Hugh Lawson White was perhaps the wealthiest man to hold the office of governor in Mississippi’s history, certainly in modern times. An industrialist and lumberman, White served two nonconsecutive terms and was among the oldest men elected governor. When he was elected to a second term in 1951, Governor White was age seventy.
During the depths of the worst depression in American history, Martin S. Conner was inaugurated governor of Mississippi on January 19, 1932. “We assume our duties,” he said, “when men are shaken with doubt and with fear, and many are wondering if our very civilization is about to crumble.”
Governor Conner inherited a bankrupt treasury and a $13 million deficit. At age forty-one, Martin Conner was one of the state’s youngest governors, but few had entered the office better trained or with more experience in public service.
While a student at the University of Mississippi, Lee Russell was a leader in the movement to abolish Greek fraternities. When he later became a member of the Mississippi Legislature from Lafayette County, he introduced a bill in 1912 to prohibit secret and exclusive societies at the public institutions of higher learning. Russell’s anti-fraternity law was enacted and remained in effect for fourteen years.
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
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.
A small group of Chinese immigrants came to Mississippi after the American Civil War. In their new environment, they sought ways to earn money and to adapt to the predominant culture of the state while preserving their ethnic identity. They came into a society dominated by Mississippians of British or African ancestry, and the Chinese carved out a distinctive place within this society.
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.