European settlement Indigenous peoples, including the
Chickasaw and
Choctaw, occupied the area prior to European settlement. The French and British traded with these indigenous peoples and tried to form alliances with them. The French established towns in Mississippi mostly on the Gulf Coast. At times, the European powers came into armed conflict. On May 26, 1736, the
Battle of Ackia was fought near the site of present-day Tupelo;
British and
Chickasaw soldiers repelled a
French and
Choctaw attack on the then-Chickasaw village of Ackia. The French, under
Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, governor of
French Louisiana, had sought to link Louisiana with
Acadia and the other northern colonies of
New France. In the early 19th century, after years of trading and encroachment by European-American settlers from the United States, conflicts increased as the US settlers tried to gain land from these nations. In 1830, Congress passed the
Indian Removal Act and authorized the relocation of all the Southeast
Native Americans to federal territory west of the
Mississippi River, which was completed by the end of the 1830s. In the early years of settlement, European-Americans named this town "Gum Pond", supposedly due to its numerous
tupelo trees, known locally as "blackgum". The city still hosts the annual Gumtree Arts Festival.
Civil War and Reconstruction During the
Civil War, Union and Confederate forces fought in the area in 1864 in the
Battle of Tupelo and the Battle of Old Town Creek. Designated the
Tupelo National Battlefield, the battlefield is administered by the
National Park Service (NPS). In addition, the
Brices Cross Roads National Battlefield, about ten miles north, commemorates another American Civil War battle. With expansion, the town changed its name to Tupelo, in honor of the battle. It was incorporated in 1870. On January 27, 1887 the
Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad acquired the unfinished
Memphis, Birmingham and Atlantic Railroad and completed the line from
Holly Springs, Mississippi through Tupelo to
Birmingham, Alabama. The KCM&B was operationally absorbed into the
St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad (the "Frisco") in 1896.
20th century to present at Tupelo Cotton Mills, 1911. Photo by
Lewis Hine. By the early twentieth century the town had become a site of cotton
textile mills, which provided new jobs for residents of the rural area. Under the state's segregation practices, the mills employed only
white adults and children. Reformers documented the child workers and attempted to protect them through labor laws. The last known bank robbery by
Machine Gun Kelly, a
Prohibition-era gangster, took place on November 30, 1932, at the Citizen's State Bank in Tupelo; his gang netted $38,000 ($ in current dollar terms). After the robbery, the bank's chief teller said of Kelly, "He was the kind of guy that, if you looked at him, you would never thought he was a bank robber." During the
Great Depression, Tupelo was
electrified by the new
Tennessee Valley Authority, which had constructed dams and power plants throughout the region to generate hydroelectric power for the large, rural area. The distribution infrastructure was built with federal assistance as well, employing many local workers. In 1935, President
Franklin Roosevelt visited this "First TVA City". Tupelo had only 20 Jewish residents at the beginning of the Great Depression, out of 20,000 total residents.
Temple B'nai Israel was established in Tupelo in 1939. The congregation first met in Tupelo City Hall. It later rented space on South Spring Street above the Fooks'
Chevrolet dealership. A synagogue building was dedicated in 1957, with then-Mayor James Ballard giving the remarks. The Frisco's
Southland ceased running on December 9, 1967, marking the last passenger train in northeast Mississippi. In 2007, the nearby village of
Blue Springs was selected as the site for
Toyota's 11th automobile manufacturing plant in the United States. In 2013 Gale Stauffer of the
Tupelo Police Department died in a set up ambush following a bank robbery, possibly the first officer killed in the line of duty in the department's history. President
Donald Trump visited the city of Tupelo twice, in 2018 and 2019. He held a campaign rally for Senator
Cindy Hyde-Smith on November 26, 2018, at the
Tupelo Regional Airport. Nearly one year later, the president returned to Tupelo to hold another rally (this time for Governor
Tate Reeves) on November 1, 2019, at the
BancorpSouth Arena. These campaign rallies were broadcast on national television and received attention from news networks, such as
CNN and
Fox News.
Severe weather , one month after a deadly
1936 tornado outbreak. The spring of 1936 brought Tupelo one of its worst-ever natural disasters, part of the
Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak of April 5–6 in that year. The storm leveled 48 city blocks and over 200 homes, killing 216 people and injuring more than 700 persons. The Tupelo Tornado is recognized as one of the deadliest in U.S. history. The Mississippi State Geologist estimated a final death toll of 233 persons, but 100 whites were still reported as hospitalized at the time. Because the white newspapers did not publish news about Black people until the 1940s and 1950s, historians have had difficulty learning the fates of those injured in the tornado. Based on this, historians now estimate the death toll was higher than in official records. Fire broke out at the segregated Lee County Training School, which was destroyed. Its bricks were salvaged for other uses. The area is subject to tornadoes. On
May 8, 2008, one rated an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale struck the town. On
April 28, 2014, another large EF3 tornado struck Tupelo and the surrounding communities, causing significant damage. On the night of
May 2, 2021, two EF1 tornadoes formed near town with the second being a large tornado that directly struck the northwest side of downtown, prompting a
tornado emergency to be issued by the
National Weather Service. ==Geography==