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Published: December 2003
James L. Alcorn was Mississippi’s first elected Republican governor. Alcorn had previously served in the state legislature of Kentucky and Mississippi, and had risen to the rank of general in the Confederate military service during the Civil War.
Published: August 2016
In 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) designated Mississippi State University (MSU) as host of the National Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
Published: January 2004
Dennis Murphree was governor of Mississippi on two separate occasions but was never elected to the office. In 1927 while serving as lieutenant governor, he became governor following the death of Henry Whitfield, and in 1943, he again succeeded to the office upon the death of Paul B.
Published: February 2010
Public schooling in Mississippi did not become commonplace until after the American Civil War. After the United States Supreme Court decided in its 1896 Plessy v.
Published: December 2003
Although his term began January 7, 1822, Governor Leake did not deliver his inaugural address until June 24 because the capital city was being relocated from Natchez. When he finally gave his address, the capital was temporarily situated at Columbia in Marion County.
Published: December 2003
Anselm McLaurin, the oldest of eight brothers and the father of ten children, was the last Confederate veteran to be elected governor of Mississippi. At the age of sixteen, he enlisted in the Third Mississippi Artillery and became well-known for his daring and bravery during the Civil War.
Published: January 2014
While serving as attorney general of the state of Mississippi in the early 1980s, Bill Allain filed a suit asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to separate the functions of the executive and legislative branches of state government, especially in the budgetary process.
Published: December 2003
Known to his friends and followers as “Johnny McRae of Chickasawhay,” Governor John J. McRae sailed his steamer Triumph up and down the Chickasawhay River “as if it were the Mississippi itself.” McRae was a folk hero and was extremely popular with the people of Mississippi.
Published: January 2004
When the Democratic Party nominated Harry S. Truman and adopted a strong civil rights platform in 1948, Southern Democrats organized the States’ Rights Democratic Party. Better known as “Dixiecrats,” the Southern Democrats nominated Governor Fielding L.
Published: January 2004
Hugh Lawson White was perhaps the wealthiest man to hold the office of governor in Mississippi’s history, certainly in modern times. An industrialist and lumberman, White served two nonconsecutive terms and was among the oldest men elected governor.
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.
Published: August 2004
Governor Earl Brewer’s inauguration was an unusually festive occasion and attracted the largest crowd in the state's history up to that time. Railroad companies offered reduced rates and thousands of people came to Jackson from all over the state.
Published: January 2004
Governor Andrew Longino was a pivotal figure in Mississippi history. He was the first governor elected after the American Civil War who was not a Confederate veteran, and he was the last governor to be nominated by a state party convention.
Published: September 2011
In 1936, Time magazine suggested that “better than any living man, Senator Byron Patton Harrison of Mississippi represents in his spindle-legged, round-shouldered, freckle-faced person the modern history of the Democratic Party.” By then Harrison had been in politics since 1906 and n
Published: December 2003
Governor Tilghman Tucker and his wife, Sarah F. McBee, were the first residents of the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion and because of the formal opening of the mansion, his inauguration on January 10, 1842, was especially festive. But Governor Tucker was a plain man of simple tastes.
Published: December 2003
When the constitutional convention met in July of 1817 to draft Mississippi’s first constitution, David Holmes was named president of the convention and was subsequently elected without opposition as the state’s first governor.
Published: December 2003
When Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys was removed from office June 15, 1868, President Andrew Johnson appointed Adelbert Ames provisional governor of Mississippi.
Published: July 2022
In 2022, more than fifty African Americans were serving in the Mississippi State Legislature, carrying on the legacy of the first Black men who served there in 1870. Mississippi’s first Black legislators were farmers and lawyers, barbers and blacksmiths, teachers and ministers.
Published: December 2003
Governor Joseph W. Matthews was a plain and unlettered frontiersman who lacked the flair for oratory which Mississippians expected from their statesmen. During the 1847 governor’s race, Matthews, a Democrat and surveyor by trade, was jeered by the aristocratic Whigs.
Published: January 2004
Shortly before Governor Edmond F. Noel’s inauguration on January 21, 1908, several Jackson businessmen recommended the sale of the Governor’s Mansion and the commercial development of the city block which the 1842 mansion occupied.
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.
OVERVIEW
In this lesson, students will explore the life and work of “the most popular and influential blues guitarist of the last three decades,” according to Robert Palmer, author of Deep Blues, (p. 178). The life of Riley B.
Published: December 2003
Gerard C. Brandon was the first native Mississippian to be elected governor. He also held the office longer than any other governor before the American Civil War.
Published: January 2004
When Paul B. Johnson, Jr. was inaugurated as Mississippi’s fifty-fourth governor on January 21, 1964, he became the only son of a Mississippi governor to follow his father to the state’s highest office.