When the constitutional convention met in July of 1817 to draft Mississippi’s first constitution, David Holmes was named president of the convention and was subsequently elected without opposition as the state’s first governor. The election of Governor Holmes, who had served as governor of the Mississippi Territory for several years, facilitated the transition of Mississippi from territorial status to statehood.
Emblems, banners, standards, and flags are an ancient tradition that date from the early Roman Empire.
Flags are powerful symbols that signify dominion and sovereignty and express personal and political allegiance to a state or nation. Mississippi did not officially adopt a state flag until 1861, when it seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. Prior to that time, several flags had flown over the territory that would become the state of Mississippi on December 10, 1817.1
In 1817, when the state's first Constitution was adopted, only the southern one-third of Mississippi was open to settlement by White Americans. The northern two-thirds was owned by the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. In 1820, the Choctaws were forced to cede their lands in west-central Mississippi to the United States. In 1830, all remaining Choctaw lands were ceded to the United States. In 1832, the Chickasaws were forced to cede their lands in northeastern Mississippi.
On March 1, 1817, President James Madison signed legislation enabling inhabitants of the western portion of the Mississippi Territory to form for themselves a constitution and State government, and to assume such name as they shall deem proper; and the said State, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union upon the same footing with the original States, in all respects whatever.
Constitutions embody the basic laws and organizations of governments. Constitutions may be written or accepted by tradition. For example, the Constitution of the United States is a written document that spells out the organization and powers of the federal government. However, some nations, like Great Britain, have no written constitutions. Instead, the British constitution comes from legal traditions and fundamental laws.
In the 1600s, Colonial French settlers brought Christianity into the lands that are now the state of Mississippi. Throughout the period of French rule and the period of Spanish dominion that followed, Roman Catholicism was the principal religion.
Jews have always been a small minority of Mississippi’s population, yet over the centuries they have forged communities in the state and preserved their religious traditions.
Their religious traditions go far back into world history. The history of the Jews began with Abraham, the founder of the Jewish religion in Hebron, twenty miles south of Jerusalem in the Judaean hills. The Jews created an identity earlier than most other people — more than 4,000 years ago — and that identity still survives. Jews first arrived in North America in 1654.
Italian families have been found in cities and small towns throughout Mississippi since the 19th century. Their story of coming to America shows the obstacles that immigrants to Mississippi faced in assimilating to the broader society and their achievements along the way.
The first Italians came to Mississippi as part of explorations the French and Spanish governments conducted in the Mississippi River Valley. They were part of Hernando DeSoto’s expedition in the 1540s, and Berardo Peloso was the first European to see Pascagoula Bay in 1558.
The first known execution by the State of Mississippi was July 16, 1818, in Adams County with the hanging of George H. Harman, a White male, for “stealing a Negro.” Since then, the state has conducted 810 known executions. Of those executed, 642 have been Black males, 130 White males, 19 Black females, 2 Native American males, and 16 individuals not completely identified either by gender or by race. No White females are known to have been executed by the state.
Gideon Lincecum moved to Mississippi in 1818. He brought his family, which included his wife Sarah Bryan, two small children, his parents, some siblings, and a few enslaved African-Americans. They settled initially along the Tombigbee River and helped establish the town of Columbus, Mississippi.
The Lincecums were part of the hundreds of other new settlers traveling west from the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama during the first two decades of the 19th century. The number of Americans moving west then was so great that historians refer to the movement as the Great Migration.