Mississippi
usinfo | 2014-05-22 17:28

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city with 175,437 people in 2012 up 1.1% from the 2010 U.S. Census with 173,514. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi ("Great River"). Mississippi is the 32nd most extensive and the 31st most populous of the 50 United States. The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area, which was cleared for cotton cultivation in the 19th century. Today, its catfishaquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States. The state symbol is the Magnolia grandiflora tree. The state's flower is the Magnolia and the state bird is the Mockingbird. Mississippi has the lowest median household income, making it the poorest state in the nation.

Demographics

The center of population of Mississippi is located in Leake County, in the town of Lena.

The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Mississippi was 2,991,207 on July 1, 2013, a 0.8% increase since the 2010 United States Census. From 2000 to 2012, the United States Census Bureau reported that Mississippi had the highest rate of increase of mixed-race population, up 70 percent in the decade.

The total population has not increased significantly, but is young, and some of the change in percentage of those who identify as mixed race is due to new births. But, it appears to reflect mostly residents who have chosen to identify as more than one race, who in earlier years may have identified as only one ethnicity, a carryover from days of racial segregation, when a binary system was imposed, as well as from the civil rights era, when people of African descent banded together to win their civil rights and achieve political power. As the demographer William Frey noted, “In Mississippi, I think it’s changed from within.” Historically in Mississippi, after Indian removal in the 1830s, the major groups were black (African American, many of whom have had European ancestry) and white (primarily European American). Matthew Snipp, also a demographer, commented on the changes of increased identification as being of more than one race: "In a sense, they’re rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed."

After having comprised a majority of the state's population since well before the Civil War and through the 1930s, today African Americans comprise approximately 37 percent of the population, with most having ancestors who were enslaved and forcibly transported from Africa and the Upper South in the 19th century to work on developing the area's new plantations. Many also have numerous ancestors who were European, as there were many children born of mixed relationships. Some also have Native American ancestry. Mississippi was part of the Black Belt, and had a majority-black population from the antebellum years until the 1930s. During the first half of the 20th century, a total of nearly 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration, for opportunities in the North, Midwest and West.

In 2004, voters in Mississippi approved Amendment 1, amending the state's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage; the measure passed with 86% of the vote, the highest margin of victory of any such amendment in the nation. However, according to the 2010 census, approximately 33% of households led by same-sex couples included at least one child, the highest such percentage in the nation. The state's sodomy law criminalized consensual sex between adults of the same gender until 2003, when such laws were voided by the Supreme Court.

 

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