Mississippi History

We are especially proud to announce the publication of Mississippi: A History, the first textbook ever published specifically for use in college-level courses in Mississippi history.

In his sweeping coverage of the Mississippi story—from prehistoric times to the present day— Dr. Westley F. Busbee, Jr., deftly combines narrative and topical chapters to address major political, economic, social, and cultural developments. Having taught Mississippi history in college classes for more than thirty years, Dr. Busbee approaches this unflinching account by asking why Mississippi—with its rich natural and human resources—continues to compare unfavorably with other states in such critical areas as per capita income, adult literacy, and public health. “How and why,” he asks, “did all of us who call Mississippi home get where we are? What past mistakes might we hope to correct and what innovative approaches might we take to enhance the future of the state?”

The book seeks answers to these meaningful questions through a careful assimilation of information gleaned from a multitude of secondary and primary sources. It also includes original maps and tables as well as a multitude of photographs, selected sources by chapter, a Selected Bibliography of Mississippi History, a series of appendices, and a full subject index. In sum, this innovative survey provides a great new resource for all instructors of Mississippi history, a common base of information for students pursuing knowledge and meaning in the study of their state’s past, and a comprehensive and engaging read for anyone interested in knowing more about the fascinating history of the Magnolia State.

  To most Americans, Mississippi is not a state but a scar, the place where segregation took its ugliest form and struck most savagely at its challengers.  But to many Americans, Mississippi is also home.  And it is this paradox, with all its overtones of history and heartache, that Anthony Walton—whose parents escaped Mississippi for the relative civility of the Midwest—explores in this resonant and disquieting work of travel writing, history, and memoir.

Traveling from the Natchez Trace to the yawning cotton fields of the Delta and from plantation houses to air-conditioned shopping malls, Walton challenged us to see Mississippi's memories of comfort alongside its legacies of slavery and the Klan.  He weaves in the stories of his family, as well as those of patricians and sharecroppers, redneck demagogues and martyred civil rights workers, novelists and bluesmen, black and white. Mississippi is a national saga in brilliant microcosm, splendidly written and profoundly moving.

Written in short, easy-to-read vignettes, these tales uncover some of the state’s most fascinating figures and legends from how the Choctaws and Chickasaws settled the land to a UFO encounter in Pascagoula. You’ll also read about famous Mississippians, the American Civil War, the 1960s Civil Rights movement, living in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, and other captivating tales that include:

· The U.S. president who stole another man’s wife, brought her to Mississippi, and married her before she was divorced
· The pirate who helped win the Battle of New Orleans and then retired to Bay St. Louis
· The national hero who killed a man in a knife fight in Natchez
· The blues singer who sold his soul to the devil in Clarksdale in return for his talent
· An interview with James Meredith

Originally inhabited by Native American tribes, territorial Mississippi has a complex history rife with fierce contention. Since 1540, when Hernando de Soto of Spain journeyed across the Atlantic and became the first European to stumble across its borders, the territory has been the center of passionate international disagreements. After numerous boundary shifts, Mississippi was finally admitted as the twentieth state of the Union on December 10, 1817.

In The Mississippi Territory and the Southwest Frontier, 1795--1817, Robert V. Haynes does more than recount history; he explores the political and diplomatic situations that led to the formation and expansion of the Mississippi Territory. Extensively researched and exceptionally written, Haynes details critical events in Mississippi's rich history, such as ongoing border violence, the arrest of infamous traitor Aaron Burr, and the bloody Creek War.

Must See Mississippi: 50 Favorite Places is a fifty-site tour through the Magnolia State\'s historic locales, ranging from the graceful swinging bridge at Tishomingo State Park to the Biloxi Lighthouse, a miraculous survivor of Hurricane Katrina. Each locale contributes a unique piece of the state\'s rich and multilayered story, told through Mary Carol Miller\'s text and more than one hundred full-color photographs by Mary Rose Carter.

The book traces the region\'s history across several centuries, from the sunken paths of the Natchez Trace, winding through ominously quiet corners of Claiborne County, to the Greek Revival mansions and courthouses of the antebellum era. Author and photographer explore the remains of the long-lost Natchez tribe\'s Grand Village, as well as Gothic churches, imposing college chapels, and cabins of the Neshoba County Fair. Natural treasures also abound with trips to Point Leflore, the gardens of Monmouth and Walter Place, and the towering oaks of Greenwood\'s Grand Boulevard.

Selected by the author and photographer after more than a decade of roaming the highways and back roads of Mississippi, these fifty sites represent the best of a fascinating state.

Mary Carol Miller and Mary Rose Carter from Greenwood, Mississippi, are coauthors of Great Houses of Mississippi and Written in the Bricks. Greg Iles of Natchez, Mississippi, is the author of several novels, including True Evil, Turning Angel, and Blood Memory.

In America's collective imagination, Mississippi, a state that aptly may be described as the most southern place in America, is often deemed a sinister, forbidding landscape. While popular conceptions of other states are evoked by rosy likenesses chosen by promoters of tourism, the mere word Mississippi too often conjures thoughts of brutality, repression, and backwardness. To many outsiders, Mississippi's controversial history continues to resonate in the present.

By allowing divergent historical voices to describe their understanding of events as they were unfolding, this new book of narrative history supports, emends, and even complicates such a vision of Mississippi's past and present. The only book ever to present Mississippi's story in a chronological documentary fashion, it includes a wide variety of public records, newspaper articles, academic papers, correspondence, ordinances, constitutional amendments, journal entries, and other documents.

Collected and placed together, they compose a narrative that reveals the state in all its great diversity of peoples and terrains--free and slave; rich, poor, and middling; coastal, hill country, Delta; black, white, and Native American.

Several chapters, particularly those on antebellum Mississippi and Reconstruction, represent recent scholarly views and correct lingering misconceptions of those years. The editor and compiler has written an introduction to each section and has placed the documents in an appropriate historical context that makes them accessible to students, scholars, archivists, librarians, and lay readers alike.

Although many of these documents are well known, many also have never been seen since their inception. In juxtaposition they offer a striking portrait. The parts and the whole alike show that Mississippi remains ever controversial, ever puzzling, ever fascinating.

• Trade paperback with scenes of the flood. 5x10 inces 524 pages