In March 1933, a tall, lanky, sandy-haired man stepped off the train at the Washington, D. C. station. No one greeted him, no band played, hardly anyone knew he had arrived. William M. Colmer had come to the nation’s capital to witness the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and then to represent the people of the sixth congressional district of Mississippi in the Seventy-third Congress.
By 1932 the Great Depression had the country in its relentless grip and most Americans believed that something was very wrong.
Farm-raised catfish is the largest aquaculture industry in the United States. In 2005, the U.S. catfish industry produced 600 million pounds of catfish from 165,000 pond water acres. The farm-raised catfish industry at $450 million in annual production value has the highest economic value of any aquaculture industry in the United States. The next highest valued aquaculture industry in the country is trout, valued at $74 million in annual production.
William Faulkner, Mississippi’s most famous novelist, once said, “To understand the world, you have to understand a place like Mississippi.”
In the early 18th century the economy of France was depressed. The government was deeply in debt and taxes were high. In addition, the French controlled the colony of Louisiana, a vast settlement in the interior of North America. The Louisiana Colony included the Natchez district and the area along the Mississippi Gulf Coast in present-day Mississippi. France was the first European country to settle this area of North America (1699-1763).