Why Mississippi is a poor state? I got a theory

[cali3448893]

mississippi is the king of racist followed by the carolinas and alabama or tennessee

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by Listener2307

And on top of all THAT, which I believe is accurate, Mississippi did not have compulsory education until the 1960's. In other words, many parents never sent their youngsters to school at all.

As a reform initiative introduced into the legislature by Gov. Bilbo in the 19teens, Mississippi mandated that all children under 16 years of age attend either a public or private school (there were a few private schools in Miss. at the time). Ironically enough, the law caused hardship for Mississippians of all stripes because public schools of the 19teens and 1920s and 1930s were not "free." Students had to buy their own school books. Since most Mississippians white and black were poor, only the well-to-do could afford the school books. Many educators tried to deal with this uneven system as best they could....either by buying books themselves for their students or having the students with means share their books with students who were less fortunate. Regardless of the state's best efforts, school terms were rather short and they adhered to the agricultural planting and harvesting seasons. Enforcement was lax, so Mississippians routinely kept their children out of school for most of the average 6-month school year.

Jeanes and Slater Fund philanthropy supported black schools in the state, but the spending on these schools by these outside foundations paled in comparison to state taxpayer support of white schools. Furthermore, the philanthropic organizations required black schools to instruct their students in industrial arts and agricultural type instruction.

In the 1950s under I believe the Gov. J.P. Coleman (or Gov. Hugh White, can't remember) administration, he signed an legislative edict ending compulsory education. Like other former Confederates states, Mississippi repealed its compulsory attendance laws because of the specter of school desegregation as ordered by the Supreme Court in 1955 as part of the Brown II decision. Legislators reasoned that if schools did actually integrate by federal order, then parents could simply not send their kids to school. The legislature of the 1950s also amended the state's constitution to shut down the state's public education system should desegregation occur. This was deemed by folks like Walter Sillers Jr. and other leaders in the government as a "measure of last resort" should the federal government initiate an immediate desegregation order following Brown.

These laws were changed by William Winter's signature on an omnibus school reform legislation that the state house approved in 1981 and became effective in 1982.

There are essentially two reasons why Mississippi didn't have school attendance laws in the latter half of the 1950s and through much of the 1960s and 1970s: race. Most Mississippians didn't want their children attending school in an integrated environment, even though most schools did not integrate until the 1970-71 school year (the same year that private academies popped up all across the state, but mostly in the Jackson area and Miss. Delta). The other reason was related to agriculture. Many Mississippians needed their children at home to work in the fields after they reached an age where they could assist in farming.

There's some good reading about this, particularly David Sansings many books on education in Mississippi. Michael Fuquay wrote a recent article about private school "segregation" academies, and Charles Bolton's book The Hardest Deal of All traces the establishment of Mississippi public education in 1870s to its desegregation and reform in the 1970s and 1980s. There's another, older book about Mississippi and other southern states' private academies called The Schools that Fear Built. I can't name the authors off the top of my head, but it's a short book and it's very interesting.

Hopefully, if I secure a book contract, I'll have a book that traces the changes in the state's education curriculum in the wake of Brown. I argue that Mississippi political leaders, with help from white, grassroots activists, attempted to codify white supremacy in social studies curricula through the school books they approved and adopted for use, and they tried to weed out teachers who were not as fully committed to segregated education as state law at the time required. Expected publication date is 2014 depending on the publishers I'm courting, otherwise only the dissertation will be available.

[DiogenesofJackson]

Originally Posted by ExhaustedCure

Mississippi's largest city, Jackson is shrinking, and has been for decades. White flight came to this city during the 1960's and 1970's, with most whites moving to the suburbs. Consequently the county's population has seen a steady increase while the city itself has seen a large decline.

Other factors affect the state's economy. A lack of industrialization and organized unions guarantee lower wages and fewer jobs for the people in skilled trades.

It's no coincidence that the poorest states in the country are all in the deep south, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. Although Mississippi is probably amongst the poorest. This can be attributed to most southerner's general lack of a good education, rural communities, and a lack of people moving to the state.

I agree with your post other than the comment about white flight. 1980 census numbers show Jackson being as much as 85% white (if memory serves me correctly about these figures) while the 2000 census shows the city retaining about 17% of its white residents. Madison County, a bedroom community just north of Jackson, in 1980 had an 80% black population, but in 2000 had an 80% white population. Regardless, that's a pretty big switch in such a small time frame.

I'd argue that Jackson's white flight began in the 1960s, but did not really get moving until the 1980s and 1990s. Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, and other southern cities, however, are a different story.

I agree that education in Mississippi is probably a big factor in keeping the state from fully modernizing and developing. Part of this is attributed, in my opinion, to the political nature of education and Mississippians general hostility toward it. This hostility is historically based. Through much of the 20th century, if a state leader advocated reforming the state's education system, then his comments were followed with the response that "education ruins a good field hand with all those high-falutin' ideas!"

Mississippians from the end of civil war to end of the civil rights era in the 1970s routinely put much of their eggs in one basket--cotton. Despite the drop in cotton prices after the civil war (thanks in part to international competition), Mississippians held steadfast to the idea that cotton could get them rich like it did their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The result was a lack of agricultural and industrial diversification. Thus the state's economy stagnated around the turn of the 20th century and Mississippians endured the ravages of ag depression after ag depression for much of the century.

Political leaders could see what the problems were and tried to fix it with the Balance Industry with Agriculture program from the 1930s to the 1970s. They tried to lure economic development by promising cheap laborers who would be hostile to union organizing, and state leaders followed this with legislation limiting the freedom of labor unions operating in the state. One example of how strong anti-union sentiment was in Mississippi during the 1959 gubernatorial election is that eventual governor Ross Barnett, during the campaign, supposedly had a secret meeting with AFL-CIO officials at a field in southwest Mississippi. The meeting never took place, but his opponents in the race, Charles Sullivan and Carroll Gartin, concocted the story just a few days before the Aug. primary (primaries determined who the governor-elect would be since the state was a virtual one-party political system).

[lhpartridge]

Originally Posted by Patriot474

Its all about connections, I think thats a problem and has become too common and it affects the economy.

In Mississippi you either rich ( got a job) or you are poor, their is nothing in the middle.

The Public Education system up here is a joke, I never did attend school in Mississippi though, that was in Louisiana. But someone I knew who was attending school I would look over some of the work bought home and question what the hell are they doing in that school? I just never saw learning or education being done and this school is supposed to be a high mark school, but its my opinion they going to pass you no matter what.

Having a job does not make one rich. In fact, it's likely that many of the richest people in Mississippi don't really work at jobs. They manage their families' inherited wealth and run their businesses. They aren't relying on an employer to provide their wealth for them. They send their sons to Ole Miss to get business degrees before putting them in charge of various aspects of these businesses. They send their daughters there to find husbands who fit the family profile. It is a closed society that very few outsiders can penetrate.

[GrandviewGloria]

Originally Posted by ExhaustedCure

I'm sure that I will get a racist backlash for the comment I'm about to post, but I believe it to be true. Mississippi has the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the country. I believe it's 59% white, 38% black, and 2% other races. African Americans in general make less money than their Caucasian counter parts, this is the largest contributor to the state's poverty levels. However it's not just poor African Americans, there are plenty of poor Caucasians also. It's the states old time traditions and ways of thinking that hinder it from moving forward.

While the state's population has continuously increased over the past 100 years, growth has been very slow, no more than 2-3% a year. I blame this on the media coverage, and general societal ideas of the state as being slow and backwater. An influx of outsiders moving into this state would greatly revolutionize it, and change things for the better.

North Carolina is a great example of this. The research triangle with the state's top 3 schools in the area has seen a huge population increase over the past few decades. The state's largest city, Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, nearly doubling its population from 400,000 to 700,000 from 1990 to 2010.

Mississippi's largest city, Jackson is shrinking, and has been for decades. White flight came to this city during the 1960's and 1970's, with most whites moving to the suburbs. Consequently the county's population has seen a steady increase while the city itself has seen a large decline.

Other factors affect the state's economy. A lack of industrialization and organized unions guarantee lower wages and fewer jobs for the people in skilled trades.

It's no coincidence that the poorest states in the country are all in the deep south, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. Although Mississippi is probably amongst the poorest. This can be attributed to most southerner's general lack of a good education, rural communities, and a lack of people moving to the state.

AhOooooooooom! (That's Mississippi for "You just said something we're not supposed to say!"). But thanks for mentioning the Elephant in the room.

I would add that the quality of the 'Caucasians' in Mississippi has been steadily going downhill. Originally, Mississippi's Whites were mostly Norse Protestant, primarily Ulster Scots. They're smart, rational, kind people. Most were small farmers who did not own slaves. But various factors sent them fleeing the state (The Brain Drain began BEFORE the Civil War).

Mississippi's climate is absolutely horrible for those who don't do well in extreme heat. Never bothered me, but then my people had been there for thousands of years, and had finished evolving there. Anyway, people with money and moxy frequently moved away. People with less wherewithal, and/or less foresight, tended to stay. Imagine trying to sleep through a hot, humid, Mississippi night without even an electric fan! No wonder people were so worn out by the end of Summer, they would die like flies in epidemics. (and there were epidemics galore)

After the Civil War, during the solid century of poverty caused by that war, Mississippians who could often moved away. Some moved to Brazil. Some moved to Texas. Some to California. Families who couldn't move would scrape up enough money to send their daughters up East, in the hopes that they might land prosperous husbands. The state's better families are full of stories about Great-Great-Grandmothers who went to New York and had their jewels stolen from their hotels (More likely, considering the sheer number of such stories, the jewels were sold to finance those husband-hunting expeditions, or sold to pay the taxes on the farms back in Mississippi. I would add that the sale of one's jewels brings pitifully little money.).

Some of those girls got lucky and became the founding matriarchs of East Coast dynasties. Not from Mississippi, but the classic story illustrating this trend, was Alva Smith, from Mobile, who went up to New York and became a Vanderbilt (then married a cryptoRothschild, and became a Belmont). She went on to save the Women's Sufferage movement with Vanderbilt money. She built quite a few palatial homes, and...before becoming a Suffragette... forced her daughter to marry the unpleasant Charles Spencer Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough (Same family that produced Princess Diana).

And so it went. One by one, the best people trickled out of the South, just as inferior whites were imported to work the fields. The new whites, being crude and violent, changed the gentle social climate of the state. I once read an excerpt in House & Garden, from Eudora Welty, in which an elderly lady farmer laments the declining quality of the people who pass along the road in front of her house. Others noted the abusive (but hot-looking) newcomers. The newcomers were communicants of the lower Protestant sects...loud, pushy, moralistic sects with folkways and mores quite distinct from the rational nature of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists who had once dominated the state.

In school, the newcomers terrorized the children of Old Stock families. They were not nice to us Indians. They terrorized Blacks, too. More blacks fled the state. Unhappy Old Stock whites fled the state. The vacuum made room for even more aggressive newcomers, from areas not traditionally regarded as European.

The combination of the oppressive weather and the steadily deteriorating social climate continued to send the Best & Brightest to better places.

Key moments? The bombing of Beth Israel. The Ole Miss Riots. Both World Wars (How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm...). My Uncles educated themselves on the GI Bill, and were out of Mississippi by 1959. They all did extremely well, but would have had hopeless lives, if they'd stayed in Mississippi.

Demographics are Destiny, and bad demographics just beget worse ones.

And interesting you should mention North Carolina as an example of a Southern State doing well. I just yesterday read that the state is paying reparations to 'victims' of its Eugenics program, who were sterilized. This program was in place for decades, and prevented the birth of countless marginal people. At fifty thou a pop for reparations, that's a huge bargain for the people of North Carolina, considering that some of those sterilized would be great-great-grandparents by now, with umpteen problematic descendants each. A little planning goes a long way...

[magicoz]

I am white but I would rather live in a black village in Mississippi (or any other Southern state) than a white or black area in or near a big city in Yankeeland or even Houston. All the big cities in the USA have WAY too much crime and are depressing. Maybe I just don't like the "urban" sense of architecture.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by DiogenesofJackson

On reason 5, I'll add that antebellum Planters made no effort whatsoever to educate their slaves and after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the state established a dual school system. There were white schools and black schools while the former took the lion's share of state funds between the establishment of Mississippi public schools in the 1870s to the end of segregation circa 1970. Not only that, but it was the policy of the state's education system during the years of segregation to focus black public education toward agricultural type work, domestic service, and other industrial type arts while white public education varied to include academic subjects that prepared one for higher learning.

In short, state leaders from 1817 to roughly 1970 conspired to make sure their "unintelligent" labor force could not have much of any access toward education.

It is well known that education is very important. I read in the Bible that people have died from lack of knowledge. That isn't the only place I have gotten this. I hear in other ways too. It is the knowledge and education that are powerful. The educated you are, the more you know and the more you can stop an injustice. It is a game of power. The powerful have conspired to keep the poor undereducated as to keep them from challenging the power strucuture.

[Patriot474]

Originally Posted by lhpartridge

Having a job does not make one rich. In fact, it's likely that many of the richest people in Mississippi don't really work at jobs. They manage their families' inherited wealth and run their businesses. They aren't relying on an employer to provide their wealth for them. They send their sons to Ole Miss to get business degrees before putting them in charge of various aspects of these businesses. They send their daughters there to find husbands who fit the family profile. It is a closed society that very few outsiders can penetrate.

Might be.


I know one thing I notice to is the high urge to literally scam people with self owned businesses to.

But people is allowing it to happen and doesnt try to put a stop to it, this is probably in line with the comments talking about the Education system in which people and self employed businesses are taking advantage of less intelligent people.

[bluesinms]

Well-explained, green-mariner. Add to that the Jim Crow laws that, until just recently, kept the African-American population down, unemployed and undereducated. Tunica County was (still is) agricultural, and the work there for most of the population was geared toward working the land.

Gaming may not be everyone's choice, but I'll say one thing: cotton is indeed no longer king. I started working at the Tunica casinos when Southern Belle was being built in 1993. We hired folks straight off the sharecropping farms who still owed money to the company store. Most of the employees in our department didn't have a bank account and had never been paid by check. The casinos provided an opportunity for the descendants of sharecroppers and town folk to try some other type of life other than being tied to the plantation (yes, plantations still exist!).

Fast forward to 2012. The casinos are still here, and most of the Vegas and Atlantic City folks are gone now, and the locals are moving on up. Some of my co-workers drive over an hour from the little towns in other counties to work at the casinos.Technology and money may make things easier, but social changes take time. A lot of time.

[bluesinms]

ALso, A wonderful, readable book that helps explain an important aspect of this topic is Isabel Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns," which follows American's great migration from the southern states to the northern/western/eastern -anywhere but the south- states.