document_title: History of Mississippi

question_text: when did mississippi become part of the united states

question_tokens: when did mississippi become part of the united states

text: History of Mississippi

text: Native Americans[edit]

text: At the end of the last Ice Age, Native Americans or Paleo-Indians appeared in what today is the Southern United States.[1] Paleo-Indians in the South were hunter-gatherers who pursued the megafauna that became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. A variety of indigenous cultures arose in the region, including some that built great earthwork mounds more than 2,000 years ago.[2]

text: The successive mound building Troyville, Coles Creek, and Plaquemine cultures occupied western Mississippi bordering the Mississippi River during the Late Woodland period. During the Terminal Coles Creek period (1150 to 1250 CE) contact increased with Mississippian cultures centered upriver near St. Louis, Missouri. This led to the adaption of new pottery techniques, as well as new ceremonial objects and possibly new forms of social structuring.[3] As more Mississippian culture influences were absorbed the Plaquemine area as a distinct culture began to shrink after 1350 CE. Eventually the last enclave of purely Plaquemine culture was the Natchez Bluffs area, while the Yazoo Basin and adjacent areas of Louisiana became a hybrid Plaquemine-Mississippian culture.[4] Historic groups in the area during first European contact bear out this division. In the Natchez Bluffs, the Taensa and Natchez had held out against Mississippian influence and continued to use the same sites as their ancestors and carry on the Plaquemine culture. Groups who appear to have absorbed more Mississippian influence were identified at the time of European contact as those tribes speaking the Tunican, Chitimachan, and Muskogean languages.[3]

text: The Mississippian culture disappeared in most places around the time of European encounter. Archaeological and linguistic evidence has shown their descendants are the historic Chickasaw and Choctaw peoples, who were later counted by colonists as among the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast. Other tribes who inhabited the territory that became known as Mississippi (and whose names were given by colonists to local towns and features) include the Natchez, Yazoo, Pascagoula, and the Biloxi. French, Spanish and English colonists all traded with these tribes in the early colonial years.

text: Pressure from European-American settlers increased during the early nineteenth century, after invention of the cotton gin made cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable. This was readily cultivated in the upland areas of the South, and its development could feed an international demand for cotton in the 19th century. Migrants from the United States entered Mississippi mostly from the north and east, coming from the Upper South and coastal areas. Eventually they gained passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which achieved federal forced removal of most of the indigenous peoples during the 1830s to areas west of the Mississippi River.

text: European colonial period[edit]

text: The first major European expedition into the territory that became Mississippi was Spanish, led by Hernando de Soto, who passed through in 1540. The French claimed the territory that included Mississippi as part of their colony of New France and started settlement along the Gulf Coast. They created the first Fort Maurepas under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville on the site of modern Ocean Springs (or Old Biloxi) in 1699.[2]

text: In 1716, the French founded Natchez as Fort Rosalie on the Mississippi River; it became the dominant town and trading post of the area. In this period of the early 18th century, the French Roman Catholic Church created pioneer parishes at Old Biloxi/Ocean Springs and Natchez. The church also established seven pioneer parishes in present-day Louisiana and two in Alabama, which was also part of New France.[6]

text: The French and later Spanish colonial rule influenced early social relations of the settlers who held enslaved Africans. As in Louisiana, for a period there developed a third class of free people of color. They were chiefly descendants of white European colonists and enslaved African or African-American mothers. The planters often had formally supportive relationships with their mistresses of color, known in French as plaçage. They sometimes freed them and their multiracial children. The fathers passed on property to their mistresses and children, or arranged for the apprenticeship or education of children so they could learn a trade. Some wealthier male colonists sent their mixed-race sons to France for education, and some entered the military there. Free people of color often migrated to New Orleans, where there was more opportunity for work and a bigger community of their class.[2]

text: As part of New France, Mississippi was also ruled by the Spanish after France's defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Later it was briefly part of West Florida under the British. In 1783 the Mississippi area was deeded by Great Britain to the United States after the latter won its independence in the American Revolution, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. Following the Peace of Paris (1783) the southern third of Mississippi came under Spanish rule as part of West Florida.

text: Through the colonial period, the various tribes of Native Americans changed alliances trying to achieve the best trading and other conditions for themselves.

text:
Historical populations

Census
year
Population

1800
7,600

1810
31,306

1820
75,448

1830
136,621

1840
375,651

1850
606,526

1860
791,305

1870
827,922

1880
1,131,597

1890
1,289,600

1900
1,551,270

1910
1,797,114

1920
1,790,618

1930
2,009,821

1940
2,183,796

1950
2,178,914

1960
2,178,141

1970
2,216,912

1980
2,520,638

1990
2,573,216

2000
2,844,658

tag: table

text: Territory and statehood[edit]

text: Before 1798 the state of Georgia claimed the entire region extending west from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi River and tried to sell lands there, most notoriously in the Yazoo land scandal of 1795. Georgia finally ceded the disputed area in 1802 to the United States national government for its management. In 1804, after the Louisiana Purchase, the government assigned the northern part of this cession to Mississippi Territory. The southern part became the Louisiana Territory.

text: The Mississippi Territory was sparsely populated and suffered initially from a series of difficulties that hampered its development. Pinckney's Treaty of 1795 ended Spanish control over Mississippi, but Spain continued to hamper the territory's growth by harassing commercial traders. It restricted American trading and travel on the Mississippi River down to New Orleans, the major port on the Gulf Coast.

text: Winthrop Sargent, territorial governor in 1798, proved unable to impose a code of laws. Not until the emergence of cotton as a profitable staple crop in the nineteenth century, after the invention of the cotton gin, were the riverfront areas of Mississippi developed as cotton plantations. These were based on slave labor, and developed most intensively along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, bordering the Mississippi Delta. The rivers offered the best transportation to markets.[7]

text: Americans had continuing land disputes with the Spanish, even after taking control of much of this territory through the Louisiana Purchase (1803) from France. In 1810 the European-American settlers in parts of West Florida rebelled and declared their freedom from Spain. President James Madison declared that the region between the Mississippi and Perdido rivers, which included most of West Florida, had already become part of the United States under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase. The section of West Florida between the Pearl and Perdido rivers, known as the District of Mobile, was annexed to Mississippi Territory in 1812; Americans from the United States occupied Kiln, Mississippi, in 1813.

text: Settlement[edit]

text: The attraction of vast amounts of high-quality, fertile and inexpensive cotton land attracted hordes of settlers, mostly from Georgia and the Carolinas, and from former tobacco areas of Virginia and North Carolina in the Upper South. By this time, most planters in the Upper South had switched to mixed crops, as their lands were exhausted from tobacco and it was barely profitable as a commodity crop.

text: From 1798 through 1820, the population in the Mississippi Territory rose dramatically, from less than 9,000 to more than 222,000. The vast majority were enslaved African Americans brought by settlers or shipped by slave traders. Migration came in two fairly distinct waves - a steady movement until the outbreak of the War of 1812, and a flood after it was ended, from 1815 through 1819. The postwar flood was catalyzed by various factors: high prices for cotton, the elimination of Indian titles to much land, new and improved roads, and the acquisition of new direct water outlets to the Gulf of Mexico. The first migrants were traders and trappers, then herdsmen, and finally farmers. Conditions on the Southwest frontier initially resulted in a relatively democratic society for whites.[8] But expansion of cotton cultivation resulted in an elite group of white planters who controlled politics in the state for decades.

text: Cotton[edit]

text: Expansion of cultivation of cotton into the Deep South was enabled by the invention of the cotton gin, which made processing of short-staple cotton profitable. This type was more readily grown in upland and inland areas, in contrast to the long-staple cotton of the Sea Islands and Lowcountry. Americans pressed to gain more land for cotton, causing conflicts with the several tribes of Native Americans who historically occupied this territory of the Southeast. Five of the major tribes had adopted some western customs and had members who assimilated to varying degrees, often based on proximity and trading relationships with whites.

text: Through the 1830s, state and federal US governments forced the Five Civilized Tribes to cede their lands. Various US leaders developed proposals for removal of all Native Americans to west of the Mississippi River. This took place following passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830 by Congress. As Indians ceded their lands to whites through the Southeast, they moved west and became more isolated from the American planter society, where many African Americans were enslaved. The state sold off the ceded lands, and white migration into the state continued. Some families brought slaves with them; most slaves were transported into the area from the Upper South in a forced migration through the domestic slave trade.[9]

text: Statehood[edit]

text: In 1817 elected delegates wrote a constitution and applied to Congress for statehood. On Dec. 10, 1817, the western portion of Mississippi Territory became the State of Mississippi, the 20th state of the Union. Natchez, long established as a major river port, was the first state capital. As more population came into the state and future growth was anticipated, in 1822 the capital was moved to the more central location of Jackson.[10]

text: Religion[edit]

text: French colonists had established the Catholic Church in their colonial settlements along the coast, such as Biloxi. As Americans entered the territory, they brought their strongly Protestant tradition. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians made up the three leading denominations in the territory, and their congregations rapidly built new churches and chapels. By this time, many slaves were already Christians, attending church under the supervision of white planters. They also developed their own private worship and celebrations on the larger plantations. Adherents to other religions were a distinct minority. Some Protestant ministers won converts and often promoted education, although there was no state public school system until it was authorized after the Civil War by the Reconstruction-era biracial legislature.

text: Whereas in the first Great Awakening, Protestant ministers of these denominations had promoted abolition of slavery, by the early 19th century, when the Deep South was being developed, most had retreated to support for slavery. They argued instead for an improved paternalism under Christianity by white slaveholders. This sometimes led to improved treatment for the enslaved.[11][12]

text: Government[edit]

text: William C. C. Claiborne (1775–1817), a lawyer and former Republican congressman from Tennessee (1797–1801), was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as governor and superintendent of Indian affairs in the Mississippi Territory from 1801 through 1803. Although he favored acquiring some land from the Choctaw and Chickasaw, Claiborne was generally sympathetic and conciliatory toward Indians. He worked long and patiently to iron out differences that arose, and to improve the material well-being of the Indians. He was partly successful in promoting the establishment of law and order; his offer of a $2,000 reward helped destroy a gang of outlaws headed by Samuel Mason (1750–1803). His position on issues indicated a national rather than regional outlook, though he did not ignore his constituents. Claiborne expressed the philosophy of the Democratic-Republican Party and helped that party defeat the Federalists.[13] When a smallpox epidemic broke out in the spring of 1802, Claiborne directed the first recorded mass vaccination in the territory. This prevented the spread of the epidemic in Natchez.[14]

text: Native American lands[edit]

text: The United States government purchased land from the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes from 1801 to about 1830, as white settlers entered the territory from coastal states. After Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the government forced the tribes to accept lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. Most left the state, but those who remained became United States citizens.

text: After 1800 the rapid development of a cotton economy and the slave society of the Deep South changed the economic relationship of native Indians with whites and slaves in Mississippi Territory. As Indians ceded their lands to whites in the eastern sections, they moved west in the state, becoming more isolated from whites and blacks. The following table illustrates ceded land in acres:

text:
Treaty
Year
Signed with
Where
Purpose
Ceded land

San Lorenzo
1795
Between Spain and United States
San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain
The treaty, also known as Pinckney's Treaty, put Choctaw & Chickasaw country under U.S. control
n/a

Fort Adams
1801
Choctaw
Mississippi Territory
Redefined Choctaw cession to England and permission for whites to use the Natchez Trace
2,641,920 acres (10,691.5 km2)

Fort Confederation
1802
Choctaw
Mississippi Territory
n/a
10,000 acres (40 km2)

Hoe Buckintoopa
1803
Choctaw
Choctaw Nation
Small cession of Tombigbee River and redefined English treaty of 1765
853,760 acres (3,455.0 km2)

Mount Dexter
1805
Choctaw
Choctaw Nation
Large cession from Natchez District to the Tombigbee/Alabama River watershed
4,142,720 acres (16,765.0 km2)

Fort St. Stephens
1816
Choctaw
Fort Confederation
Ceded all Choctaw land east of Tombigbee River
10,000 acres (40 km2)

Doak's Stand
1820
Choctaw
Natchez Trace, Choctaw Nation
Exchanged cession in Mississippi for parcel in Arkansas
5,169,788 acres (20,921.39 km2)

Washington City
1825
Choctaw
Exchanged Arkansas land for Oklahoma parcel
2,000,000 acres (8,100 km2)

Dancing Rabbit Creek
1830
Choctaw
Choctaw Nation
Removal and granting U.S. citizenship to Choctaw who remained
10,523,130 acres (42,585.6 km2)

Pontotoc
1832
Chickasaw
Pontitock Creek
Seek a home in the west
6,283,804 acres (25,429.65 km2)

text: Antebellum period[edit]

text: The exit of most the Native Americans meant that vast new lands were open to settlement, and tens of thousands of immigrant Americans poured in. Men with money brought slaves and purchased the best cotton lands in the Delta region along the Mississippi River. Poor men took up poor lands in the rest of the state, but the vast majority of the state was still undeveloped at the time of the Civil War.

text: Cotton[edit]

text: By the 1830s Mississippi was a leading cotton producer, increasing its demand for enslaved labor. Some planters considered slavery a "necessary evil" to make cotton production profitable, for the survival of the cotton economy, and were brought in from the border states and the tobacco states where slavery was declining.[15] The 1832 state constitution forbade any further importation of slaves by the domestic slave trade, but the provision was found to be unenforceable, and it was repealed.

text: As planters increased their holdings of land and slaves, the price of land rose, and small farmers were driven into less fertile areas. An elite slave-owning class arose that wielded disproportionate political and economic power. By 1860, of the 354,000 whites, only 31,000 owned slaves and two thirds of these held fewer than 10. Fewer than 5,000 slaveholders had more than 20 slaves; 317 possessed more than 100. These 5,000 planters, especially the elite among them, controlled the state. In addition a middle element of farmers owned land but no slaves. A small number of businessmen and professionals lived in the villages and small towns. The lower class, or "poor whites", occupied marginal farm lands remote from the rich cotton lands and grew food for their families, not cotton. Whether they owned slaves or not, however, most white Mississippians supported the slave society; all whites were considered above blacks in social status. They were both defensive and emotional on the subject of slavery. A slave insurrection scare in 1836 resulted in the hanging of a number of slaves, as was common in the South after such incidents. Several white northerners were suspected of being secret abolitionists.[16]

text: When cotton was king during the 1850s, Mississippi plantation owners—especially those in the old Natchez District, as well as the newly emerging Delta and Black Belt region of the uplands in the center of the state—became increasingly wealthy due to the great fertility of the soil and the high price of cotton on the international market. The severe wealth imbalances and the necessity of large-scale slave populations to sustain such income played a strong role in state politics and political support for secession.[17] Mississippi was among the six states in the Deep South with the highest proportion of slave population; it was the second state to secede from the union.

text: Mississippi's population grew rapidly due to migration, both voluntary and forced, reaching 791,305 in 1860. Blacks numbered 437,000, making up 55% of the population; they were overwhelmingly enslaved. Cotton production grew from 43,000 bales in 1820 to more than one million bales in 1860, as Mississippi became the leading cotton-producing state. With international demand high, Mississippi and other Deep South cotton was exported to the textile factories of Britain and France, as well as those in New York and New England. The Deep South was the major supplier and had strong economic ties with the Northeast. By 1820, half of the exports from New York City were related to cotton. Southern businessmen traveled so frequently to the city that they had favorite hotels and restaurants.

text: In Mississippi some modernizers encouraged crop diversification, and production of vegetables and livestock increased, but King Cotton prevailed. Cotton's ascendancy was seemingly justified in 1859, when Mississippi planters were scarcely touched by the financial panic in the North. They were concerned by inflation of the price of slaves but were in no real distress. Mississippi's per capita wealth was well above the U.S. average. The major planters made very large profits, but they invested it on buying more cotton lands and more slaves, which pushed up prices even higher. They educated their children privately, and the state government made little investment in infrastructure. Railroad construction lagged behind that of other states, even in the South. The threat of abolition troubled planters, but they believed that if needed, the cotton states could secede from the Union, form their own country, and expand to the south in Mexico and Cuba. Until late 1860 they never expected a war.[18]

text: The relatively low population of the state before the Civil War reflected the fact that much of the state was still frontier and needed many more settlers for development. For instance, except for riverside settlements and plantations, 90% of the Mississippi Delta bottom lands were still undeveloped and covered mostly in mixed forest and swampland. These areas were not cleared and developed until after the war. During and after Reconstruction, most of the new owners in the Delta were freedmen, who bought the land by clearing it and selling off timber.[19]

text: Slavery[edit]

text: At the time of the Civil War, the great majority of blacks were slaves living on plantations with 20 or more fellow slaves, many in much larger concentrations. While some had been born in Mississippi, many had been transported to the Deep South in a forcible migration through the domestic slave trade from the Upper South. Some were shipped from the Upper South in the coastwise slave trade, while others were taken overland or forced to make the entire journey on foot.

text: The typical division of labor on a large plantation included an elite of house slaves, a middle group of overseers, drivers (gang leaders) and skilled craftsmen, and a "lower class" of unskilled field workers whose main job was hoeing and picking cotton. The owners hired white overseers to direct the work. Some slaves resisted by work slowdowns and by breaking tools and equipment. Others left for a while, hiding out for a couple of weeks in woods or nearby plantations. There were no slave revolts of any size, although whites often circulated fearful rumors that one was about to happen. Most slaves who tried to escape were captured and returned, though a handful made it to northern states and eventual freedom.

text: Most slaves endured the harsh routine of plantation life. Because of their concentration on large plantations, within these constraints they built their own culture, often developing leaders through religion, and others who acquired particular skills. They created their own religious practices and worshipped sometimes in private, developing their own style of Christianity and deciding which stories, such as the Exodus, spoke most to them. While slave marriages were not legally recognized, many families formed unions that lasted, and they struggled to maintain their stability. Some slaves with special skills attained a quasi-free status, being leased out to work on riverboats or in the port cities. Those on the riverboats got to travel to other cities; they were part of a wide information network among slaves.

text: By 1820, 458 former slaves had been freed in the state. The legislature restricted their lives, requiring free blacks to carry identification and forbidding them from carrying weapons or voting. In 1822 planters decided it was too awkward to have free blacks living near slaves and passed a state law forbidding emancipation except by special act of the legislature for each manumission.[16][20] In 1860 only 1,000 of the 437,000 blacks in the state were recorded as free.[21] Most of these free people lived in wretched conditions near Natchez.[citation needed]

text: Politics[edit]

text: Mississippi was a stronghold of Jacksonian democracy, which glorified the independent farmer; the legislature named the state capital in Andrew Jackson's honor. Corruption and land speculation caused a severe blow to state credit in the years preceding the Civil War. Federally allocated funds were misused, tax collections embezzled, and finally, in 1853, two state-supported banks collapsed when their debts were repudiated. In the Second Party System (1820s to 1850s), Mississippi moved politically from a divided Whig and Democratic state to a one-party Democratic state bent on secession.

text: Criticism from Northern abolitionists escalated after the Mexican War ended in 1848. Mississippi and other southern planters expected the war to gain new territory where slavery could flourish. The South resisted attacks by abolitionists, and white Mississippians were among those who became outspoken defenders of the slave system. An abortive secession attempt in 1850 was followed by a decade of political agitation during which the protection and expansion of slavery became their major goal. When Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 with the goal seeking an eventual end of slavery, Mississippi followed South Carolina and seceded from the Union on January 9, 1861. Mississippi's U.S. senator Jefferson Davis was chosen as president of the Confederate States.

text: Civil War[edit]

text: More than 80,000 Mississippians fought in the American Civil War, and casualties were extremely heavy. Fear that white supremacy might be lost was among the reasons that men joined the Confederate Army. Men who owned more property, including slaves, were more likely to volunteer. But men in Mississippi's river counties, regardless of their wealth or other characteristics, joined at lower rates than those living in the state's interior. River-county residents were especially vulnerable and apparently left their communities for safer areas (and sometimes moved out of the Confederacy) rather than face invasion.[22]

text: Both the Union and Confederacy knew control of the Mississippi River was critical to the war. Union forces mounted major military operations to take over Vicksburg, with General Ulysses S. Grant launching the Shiloh and Corinth campaigns and the siege of Vicksburg, from the spring of 1862 to the summer of 1863.[23] The most important was the Vicksburg Campaign, fought for control of the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. The fall of the city to General Grant on July 4, 1863, gave the Union control of the Mississippi River, cut off the western states, and made the Confederate cause in the west hopeless.

text: As Union troops advanced, many slaves escaped and joined their lines to gain freedom. After the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, more slaves left the plantations. Thousands of ex-slaves in Mississippi enlisted in the Union Army in 1863 and the following years.[24]

text: At the Battle of Grand Gulf, Admiral Porter led seven Union ironclads in an attack on the fortifications and batteries at Grand Gulf, Mississippi. His goal was to take over the Confederate guns and secure the area with troops of McClernand's XIII Corps, who were on the accompanying transports and barges. The Confederates won but it was a hollow victory; the Union defeat at Grand Gulf caused only a slight change in Grant's offensive.[25]

text: Grant won the Battle of Port Gibson. Advancing toward Port Gibson, Grant's army ran into Confederate outposts after midnight. Union forces advanced on the Rodney Road and a plantation road at dawn, and were met by Confederates. Grant forced the Confederates to fall back to new defensive positions several times during the day; they could not stop the Union onslaught and left the field in the early evening. This defeat demonstrated that the Confederates were unable to defend the Mississippi River line; the Federals secured their needed beachhead.[26]

text: General William Tecumseh Sherman's march from Vicksburg to Meridian, Mississippi, was designed to destroy the strategic railroad center of Meridian, which had been supplying Confederate needs. The campaign was Sherman's first application of total war tactics, prefiguring his March to the Sea through Georgia in 1864.

text: The Confederates had no better luck at the Battle of Raymond. On May 10, 1863, Pemberton sent troops from Jackson to Raymond, 20 miles (32 km) to the southwest. Brig. Gen. Gregg had an over-strength brigade, but they had endured a grueling march from Port Hudson, Louisiana, arriving in Raymond late on May 11. The next day he tried to ambush a small Union raiding party. The party was Maj. Gen. John A. Logan's Division of the XVII Corps. Gregg tried to hold Fourteen Mile Creek, and a sharp battle ensued for six hours, but the overwhelming Union force prevailed and the Confederates retreated. This left the Southern Railroad of Mississippi vulnerable to Union forces, severing the lifeline of Vicksburg.[27]

text: In April–May 1863 Union colonel Benjamin H. Grierson led a major cavalry raid that raced through Mississippi and Louisiana, destroying railroads, telegraph lines, and Confederate weapons and supplies. The raid also served as a diversion to take away Confederate attention from Grant's moves toward Vicksburg.

text: A Union expedition in June 1864, commanded by General Samuel D. Sturgis, was opposed by Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. They clashed at the Battle of Brice's Crossroads on 10 June 1864, and Forrest routed the Yankees in his greatest battlefield victory.

text: Homefront[edit]

text: After each battle, there was increased economic chaos and local societal breakdown. State government during the course of the war transferred around the state. It moved from Jackson to Enterprise, to Meridian and back to Jackson, to Meridian and then to Columbus and Macon, Georgia, and finally back to what was left of Jackson. The first of the two wartime governors was the Fire-Eater John J. Pettus, who carried the state into secession, whipped up the war spirit, began military and domestic mobilization, and prepared to finance the war.[28] His successor, General Charles Clark, elected in 1863, remained committed to continuing the fight regardless of the cost, but he faced a deteriorating military and economic situation. The war presented both men with enormous challenges in providing an orderly, stable government for Mississippi.[29]

text: There were no slave insurrections, but many slaves escaped to Union lines. Numerous plantations turned to food production. The federal government wanted to keep up cotton production to fulfill the North's needs, and some planters sold their cotton to Union Treasury agents for high prices. The Confederates considered this a sort of treason but were unable to stop the lucrative trading on the black market.[30]

text: Most whites supported the Confederacy, but there were holdouts. The two most vehemently anti-Confederate areas were Jones County in the southeastern corner of the state, where the "Knight Company" originated, and Tishomingo County in the northeastern corner. Among the most influential Mississippi Unionists was Presbyterian minister John Aughey, whose sermons and book The Iron Furnace or Slavery and Secession (1863) became hallmarks of the anti-secessionist cause in the state.[31]

text: The war shattered the lives of all classes, high and low. Upper-class ladies replaced balls and parties with bandage-rolling sessions and fund-raising efforts. But soon enough they were losing brothers, sons and husbands to battlefield deaths and disease, lost their incomes and luxuries, and had to deal with chronic shortages and poor ersatz substitutes for common items. They took on unexpected responsibilities, including the chores previously left to slaves when the latter struck out for freedom. The women coped by focusing on survival. They maintained their family honor by upholding Confederate patriotism to the bitter end. Less privileged white women struggled even more to hold their families together in their men's absence; many became refugees in camps or fled to Union lines.[32] After the war, Southern women organized to create Confederate cemeteries and memorials, becoming champions of the "Lost Cause" and shapers of social memory.[33]

text: Black women and children had an especially hard time as the plantation regime collapsed; many took refuge in camps operated by the Union Army. They were freed after the Emancipation Proclamation but suffered from widespread diseases that flourished in the crowded camps. Disease was also common in the troop camps; during the war, more men on both sides died of disease than of wounds or direct warfare.[34]

text: Reconstruction[edit]

text: After the defeat of the Confederacy, President Andrew Johnson appointed a temporary state government under provisional governor Judge William Lewis Sharkey (1798-1873). It repealed the 1861 Ordinance of Secession and wrote new "Black Codes", defining and limiting the civil rights of freedmen, the former slaves. The whites tried to restrict the African Americans to a second-class status without citizenship or voting rights. Johnson was following the previously expressed policies of his predecessor, 16th President Abraham Lincoln. He had planned a generous and tolerating Reconstruction policy towards the former Confederates and southerners. He intended to grant citizenship and voting rights first to Black veterans, while slowly integrating the remainder of the freedmen into the political and economic life in the nation and the "new South".[citation needed]

text: The Black Codes were never implemented. Radical Republicans in the Congress, with the early support of President Lincoln, objected strongly to the intent to impose new restrictions on the movement and rights of freedmen. The federal government established the Freedmen's Bureau as an agency to help educate and assist the former slaves, in the U.S. War Department. It attempted to help the freedmen negotiate contracts and other relations in the new free labor market. Most officials in the Freedmen's Bureau were former Union Army officers from the North. Many settled permanently in the state, with some becoming political leaders in the Republican Party and in business (they were scornfully known as "carpetbaggers" by white Democrats in the South). The Black Codes outraged northern opinion, as they represented an attempt to reassert conditions of slavery and white supremacy. They were not fully implemented in any state. White Mississippians and other Southerners were committed to restoring white supremacy and circumscribing the legal, civil, political, and social rights of the freedmen.

text: In September 1865 Congress was under the control of more Radical Republicans from the North, and refused to seat the newly elected Mississippi delegation. Responding to tumultuous conditions and violence, in 1867, Congress passed Reconstruction legislation. It used U.S. Army forces to occupy and manage various areas of the South in an effort to create a new order, and Mississippi was one of the areas designated to be under military control.

text: The military Governor-General, and Union Army Gen. Edward O.C. Ord, (1818-1883), commander of the Mississippi/Arkansas District, was assigned to register the state's electorate so that voters could elect representatives to write a new state constitution reflecting the granting of citizenship and the franchise to freedmen through amendments to the United States Constitution. In a contested election, the state's white voters rejected the proposal of a new state constitution. Mississippi continued to be governed by federal martial law. Union Gen. Adelbert Ames (1835-1933) of Maine, under direction from the Republican majority in the U.S. Congress, deposed the provisional civil government appointed by President Johnson. He enabled all black men of age to enroll as voters (not just veterans), and temporarily prohibited about a thousand or so former Confederate leaders to vote or hold state offices.[35]

text: In 1868 a biracial coalition (dominated by whites) drafted a new constitution for the state; it was adopted by referendum. The Constitutional Convention was the first political organization in the state's history to include African American (then referred to as "Negro" or "Colored") representatives, but they did not dominate the convention, nor the later state legislature. Freedmen numbered 17 among the 100 members, although blacks comprised more than half of the state population of the time. Thirty-two Mississippi counties had black majorities, but freedmen elected whites as well as blacks to represent them.

text: The 1868 constitution had major elements that lasted for 22 years. The convention adopted universal male suffrage (unrestricted by property qualifications, educational requirements or poll taxes); created the framework for the state's first public school system (which Northern and border states had begun 40 years earlier); forbade race distinctions in the possession and inheritance of property; and prohibited limiting civil rights in travel. It provided for a four-year term for the governor rather than two years (the previous legislatures had severely limited executive power); provided the governor with the power to appoint judges (taking judicial elections out of what had been corrupt elections before the war); required legislative reapportionment of seats to recognize the new voting freedmen in many jurisdictions; and repudiated the ordinances and powers of secession. Opponents of black franchise referred to this as the "Black and Tan Convention", although whites composed the overwhelming majority of delegates. Mississippi was readmitted to the Union on January 11, 1870, and its representatives and senators were seated in Congress on February 23, 1870.[36]

text: Black Mississippians, participating in the political process for the first time, formed a coalition with white Republicans made up of locals and Northerners in a Republican party that controlled the state legislature for a time. Most of the Republican voters were freedmen, several of whom held important state offices. Some black leaders emerged who had gained education in the North and were returning to the South. A. K. Davis served as lieutenant governor, and Hiram Revels (1827-1901) and Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898) were elected by the Legislature to the U.S. Senate. John R. Lynch (1847-1939) was elected as a representative to Congress. The Republican regime faced the determined opposition of the "unreconstructed" white Democrats in the population. Soon after the end of the war, chapters of the Ku Klux Klan were organized in Mississippi, working to intimidate blacks and their allies, such as schoolteachers, and suppress voting.

text: The planter James Lusk Alcorn (1816-1894), a Confederate general, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1865 but, like other Southerners who had been loyal to the Confederacy, was not allowed to take a seat at that time. He supported suffrage for freedmen and endorsed the Fourteenth Amendment, as required by the Republicans in Congress. Alcorn became the leader of the "scalawags", local residents who comprised about a third of the Republican Party in the state, in coalition with "carpetbaggers" (migrants from the North) and freedmen.

text: Alcorn was elected as governor in 1869 and served from 1870 to 1871. As a modernizer, he appointed many like-minded former Whigs, even if they had become Democrats. He strongly supported education, conceding segregation of public schools in order to get them started. He supported founding a new college for freedmen, now known as Alcorn State University (established 1871 in Lorman). He maneuvered to make his ally Hiram Revels its president. Radical Republicans opposed Alcorn as they were angry about his patronage policy. One complained that Alcorn's policy was to see "the old civilization of the South 'modernized'" rather than lead a total political, social and economic revolution.[37]

text: Alcorn resigned the governorship to become a U.S. senator (1871–1877), replacing his ally Hiram Revels, the first African-American U.S. senator from the state. In speeches to the Senate, Alcorn urged the removal of the political disabilities of white southerners and rejected Radical Republican proposals to enforce social equality by federal legislation. He denounced the federal cotton tax as robbery, and defended separate schools for both races in Mississippi. Although a former slaveholder, he characterized slavery as "a cancer upon the body of the Nation" and expressed his gratitude for its end.[38]

text: Although President Grant achieved suppression of the KKK in much of the South through the Enforcement Acts, new groups of Democratic insurgents arose through the 1870s. Such paramilitary terrorist organizations as the White League, the Red Shirts in Mississippi and the Carolinas, and associated rifle clubs raised the level of violence at every election, attacking blacks to suppress the freedmen's vote.

text: In 1870, former military governor Adelbert Ames (1835-1933) was elected by the Legislature (as was the process at the time) to the U.S. Senate. Ames and Alcorn battled for control of the Republican Party in Mississippi; their struggle caused the party to lose its precarious unity. In 1873 they both ran for governor. Ames was supported by the Radicals and most African Americans, while Alcorn won the votes of conservative whites and most of the scalawags. Ames won by a vote of 69,870 to 50,490.

text: In 1874 Republican voters elected a black sheriff in the city of Vicksburg and dominated other elections. White had been organizing to throw out Republicans and, on December 6, 1874, forced the newly elected sheriff Peter Crosby to leave his office. Freedmen tried to support him, coming in from the rural areas on December 7, but he advised them to return home peacefully. Armed white militia attacked the freedmen that day and in the following days, in what became known as the Vicksburg Massacre. White Democrats are estimated to have killed 300 blacks in the area. The massacre was carried by newspapers from New York[39] to California.[40][41][42] The New York Times also carried reporting on the congressional investigation into these events, beginning in January 1875.[43]

text: The Democratic Party had factions of the Regulars and New Departures, but as the state election of 1875 approached, they united and worked on the "Mississippi Plan", to organize whites to defeat both white and black Republicans. They used economic and political pressure against scalawags and carpetbaggers, persuading them to change parties or leave the state. Armed attacks by the Red Shirts, White League and rifle clubs on Republicans proliferated, as in the September 1875 "Clinton Riot". Governor Ames appealed to the federal government for armed assistance, which was refused. That November, Democrats gained firm control of both houses of the legislature by such violence and election fraud. Ames requested the intervention of the U.S. Congress since the election had been subject to voter intimidation and fraud. The state legislature, convening in 1876, drew up articles of impeachment against him and all statewide officials. He resigned and fled the state, "marking the end of Republican Reconstruction in Mississippi."[44][45]

text: Gilded Age: 1877-1900[edit]

text: There was steady economic and social progress among some classes in Mississippi after the Reconstruction era, despite the low prices for cotton and reliance on agriculture. Politically the state was controlled by the conservative elite whites, known as "Bourbon Democrats" by their critics. The Bourbons represented the planters, landowners and merchants. They used violence, intimidation, and coercion to suppress black voting at the polls, but freedmen elected many representatives to local offices, such as sheriff and justice of the peace. The Bourbons controlled the Democratic Party conventions and state government.[46]

text: The state remained largely rural, but the nascent railroad system, which had been destroyed in the war, was rebuilt and more investments were made in infrastructure. A few more towns developed, as well as small-scale industry, notably the lumber industry in the Piney Woods region of the state. Most farmers continued to grow cotton. The "crop-lien system involved local merchants who lent money for food and supplies all year, and then split the cotton crop to pay the debts and perhaps leave a little cash left over for the farmer—or often leave him further in debt to the merchants."[47]

text: In 1878 the worst yellow fever epidemic Mississippi had seen ravaged the state. The disease, sometimes known as "Yellow Jack" or "Bronze John", produced so many fatalities that it devastated the society both socially and economically. Entire families were wiped out, while others fled their homes in panic for the presumed safety of other parts of the state, as people did not understand how the disease was transmitted. Quarantine regulations, passed to prevent the spread of the disease, brought trade to a stop. Some local economies never recovered. Beechland, near Vicksburg, became a ghost town. By the end of the year, 3,227 people in the state had died from the disease, particularly along the coast.[48]

text: The small farmers struggled against the Bourbon control of politics and the credit lien system, which seemed to keep them forever in debts. The Populist movement failed to attract the large following in Mississippi that it did in Alabama, Georgia and other Southern states. Mississippi did produce some Populist spokesmen, such as newspaper editor Frank Burkitt, but poor farmers, white and black, refused to follow the leadership of the Farmers' Alliance. Few farmers were willing to support the sub-treasury plan, the Alliance's plan to aid farmers by providing low-cost federal loans secured by crops. The Democratic Party machine, the increasing activism of the National Grange, and effective disenfranchisement of most black voters and many poor whites after 1890 under provisions of the new constitution,[49] designed to "exclude the Negro" and help the Democrats in "keeping the Negro down",[50] according to its drafters, meant the failure of Mississippi populism. The constitution required payment of a poll tax for voter registration, which many poor people could not afford. The voter rolls dropped dramatically, and white Democrats secured a hold on power in the state. By the birth of the People's Party in 1892, Mississippi populism was too weak to play a major role.[51] According to Democrat James K. Vardaman, Mississippi's governor, the purpose of the 1890 constitution was "to eliminate the nigger from politics."[52]

text: Whitecapping was the name associated with activities by a dirt farmer movement that arose in the Piney Woods region of southern Mississippi. Poor whites organized against low prices, rising costs, and increasing tenancy brought about by the crop lien system. Whitecaps resented black tenant farmers on lands acquired by foreclosure by merchants–some of them Jewish. Whitecap Clubs, resembling fraternal and military organizations, tried to intimidate black laborers and landowners, and to prevent mercantile land acquisition. They were anti-black and anti-Jewish. Whitecaps came from the rural poor; their leaders from a higher social strata.[53]

text: Blacks: 1877-1940[edit]

text: Mississippi has been thought to typify the Deep South during the era of Jim Crow that began in the late 19th century. But it had an enormous frontier of undeveloped land in the backcountry and bottomlands of the Mississippi Delta. Tens of thousands of black and white migrants came to the Delta seeking the chance to buy and work land, cut timber, and make lives for themselves and their families. Because the Mississippi Delta contained so much fertile bottomland away from the river settlements, African Americans achieved unusually high rates of land ownership from 1870 to 1900. Two-thirds of the independent farmers in the Delta were black.

text: As the Panic of 1893 brought another depression and very low cotton prices, many farmers had to sell their land to pay off debts and become sharecroppers.[54] The sharecropping system, as Cresswell (2006) shows, functioned as a compromise between white landowners' desire for a reliable supply of labor, and black workers' refusal to work in gangs. By the turn of the century, much of the second-generation of black owner-farmers had lost their land.

text: In 1890 the state adopted a new constitution that imposed a poll tax of $2 a year, which the great majority of blacks and poor whites could not pay in order to register to vote; they were effectively excluded from the political process. These requirements, with additions in legislation of 1892, resulted in a 90% reduction in the number of blacks who voted. In every county whites allowed a handful of prominent black ministers and local leaders to vote.[49]

text: As only voters could serve on juries, disenfranchisement meant blacks could not serve on juries, and they lost all chance at local and state offices, as well as representation in Congress. When these provisions survived a Supreme Court challenge in 1898 in Williams v. Mississippi, other southern state legislatures rapidly incorporated them into new constitutions or amendments, effectively extending disfranchisement to every southern state. In 1900 the population of Mississippi was nearly 59% African American, but they were virtually excluded from political life.

text: The Jim Crow system became total after 1900, with disenfranchisement, coupled with increasingly restrictive racial segregation laws, and increased lynchings. Economic disasters always lurked, such as failure of the cotton crop due to boll weevil infestation, and successive severe flooding in 1912 and 1913. By 1920, the third generation after freedom, most African Americans in the state were landless sharecroppers or laborers facing inescapable poverty.[54]

text: Legal racial segregation was imposed in Mississippi primarily following the Reconstruction era. A handful of state laws earlier required separate facilities for black and white school children. The legislature passed statutes requiring three restroom facilities in public buildings: one for white males, one for white females, and one for black males and females. Otherwise, segregation arose by local custom more than it did by state or municipal law. Since segregation was a customary practice, historians consider it to be one that mandated social distance between whites and blacks rather than physical distance. In most Mississippi communities from the late 1800s until the 1970s, blacks and whites lived in relative proximity to one another. Whites depended on the labor of blacks either as agricultural or domestic workers. White and black children often played together until they reached puberty, at which time parents began instructing their children about the racial status quo.

text: White children were taught they were superior to blacks, while black children were forced to learn the vacillating and arbitrary customs of Jim Crow, which often differed from community to community. By 1900, racial segregation had become more rigid. Jim Crow became the mainstay of the Mississippi social order.

text: Tens of thousands of African Americans left Mississippi by train, foot, or boat to migrate north starting in the 1880s; migration reached its pinnacle during and after World War I. In the Great Migration, they went North to leave the violence and a society that had closed off opportunity.[55] Another wave of migration arose in the 1940s and 1950s. Almost half a million people, three-quarters of them black, left Mississippi in the second migration, many seeking jobs in the burgeoning wartime defense industry on the West Coast, particularly in California.

text: Jim Crow and disenfranchisement persisted in Mississippi for decades, sometimes enforced by violence and economic blackmail, particularly as African Americans organized to achieve civil rights. It did not legally end until after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as concerted federal enforcement, and court challenges by black groups and national advocates, and local customs began to break down by 1970.[56][57]

text: Schools[edit]

text: Following Reconstruction, the Democrat-dominated state legislature cut back on already limited funding for public schools. For decades public school funding was poor for whites and very poor for blacks. Northern philanthropy helped support the schools. The Anna T. Jeanes Foundation, begun in 1907 and also known as the Negro Rural School Fund, aimed to provide rudimentary education for rural Southern blacks. Jeanes supervisors, all experienced teachers, personally made physical and academic improvements in rural schools. Early Jeanes supervisors brought vocational education into their classrooms, based on the Hampton and Tuskegee Institute models promoted by Booker T. Washington. By the 1940s, the Jeanes program changed its emphasis from industrial education to academic subjects.

text: Other major northern foundations also helped, especially the General Education Board (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rosenwald Fund), which supported construction of more than 5,000 schools in southern rural areas. Northern churches supported denominational colleges.[58]

text: Jazz[edit]

text: Mississippi became a center of rich, quintessentially American music traditions: gospel music, jazz, blues, and rock and roll were all invented, promulgated, or developed largely by Mississippi musicians, particularly of the Delta areas. They also carried these traditions upriver to Chicago during the Great Migration, creating new forms of jazz and blues in that city.

text: In the 1940s, John Lomax and his son Alan recorded some of the Delta's rich musical tradition for the Library of Congress. They sought out blues songs and field chants at Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. In 1941, Alan Lomax recorded Muddy Waters, then 28 years old, at Stovall's Plantation. Among other major artists, Bo Diddley, B.B. King and Muddy Waters were born and raised on Mississippi plantations.

text: Progressive Era[edit]

text: By 1900, Mississippi lagged behind other Southern states. It had a one-party government dominated by white Democrats who emphasized not raising taxes, resulting in no paved roads; residents suffered widespread illiteracy and regular epidemics of contagious diseases, the latter spread in part because of the lack of sanitation infrastructure, endemic hookworm; this was the nadir of race relations, marked by a high rate of lynchings of blacks, especially when sharecrop accounts were due to be settled and cotton prices were low; local affairs were controlled by courthouse rings; and the state had few natural assets besides prime cotton land and once important cities on the Mississippi River.

text: Mississippi failed to attract much outside investment or European immigration, although European Jews settled in the larger cities such as Meridian and Jackson. Planters recruited Chinese workers for agriculture from 1900 to 1930, but the newcomers did not stay long in the fields. They became merchants in small towns.[59] Planters also had recruited Italian workers for field labor, and they complained about peonage conditions to their consulate. A State Department investigation ensued in some areas, including an Arkansas plantation owned by prominent US Senator LeRoy Percy of Greenville, Mississippi.[60]

text: The Progressive Era had some results in Mississippi. Governor Theodore Bilbo (1916–20) had the most successful administration of all the governors who served between 1877 and 1917, putting state finances in order and supporting such Progressive measures as passing a compulsory school attendance law, founding a new charity hospital, and establishing a board of bank examiners. However, Bilbo was also an avowed racist who openly defended segregation and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.[61]

text: 1920s and 1930s[edit]

text: Mississippians had more prosperity in the 1920s than they had known for two generations, although the state was still poor and rural by national standards. The people gained a slice of the American Dream. Ownby (1999), in his in-depth study of the state, identifies four American dreams that the new 20th-century consumer culture addressed. The first was the "Dream of Abundance", offering a cornucopia of material goods to all Americans, making them proud to be the richest society on earth. The second was the "Dream of a Democracy of Goods", whereby everyone had access to the same products regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or class, thereby challenging the aristocratic norms of the rest of the world, whereby only the rich or well-connected are granted access to luxury. The "Dream of Freedom of Choice", with its ever-expanding variety of goods, allowed people to fashion their own particular style. Finally was the "Dream of Novelty", in which ever-changing fashions, new models, and unexpected new products broadened the consumer experience and challenged the conservatism of traditional society and culture, and politics. Ownby acknowledges that the dreams of the new consumer culture radiated from the major cities, but notes that they quickly penetrated the most rural and most isolated areas, such as rural Mississippi. With the arrival of the Model T car after 1910, many consumers in rural America were no longer locked into local general stores with their limited merchandise and high prices. They could go to towns and cities to do comparison shopping. Ownby demonstrates that poor black Mississippians shared in the new consumer culture. He attributes some of their desire to move to ambition, and acknowledges that hundreds of thousands of blacks moved to Memphis or Chicago in the Great Migration.[62][page needed] Other historians have attributed the migration decisions to the poor schools for blacks, a high rate of violence, social oppression, and political disenfranchisement in Mississippi.

text: Not all Mississippi was doing well. In the Pearl River country in the south central region, the 1920s was a decade of persistent poverty. Locals had new interest in anti-modernist politics and culture. The timber companies that had employed up to half of all workers were running short of timber, so payrolls dwindled. Farming was hard-scrabble. Governor Theodore G. Bilbo, a native of the region, won widespread support among the poor white farmers and loggers with his attacks on the elites, the big cities, and the blacks. Dry laws were but one aspect of a pervasive prohibitionism that included laws against business or recreation on Sunday, as well as attacks on Catholics and immigrants (often the same, as new immigrants came from Catholic countries). Baptist and some other denominations embraced fundamentalism and rejected liberal ideas such as evolution and the Social Gospel.[63]

text: Transportation[edit]

text: When the automobile arrived about 1910, the state had poorly constructed dirt roads used for wagon traffic, and an outdated system of taxation. Road improvement continued to be a local affair controlled by individual county supervisors for each beat in the counties; they achieved few positive results. The Lindsey Wagon Company of Laurel built the famous Lindsey wagon after 1899. It was a heavy-duty eight-wheel wagon used to haul logs, timber, and other bulky and heavy material. Wagon production reached a peak in the 1920s, then declined. Improved roads finally made it possible for residents to use trucks built in Detroit. The Great Depression after 1929 reduced the need for new wagons.[64]

text: After 1928, the need to build roads motivated politicians to talk up the cause. They enacted massive bond issues, created excise taxes, and centralized control to create a genuine state highway system, with a system of main highways designed by engineers, using a common system of signage and nomenclature.[65]

text: World War II[edit]

text: The war years brought prosperity as cotton prices soared and new war installations paid high wages. Many blacks headed to northern and western cities, particularly in California, as part of the second and larger wave of the Great Migration. White farmers often headed to southern factory towns. Young men, white and black, were equally subject to the draft, but farmers were often exempt on occupational grounds. The World War II era marked a transition from labor-intensive agriculture to mechanized farming in the Delta region of Mississippi. Federal farm payments and improvements in mechanical cotton pickers made modernization economically possible by 1940, but most planters feared loss of racial and social control and simply shifted their workers from sharecropping to wage labor. As workers left the farm for military service or defense jobs, farm wages rose. By 1944, wages had tripled. In 1945 the newly established Delta War Wage Board provided planters temporary relief by setting a maximum wage for farm workers, but President Harry S. Truman lifted wartime economic controls in 1946.

text: Beginning in the 1930s, the ravages of the boll weevil and federal crop restrictions and conservation programs encouraged many farmers to turn from cotton farming to growing other crops, such as soybeans; to sowing grasses for livestock; and to planting trees for timber. Agricultural productivity increased, and the soils were improved by crop rotation, strip planting, terracing, contour plowing, and the use of improved fertilizers, insecticides, and seeds. After 1945, farm mechanization advanced rapidly, especially in the Cotton Belt, and small farms were consolidated, as small farmers who could not afford the new machinery and sharecroppers left the land. Planters rapidly mechanized. It took only a few operators of cotton-picking machines to do the work of hundreds of laborers. The sharecroppers could find no other work, and this system collapsed after they moved to the cities in the North and West. By 1950 whites were a majority of the population statewide and in every region outside the Delta.[66]

text: In the postwar period, African-American veterans and others began to press for improved civil rights. There was high resistance from many whites, leading to outbreaks of violence and other forms of intimidation. Despite this, mature men with families were among those who joined the NAACP and later such groups as CORE and SNCC. Given the repressed state of its black population, Mississippi was a center of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public education was unconstitutional. In reaction the state set up the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, ostensibly to market its advantages. This tax-supported group began to spy on state citizens, identifying professionals such as teachers as activists, and sharing data on persons' activities with the White Citizens Councils formed in many cities and towns in this period. Whites used economic intimidation to suppress activism, firing people from jobs, evicting them from rental properties, refusing loans, etc. The state's activities captured the national stage in 1963 and 1964. Few white leaders in the state supported the effort to secure voting and exercise of other civil rights for African Americans.

text: According to the 1960 census, the state had a population of 2,178,141, of which 915,743, or 42% of the residents, were black.[67] During their long disenfranchisement, white state legislators had consistently underfunded segregated schools and services for African Americans, created programs that did not represent their interests, and passed laws that discriminated against them systematically. African Americans had no representation in local governments, juries or law enforcement.

text: Based on complaints and research by the Department of Justice,

text: In 1962 the United States government brought an action against the State of Mississippi, state election commissioners, and six county registrars, alleging that the defendants had violated the voting rights of African-American citizens. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi dismissed the complaint, but the Supreme Court reversed the suit on appeal in March 1965. However, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the District Court reconsidered the case… making significant portions moot.[68]

text: On another front, young people attempted to integrate the state's institutions of higher education. James Meredith, the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, was greeted with the Ole Miss riot of 1962 as opponents rushed to the campus from the region. A white mob attacked 500 United States marshals deployed by President John F. Kennedy to ensure Meredith's safety. Rioters assaulted the marshals with bricks, bottles, and gunfire before the marshals responded with tear gas. The fighting which ensued claimed the lives of two men and seriously injured dozens more, and polarized race relations and politics. Whites believed they were under attack from the federal government.[69]

text: Following the murder of three civil rights workers in the early summer, in September 1964 the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a secretive and extralegal counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE. This covert action program sought to expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize Ku Klux Klan groups in Mississippi whose violent vigilante activities alarmed the national government. The program succeeded in creating an atmosphere of paranoia that turned many Klan members against each other. It helped destroy many Klan groups between 1964 and 1971. Some members of the Klan groups subsequently joined other white supremacist organizations, including Christian Identity.[70]

text: Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964[edit]

text: Meanwhile, black activists had been increasing their local work throughout the South. In Mississippi in 1962, several activists formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), to coordinate activities in voter registration and education of civil rights groups in Mississippi: the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

text: In 1963 COFO organized a Freedom Vote in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. They had been disfranchised since statutory and constitutional changes in 1890 and 1892. More than 80,000 people quickly registered and voted in mock elections which pitted candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates.[71]

text: In the summer of 1964, the COFO brought more than one hundred college students, many from outside the state, to Mississippi to join with local activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools" and organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Many white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. The work was dangerous. Activists were threatened.

text: On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers, James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two Jewish volunteers from New York, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College student; and Michael Schwerner, a social worker, disappeared. With the national uproar caused by their disappearance, President Johnson forced J. Edgar Hoover to have the FBI investigate.

text: The FBI found the bodies of the civil rights workers on August 4 in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. During its investigation, the FBI also discovered the bodies of several other Mississippi blacks whose murders and disappearances over the past several years had not gained attention outside their local communities.

text: The case of the young murdered activists captured national attention. They were found to have been murdered by members of the Klan, some of them members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department. President Johnson used the outrage over their deaths and his formidable political skills to bring about passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed July 2. It banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment and education. It also had a section about voting, but voting protection was addressed more substantially by passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

text: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964[edit]

text: In 1964, civil rights organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white slate from the state party, based as it was on disfranchisement of blacks. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, the MFDP held its own primary. They selected Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray to run for Congress, and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

text: The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was inconvenient for national leaders. Democratic Party organizers had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson Administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the party. Johnson was also worried about inroads that Republican candidate Barry Goldwater was making in what had been the Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as the support which Independent candidate George Wallace had gained in the North during the Democratic primaries. The all-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated.

text: Johnson could not prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There Fannie Lou Hamer testified eloquently about the beatings which she and others endured, and the threats they faced, all for trying to register to vote and exercise their constitutional rights. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"

text: Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the compromise. The MFDP kept up its agitation within the convention, even after it was denied official recognition. The 1964 convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the Civil Rights Movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The new party invited Malcolm X, head of the Black Muslims, to speak at its founding convention and issued a statement opposing the war in Vietnam.

text: Armed self-defense became an integral part of the Southern planning strategy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) after 1964. The ideological shift on the question of nonviolence within CORE and SNCC occurred primarily because of the effect of white violence in Mississippi, such as the murders of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman in Neshoba County. The shift marked the beginning of the end of nonviolence as the philosophy and method of the Southern freedom movement.

text: Southern blacks had a tradition of armed resistance to white violence that had become more organized and intense as the struggle accelerated and federal protection failed to appear. Moreover, it was the armed protection by local blacks and the haven provided by Mississippi's black farming communities that allowed SNCC and CORE to operate effectively in the state.[72]

text: After 1966 the blacks moved into the Democratic party, where they organized politically to vote, to nominate candidates for office, and win their elections. They struggled to get candidates elected to office, particularly in the Delta, where they were a majority of the population and had long been oppressed by white officials.

text: National image[edit]

text: During the 1960s, the vocal opposition of many politicians and officials, the use of tax dollars to support the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, which spied on citizens and helped achieve economic boycotts of civil rights activists; and the violent tactics of Ku Klux Klan members and sympathizers gave Mississippi a reputation as a reactionary state.[73] The state was the last to repeal Prohibition and to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, in 1966 and 2013, respectively.[74]

text: As in other states of the former Confederacy since the late 1960s, the Republican Party has won increasing support from white conservatives, who formerly had voted Democratic since before the Civil War. In Mississippi, the three majority-white congressional districts support Republican candidates. The majority-black 2nd congressional district has supported Democratic candidates since the national party's support for the civil rights movement and President Lyndon B. Johnson's gaining passage of legislation to this end in the mid-1960s. As was noted by reporter R.L. Nave of the Jackson Free Press in 2012 when the Republicans took control of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, "of course, the Republican Party of the 1880s was very different from the GOP that now rules the state."[75]

text: Since 2000[edit]

text: Mississippi in recent years has been noted for its political conservatism, improved civil rights record, and increasing industrialization. In addition, a decision in 1990 to permit riverboat gambling has led to economic gains for the state. However, the state lost an estimated $500,000 per day in tax revenue following Hurricane Katrina's severe damage to several riverboat casinos in August 2005.

text: Gambling towns in Mississippi include Gulfport and Biloxi on the Gulf Coast; Vicksburg, Tunica Resorts, and Greenville on the Mississippi River; and the town of Philadelphia in the interior. Prior to Katrina, Mississippi was the second-largest gambling state in the Union in terms of its revenues, after Nevada and ahead of New Jersey.

text: Hurricanes[edit]

text:
August 17, 1969 - Category 5 Hurricane Camille hit the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage.
September 12, 1979 - Hurricane Frederic
September 2, 1985 - Hurricane Elena
September 28, 1998 - Hurricane Georges
August 29, 2005 - Hurricane Katrina caused the greatest destruction across the entire 90 miles (140 km) of Mississippi Gulf coast from Louisiana to Alabama.

text: Literature[edit]

text: Mississippi has been noted for its authors, including Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner, as well as William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy, Shelby Foote, Stark Young, Eudora Welty and Anne Moody.


document_title: Garmin Forerunner

question_text: when did the garmin forerunner 235 come out

root

text: Garmin Forerunner

text: Models[edit]

text: The Forerunner series consists of the 101, 201, 301, 205, 305, 50, 405, 60, 405CX, 310XT, 110, 210, 410, 610, 910XT, 70, 10, 220, 620, 15, 920XT, 225, 25, 230, 235, 630, 735XT, 35, 935, 645, and 645Music (listed in chronological order by release date). All models except the 101 include a way to upload training data to a personal computer and training software.[1]

tag: p

text: Garmin registered the name "Forerunner" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in August 2001 but released the first watches — the 101, 201, and 301 — in 2003.[2]

text: In 2006, the improved 205 and 305 appeared. These models are smaller than the first generation and feature a more sensitive SiRFstarIII GPS receiver chip.

text: In late 2007, the Forerunner 50 was introduced. As opposed to GPS, this model paired with a foot pod to measure displacement. The Forerunner 50 also came packaged with a USB stick that allowed training data to be transferred wirelessly to one's pc.[3] This feature has since become a staple of Garmin's more full-featured sport watches.

text: The Forerunner 405 was introduced in 2008 and is significantly smaller than its predecessors, only slightly outsizing a typical wristwatch. The 405 also featured improved satellite discovery and connection.

text: In 2009, Garmin produced three new models: the Forerunner 60 (an evolution of the Forerunner 50), the Forerunner 405CX (405 chassis), and the Forerunner 310XT (an evolution of the 305 chassis).[4] New features included additional battery life and vibration alerts on the 310XT and advanced calorie consumption modeling on all watches. The new calorie consumption modeling in these devices was the result of Garmin's first collaboration with Finnish physiological analytics firm Firstbeat[5][6]. The 310XT was also the first watch of the Forerunner series to be waterproof, thus allowing its use for swimming and on all legs of a Triathlon, also thanks to an extended battery life. In 2010 a firmware update added vastly improved open-water swimming metrics.[7]

text: In 2010, the Forerunner 110, 210 and 410 were introduced. The releases included the addition of a touch-sensitive bezel on the 410, presumably, although heavily debated, allowing for easier scrolling and selection of functions. It was touted as providing "unmatched reliability in sweaty, rainy conditions."[8]

text: The Forerunner 610 was released in the spring of 2011. It features a touch sensitive screen as well as vibration alerts.[9]

text: In 2012 the Forerunner 910XT was introduced, which is a development of the 310XT. This version was originally supposed to be released in Q4 of 2011, but the November date had slipped and it was eventually released in Q1 of 2012. New features are the inclusion of the SiRFStar iv chipset, a barometric altimeter, and improved swimming metrics using an accelerometer in the watch. This allowed it to automatically count pool lengths and to recognize swimming styles.[10]

text: A further addition to the series was the Forerunner 10, a simple watch offering just GPS tracking of activity's and run metrics like distance, pace and calories burned.

text: At the end of 2013 the Forerunner 220 and 620 were introduced, with color screens, Bluetooth Low energy (BTLE; allowing connections to some smartphones), and, for the 620 only, a touchscreen, Wi-Fi (allowing automatic activity download) and enhanced "running dynamics" given by an updated Heart rate monitor. These watches also abandon syncing via the ANT+ protocol in favor of wired (USB) and Wi-Fi (620 only) data transfers. They are also fully waterproof, but do not include any kind of swimming mode.[11][12]

text: In 2014, the Forerunner 15 and 920XT were introduced. The 15 is a development of the 10, adding activity tracking, increased battery life, footpod and heart rate monitor capability. The 920XT is the successor of the 910XT, featuring all the capabilities of it (except ANT+ scale and fitness equipment capability) and adding features found in the 620 such as a color screen, Wi-Fi data transfers and running dynamics. Additionally, battery life over the 910XT was improved, daily activity tracking, GLONASS support and a swim drill mode added, and the 920XT is the first Garmin watch extensible with custom apps built using the Garmin Connect IQ software development kit.[13][14]

text: Announced in May 2015, the Forerunner 225 is the first Garmin watch with an integrated optical heart rate monitor.[15][16]

text: Announced in May 2016, the Forerunner 735XT is a triathlon-ready Garmin watch with integrated optical heart rate monitor.[17]

text: In April 2017, Garmin announced the Forerunner 935, billing it as a watch for running and triathlons with features similar to the fenix 5. The watch boasts 24/7 wrist-based heart rate monitoring and new advanced training features.[18]

text: On March 12th, 2018, Garmin released the Forerunner 645 and 645 Music marketed as a high end running watch. The watch comes with Garmin Pay, an NFC enabled touchless pay system and the 645 Music is Garmin's first watch with onboard music storage (4 GB).[19]

text: GPS functionality[edit]

text: The Forerunner can be used to record historical data by completing a work out and then uploading the data to a computer to create a log of previous exercise activities for analysis.

text: Additionally, the Forerunner can be used to navigate during a workout. Users can "mark" their current location and then edit this entry's name and coordinates, which enables navigation to those new coordinates. The watch uses the hh.mm.mmmm (hours, minutes, and minute decimals) coordinate format. The 310XT can display additional formats; it also has a screen to display current coordinates in real-time.

text: Computer interface[edit]

text: The user can download a previously-traveled course/route to the Forerunner using Garmin's Communicator software together with the ANT+ technology, and then follow this course/route to "race" against this historical course/route. Until recently this download was possible via the tethered USB connection on the older 205 & 305 models. However, the current version of the software has eliminated this option, requiring the user to acquire a newer model with wireless connection in order to use this feature.

text: The user can also make new courses or routes, which can be downloaded to the watch and then followed. This is a convenient way to go on a cross-country bike ride while navigating with the Forerunner. Note: navigating with a course is better than navigating with a route, because a Garmin course can store more points than a Garmin route.

text: Additionally, a user can create downloadable points of interest (POIs) by creating a custom map with Google Maps.  POIs can be transferred to the 205 or 305 but not to the 405 or 310XT.

text: Models[edit]

text:
Model
Release date
Image

Forerunner 101
2003-03-02[20]

Forerunner 201
2003-08-14[21]

Forerunner 301
2005-01-05[22]

Forerunner 205
2006-01-03[23]

Forerunner 305
2006-01-03[23]

Forerunner 50
2007-08-08[24]

Forerunner 405
2008-01-03[25]

Forerunner 60
2009-01-30[26]

Forerunner 405CX
2009-04-02[5]

Forerunner 310XT
2009-04-02[27]

Forerunner 110
2010-03-29[28]

Forerunner 210
2010-10-04[29]

Forerunner 410
2010-10-04[29]

Forerunner 610
2011-04-12[30]

Forerunner 910XT
2011-10-04[31]

Forerunner 10
2012-08-28[32]

Forerunner 220
2013-09-16[33]

Forerunner 620
2013-09-16[33]

Forerunner 15
2014-05-06[34]

Forerunner 920XT
2014-10-01[35]

Forerunner 225
2015-05-12[15][16]

Forerunner 25
2015-08-05[36]

Forerunner 230Forerunner 235
2015-10-21[37]

Forerunner 630
2015-10-21[38]

Forerunner 735XT
2016-05-11[39]

Forerunner 35
2016-08-31[40]

Forerunner 935
2017-03-29[41]

Forerunner 30
2017-09-26[42]

Forerunner 645Forerunner 645 Music
2018-01-08[43]


document_title: Comes a Horseman

question_text: when was the movie comes a horseman made

text: Comes a Horseman

text: This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text:
Comes a Horseman

film poster by Robert McGinnis

Directed by
Alan J. Pakula

Produced by
Gene Kirkwood
Dan Paulson

Written by
Dennis Lynton Clark

Starring
Jane Fonda
James Caan
Jason Robards
Richard Farnsworth

Cinematography
Gordon Willis

Edited by
Marion Rothman

Distributed by
United Artists

Release date

October 25, 1978 (1978-10-25)

Running time

118 minutes

text: Comes a Horseman is a 1978 American western drama film starring Jane Fonda, James Caan, Jason Robards, and Richard Farnsworth, directed by Alan J. Pakula.

text: Set in the American West of the 1940s but not a typical Western, it tells the story of two ranchers (Caan and Fonda) whose small operation is threatened both by economic hardship and the expansionist dreams of a local land baron (Robards).

text: Farnsworth, a former stuntman, received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. The film itself was a critical and commercial success grossing $ 44.3 million at the box office.

text: A stuntman working on this film, Jim Sheppard, was killed while doing a scene where Robards' character is dragged to (presumably) his death. A horse dragging him veered from its course and caused Sheppard to hit his head on a fence post. The scene made it into the movie, although it is cut right before the horse passes through the gate where the fatal accident occurred.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
James Caan as Frank "Buck" Athearn
Jane Fonda as Ella Connors
Jason Robards as Jacob 'J.W.' Ewing
George Grizzard as Neil Atkinson
Richard Farnsworth as Dodger
Jim Davis as July Blocker
Mark Harmon as Billy Joe Meynert
Macon McCalman as Virgil Hoverton
Basil Hoffman as George Bascomb
James Kline as Ralph Cole
James Keach as Emil Kroegh

tag: ul


document_title: Fastball

question_text: when is a baseball pitched at its fastest

text: Fastball

text: Pitches[edit]

text: Four-seam fastball[edit]

text: This section's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (June 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: The four-seam fastball is the most common variant of the fastball. The pitch is used often by the pitcher to get ahead in the count or when he needs to throw a strike. This type of fastball is intended to have minimal lateral movement, relying more on its velocity. It is often perceived as the fastest pitch a pitcher throws, with recorded top speeds above 100 mph. The fastest pitch recognized by MLB was on September 25, 2010, at Petco Park in San Diego by then Cincinnati Reds left-handed relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman. It was clocked at 105.1 miles per hour. [2] April 19, 2011 Chapman lit up the stadium radar gun at 106 MPH (the TV-reading had his pitch at 105 MPH, and the pitchF/X reading was actually 102.4 MPH). [3] Two general methods are used to throw a four-seam fastball. The first and most traditional way is to find the horseshoe seam area, or the area where the seams are the farthest apart. Keeping those seams parallel to the body, the pitcher places his index and middle fingers perpendicular to them with the pads on the farthest seam from him. The thumb then rests underneath the ball about in the middle of the two fingers. With this grip, the thumb will generally have no seam on which to rest.

text: The four seam fastball is widely regarded as the main key to advancing to the next level of play. One of a baseball scouts main criteria when scouting a prospect is how fast he throws a four seam fastball. The game of baseball keeps on progressing, and as research on the physics of throwing is published and recognized, fastball velocity training has become more effective. This can be shown by looking at the average fastball velocity in the major leagues as time progresses. In 2008 the average fastball thrown in the MLB was 90.9 mph. 5 years later it had risen to 92.0. To show the affect that this increase in velocity has had on hitters in the big leagues, we can look at the runs scored stat. In 2008, the average number of runs a team scored a game was 4.6; 5 years later as the velocity increased, the average dropped by half a run a game, to 4.0.

text: How has pitch velocity gone up so much? Mostly by the development of better training and clearer communication within the baseball community that velocity is so valued. People like Tom House, Eric Cressey, Kyle Boddy, and Ron Wolforth have all pushed the edge and dedicated careers to research on what makes the ultimate pitcher. Pitchers are getting bigger, faster and stronger, and pushing their bodies in the weight room as well as with weighted ball throwing. All of this has created a faster more powerful game for pitchers on the mound today. [4] [5]

text: Two-seam fastball[edit]

text: A two-seam fastball, sometimes called a two-seamer, tailing fastball, running fastball, or sinker is another variant of the straight fastball. It is designed to have more movement than a four-seam fastball, so the batter cannot hit it hard, but it can be more difficult to master and control. Because of the deviation from the straight trajectory, the two-seam fastball is sometimes called a moving fastball.

text: The pitcher grabs a baseball and finds the area on it where the seams are the closest together, and puts his index and middle fingers on each of those seams. A sinker is a similar pitch that drops 3 to 6 inches more than a typical two-seam fastball; this causes batters to hit ground balls more often, mostly due to the tilted sidespin on the ball.[6]

text: Each finger should be touching the seam from the pads or tips to almost the ball of each finger. The thumb should rest underneath the ball in the middle of those two fingers, finding the apex of the horseshoe part of the seam. The thumb needs to rest on that seam from the side to the middle of its pad. If the middle finger is used, more whipping action occurs, making the pitch go around 10 mph faster. This ball tends to move for the pitcher a little bit depending on velocity, arm slot angle, and pressure points of the fingers. Retired pitchers Greg Maddux and Pedro Martínez were known for their effective two-seamers.

text: Depending on the grip and pressure applied with the fingers, sometimes the two-seam fastball features more sink than lateral movement. Sinkerballers tend to induce a lot of ground ball outs because hitters tend to swing over the ball due to the late downward movement, thus often end up beating the ball into the ground. Roberto Hernández of the Philadelphia Phillies, Justin Masterson of the St. Louis Cardinals, Derek Lowe of the New York Yankees, Tim Hudson of the San Francisco Giants, Aaron Cook of the Colorado Rockies, Clay Buchholz of the Boston Red Sox, Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies, Chris Volstad of the Chicago White Sox, Trevor Cahill of the Chicago Cubs, and Bronson Arroyo of the Arizona Diamondbacks are well known for their sinkers, consistently ranking high in the league in ground ball-to-fly ball ratio.

text: Rising fastball[edit]

text: The rising fastball is an effect perceived by some batters, but is a baseball myth. Some batters are under the impression that they have seen a "rising" fastball, which starts with the trajectory of a normal fastball, but which as it approaches the plate rises several inches and gains a burst of speed. Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Sandy Koufax, Dwight Gooden, and Chan Ho Park have been described as paramount pitchers with this kind of ball action.

text: Such a pitch is known to be beyond the physical capabilities of pitchers, due to the very high backspin required to overcome gravity with the Magnus effect. While not physically impossible (conservation of momentum is maintained through imparting the required opposing momentum to air, as an airplane does at takeoff), the amount of spin required is beyond the capabilities of a human arm. It has been explained as an optical illusion.

text: What is likely happening is that the pitcher first throws a fastball at one speed, and then, using an identical arm motion, throws another fastball at a higher speed. The higher-speed fastball arrives faster and sinks less due to its high speed. The added back-spin from the higher speed further decreases the amount of sink. When the pitch is thrown, the batter expects a fastball at the same speed, yet it arrives more quickly and at a higher level. The batter perceives it as a fastball which has risen and increased in speed. A switch from a two-seam to a fastball can enhance this effect.

text: This perception may also be created by a tall, hard-throwing pitcher who throws the ball from a higher release point on an elevated mound (the pitcher's rubber is 10 inches above the field level). Factoring in the element of depth perception when the hitter watches the pitcher from 60 ft 6 in away from the pitcher's mound, and the hitter perceives the pitcher's size and positioning on the mound to be less elevated than it actually is. Hence, to the hitter, an overhand pitch will appear to be thrown at a hitter's shoulder level (or even belt level), as opposed to several inches above the hitter's head, from where the pitch is actually released from the pitcher's hand. This perception enhances the apparent "rising" motion of the fastball when the pitch passes the hitter at a higher level than where the hitter perceived the pitch to have left the pitcher's hand.

text: It is possible for a rising fastball to be thrown by a submarine pitcher because of the technique with which they throw the ball. Because they throw almost underhanded with their knuckles near the field surface, the batter perceives the sensation of the ball going upward because of its low starting point and flight trajectory. This is not the traditional rising fastball batters believe they see. This type of movement is similar to a rising fastball in fast-pitch softball. Left-hander Sid Fernandez was known for throwing a rising fastball from a slightly "submarine" motion.

text: Cutter[edit]

text: A cut fastball, or "cutter", is similar to a slider, but the pitcher tends to use a four-seam grip. The pitcher shifts the grip on a four-seamer (often by slightly rotating the thumb inwards and the two top fingers to the outside) to create more spin. This usually causes the pitch to shift inwards or outwards by a few inches, less than a typical slider, and often late. A cutter is effective for pitchers with a strong four-seamer since the grip and delivery look virtually identical. The unexpected motion will often fool batters into hitting the ball off-center, or missing it altogether.

text: Mariano Rivera, a relief pitcher for the New York Yankees, is known for throwing a cutter. In his prime, Rivera could deliver late motion while throwing the ball around 95 mph. Al Leiter rode his cutter to 162 career wins and a no-hitter. Roy Halladay threw a cut fastball, but claimed that overusing it had given him forearm trouble.[citation needed] This may have prematurely ended Halladay's 2006 season due to forearm stiffness,[citation needed] since the grip causes more stress than a standard four-seamer. Yankee Andy Pettitte is another pitcher who throws the cutter. On a June 3, 2007, game against the Red Sox, announcer Joe Morgan estimated that of Pettitte's 87 pitches, 83 of them were cutters. Jamie Moyer used a cutter that became an important pitch due to his relatively low velocity late in his career. Many other major league pitchers have added the cut fastball, as well.

text: Split-finger fastball[edit]

text: The split-finger fastball, or "splitter", is truly an off-speed pitch rather than a type of fastball. Like the changeup, to which it is a close relative, it is thrown with the same arm motion as a normal fastball, but the adjusted grip causes it to behave quite differently. The ball does not have the characteristically tight spin of a fastball. The ball appears to tumble in a knuckleball-like fashion; but it is much faster than a knuckleball. The ball is gripped tightly with the index and middle fingers "split" along the outside of the horseshoe seam. It is important that at least one finger is touching the seam, as the ability to control the release of the ball is derived from this contact. The release is the same as a fastball. A splitter usually drops as it approaches the plate, and breaks to either the right or left. The forkball is a similar pitch, though it is slower and gripped with a more exaggerated split of the fingers. A pitcher generally needs long, flexible fingers to effectively throw this pitch. Due to similarities in speed and movement, some pitchers' split-finger fastballs are misidentified as changeups.

text: It helps to have larger hands to throw this pitch. Because the fingers are spread wider than normal on the baseball, this pitch produces more stress from the hand up through the arm. While the mechanics are the same as a normal fastball, the stress it places on the hand and arm is different. Over time it is possible to damage the arm. It is therefore not recommended for younger pitchers to learn this pitch. Older pitchers should feel comfortable deploying this pitch, but to use it in moderation. The splitter is an effective pitch because the hitter generally picks up the movement later and either swings over the ball or produces a weakly hit ground ball.

text: The split-finger is used currently by pitchers such as Dan Haren, Jonathan Papelbon, and Masahiro Tanaka. Former players noted for use of the split-finger fastball include Bruce Sutter, Mike Scott, John Smoltz, Jack Morris, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Bryan Harvey, Roger Clemens, and Fred Breining.

text: Incurve[edit]

text: The incurve was a term used until about 1930 used to describe a simple fastball. As a curveball was often called an "outcurve", one might assume that an incurve is the opposite of a curveball, in other words, the modern screwball. However, this does not appear to be so, as cited by John McGraw.

text: Side-arm fastball[edit]

text: A side-arm fast ball is thrown from an angle different from the normal one. It is at a lower angle and is thrown from the side, hence the name "side"-arm. It will have a sinking motion to the right if the pitcher is right-handed, or to the left if the pitcher is left-handed. It is usually slower than a normal four-seam fastball.