Монтгомери округі, Миссисипи штаты

County in Mississippi, United States

Montgomery County is a county located in the U. S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,822. Its county seat is Winona. The county is said to be named in honor either of Richard Montgomery, an American Revolutionary War general killed in 1775 while attempting to capture Quebec City, Canada, or for Montgomery County, Tennessee, from which an early settler came. In the latter case, it would have been indirectly named after John Montgomery, a settler in Montgomery County, Tennessee, who founded the city of Clarksville, Tennessee, in the same county. The Big Black River passes through the southern part of the county, flowing southwest to its confluence with the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg.

According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 408 square miles (1,057 km2), of which 407 square miles (1,054 km2) is land and 0.9 square miles (2 km2) (0.2%) is water. It is the fourth smallest county in Mississippi by total area.

This area was occupied in historic times by the Choctaw people. Their ancestors had inhabited the area for thousands of years. Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the United States forced most of the Native Americans west of the Mississippi River in order to open their lands to settlement by European Americans. Much of the area of present day Montgomery County was developed for cotton plantations before and after the Civil War, when it was still part of Choctaw County. Most of the labor was supplied by African Americans, enslaved before the war and freed afterward. The county was organized by the legislature in 1871, during the Reconstruction era. The eastern hilly areas became a center of timber industry. From 1877 to 1950, there were 10 known lynchings of blacks in the county, fewer than in many other counties of the state. It was a form of racial terrorism that was at its height at the turn of the 20th century. The lynchings were reported nationally in the United States and widely condemned. Representative Hatton W. Sumners (D Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a telegram to Governor Hugh L. White decrying the lynching. He said, "It is the sort of thing which makes it hard for those of us who are here trying to protect the governmental sovereignty of the state " As was typical of lynchings, no one was ever prosecuted for the murders. Nazi Germany reported the lynching, comparing it to the "humanism" of its anti Semitic laws. As in much of rural Mississippi, population in this county declined markedly from 1910 to 1920, and from 1940 to 1970. The peak of population in the county was in 1910. In addition to labor changes because of mechanization of agriculture, blacks left in two waves of the Great Migration out of the rural and small town South seeking jobs, education, relief from Jim Crow and violence, and better opportunities in other regions. As a result, Mississippi changed from majority black (56%) in population in 1910 to majority white (63%) by 1970.

+Montgomery County racial compositionRaceNum. Perc. White (non Hispanic)5,09451.86%Black or African American (non Hispanic)4,36444.43%Native American90.09%Asian240.24%Other/Mixed2252.29%Hispanic or Latino1061.08%
As of the 2020 United States census, there were 9,822 people, 4,539 households, and 3,064 families residing in the county.

As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 10,925 people living in the county. 53.0% were White, 45.5% Black or African American, 0.4% Asian, 0.1% Native American, 0.5% of some other race and 0.5% of two or more races. 0.9% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race).

Fannie Lou Hamer Civil rights activist, with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964; born in Montgomery County in 1917, moved to Sunflower County in 1919.