Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial

Follow

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: 1868 Constitutional Convention

  Jennifer Ford

  Immediately after the end of the Civil War, Mississippi was required by Congress to rewrite its constitution. Congress invalidated the 1865 constitution which was produced due to the extreme restrictions placed on African Americans and Mississippi’s defiance of Universal Manhood Suffrage. Congressional reconstruction had begun by the time of the State’s next attempt at a governing document. The 1868 Constitutional Convention, known later by the insensitive name “The Black and Tan Convention” was the state’s first biracial election which included seventeen African American delegates.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Ballots

  Leigh McWhite

  In early 19th century American elections, political parties printed ballots in newspapers or distributed them at the polls. These documents listed everyone running for office from that specific party. Mississippi did not adopt the secret ballot supplied by the state and listing all parties’ candidates until 1890.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Commemorative Stamps

  Leigh McWhite

  Dr. Dunbar Rowland, Director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History began commemorating in 1915 for celebration of the state’s centennial year of statehood in 1917. He argued, in addition to historical and patriotic retrospection, recognition of the states accomplishment’s over the past 100 years would energize Mississippi’s forward momentum into the 20th century.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Mississippi/Alabama Plate Map

  Jennifer Ford

  A hand colored plate from the 1822 publication by Luke Drury called A Geography for Schools features the newly formed state of Mississippi along with Alabama. Drury's early American geography book contains 40 hand colored maps including maps of the Americas as well as Europe and other regions.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Mississippi Folklore

  Greg Johnson

  There were a number of folklorists and collectors that went all around the country during the New Deal, as part of the Works Progress Administration, collecting examples of folk songs, folk customs, folk lore, folk stories, just all of the things that make a people united in different regions. And all of these come from, when you trace these back, you can see examples of early Irish, Scottish, English, settlers in the country as well as those folk stories and tales from France that made their way here, folk stories from parts of Africa and the Caribbean and Native American folk tales and culture that have all kind of comingled here in Mississippi to form our very diverse and unique folk culture.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Mississippi Music

  Greg Johnson

  Driving into the state, visitors are greeted with signs reading “Welcome to Mississippi, Birthplace of America’s Music”. We have the blues from the Delta and Hill Country region, we have Elvis out of Tupelo, and we have Jimmy Rodgers from Meridian, Mississippi, as well as opera soprano Leontyne Price from Laurel, Mississippi.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Pre-Mississippi Map

  Jennifer Ford

  A hand colored map, created by one of the most prolific cartographers of the 18th century, Johann Baptiste Homann, known as the buffalo map, due to the stylized depictions of buffalo featured in the top left and bottom right corners, depicts what would become the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Our version was likely printed around 1763 although the original date on the map is 1687.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Rebellion Map

  Jennifer Ford

  Charles O. Perrine’s first separately issued map, dated 1862, published in Indianapolis during the Civil War, of the states then in rebellion under the title “Perrine’s New Military Map Illustrating the Seat of War” provides a crude but striking depiction of the Southern United States with an insert map of Florida. This version is much rarer than Perrine’s 1864 map entitled the “New Topographical War Map of the South”. Separately printed wartime maps, as well as those published in journals and newspapers, were actively collected and became increasingly important as families attempted to track the location of their loved ones across regions, many of which were unfamiliar to them.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: School Textbooks

  Lauren Rogers

  During the mid-1970’s Mississippi public schools had been integrated formally for about half a decade, meaning that white and African American students were working alongside each other using the same textbooks. This was problematic, however, given that the textbooks themselves may have contributed to a persistent sense of racism and discrimination in these schools.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Sheet Music

  Greg Johnson

  You can learn a lot about a culture or a place through sheet music titles, song content, lyrics, cover art that you see on the sheet music itself. Mississippi is no exception, when you see a lot of music from the south or about the south, particularly music that was printed from the late 1800s into the first three or even four decades of the 20th century, we see a lot of nostalgic visions for the old south, for this sort of glorified place that never existed.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Suffrage Movement

  Lauren Rogers

  The early women’s suffrage movement began in 1848 as an offshoot of the anti-slavery movement but was somewhat delayed by greater world events such as the Civil War and emancipation. In 1890 the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association was formed and led by Nellie Nugent Somerville. Their efforts were to gain the vote for women in the state of Mississippi. In their constitution the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association sought to advance the industrial, educational, and legal rights of woman and to secure suffrage for them.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: Who's Who

  Leigh McWhite

  A number of reference publications exist with the title “Who’s Who” which contain brief biographical information on noted individuals.

• 

  Celebrating Mississippi's Bicentennial: William Winter Bicentennial Comments

  William Winter

  By its very nature the state's bicentennial year is an important event in the history of Mississippi. Two hundred years of existence as a state of the United States of America. That of itself is worthy of observing but for Mississippi 200 years of history is includes so many unique and exciting and memorable events. We still live in this great country under the same structure of government the same Constitution hopefully under the same principles. Now we have an opportunity to look back and observe how far we've come and how much we've accomplished but more importantly how much we still have left to do. We must make this 200th year the basis for celebrating not only our history but celebrating the accomplishments that I think we can look forward to in the future.