State (pop., 2000: 2,844,658), south-central U.S. Lying on the Gulf of Mexico, it is bordered by Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
It covers 47,695 sq mi (123,530 sq km); its capital is Jackson . Its landscape ranges from hills and pine woods to plains and river lowlands. Before European settlement, the area was inhabited by several Indian tribes, including the Choctaw , Natchez, and Chickasaw. It became part of French-controlled Louisiana, and Biloxi was settled in 1699. The northern portion was ceded to the U.S. in 1783; the southern portion was included in the Mississippi Territory (created 1798), which expanded in 1804 to include most of the present-day state. Mississippi became the 20th U.S. state in 1817. A plantation-based economy using slave labour developed in the 1820s. It seceded from the Union in 1861 and gave the Confederacy its president, Vicksburg in 1863 proved a turning point in the American Civil War . It was readmitted to the Union in 1870 and adopted a constitution aimed at blocking Reconstruction in 1890. The state became a battleground in the struggle against racial segregation in the 1960s: the state's effort to block the admission of {{link=Meredith, James Howard">James Meredith to the University of Mississippi triggered riots in 1962; local civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in 1963. After 1969, when the federal government ordered the integration of the state's segregated school system, Mississippi's long-standing racial traditions began a gradual change. Today, its economy is based on agricultural products, including cotton and soybeans. Manufactured goods include textiles and electrical equipment.