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| Jackson Apartment Locator Services : Jackson Apartments |  | Contents | |
| History |
| The city, originally known as LeFleur's Bluff,
was founded based on the need for a centrally located capital
for the state of Mississippi and named for the iconic figure
of General Andrew Jackson. In 1821, the Mississippi General
Assembly, meeting in the then-capital, Natchez, had sent Thomas
Hinds (for whom Hinds County is named), James Patton, and William
Lattimore to look for a site. After surveying areas north and
east of Jackson, they proceeded southwest along the Pearl River
until they reached LeFleur's Bluff in Hinds County. Their report
to the General Assembly was this location had beautiful and
healthful surroundings, good water, abundant timber, navigable
waters, and proximity to the Natchez Trace. And so, a legislative
act passed by the Assembly on 28 November 1821 authorized the
location to become the permanent seat of the government of the
state of Mississippi. Jackson was originally planned out in
April 1822 by Peter Van Dorn in a "checkerboard" pattern
advocated by Thomas Jefferson, in which city blocks alternated
with parks and other open spaces, giving the appearance of a
checkerboard. This plan has not lasted to the present day. The
state legislature first met in Jackson on December 23, 1822.
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| In 1839, Jackson was the site of the passage of
the first state law that permitted married women to own and
administer their own property. |
| Jackson was first linked with other cities by
rail in 1840. Unlike Vicksburg, Greenville, and Natchez, Jackson
is not located on the Mississippi River, and did not develop
like those cities from river commerce. Instead, railroads would
later spark growth of the city in the decades after the American
Civil War. |
| In 1863, during the campaign which ended in the
capture of Vicksburg, Union forces captured Jackson during two
battles - once before the fall of Vicksburg and once after the
fall of Vicksburg. |
| On May 13, 1863, Union forces won the first Battle
of Jackson, forcing Confederate forces to flee northward towards
Canton. Subsequently, on 15 May 1863 Union troops under the
command of William Tecumseh Sherman burned and looted key facilities
in city of Jackson, a strategic manufacturing and railroad center
for the Confederacy. After driving the Confederate forces out
of Jackson, Union forces turned west once again and engaged
the Vicksburg defenders at the Battle of Champion Hill in nearby
Edwards. The siege of Vicksburg began soon after the Union victory
at Champion Hill. Confederate forces began to reassemble in
Jackson in preparation for an attempt to break through the Union
lines surrounding Vicksburg and end the siege there. The Confederate
forces in Jackson built defensive fortifications encircling
the city while preparing to march west to Vicksburg. |
| Confederate forces marched out of Jackson to break
the siege of Vicksburg in early July, 1863. However, unknown
to them, Vicksburg had already surrendered on July 4, 1863.
General Grant dispatched General Sherman to meet the Confederate
forces heading west from Jackson. Upon learning that Vicksburg
had already surrendered, the Confederates retreated back into
Jackson, thus beginning the Siege of Jackson, which lasted for
approximately one week. Union forces encircled the city and
began an artillery bombardment. One of the Union artillery emplacements
still remains intact on the grounds of the University of Mississippi
Medical Center University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
Another Federal position is still intact on the campus of Millsaps
College. One of the Confederate Generals defending Jackson was
former United States Vice President John C. Breckenridge. On
July 16, 1863, Confederate forces slipped out of Jackson during
the night and retreated across the Pearl River. Union forces
completely burned the city after its capture this second time,
and the city earned the nickname "Chimneyville" because
only the chimneys of houses were left standing. The northern
line of Confederate defenses in Jackson during the siege was
located along a road near downtown Jackson now known as Fortification
Street. |
| Today there are few antebellum structures left
standing in Jackson. One surviving structure is the Governor's
Mansion, built in 1842, which served as Sherman's headquarters.
Another is the Old Capitol building, which served as the home
of the Mississippi state legislature from 1839 to 1903. There
the Mississippi legislature passed the ordinance of secession
from the Union on January 9, 1861, becoming the second state
to secede from the United States. The constitutional convention
of 1890, which produced Mississippi's Constitution of 1890,
was also held there. The so-called New Capitol replaced the
older structure upon its completion in 1903, and today the Old
Capitol is a historical museum. A third important surviving
antebellum structure is the Jackson City Hall, built in 1846
for less than $8,000. It is said that Sherman, a Mason, spared
it because it housed a Masonic Lodge, though a more likely reason
is that it housed an army hospital. |
| Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty was
born in Jackson in 1909, died there in 2001, and lived most
of her life in the Belhaven section of the city. She wrote a
memoir of her development as a writer, One Writer's Beginnings
(1984). The book gives a charming picture of the city in the
early 20th century. Today, the main Jackson public library is
named in her honor. |
| Highly acclaimed African-American author Richard
Wright, a native of Roxie, Mississippi, lived in Jackson as
an adolescent and young man in the 1910s and 1920s, and relates
his experience in his memoir Black Boy (1945). He describes
the harsh and largely terror-filled life most African-Americans
experienced in the South (and, it should be added, in much of
the United States) under segregation in the early twentieth
century. |
| Jackson's economic growth was stimulated in the
1930s by the discovery of natural gas fields nearby. |
| On May 24, 1961 during the American civil rights
movement, a large group of Freedom Riders was arrested in Jackson
for disturbing the peace after they disembarked from their bus. |
| In Jackson, shortly after midnight on June 12,
1963, civil rights activist and leader of the Mississippi chapter
of the NAACP Medgar Evers was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith,
a white supremacist. In 1994, prosecutors finally convicted
de la Beckwith of murder. A local highway now bears Medgar Evers'
name. |
| The first successful cadaveric lung transplant
was performed at the University of Mississippi Medical Center
in Jackson in June 1963 by Dr. James Hardy. Hardy transplanted
the cadaveric lung into a patient suffering from lung cancer.
The patient survived for eighteen days before dying of kidney
failure. |
| In 1965, Millsaps College became the first private
college in the South to admit African-American students. |
| Since 1968, Jackson has been the home of Malaco
Records, one of the leading record companies for gospel and
soul music in the United States. In January 1973, Paul Simon
recorded the song "Learn How To Fall," found on the
album There Goes Rhymin' Simon, in Jackson at the Malaco Recording
Studios. |
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