Mississippi

With about three million people, Mississippi is the 32nd most populous state. Part of the deep south, the state consists of the Mississippi Delta and the East Gulf coastal plains.

Though Mississippi once had a much larger black population, migratory patterns in the 1930s and 1940s saw the departure of nearly 400,000 African Americans who left for better economic opportunities and treatment in the northern industrial cities. Despite this, the state still has the highest proportion of African Americans in its population—about 38 percent—which is growing, as the African American birthrate is slightly higher than the birthrate for the state as a whole. Blacks are the majority in several parts of the state, such as the Yazoo Delta, central Mississippi, and the southwest. Most white Mississippians self-identify as American when asked their ancestry; Irish, English, German, French, Scots-Irish, Italian, and Scottish are the most common ethnic groups. Neshoba County has a large Choctaw population, while Hancock County is predominantly French (Creoles from Louisiana or descended from the earliest settlers of Mississippi). Most of the state's Asian population (a total of less than 1 percent of the population) is Chinese American, either descendants of indentured servants who came from Cuba in the late 19th century or from immigrants who arrived during the 1910–30 wave to work as sharecroppers. The Chinese American community in Mississippi is therefore quite long established, with well-established social networks. Many small retail businesses throughout the Delta region are operated by Chinese Americans. There are also a small number of Vietnamese Americans who have relocated to Mississippi from the New Orleans area, where large numbers of refugees from the war settled, and these communities too have long, well-established ties.

Church ties are powerful in Mississippi—and with good reason. Many of the most important postcolonial developments in American religion have transpired in part in Mississippi. In the 19th century, religious revivals reached out to the yeomen of the south—the landowning white farmers who were not poor but were not wealthy enough to own slaves, often subsistence farmers who raised crops for their own households rather than for the market. Therefore, they had no ability to expand their operations as profit-making plantation owners could. The yeoman had been an important figure in the rhetoric of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy, representing self-reliance and a political spirit that was not bound to party leaders or what is now referred to as special interests. He was a figure largely overlooked by romantic portrayals of the south (as he would continue to be overlooked by later romanticizations), which dwelled mostly on aristocratic planters and their slaves. But religious revivalists sensed the need in such farmers and their families for stronger ties and networks, connections they lacked because they did not have the economic networks and social lives of their wealthier counterparts.

Later in the century, many Protestant denominations experienced temporary or permanent schisms over the issue of slavery and the Civil War, most prominently the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which formed its own denomination in 1845. The SBC has since become one of the largest denominations to embrace conservative and evangelical doctrines and practices, [Page 542]and although it is represented in 42 states, Mississippi retains the largest proportion of SBC members and churches. Methodists and Presbyterians are also prominent. African American Baptist churches, however, have grown to double the size of white Baptist churches, and churches led the way in the fight for civil rights and the end of segregation, beginning during the Great Depression when the need for strong social networks among Mississippi's disenfranchised classes was greater than ever. This tandem of religion and activism, while often popularly associated with the north and “meddlers,” actually has an old history in the south, where the social gospel movement of the Progressive era—which pursued social justice and reform with a Christian point of view—was quite popular, often associated with temperance movements. Since the 1970s, conservative fundamentalist, charismatic, and Pentecostal churches have grown more rapidly than any other Christian segments in Mississippi and have increasingly combined religion and activism, albeit to different ends.

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