elementary School, which merged into St. Joseph in 2016.

The Greenville Higher Education Center offers non-credit community courses and credit courses from Delta State University, Mississippi Delta Community College (MDCC), and Mississippi Valley State University. All of Washington County is in the service area of MDCC.

Media
Delta Democrat Times is the daily newspaper of the town.

Sports
The Greenville Bucks were a minor-league baseball team in the Cotton States League from 1922 to 1955.

The Greenville Bluesmen were an independent minor league professional baseball team from 1996–2001 in Greenville.

The Mississippi Miracles, formerly the Mississippi Stingers, were an American Basketball Association franchise from 2004–2006 in Greenville.

Greenville will become host to a mega-sports complex for young athletes.

Sites
The Winterville Mounds Historic Site, with more than twelve earthwork mounds constructed by people of the Plaquemine Mississippian culture, is a survival north of the county seat of the deep indigenous history along the Mississippi River. This culture was particularly prominent from 13th to the 15th centuries, long before European exploration. Earthwork mounds were built by peoples in this area from the 9th century. The people in this region were influenced by the larger Mississippian culture, which built similar ceremonial sites throughout the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries. The historic Natchez people are considered the only contemporary surviving group of the Mississippian culture at the time of European exploration.

The Winterville Mounds has been designated as a state park and National Historic Landmark. A museum on the grounds displays artifacts recovered in professional excavations and adds to the interpretation of this complex, and the park has walking trails. It is located about 3 miles north of the city. It can be reached at 2415 Highway 1 N.

In popular culture
The movies Crossroads (1986) and The Reivers (1969) were filmed in Greenville. Also, the 1975 song "Mississippi" by the Dutch band Pussycat mentions Greenville throughout the song.

The movie Django Unchained (2012) is set in Greenville for some scenes.

Born in Greenville

 * Quentin Groves, (1984–2016) was an American football linebacker, drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the second round of the 2008 NFL. Groves was a sack specialist at Auburn and finished tied for the Auburn career sack record at 26.
 * Steve Azar, country singer
 * Heather McTeer Toney, former mayor of Greenville and EPA regional administrator.
 * John Colbert, a.k.a. J Blackfoot, Soul singer with the Bar-Kays and Soul Children, was born in Greenville.
 * Eden Brent, blues boogie-woogie musician, composer, and performer
 * Vivian Brown, meteorologist for The Weather Channel
 * Charles Chew, (1922–1986), Illinois state senator; born in Greenville
 * Tommy Davidson, actor/comedian
 * Ross Davis, Negro league baseball player
 * Tyrone Davis, blues musician
 * Johnny Dollar, (1941–2006), Chicago blues guitarist, singer and songwriter
 * Shelby Foote, author and historian
 * Jimmie Giles, NFL tight end, four-time Pro Bowl selection in the 1980s with Tampa Bay Buccaneers
 * Brooks Haxton, poet and professor at Syracuse University
 * Robert T. Henry, World War II soldier and Medal of Honor recipient
 * Jim Henson, (1936–1990), puppeteer, television and film producer, creator of The Muppets
 * Corey Holmes, all-star Canadian Football League player and Mayor of Metcalfe, Mississippi
 * Lucy Somerville Howorth, feminist and New Deal lawyer
 * Carla Hughes, convicted of murdering Avis Banks and her unborn baby.
 * Antonio Johnson, NFL player for the Indianapolis Colts
 * Germany Kent, model and media personality
 * Cornelia Lampton, pianist
 * Sam Chu Lin, pioneering Chinese American journalist
 * John Ramsey Miller, writer and journalist
 * Wilbert Montgomery, former NFL running back, member of Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Fame
 * The Percy family, including U.S. Senator Le Roy Percy and his son, author William Alexander Percy, lived here. They directed efforts to prevent and recover from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The younger Percy wrote a memoir, Lanterns on the Levee about the Mississippi Delta culture. Walker Percy, another writer from the Percy family, and his brothers were raised by William Alexander Percy here after being orphaned. He lived most of his life in Louisiana.
 * Neil Ratliff (1936-1994), music librarian
 * Julia Evans Reed, author, journalist and columnist
 * George Scott, MLB player for Boston Red Sox, Milwaukee Brewers, Kansas City Royals and New York Yankees
 * Carol Schwartz, former member of Council of the District of Columbia
 * Nellie Nugent Somerville, first woman elected to Mississippi Legislature, mother of Lucy Somerville Howorth
 * LaToya Thomas, former professional basketball player in WNBA, first round draft pick of Cleveland Rockers
 * Walter Turnbull, African American musician, founder of Boys Choir of Harlem, as well as a Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame inductee, was born in Greenville in 1944
 * Frank White, professional baseball player
 * Mary Wilson, singer of The Supremes
 * Benjamin_Wright_(composer), (born July 11, 1946) is an American record producer, composer and arranger.As an arranger, he has conducted hits for many artists including Justin Timberlake, OutKast, Brandy, Destiny's Child, Dru Hill, Aretha Franklin, Quincy Jones, James Ingram, Richard Ashcroft, Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson.
 * Malcolm Wynn, first black police chief of Greenville Police Department
 * Kelvin Jones, director of the LSU Tiger Band and first African American head athletic band director in SEC history

Greenville-related

 * Ray Brown, NFL football player
 * Hodding Carter, Pulitzer Prize-journalist, managed the city's Delta Democrat Times. His descendant Hodding Carter III, also a journalist, lived and worked here during and after the civil rights movement.
 * Holt Collier is buried in Greenville. Collier was an African-American bear hunter and sportsman; he served as the guide for President Theodore Roosevelt on a bear hunt in Sharkey County. In January 2004 the Holt Collier National Wildlife Refuge was established on Collier's "historic hunting grounds" south of Greenville.
 * Samuel Gibbs French (1818-1910), Confederate Major General, managed a plantation in Greenville
 * John F. Harris, Mississippi State Representative from Greenville elected in 1890.
 * Clarke Reed, Mississippi state Republican chairman from 1966 to 1976, was instrumental in the nomination of Gerald R. Ford, Jr., at the 1976 Republican National Convention, has resided in Greenville since 1950; he is a businessman and investor.
 * Sam Stein, Russian Jewish immigrant who founded the retail store chain Stein Mart
 * Thomas R. Yarborough, first Black city councilman in California

Sister cities

 * 🇩🇪 Kronach, Bavaria, Germany, since 2006
 * 🇱🇷 Greenville, Liberia, since 2009

title: Greenville, Mississippi


text:
Hollandale, Mississippi

Hollandale is a city in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 2,323 at the 2020 census.

Deer Creek flows through Hollandale, and the Leroy Percy State Park is west of the city along Mississippi Highway 12. The Hollandale Municipal Airport is northeast of the city.

A 2008 study by the University of North Carolina described Hollandale as "a small community that has been mired in poverty for decades."

History
Hollandale was named for Dr. Holland, the original owner of the town site. Hollandale was incorporated in 1890, and almost completely destroyed by fire in 1904.

A one-room school house in Hollandale was founded by Emory Peter "E.P." Simmons in 1891. One of the first schools for African-American children in the area, it was used until 1923, when financial support from the Rosenwald Fund enabled the construction of a larger brick school. Simmons worked as an educator and administrator for 52 years, and Simmons High School in Hollandale is named in his honor.

Thomas Roosevelt "T.R." Sanders was a noted community leader. Sanders was principal of Simmons High School for 33 years, and the first superintendent of the Hollandale Colored School District. Sanders developed 'Sanders Estates', the town's first subdivision, and organized an association which provided running water to neighboring Sharkey County. Sanders was the first African-American in Mississippi to receive a master's degree in educational administration.

During the Civil Rights Movement, Hollandale was noted for having passed an ordinance forbidding white civil rights workers from living with black citizens.

A marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail dedicated to musician Sam Chatmon is located in Hollandale, as is a marker on the Mississippi Country Music Trail dedicated to Ben Peters.

Hollandale resident Capt. Kermit O. Evans was recognized by the U.S. Congress in 2007 after losing his life in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Farm Fresh Catfish processing plant was located in Hollandale until it closed in 2004, laying off 240 workers. The Delta & Pine Land Company of Mississippi, a cotton and soybean producer owned by Monsanto, continues to be a major employer.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.2 sqmi, all of it land.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 2,323 people, 802 households, and 513 families residing in the city.

2013 ACS
As of the 2013 American Community Survey, there were 2,695 people living in the city. 87.0% were African American, 12.9% White and 0.1% Native American.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 3,437 people, 1,104 households, and 803 families living in the city. The population density was 1,536.3 PD/sqmi. There were 1,156 housing units at an average density of 516.7 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 16.06% White, 83.21% African American, 0.09% Asian, and 0.64% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.76% of the population.

There were 1,104 households, out of which 37.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.9% were married couples living together, 32.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.2% were non-families. 24.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.10 and the average family size was 3.72.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 35.4% under the age of 18, 10.8% from 18 to 24, 24.9% from 25 to 44, 18.0% from 45 to 64, and 11.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28 years. For every 100 females, there were 80.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 69.9 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $20,135, and the median income for a family was $25,313. Males had a median income of $23,194 versus $17,353 for females. The per capita income for the city was $9,251. About 28.4% of families and 38.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 52.7% of those under age 18 and 24.9% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The City of Hollandale is served by the Hollandale School District.

Notable people

 * Ruby Andrews, musician.
 * Sam Chatmon, musician; moved to Hollandale.
 * Andrew DeGraffenreidt, educator and politician; grew up in Hollandale.
 * Edward Hill, physician and resident for 27 years; president of American Medical Association.
 * Patricia Jessamy, former chief prosecutor for the City of Baltimore, Maryland.
 * Martin F. Jue amateur radio products inventor, entrepreneur.
 * Ben Peters, Grammy Award-winning musician; grew up in Hollandale.
 * Johnny Rembert, professional football player.
 * Lavelle White, musician; grew up in Hollandale.
 * Ulis Williams, Olympic gold medal winner.

title: Hollandale, Mississippi


text:
Leland, Mississippi

Leland is a city in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. It is located within the Mississippi Delta, on the banks of Deer Creek. The population was 4,481 at the 2010 census. It was once a railway town and had long been a center of cotton culture, which is still an important commodity crop in the rural area. It was once considered the second-largest city in Washington County in 1920 due to its rapid growth of residents, businesses, and schools.

Since before the Civil War, farming has been the basis of the local economy. There are several privately owned farms within and around the boundaries of the town. Mississippi State University and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) maintain an agriculture research station at Stoneville on Leland's outskirts. Other agricultural companies in the area are Lauren Farms BASF Stoneville Cotton, Bayer Crops Science, GreenPoint Ag, Azlin Seed Service, Corteva Agriscience, Pettiet Agricultural Services, Inc., Nutrien Ag Solutions,  K-I Chemical U.S.A., Greenland Planting Company,  Ayers-Delta Implement,  Edward's Flying Service, Essie Patterson Farm Trucking, and Southern Seed Association. Cotton, soybeans, rice and corn are the leading commodity crops along with catfish.

A number of national and regionally noted blues musicians are from Leland. There are five Mississippi Blues Trail markers in Leland commemorating the small town's significant contribution to blues history. Highway 61, mentioned in numerous blues recordings, runs through the town and gives its name to the community's blues museum. Leland is the burial place of the folk artist and blues musician James "Son" Thomas, who lived for many years near the railroad tracks. Thomas is buried beneath a gravestone donated by Mt. Zion Memorial Fund, to which musician John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival was a yearly contributor.

Blues musician Johnny Winter spent part of his childhood in Leland. Winter's grandfather and father, a former mayor of Leland, operated J.D. Winter & Sons, a cotton business. One of the Blues Trail markers in Leland is dedicated to Winter.

The community is the childhood home of puppeteer Jim Henson, who was born in nearby Greenville, but raised in Leland. Here he created the character of Kermit the Frog, a Muppet. The city has a museum along the banks of Deer Creek celebrating Henson's accomplishments called the Jim Henson Exhibit.

Leland was selected as the site for the Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum, opened in 2016.

1800–1900: Founding
The area in which Leland sits was once part of the Choctaw territory in the early 1800s. After the Second Choctaw Cession, which came from the Treaty of Doak's Stand of 1820, the land was fought over by the United States government and the Choctaw Indians during the American Civil War in which the Choctaw Indians sided with the Confederacy in order to fight the Union for the return of their land.

The territory that the town was built on was first settled on in 1834 by Samuel and Susan Jones, Mary Neely, and Malinda Breeland. A few years later, they deeded the land to the families of Connerly and Buckner. They made their home on the bank of Deer Creek on the Three Oaks Plantation. Soon other settlers came to live in Leland and the Stoneville area. To travel between both places at the time, people used boats to navigate on Deer Creek. There was even a drawbridge that wad built by Leland settlers to be more closely connected with the people of Stoneville. Years later, the Buckner and Connerly families moved away and sold their land to Judge James Ruckus and William Yerger. The new owners maintained the land until the American Civil War. In 1869, their heirs quit claimed the land for release mortgages which passed to the hands of the Bank of Kentucky. After seven years, Mississippi native Captain James Alexander Ventress Feltus (1840–1908) bought the 900 acres of land for $12,000.

Captain James A. V. Feltus built his home at the “Three Oaks” and deeded a 100-foot right-of-way on the land to the Memphis and Vicksburg Railroad Company; however, no railway was built until 1885, when the right of way was given to the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railroad Company. Leland was one of two cities considered for a terminus of several railroad lines, most notably, the Louisville, New Orleans & Texas Railway. Captain John C. Calhoun, an enterprising and liberal owner of the Leland Plantation, pushed efforts to make Leland a primary candidate for the terminus.

Captain Feltus dedicated the original town of Leland by signing deeds that created streets from First to Eighth Streets, which included Main and Broad Streets as the east and west boundaries of the town. Accounts state that Captain Feltus named the town after Miss Leland McCutcheon, the mother of Feltus’ friend, Ruben Armstrong and fiancé of young traveling railroad auditor C. E. Armstrong. It would seem that both accounts state that both men asked Captain Feltus to name the town in her honor. The first store built in the town of Leland was the Greenley's Mens Store, owned by J. C. Greenley.

In January 1886, the citizens of the town drafted a charter to incorporate the town of Leland and sent it by mail to the representatives at Jackson, Mississippi. By February of that year, the charter was amended in bills H.B. 642 and H.B. 643 and was well on its way to making the town officially recognized as a city; it was approved on February 20, 1886. As the town continued to progress, it established its first newspaper publication, The Leland Record, and businesses were established, including retail, banks, law firms, other railway companies, grocers, innkeepers, landlords and more.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.1 sqmi, of which 2.1 sqmi is land and 0.04 sqmi (1.44%) is water.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 3,988 people, 1,642 households, and 1,032 families residing in the city.

2013 ACS
As of the 2013 American Community Survey, there were 4,427 people living in the city. 74.3% were African American, 24.8% White, 0.1% Native American, 0.6% Asian, 0.1% from some other race and 0.2% from two or more races. 0.4% were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,502 people, 1,943 households, and 1,414 families living in the city. The population density was 2,670.2 PD/sqmi. There were 2,095 housing units at an average density of 1,016.7 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 32.01% White, 67.01% African American, 0.16% Native American, 0.13% Asian, 0.04% from other races, and 0.65% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.75% of the population.

There were 1,943 households, out of which 36.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.9% were married couples living together, 27.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 27.2% were non-families. 24.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.82 and the average family size was 3.35.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 31.9% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 26.3% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 12.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30 years. For every 100 females, there were 88.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 78.6 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $25,678, and the median income for a family was $28,926. Males had a median income of $26,184 versus $20,693 for females. The per capita income for the city was $11,681. About 24.0% of families and 27.5% of the population were below the poverty line.

Places of Interest

 * Mississippi Blues Trail Markers
 * Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Museum
 * Jim Henson Exhibit
 * The Thompson House

Education
The City of Leland is served by the Leland School District. Leland High School is the sole high school. Leland School Park is the sole middle school. Edna M. Scott Elementary is the sole elementary school.

Media
The Leland Progress is the paper of record. Previous papers were the Leland Record (est.1886) and the Leland Enterprise (est.1901).

Health Care
The Witte Clinic and hospital served the Leland area from 1946 to 1949. It was then leased out to the city and named The Leland City Hospital in 1949 for a year. While no longer a hospital system since the 1980s, this facility is now named the Leland Medical Clinic.

Notable people

 * James "Son" Thomas, blues musician, gravedigger, and sculptor.
 * Douglas A. Blackmon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Slavery by Another Name, grew up in Leland.
 * Johnie Cooks (1958–2023), former college and professional football player at Mississippi State University and the NFL, was born in Leland.
 * Jim Henson, puppeteer and creator of The Muppets, grew up in Leland.
 * Thelma Houston, singer/actress, was born in Leland.
 * Antonio Johnson, professional football player.
 * Wadada Leo Smith, a jazz trumpeter and composer, is from Leland.
 * Bob Taylor, baseball player.
 * Johnny Winter, blues musician, spent part of his childhood in Leland.
 * Matt Miller graduated at Leland High School in 1990; He was a former Major League Pitcher who has since retired.
 * Eddie Cusic, blues musician, was born in Wilmot, near Leland, where he spent most of his life.
 * Ruth Thompson Dickins, socialite and convicted murderer.

In popular culture
A scene from the movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), was filmed in Leland on the Columbus and Greenville Railway line. In the scene, the three escaping convicts try to jump aboard a freight train only to fail and catch a handcar driven by a blind old man who makes wild predictions about their future.

title: Leland, Mississippi


text:
Metcalfe, Mississippi

Metcalfe is a town in Washington County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,067 at the 2010 census. The county is located on the western border of the state, with the Mississippi River on the west. It is within the Mississippi Delta.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.0 sqmi, all land.

Climate
The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Metcalfe has a humid subtropical climate, abbreviated "Cfa" on climate maps.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 816 people, 351 households, and 201 families residing in the town.

2000 census
At the 2000 census there were 1,109 people, 386 households, and 272 families in the town. The population density was 1,110.5 PD/sqmi. There were 417 housing units at an average density of 417.5 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 1.17% White, 97.57% African American, 0.27% Native American, 0.36% from other races, and 0.63% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.63%.

Of the 386 households 44.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 23.3% were married couples living together, 43.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.5% were non-families. 27.5% of households were one person and 9.8% were one person aged 65 or older. The average household size was 2.87 and the average family size was 3.54.

The age distribution was 40.8% under the age of 18, 11.6% from 18 to 24, 24.0% from 25 to 44, 16.3% from 45 to 64, and 7.3% 65 or older. The median age was 23 years. For every 100 females, there were 75.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 56.4 males.

The median household income was $15,000 and the median family income was $18,295. Males had a median income of $21,307 versus $16,793 for females. The per capita income for the town was $8,050. About 43.0% of families and 47.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 58.9% of those under age 18 and 53.3% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The Town of Metcalfe is served by the Western Line School District.

title: Metcalfe, Mississippi


text:
Waynesboro, Mississippi

Waynesboro is a city in Wayne County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 5,043 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Wayne County.

History
In 1854, the Mobile and Ohio Railroad was built through Wayne County, and Waynesboro Station was built about five miles north of Winchester. Around Waynesboro Station, the railroad laid the future town of Waynesboro and sold property.

In 1867, Waynesboro replaced Winchester as the county seat.

The discovery of oil in Wayne County during the 1940s drove an economic and population boom. In the 1940s, Waynesboro's population more than doubled, increasing from 1,445 residents in 1940 to 3,442 residents in 1950.

Geography
Waynesboro is located at 31.67389°N, -88.64361°W (31.674026, -88.643553), just east of the Chickasawhay River.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.7 sqmi, of which 6.7 sqmi is land and 0.15% is water.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 4,567 people, 1,786 households, and 1,219 families residing in the city.

2010 census
As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 5,043 people living in the city. 61.9% were African American, 35.2% White, 0.2% Native American, 0.3% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 1.4% from some other race and 1.0% of two or more races. 1.9% were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 5,197 people, 1,982 households, and 1,335 families living in the city. The population density was 781.6 PD/sqmi. There were 2,276 housing units at an average density of 342.3 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 41.54% White, 57.28% African American, 0.21% Native American, 0.37% Asian, 0.25% from other races, and 0.35% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.94% of the population.

There were 1,982 households, out of which 36.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.5% were married couples living together, 26.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.6% were non-families. 29.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.53 and the average family size was 3.12.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 29.5% under the age of 18, 10.9% from 18 to 24, 25.5% from 25 to 44, 20.1% from 45 to 64, and 14.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females, there were 82.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 73.3 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $22,357, and the median income for a family was $27,754. Males had a median income of $29,602 versus $16,887 for females. The per capita income for the city was $12,946. About 31.1% of families and 32.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 43.1% of those under age 18 and 17.4% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The city is served by the Wayne County School District. The city's high school level education is provided by Wayne County High School (public) and Wayne Academy (private).

Notable people

 * Three Major League Baseball players were born in Waynesboro: Claude Passeau (1909), Paul Busby (1918), and Jeff Branson (1967).
 * Beauty queen Jalin Wood was born in Waynesboro; she won Miss Mississippi in 2004, then competed in the Miss America and Miss USA pageants.
 * Spencer Johnson, football defensive tackle for Minnesota Vikings, Buffalo Bills.
 * James Marion West, Sr., noted Texan oilman, cattle rancher, lumberman, and philanthropist, was born in Waynesboro (1871).
 * Benito Jones, pro football player for the Detroit Lions.

title: Waynesboro, Mississippi


text:
Mantee, Mississippi

Mantee is a village in Webster County, Mississippi. The population was 232 at the 2010 census.

Geography
Mantee is located at 33.73056°N, -89.06°W (33.730615, -89.060074).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.7 sqmi, of which 1.6 sqmi is land and 0.1 sqmi (3.51%) is water.

Demographics
As of the 2010 census, there were 232 people, 95 households, and 70 families residing in the village. There were 115 housing units of which 20 were reported vacant. The racial makeup of the village was 99.1% White and 0.4% African American.

There were 115 households, out of which 23.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 65.3% were married couples living together, 6.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 26.3% were non-families. 22.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 30.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 2.89.

In the village, the population was spread out, with 7.3% under the age of five, 19,4% from five to 19, 1.7% from 20 to 24, 27,9% from 25 to 44, 26,2% from 45 to 64, and 17.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41.5 years. For every 100 males, there were 127 females.

The median income for a household in the village was $49,375, and the median home price was $105,600. Males had a median income of $32,500 versus $23,750 for females. The per capita income for the village was $18,871. About 3.5% of families and 6.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.7% of those under the age of eighteen and 8.2% of those 65 or over.

Education
The Village of Mantee is served by the Webster County School District.

title: Mantee, Mississippi


text:
Walthall, Mississippi

Walthall is a village in Webster County, Mississippi. The population was 144 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Webster County, designated in 1876.

Geography
Walthall is located at 33.60667°N, -89.27889°W (33.606588, -89.279000).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 1.0 sqmi, all land.

Demographics
As of the census of 2000, there were 170 people, 61 households, and 50 families residing in the village. The population density was 173.0 PD/sqmi. There were 69 housing units at an average density of 70.2 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the village was 92.94% White, 3.53% African American, 0.59% Asian, 0.59% from other races, and 2.35% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.18% of the population.

There were 61 households, out of which 41.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 68.9% were married couples living together, 6.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 18.0% were non-families. 18.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.79 and the average family size was 3.18.

In the village, the population was spread out, with 31.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 25.3% from 25 to 44, 21.2% from 45 to 64, and 11.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30 years. For every 100 females, there were 107.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.3 males.

The median income for a household in the village was $31,000, and the median income for a family was $36,875. Males had a median income of $30,417 versus $23,750 for females. The per capita income for the village was $14,903. About 24.6% of families and 21.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 22.4% of those under the age of eighteen and 57.9% of those 65 or over.

Education
The Village of Walthall is served by the Webster County School District.

title: Walthall, Mississippi


text:
Louisville, Mississippi

Louisville (pronounced LEW-iss-vill) is a city in Winston County, Mississippi. The population was 6,631 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Winston County.

History
Like Winston County, Louisville is named for Louis Winston (1784–1824), a colonel in the militia, a prominent lawyer, and a judge of the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 1863 Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson marched 900 troops through Louisville during his raid through Mississippi. There was no fighting in Winston County.

In 1927, a mob of 1,000 white men from Louisville, lynched two African-Americans, Jim and Mark Fox by wrapping them in barbed wire and setting them on fire. The Foxes were accused of killing Clarence Nichols, a white man who started a fight with them because they would not let him pass their Ford touring car in his Chevrolet.

On April 28, 2014, Louisville was hit by an EF4 tornado, resulting in ten fatalities.

Geography
Louisville is located at 33.12306°N, -89.05611°W (33.122931, -89.056182). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 15.3 sqmi, of which 15.1 sqmi is land and 0.2 sqmi (1.44%) is water. It is known by many as the "Front porch of the South".

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 6,072 people, 2,309 households, and 1,589 families residing in the city.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 7,006 people, 2,641 households, and 1,817 families living in the city. The population density was 464.5 PD/sqmi. There were 2,884 housing units at an average density of 191.2 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 46.29% White, 52.46% African American, 0.13% Native American, 0.17% Asian, 0.44% from other races, and 0.51% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.66% of the population.

There were 2,641 households, out of which 34.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.4% were married couples living together, 25.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.2% were non-families. 28.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.12.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 28.9% under the age of 18, 9.3% from 18 to 24, 24.7% from 25 to 44, 19.8% from 45 to 64, and 17.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 80.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 73.8 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $27,485, and the median income for a family was $31,750. Males had a median income of $29,951 versus $17,491 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,857. About 24.8% of families and 28.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 39.3% of those under age 18 and 20.9% of those age 65 or over.

Education
Prior to 1970, Louisville maintained a dual system of schools for White and Black students. Black students were educated at the Louisville Colored School, also known as Camile Street School, whereas White students had their own schools, including Louisville High School. Several federal laws and U.S. Supreme Court decisions forced this to change. In 1967, due to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the school adopted a desegregation plan that in theory allowed students to choose which schools to attend. When the courts mandated that the schools be integrated, students from Louisville Colored School were allowed to attend Louisville High School. In order to preserve a segregated education for White students only, a segregation academy, Winston Academy was created. The City of Louisville is now served by the Louisville Municipal School District and Louisville High School. Private schools in Louisville include Winston Academy, which as of 2020 was still over 99% white, and Grace Christian School.

Culture
The American Heritage "Big Red" Fire Museum is located in Louisville. This museum features a collection of restored antique fire equipment and fire engines. The Strand Theatre, in downtown Louisville, is an historic movie theater which now serves as an art and music venue. Louisville native Carl Jackson plays an annual Christmas concert at the theater to raise money for the building's restoration.

Transportation
Mississippi Highway 14 enters east from the Alabama state line through Macon and when it enters in Louisville it is also known as Main Street. It leaves westbound eventually traveling to the Mississippi River where it ends.

Mississippi Highway 15 enters from the north from Ackerman, MS, then meets up with Mississippi Highway 25 just north of Louisville. M.S. 25 enters from the north from Starkville. M.S. 15 and 25 travel together along the western side of town. At the southern edge of town they separate: M.S. 15 traveling to Philadelphia & Interstate 20; and M.S. 25 to Jackson.

Notable people

 * Van Chancellor, basketball coach
 * Thomas D. Clark, noted historian
 * Doug Cunningham, former professional football player
 * Olu Dara (born Charles Jones), jazz musician, father of the rapper Nas
 * Drew Eubanks, American basketball player
 * Mark Hudspeth, football coach
 * Carl Jackson, country music songwriter
 * E. Grady Jolly, U.S. circuit judge
 * Andy Kennedy, basketball coach
 * Coby Miller, Olympic athlete
 * Matthew Mitchell, basketball coach, University of Kentucky Lady Wildcats
 * Kim Rosamond, basketball coach for Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles
 * Lisa Stewart, country music singer and TV host
 * Marcus Thames, Major League Baseball player and coach

title: Louisville, Mississippi


text:
Coffeeville, Mississippi

Coffeeville is a town in and one of two county seats of Yalobusha County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 905 at the 2010 census. It is named after John Coffee (1772–1833), a planter and military leader. The minor American Civil War Battle of Coffeeville took place near here in December 1862.

Water Valley, Mississippi, in the northeastern part of the county, is the second county seat and judicial district. Once a center of railroad shops, it is the largest city in the county.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.2 sqmi, all land.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 797 people, 457 households, and 268 families residing in the town.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 930 people, 401 households, and 261 families residing in the town. The population density was 423.4 PD/sqmi. There were 464 housing units at an average density of 211.3 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 54.52% African American, 44.84% White, 0.32% Native American, and 0.32% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.83% of the population.

There were 401 households, out of which 25.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.4% were married couples living together, 21.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 34.9% were non-families. 32.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 20.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.32 and the average family size was 2.93.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 24.8% under the age of 18, 8.2% from 18 to 24, 23.3% from 25 to 44, 24.3% from 45 to 64, and 19.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females, there were 74.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 68.8 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $24,712, and the median income for a family was $31,000. Males had a median income of $25,592 versus $20,294 for females. The per capita income for the town was $13,758. About 23.1% of families and 28.5% of the population were below the poverty line, including 44.3% of those under age 18 and 14.5% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The Town of Coffeeville is served by the Coffeeville School District.

title: Coffeeville, Mississippi


text:
Oakland, Mississippi

Oakland is a town in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 527 at the time of the 2010 census.

History
Oakland was first settled around 1836, and was located 1.5 mi east of its present location. The town moved when the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad was built in the 1850s.

During the Civil War, the Battle of Oakland occurred on December 3, 1862, when Union Army General Cadwallader C. Washburn's 1,900 cavalrymen encountered Confederate Colonel John Summerfield Griffith's 6th Texas Cavalry Regiment at Oakland. Both sides withdrew after several hours of fighting.

In the early 1900s, the farms surrounding Oakland produced corn, cotton, vegetables and fruits, and "it is claimed that Oakland pears rival those of California". Oakland was prosperous, and "one of the best business towns of its size in the State", with two churches, a cotton gin, schools, merchants, and a bank, The Bank of Oakland.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.4 sqmi, all land.

2020 census
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 462 people, 237 households, and 139 families residing in the town.

2000 census
As of the census of 2000, there were 586 people, 222 households, and 132 families residing in the town. The population density was 409.3 PD/sqmi. There were 238 housing units at an average density of 166.2 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 23.72% White, 75.94% African American, 0.17% Native American, and 0.17% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.37% of the population.

There were 222 households, out of which 28.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 28.4% were married couples living together, 24.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.1% were non-families. 36.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.64 and the average family size was 3.57.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 30.0% under the age of 18, 9.7% from 18 to 24, 29.2% from 25 to 44, 19.1% from 45 to 64, and 11.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. For every 100 females, there were 93.4 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.5 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $17,431, and the median income for a family was $19,286. Males had a median income of $27,222 versus $17,083 for females. The per capita income for the town was $7,898. About 49.2% of families and 53.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 66.5% of those under age 18 and 58.1% of those age 65 or over.

Education
The Town of Oakland is served by the Coffeeville School District.

Notable people

 * Dunbar Rowland, attorney, archivist, and historian.

title: Oakland, Mississippi


text:
Bentonia, Mississippi

Bentonia is a town in Yazoo County, Mississippi, United States. The population as of the 2020 census was 319.

The Bentonia School of blues singing and guitar-playing is named for Bentonia.

History

Bentonia began as a postal town along the Illinois Central Railway. It is named for an early resident. Bentonia had a population of 167 in 1900.

Bentonia Blues
The Bentonia School, "Bentonia-style" or "Bentonia Blues" describe a country blues style that originated in and immediately around Bentonia. The annual Bentonia Blues Festival is held in June in Bentonia. The festival's stage is set up in front of the Blue Front Cafe, which is operated by Jimmy "Duck" Holmes who, as a young man, learned the local style from Bentonia Blues musician Jack Owens.

Three markers on the Mississippi Blues Trail are located in Bentonia: one each to musicians Skip James and Jack Owens, and one located at the Blue Front Café.

Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 1.4 sqmi, all land.

2020 census
''Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race.''

2000 Census
Bentonia's largest population count, 544, was recorded in 1970. Bentonia had sixty fewer residents in 2010 compared to 2000, and the 2015 estimate is another fourteen fewer. As of the census of 2000, there were 500 people, 203 households, and 130 families residing in the town. The population density was 366.0 PD/sqmi. There were 214 housing units at an average density of 156.6 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the town was 62.80% White, 35.80% African American, 0.20% Asian, 0.20% from other races, and 1.00% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.40% of the population.

There were 203 households, out of which 29.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 38.9% were married couples living together, 21.7% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.5% were non-families. 33.5% of all households were made up of individuals, and 16.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.15.

In the town, the population was spread out, with 25.2% under the age of 18, 7.8% from 18 to 24, 25.6% from 25 to 44, 23.8% from 45 to 64, and 17.6% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 79.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 76.4 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $21,458, and the median income for a family was $39,583. Males had a median income of $28,000 versus $26,875 for females. The per capita income for the town was $12,440. About 23.3% of families and 27.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.5% of those under age 18 and 22.2% of those age 65 or over.

Transportation
Amtrak’s City of New Orleans, which operates between New Orleans and Chicago, passes through the town on CN tracks, but makes no stop. The nearest station is located in Yazoo City, 16 mi to the north.

Education
The Town of Bentonia is served by the Yazoo County School District. Residents are zoned to Bentonia Gibbs Elementary School, Yazoo County Middle School, and Yazoo County High School.

Notable people

 * Jimmy "Duck" Holmes, blues musician
 * Skip James, blues musician
 * Jack Owens, blues musician
 * James Steels, former outfielder for the San Diego Padres.

title: Bentonia, Mississippi