Mississippi's rank as one of the poorest states is related to its dependence on
cotton agriculture before and after the
American Civil War, late development of its frontier
bottomlands in the
Mississippi Delta, repeated natural disasters of
flooding in the late 19th and early 20th century that required massive capital investment in
levees, and ditching and draining the bottomlands, and slow development of
railroads to link bottomland towns and river cities. In addition, when
Democrats regained control of the state legislature, they passed the 1890 constitution that discouraged corporate industrial development in favor of rural agriculture, a legacy that would slow the state's progress for years. Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by the labor of slaves in cotton plantations along the rivers. Largely due to the domination of the
plantation economy, focused on the production of
agricultural cotton, the state's elite was reluctant to invest in infrastructure such as roads and railroads. They educated their children privately.
Industrialization did not reach many areas until the late 20th century. The planter aristocracy, the elite of
antebellum Mississippi, kept the tax structure low for their own benefit, making only private improvements. Before the war the most successful planters, such as
Confederate President
Jefferson Davis, owned riverside properties along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers in the Mississippi Delta. Away from the riverfronts, most of the Delta was undeveloped frontier. Blacks cleared land, selling timber and developing bottomland to achieve ownership. In 1900, two-thirds of farm owners in Mississippi were blacks, a major achievement for them and their families. Due to the poor economy, low cotton prices and difficulty of getting credit, many of these farmers could not make it through the extended financial difficulties. Two decades later, the majority of African Americans were
sharecroppers. The low prices of cotton into the 1890s meant that more than a generation of African Americans lost the result of their labor when they had to sell their farms to pay off accumulated debts. After the Civil War, the state refused for years to build human capital by fully educating all its citizens. In addition, the reliance on agriculture grew increasingly costly as the state suffered loss of cotton crops due to the devastation of the
boll weevil in the early 20th century, devastating floods in 1912–1913 and 1927, collapse of cotton prices after 1920, and drought in 1930. In the modern era more of an emphasis has been placed on
sustainable agriculture. The negative effects of
overdevelopment and
climate change on
agriculture in California have made large scale
commercial farming in the Mississippi Delta more attractive. == Significant products ==