Mississippi

Opened to cotton after Native removal in the 1830s, Mississippi became the wealthiest slave state per white capita on the eve of the Civil War, with an enslaved majority working the Delta's plantations. Defeat and Reconstruction gave way to a century of sharecropping and Jim Crow, against which the state became a central battleground of the civil-rights movement. The Delta is also the birthplace of the blues.

• Existed: 1699 CE – present
• Type: Entity
• Government: U.S. State
• Capital: Jackson