History of Vicksburg

At the request of Governor Adelbert Ames, President Ulysses S. Grant sent Federal troops to Vicksburg to quell the violence. In the aftermath of the Vicksburg Massacre, other states adopted what they called the "Mississippi Plan", an organized effort to suppress the black vote and unite whites under the Democrats. At election times, paramilitary groups intimidated black Republican voters into staying away from the polls, despite the majority of blacks in the state. In 1875 in Mississippi and within two years elsewhere in the former Confederacy, Democrats had regained control of state legislatures. Under new constitutions, amendments and laws passed from 1890 (Mississippi) to 1910, they imposed Jim Crow and disfranchised most blacks and many poor whites.

Lynchings and other forms of vigilante violence continued to occur in Vicksburg after the start of the 20th century. In May 1903, for instance, two black men charged with murdering a planter were taken from jail by a mob of 200 farmers and lynched before they went to trial.

Activists in the Vicksburg Movement were prominent in civil rights activities, especially during the 1960s.

Contemporary Vicksburg

In 2001, a group of Vicksburg residents visited the Paducah, Kentucky mural project. In 2002, the Vicksburg Riverfront murals program was begun by Louisiana mural artist Robert Dafford and his team on the floodwall located on the waterfront in downtown. Subjects for the murals were drawn from the history of Vicksburg and the surrounding area; they include President Theodore Roosevelt's bear hunt, the SS Sultana, the Sprague, the Siege of Vicksburg, the Kings Crossing site, Willie