Mississippi (U.S. state)
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This article is about Mississippi (U.S. state). For other uses of the term Mississippi, please see Mississippi (disambiguation).
Mississippi is a medium-sized state in southeast U.S. on the Gulf of Mexico. The capital city is Jackson. Mississippi joined the union in 1817 and was one of the eleven states that rebelled during the civil war (1861-1865).
As one of the top cotton-producing states in the U.S., Mississippi also has the dubious distinction of having had more lynchings in the decades after the American Civil War than any other U.S. state. Most victims were black (539 of a total of 581), reflecting the large population of former African American slaves living in the state and their difficulty in assimilation into society after being freed from slavery.