Translated from the Choctaw Language, the word,"Mississippi" means "Father of the Waters," a reference to the great Mississippi River for which the state is named. The first white man to enter the region was the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto, who came to the area in search of gold and became instead the European to see the great Mississippi River. THe first European settlement in the Mississippi region was established by the French in 1699. The flags of France, Spain, and England all flew over the territory before the Mississippi Territory became the twentieth state in 1817.

Mississippi fast became one of the nation's wealthiest states. Cotton was King, and plantation owners constructed elaborate mansions to serve as testimony to their incredible wealth.

Mississippi seceded from the Union in January of 1861, and Missippian Jefferson Davis was named President of the Confederate Sates of America. The Civil War transformed Mississippi into a bloody battlefield, replacing the splendor and grace of the Old South culture with the horror and devastation of combat. Mississippi troops saw action in theatres of War across the nation, and battles were waged in every corner of the state itself.

Mississippi was readmitted to the Union in 1870, and gradually recovered from the War's devastation. Mississippi shifted its economic focus from predominatly agricultural interests to industrial development.

Wartime prosperity expanded opportunities in other states as well, and record numbers of Afro-Americans left the South to work in northern factories. Those who remained in Mississippi participated in the most dramatic phase of the state's history since the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Source: State of Mississippi.