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Published: December 2003
Hiram Runnels lost the office of governor and won the office of governor by the narrowest margins in Mississippi’s history. In 1831 he lost by 247 votes and in 1833 he won by 558 votes, but then lost again in 1835 by 426 votes.
OVERVIEW
Prior to the involvement of national initiatives in the 1960s, such as the Freedom Rides, local people worked to bring an end to discrimination in their communities.
Published: September 2009
During his twenty-eight-year public career, Hubert Durrett Stephens was a Mississippi district attorney, a United States congressman and senator, and a member of the board of directors of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
Published: July 2002
On the sweltering afternoon of July 7, 1962, the town of Oxford, Mississippi, paused to pay its final respects to its most famous native son.
Published: December 2003
Charles Lynch migrated to Mississippi from his native South Carolina, where he was born in 1783. Lynch is one of the few governors of Mississippi who held office in all three branches of state government.
Published: February 2002
The American Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s represents a pivotal event in world history. The positive changes it brought to voting and civil rights continue to be felt throughout the United States and much of the world.
Published: August 2000
Emblems, banners, standards, and flags are an ancient tradition that date from the early Roman Empire.
Published: December 2003
Robert Lowry occupied the office of governor for eight years and was Mississippi’s first governor to remain in office for two consecutive four-year terms. He was first elected in 1881 and re-elected in 1885.
Published: June 2004
Progressivism was a political movement that swept America beginning about 1900. Progressives were people who believed that politicians should combine human compassion with the latest scientific and medical advances in order to tackle tough problems and supply solutions to those problems.
Published: January 2004
Not since George Poindexter had there been a Mississippi governor with a broader range of political experience than Governor James Plemon Coleman. He was also one of the few governors in the 20th century elected in his first campaign for the office.
Return to Mississippi Soldiers in the Civil War
In Bivouac 4 miles from Ripley,
Wednesday 1st Oct. 1862.
Published: January 2004
For all of William Winter’s many contributions to the state of Mississippi, he will best be remembered for the Education Reform Act of 1982. After the legislature failed to enact his educational reforms during the regular session in 1982, Governor Winter called a special session.
Published: January 2004
During the depths of the worst depression in American history, Martin S. Conner was inaugurated governor of Mississippi on January 19, 1932. “We assume our duties,” he said, “when men are shaken with doubt and with fear, and many are wondering if our very civilization is about to crumble.”
Teaching Levels
Grades 7 through 9
Curricular Connections
2018 Mississippi College-and Career-Readiness Standards for the Social Studies
Published: October 2008
In the late 1940s in Indianola, Mississippi, a young man named Riley King was singing and playing guitar with his friends in a group called the “Famous St.
Return to Mississippi Soldiers in the Civil War
Fredericksburg, January 29, 1863
Published: August 2000
Banner
A synonym for flag.
Border
An edging around the field of a flag that is a different color from the field.
Bunting
A woolen cloth used in making flags.
Published: December 2003
Governor John Jones Pettus has the distinction of serving the shortest term of governor in the state’s history. He served for five days between the resignation of Henry Foote on January 5 and the inauguration of his successor, John J. McRae, on January 10, 1854.
Published: May 2000
During its first half century as a territory and state (1810-1860), Mississippi was an agrarian-frontier society. Its population was made up of four groups: Native Americans, White people, enslaved people, and free Black people.
IntroductionThe oldest city in Mississippi, Natchez was a key site of the Civil Rights Movement in the state. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which terrorized Black people through bombings, beatings, and murder, was active throughout southwest Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s.
Published: May 2025
When Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahima arrived in Natchez in 1788, he walked up a landing dock where he met Thomas Foster, a young farmer who would purchase him like cattle and keep him enslaved for forty years on a nearby plantation.
Overview
On December 28, 1894, Burnita Shelton Matthews was born into an educated, civic-minded family, in Copiah County, Mississippi.
Published: July 2004
Mississippi is properly famous as the home of the blues and of the first star of rock and roll.
OVERVIEW
1927—what a year! Charles Lindbergh flew to Paris, Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs, and the first talking movie was released. Perhaps of even more significance to citizens who lived along the Mississippi River, the U.S.
Published: December 2003
Governor Charles Clark has the distinction of being one of the three governors of Mississippi to be arrested and imprisoned. The other two are John Quitman and Theodore Bilbo.