Голмс округы: Миссисипи тарихы мен географиясы

County in Mississippi, United States

Holmes County is a county in the U. S. state of Mississippi; its western border is formed by the Yazoo River and the eastern border by the Big Black River. The western part of the county is within the Yazoo Mississippi Delta. As of the 2020 census, the population was 17,000. Its county seat is Lexington. The county is named in honor of David Holmes, territorial governor and the first governor of the state of Mississippi and later United States Senator for Mississippi. Holmes County native, Edmond Favor Noel, was an attorney and state politician, elected as governor of Mississippi, serving from 1908 to 1912. Cotton was long the commodity crop; before the Civil War, its cultivation was based on slave labor and the majority of the population consisted of enslaved African Americans. Planters generally developed their properties along the riverfronts. After the war, many freedmen acquired land in the bottomlands of the Delta by clearing and selling timber to raise the purchase price, but most lost their land during difficult financial times at the end of the century, becoming tenant farmers or sharecroppers. With an economy based on agriculture, the county had steep population declines from 1940 to 1970, due to mechanization of farm labor, and the second wave of the Great Migration. African Americans migrated from the Deep South especially to West Coast cities, where jobs were plentiful in the buildup of the defense industry. Some African Americans had reacquired land in Holmes County in the 1940s under New Deal programs. By 1960, Holmes County's 800 independent black farmers owned 50% of the land, a higher number of such farmers than elsewhere in the state. Robert G. Clark, Jr., a teacher in Holmes County, was elected as state representative in 1967, the first black person to be elected to state government in the 20th century. He served as the only African American in the state house until 1976. He continued to be re elected to the state legislature from Holmes County until 2003. In the late 20th century, he was elected to the first of three terms as Speaker of the state House.

The western border of the county is formed by the Yazoo River; it is next to the Mississippi Delta, and shares its characteristics. The eastern border is formed by the Big Black River and the eastern part has hills. The county was developed for cotton plantations in the antebellum era before the American Civil War, with most properties of the period located along the riverfronts for transportation access. Due to the plantation economy and reliance on slave labor, the county was majority black before the Civil War. It has continued to be majority black (see Demographics). Because of these characteristics, it is included among the 200 counties defined as part of the Black Belt region that curves across the South, into Texas. After the war, many freedmen and white migrants went to Holmes County and other parts of the Mississippi Delta, where they developed the bottomlands behind the riverfront properties, clearing and selling timber in order to buy their own lands. The period after Reconstruction and through the early 20th century had the highest incidence of white people lynching black people. Holmes County had 10 documented lynchings in the period from 1877 to 1950, most around the turn of the 20th century. Two lynchings took place in the county seat of Lexington, Mississippi in the 1940s. White planters continued to recruit labor in the area, as freedmen wanted to work on their own account. The first Chinese immigrant laborers entered the Delta in the late 1870s. From 1900 1930, additional Chinese immigrants arrived in Mississippi, including some to Holmes County. They worked hard to leave field labor and often became merchants, especially becoming grocers of small stores in the rural Delta towns. As their socioeconomic status changed, the Chinese Americans carved out a niche "between black and white", gaining admission to white schools for their children through court challenges. With the decline of small towns, most Chinese Americans moved to larger cities through the 20th century. In Mississippi, the number of ethnic Chinese has increased overall in the state through 2010, although it is still small in total fewer than 5,000. During the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration worked through the Farmers Home Administration to provide low interest loans in order to increase black land ownership. They also established a co op cotton gin to be used by farmers in the project. In Holmes County, numerous African Americans became landowners in the 1930s and 1940s through this program. They were fiercely independent and later were among strong supporters of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, even as white people kept a grip on economic and political power through banks, police and the county courthouse. Although there had been outmigration, the population of the county in 1960 was still 42% black. They were among those who initiated the civil rights movement, particularly farmers of Mileston, where the soil was rich. They invited organizers of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to come to Mileston to help them take action. The majority of the first fourteen black people who attempted to register to vote on April 9, 1963, were landowners. The Freedom Democratic Party was organized in 1964 to work on black voter registration and education, and continued after passage of civil rights laws, in order to implement such laws. For instance, where white Democratic Party officials had defined the very large Lexington precinct, which held the majority of population, the county chapter of the FDP organized its own sub precincts within it in order to communicate better with the community. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were important but had to be implemented on the local level, where resistance to black voting continued to be strong, sometimes becoming violent. The FDP worked with residents to register African American voters and encourage them to vote. As resistance continued by white officials, in November 1965 a federal registrar was assigned to Holmes County, based on residents' petitions about the circuit clerk's discrimination over a 4 month period. After this, 2,000 black voters were registered in two months. The FDP also worked with local people to run for positions on the ASCS board. In the fall of 1965, six black farmers were elected to the county board, with four as alternates. This gave them a voice in determining how local programs would run. In 1966 many communities in the county concentrated on setting up the new federal Head Start program for young children. The FDP continued to work with other communities on correcting unfair hiring at factories and unequal administration of welfare, as well as trying to end discrimination at eating places. From 1966 on, the FDP registered an increasing number of black voters and gained their participation in elections. By November 1967, nearly 6,000 new voters were registered in the county. In 1967 black farmers and landowners, who had been part of the Movement since the early 1960s, accounted for eight of the ten candidates who ran for local and state offices: Thomas C. "Top Cat" Johnson, Ed Noel McGaw, Jr.; Ward Montgomery; John Malone; Willie James Burns; John Daniel Wesley; Griffin McLaurin, and Ralthus Hayes. He won a seat as the first and only black elected in 1967 to the Mississippi House of Representatives. By 2000, Clark had been re elected to eight four year terms in the state house and had been elected as Speaker three times since 1992. It was not until 1976 that another African American was elected to the state legislature, but then the number increased. Several blacks were elected to local offices in Holmes County well before that. White people have also left the county since the mid 20th century because of declining work opportunities. Agribusinesses have bought up large tracts of land, and the number of independent farmers has declined markedly. By 2010, the total population was less than half that of 1940. Still largely rural, Holmes County in the 21st century has had problems associated with poverty and limited access to healthcare; as of 2011 it had the lowest life expectancy of any county in the United States, for both men and women.

According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 765 square miles (1,981 km2), of which 757 square miles (1,961 km2) is land and 7.9 square miles (20 km2) (1.0%) is water.

From 1940 until 1970, the county had major declines in population as many African Americans left the state in the Great Migration. Whites have also left as economic opportunities were limited in the rural county.

+Holmes County Racial CompositionRaceNum. Perc. White2,35913.88%Black or African American14,19483.49%Native American360.21%Asian200.12%Pacific Islander30.01%Other/Mixed2791.64%Hispanic or Latino1120.66%
As of the 2020 United States Census, there were 17,000 people, 6,188 households, and 3,722 families residing in the county.

As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 19,198 people living in the county, less than half than at the peak of population in 1940. 83.4% were Black or African American, 15.6% White, 0.2% Asian, 0.1% Native American, 0.1% of some other race and 0.6% of two or more races. 0.7% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race).

The county newspaper is the Holmes County Herald. It was established in 1959 as the weekly paper of the county chapter of the White Citizens Council, founded to resist integration of public schools and the civil rights movement. Edmond "Eddie" F. Noel (1926 1990), was born and lived in Lexington. An African American veteran of World War II, he killed three white men in January 1954, including a deputy sheriff, and evaded capture for three weeks, making national news. He was hunted by numerous men, dogs, and even observers in planes. He turned himself in to the court, and the judge ordered a mental evaluation. Noel was committed by the court to the state mental institution, where he was held for more than a decade. He was released in 1970 and lived his last 20 years with his family, who had migrated to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Hazel Brannon Smith, publisher and journalist, in 1935 purchased The Durant News and The Lexington Advertiser in Lexington; she published them for decades and was noted in the region for her fair coverage and later support of civil rights. She opposed the White Citizens Council, which conducted an advertising boycott against her papers. In 1964 she was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, for her editorials on civil rights, the same year her paper in Jackson, The Northside Reporter, was firebombed. She was forced out of business.

Carolyn Haines, an American mystery writer, sets many of her novels in Holmes County and other parts of the Mississippi Delta.