Copiah County
County
US Post Office in Hazlehurst
US Post Office in Hazlehurst
Map of Mississippi highlighting Copiah County
Location within the U.S. state of Mississippi
Map of the United States highlighting Mississippi
Mississippi's location within the U.S.
Coordinates: 31°52′N 90°26′W / 31.86°N 90.44°W / 31.86; -90.44
Country United States
State Mississippi
Founded1823
SeatHazlehurst
Largest cityCrystal Springs
Area
 • Total779 sq mi (2,020 km2)
 • Land777 sq mi (2,010 km2)
 • Water2.2 sq mi (6 km2)  0.36%
Population
 (2020)
 • Total28,368
 • Density36/sq mi (14/km2)
Time zoneUTC−6 (Central)
 • Summer (DST)UTC−5 (CDT)
Congressional district2nd
Websitewww.copiahcounty.org

Copiah County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 28,368.[1] The county seat is Hazlehurst.[2]

With an eastern border formed by the Pearl River, Copiah County is part of the Jackson, MS Metropolitan Statistical Area.

History

Copiah, from a Choctaw Indian word meaning calling panther, was organized in 1823 as Mississippi's 18th county. In the year of county organization, Walter Leake served as governor and James Monroe as President of the United States. In 2004 Calling Panther Lake, commemorating this name, was opened up just West and North of Crystal Springs near the Jack and New Zion community.

Soon after the Choctaw Indians relinquished their claims to this land in 1819 and the legislature formed Copiah County in 1823, Elisha Lott, a Methodist minister who had worked among the Indians, brought his family from Hancock County to a location near the present site of Crystal Springs. When the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad built in the area in 1858, a new town was created about a mile and a half west of the old settlement. The new settlement took the name Crystal Springs and the old settlement became Old Crystal Springs.

William J. Willing's home was the first to be built in the new town, and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, once made a speech from the front yard. Ozious Osborne owned the first merchandise store on a corner of his residence lot on south Jackson Street. This lot later became the Merchants Grocery Company's site.

The development of cotton agriculture in the county was based on, and the population was before the Civil War.

The first church built was the Methodist in 1860 in Hazelhurst.[3] It was followed by the Baptist in 1861, Presbyterian in 1870. Trinity Episcopal was built in 1882, during a growth in the US Episcopal Church. After the American Civil War, most freedmen withdrew from white churches to establish their own independent congregations, setting up state associations of Baptists by the end of the nineteenth century.

The county expanded its production of commercial vegetable crops, known as truck farming, in the 19th and 20th centuries. Crystal Springs developed as one of the largest tomato shipping centers. Its commercial farming started in 1870 when the first shipment of peaches, grown by James Sturgis, was shipped to New Orleans and Chicago markets. Tomatoes were still known as "love apples" when N. Piazza imported seeds from Italy, and with help from S. H. Stackhouse, began scientific cultivation of tomato plants. With the help of German immigrant Augustus Lotterhos, the industry achieved success. In 1878, Lotterhos pooled the products of a number of tomato growers and shipped the first boxcar load to Denver, Colorado.[4][5][6]

In the 1960s, Hazlehurst and Crystal Springs were centers of civil rights activism in the southwest part of the state. In addition to working with the Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 on voter registration and education, they organized to make progress after passage of federal civil rights legislation in 1964 and 1965. With the aid of Deacons for Defense and Justice, to protect protesters working with the NAACP on boycotts of merchants in 1966 and 1967 in order to gain integration of public facilities and implement civil rights legislation. The Deacons for Defense had first been organized in Natchez in 1965 to protect African-American protesters, after considerable earlier violence in the state against protesters.[7]

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 779 square miles (2,020 km2), of which 777 square miles (2,010 km2) is land and 2.2 square miles (5.7 km2) (0.3%) is water.[8]

Major highways

Adjacent counties

National protected area

Demographics

The mostly rural county has had two periods of marked losses of population during waves of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the rural South: from 1910 to 1920, and from 1940 to 1970. In the first period, most migrants went North, many to St. Louis or Chicago. In the second, they went West, particularly to California where the defense industry had many new jobs and federal policy created opportunities for African Americans in these fields.

Historical population
CensusPop.Note%±
18307,001—
18408,95427.9%
185011,79431.7%
186015,39830.6%
187020,60833.8%
188027,55233.7%
189030,2339.7%
190034,39513.8%
191035,9144.4%
192028,672−20.2%
193031,61410.3%
194033,9747.5%
195030,493−10.2%
196027,051−11.3%
197024,749−8.5%
198026,5037.1%
199027,5924.1%
200028,7574.2%
201029,4492.4%
202028,368−3.7%
U.S. Decennial Census[9]
1790–1960[10] 1900–1990[11]
1990–2000[12] 2010–2013[13]
Copiah County racial composition as of 2020[14]
Race Num. Perc.
White (non-Hispanic) 12,171 42.9%
Black or African American (non-Hispanic) 14,264 50.28%
Native American 17 0.06%
Asian 121 0.43%
Pacific Islander 24 0.08%
Other/Mixed 660 2.33%
Hispanic or Latino 1,111 3.92%

As of the 2020 United States census, there were 28,368 people, 9,414 households, and 6,609 families residing in the county.

Tomato Festival

The county is known as a tomato and cabbage producing area, and for many years was called the "Tomato Capital of the World." Specifically, Crystal Springs was known as "The Tomato Capital of the World" because for a few years in the late 1930s it canned and shipped out via rail car more tomatoes than any other locale. Its predominance was disrupted by the onset of World War II but it kept the title.

In June 2000, the town revived celebration of an annual Tomato Festival, held on the last Saturday in June. It includes a tomato growing contest (with prizes for largest tomato, ugliest tomato, prettiest tomato, etc.), tomato tasting, farmers' market, vendor's booths, musical entertainment, 5K run and, of course, the crowning of the new Tomato Queen. The Tomato Festival was originally set up on Front Street.

The Friday night before the Tomato Festival, a Street Dance is held as the kick-off event. It is the night of the crowning of the Tomato Queen. Entertainment includes a live band, games and amusement rides for the kids, and food vendors. During the Street Dance, "BBQ and Blue Jeans" is sponsored by the Junior Auxiliary of Crystal Springs. They sell take-out containers filled with BBQ sandwiches, potato salad, baked beans and a dinner roll. This is the evening when other festival vendors start setting up their booths for the main day events. Vendors come from all over the U.S. to the festival every year to sell their wares, and provide games and amusement rides. A tomato museum at the Chautauqua Park Visitor's Center exhibits historical pictures, agricultural relics from the era, and examples of some of the shipping and canning labels.

Education

Communities

Cities

Towns

Village

Unincorporated communities

Ghost town

Politics

United States presidential election results for Copiah County, Mississippi[16]
Year Republican Democratic Third party
No. %No. %No. %
2020 6,250 48.51% 6,470 50.22% 163 1.27%
2016 6,103 47.01% 6,741 51.93% 138 1.06%
2012 6,282 44.48% 7,749 54.87% 92 0.65%
2008 6,701 46.21% 7,710 53.17% 91 0.63%
2004 6,374 55.95% 4,961 43.54% 58 0.51%
2000 5,643 53.30% 4,845 45.76% 99 0.94%
1996 4,138 46.23% 4,415 49.33% 397 4.44%
1992 4,600 48.68% 4,397 46.53% 452 4.78%
1988 5,100 54.64% 4,175 44.73% 59 0.63%
1984 5,806 55.74% 4,591 44.08% 19 0.18%
1980 4,461 43.99% 5,517 54.41% 162 1.60%
1976 4,108 47.51% 4,267 49.35% 271 3.13%
1972 5,498 73.11% 1,803 23.98% 219 2.91%
1968 704 8.40% 2,724 32.51% 4,951 59.09%
1964 4,506 94.96% 239 5.04% 0 0.00%
1960 761 21.06% 896 24.79% 1,957 54.15%
1956 387 16.80% 1,270 55.12% 647 28.08%
1952 1,527 42.69% 2,050 57.31% 0 0.00%
1948 19 0.72% 89 3.38% 2,523 95.90%
1944 85 3.41% 2,409 96.59% 0 0.00%
1940 49 2.06% 2,335 97.94% 0 0.00%
1936 45 1.84% 2,397 98.12% 1 0.04%
1932 28 1.17% 2,371 98.67% 4 0.17%
1928 161 5.56% 2,733 94.44% 0 0.00%
1924 43 2.02% 2,087 97.98% 0 0.00%
1920 60 4.37% 1,300 94.61% 14 1.02%
1916 20 1.32% 1,486 98.22% 7 0.46%
1912 10 0.77% 1,234 94.78% 58 4.45%

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Census - Geography Profile: Copiah County, Mississippi". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  2. ↑ "Find a County". National Association of Counties. Archived from the original on May 31, 2011. Retrieved June 7, 2011.
  3. ↑ Cain, J.B. Hazelhurst Methodist Church, 1860-1960: A History of Hazelhurst Methodist Church. Nashville, Tenn.: Parthenon, n.d. 104 pp.
  4. ↑ James L. McCorkle, The Mississippi Vegetable Industry: A History, University of Mississippi, 1966.
  5. ↑ McCorkle, James L., Jr. "Nineteenth Century Beginnings of the Commercial Vegetable Industry in Mississippi." Journal of Mississippi History 30, no. 4 (Nov. 1968): 260-74
  6. ↑ McCorkle, James L. "Mississippi Truck Crops: An Exercise in Agrarian Organization," Mississippi Quarterly 33, no. 1 (Winter 1979-80): 55-77
  7. ↑ Ted Ownby, The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2013, pp. 221-223
  8. ↑ "2010 Census Gazetteer Files". United States Census Bureau. August 22, 2012. Archived from the original on September 28, 2013. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
  9. ↑ "U.S. Decennial Census". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
  10. ↑ "Historical Census Browser". University of Virginia Library. Archived from the original on August 11, 2012. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
  11. ↑ "Population of Counties by Decennial Census: 1900 to 1990". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
  12. ↑ "Census 2000 PHC-T-4. Ranking Tables for Counties: 1990 and 2000" (PDF). United States Census Bureau. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 27, 2010. Retrieved November 3, 2014.
  13. ↑ "State & County QuickFacts". United States Census Bureau. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved September 3, 2013.
  14. ↑ "Explore Census Data". data.census.gov. Retrieved December 17, 2021.
  15. ↑ Diane Ravitch (1983). The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980. Basic Books. p. 329. ISBN 978-0-465-08756-3.
  16. ↑ Leip, David. "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections". uselectionatlas.org. Retrieved March 4, 2018.

31°52′N 90°26′W / 31.86°N 90.44°W / 31.86; -90.44

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