Promise and Peril, 1903–1927

In 1897 the Mississippi Legislature passed a law empowering a county board of supervisors to elect a county road commissioner to oversee improvement of public roads. But since the legislators did not require the appointment of such a commissioner, the law had little effect. On May 8, 1897, referring to this powerless law, the editor of the Biloxi Herald opined, “A proposed road law or a dog tax has a paralyzing effect on the average legislator, and he always approaches them by a circuitous route which sometimes lands him in close proximity but never clearly up to scratch.”

David Holmes, 1817-1820
George Poindexter, 1820-1822
Walter Leake, 1822-1825
Gerard Chittocque Brandon, 1825-1826

Progressivism was a political movement that swept America beginning about 1900. Progressives were people who believed that politicians should combine human compassion with the latest scientific and medical advances in order to tackle tough problems and supply solutions to those problems. Among the most famous Progressives nationally were U. S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Definitions for Women's Suffrage Amendment

In the 20th century, Mississippi legislators were twice called upon to act on two constitutional amendments that had major implications for American women. The first for their consideration was the woman suffrage amendment which was ratified in 1920 and became the Nineteenth Amendment.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s many homes in Mississippi and other rural American states did not have indoor plumbing and had inadequate sanitary facilities. Families could rarely afford to install indoor plumbing. Many Mississippians simply did not know how proper sanitary waste disposal and clean-living conditions could prevent diseases. As a result, they were often plagued with diseases that were directly linked to improper sanitary facilities. Hookworm was one such disease.

When Mississippi faced tough economic and social problems after the Great Depression and World War II, Owen Cooper challenged Mississippians to band together and successfully solve them. Whether the need was for rural hospitals and affordable health insurance, production of a fertilizer that increased crop yield for a hungry world, better race relations, or spreading Southern Baptist missions around the globe, Cooper repeatedly led Mississippians to work together and make the seemingly impossible possible.

The president of the United States addressed the nation and called for war. Tyrants, he said, could not be allowed to destroy the bonds of civilization by engaging in inhumane and immoral actions that oppressed their own people and threatened their neighbors. The world had to be made safe for democracy.

The nation's leading newspapers overwhelmingly agreed with the president, but the American people were divided. While some enthusiastically backed the official call to arms, critics suggested that the war was being undertaken to further privileged economic interests.

In August 1939, seventy-seven-year-old Susie V. Powell reminisced about rural life in the early 1900s. In 1910 Mississippi was overwhelmingly rural, she noted, with the majority of Mississippians living on the land or in small towns dependent upon agriculture. She explained that the care of the farm family, plus maintaining the house and garden, was generally the domain of the homemaker, who completed chores in a difficult work environment: few farms had running water, much less electricity, to ease the endless drudgery of housework.

The Great Flood of 1927 unleashed a spring season of catastrophic events along the banks of the Mississippi River. A weather system that stalled over the Midwestern states in the fall of 1926 brought untold amounts of water to the Upper Mississippi River region. The region’s burgeoning tributaries caused the Mississippi River to overflow in eleven states from Illinois to Louisiana.