Editing Bolivar County, Mississippi (section)

== History ==
On February 9, 1836, when it was established, the land was originally [[Choctaw]], and was taken for use in agriculture, with some of the most valued land in the state.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=r2WPadmin |title=Bolivar County |url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/bolivar-county/ |access-date=November 24, 2022 |website=Mississippi Encyclopedia |language=en-US}}</ref> In 1840, there was only one free black person, 384 free whites, and 971 enslaved people, making its population 60% slaves. This number only increased, because around 1860, the population was about 87% slaves, due to its mostly agricultural economy, and continued to gain a high black population, relating to it being in the delta,<ref name=":1" /> and {{Clarify span|mound bayou's|date=March 2023}} pressure for African-Americans to move to the delta. The county had 18 documented lynchings in the period from 1877 to 1950.<ref name="eji 2017">''[https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/ Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror]'' ({{nowrap|3{{sup|rd}}}} ed.), [[Montgomery, Alabama]]: [[Equal Justice Initiative]] (2017); {{OCLC|1004771814}}</ref> In the 1920s, Bolivar county was a hotspot for [[Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League|UNIA]] chapters, with 17 chapters, and by 1960, it had a significant local civil rights movement, and remains a mostly black area today.<ref name=":1" />