Editing Mayersville, Mississippi (section)

== History ==
[[File:Court House, Issaquena County, Mississippi.jpg|thumb|left|Historic photo of county courthouse in Mayersville]]
[[File:The village blacksmith, Mayersville, Issaquena County, Mississippi circa.jpg|thumb|left|The village blacksmith, Mayersville, Issaquena County, Mississippi circa 1936]]
Native Americans had lived in this area since prehistoric times. The Mayersville Archeological Site, added to the [[National Register of Historic Places]] in 1980, is on privately owned land. It contains the remains of earthwork mounds constructed primarily in the Mayersville phase ({{small|
AD}} 1200–1400) of the earlier [[Mississippian culture]].

A 1950 survey by Philip Phillips of the [[Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology]] reported eleven ancient mounds. By the time the site was nominated by the state to the National Register of Historic Places, two mounds had been completely destroyed, a third one was nearly gone, three were reduced in size by plowing, and five remained nearly as described. Three mounds had enclosed a large plaza measuring roughly {{convert|170|by|240|m|order=flip}}. The fourth side was bounded by three mounds. Among these was Mound I, which was found to have been re-occupied from 1400 to 1600, perhaps by the succeeding [[Choctaw]] people. A European-American family cemetery associated with a 19th-century plantation was developed on Mound A.<ref name="nrhp">[http://www.apps.mdah.ms.gov/nom/prop/2145890882.pdf National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: "Mayersville Site (22-Is-501)"], Mississippi Dept. of Archaeology and History, July 1979.</ref>

The first record of non-Native settlement was in 1830, when European-American Ambrose Gipson purchased a large body of land along the Mississippi River and founded "Gipson's Landing". This soon became the port on the river for shipping out the cotton of Issaquena and [[Sharkey County, Mississippi|Sharkey]] counties. It attracted shifting populations of river crews, gamblers, and traders, as well as show boats during low water times. The shipping records for David Mayer, who owned nearby Mout Level Plantation, show that river freight was shipped from the port via steamboat to points in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Mississippi.

Mayer purchased Gipson's Landing in 1870, and the town of Mayersville was founded in 1871. The town was established in 1872 by the legislature as the Issaquena County seat.<ref>{{cite web
 | last =
 | first =
 | author-link =
 | title =General County History and Information
 | publisher =Issaquena Genealogy and History Project
 | year =2004
 | url =http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~msissaq2/history.html
 | doi =
 }}
</ref><ref>{{cite web
 | last =
 | first =
 | author-link =
 | title =Mayer (David) account book (manuscript)
 | publisher =Mississippi Department of Archives and History
 | date =
 | url =http://zed.mdah.state.ms.us/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=65321
 | format =
 | doi =
 }}
</ref><ref name="Hellmann">{{cite book
 | last =Hellmann
 | first = Paul T.
 | author-link =
 | title =Historical Gazetteer of the United States
 | work =
 | publisher =Routledge
 | year =2005
 | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=EQ-R4O2L3nEC&q=%22gipson%27s+landing%22&pg=PP5
 | format =
 | doi =
 | isbn = 9780203997000
 }}
</ref><ref>{{cite book
 | last =
 | first =
 | author-link =
 | title =Mississippi: A Guide to the Magnolia State
 | work =
 | publisher =Viking
 | year = 1938
 | url =https://archive.org/details/mississippiaguid006293mbp
 | page =[https://archive.org/details/mississippiaguid006293mbp/page/n384 357]
 | quote =gipson's landing.
 | format =
 | doi =
 }}
</ref>

In January 1885, black saloon keeper Ebenzer Fowler was rumored to have sent an insulting letter to a white woman in the town. An armed white posse confronted Fowler on the main street just before dark on January 30, 1885. They claimed that Fowler grabbed a gun from a posse member and fired a shot at them; they returned fire and shot him dead. Tension between the town's blacks, a majority of the population, and whites flared following the shooting. The county sheriff called in 22 members of [[Vicksburg, Mississippi|Vicksburg's]] militia, the "Volunteer Southrons", for assistance. The militia left the following day when tensions had eased.<ref>{{cite book
 | last =Wells
 | first =Ida B.
 | author-link =
 | title =Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892)
 | work =
 | publisher =Digital History
 | year =2013
 | url =http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook_print.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3614
 | format =
 | doi =
 }}
</ref><ref>{{cite book
 | last =Wells
 | first =Ida B.
 | author-link =
 | title =Selected Works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett
 | work =
 | publisher =Oxford
 | year =1991
 | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt0sfN9V6ZYC&q=%22Ebenzer+Fowler%22&pg=PA25
 | format =
 | doi =
 | isbn =9780195062021
 }}
</ref><ref>{{cite web
 | last =Hill
 | first =Karlos
 | author-link =
 | title =Resisting Lynching: Black Grassroots Responses to Lynching in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas, 1882-1938
 | work =PhD Dissertation
 | publisher =University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
 | year =2009
 | url =https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/14606/1_Hill_Karlos.pdf?sequence=6
 | format =
 | doi =
 }}
</ref>
{{see also|Clarksdale, Mississippi#Early history}}

Mayersville's popularity as a shipping port began to decline in the mid-1800s when it had to compete with the railways being built across the [[southern United States|South]], though no railway was built to the town. The construction of a levee following the hugely destructive [[Great Mississippi Flood of 1927|flood of 1927]] cut off direct river access for the town, causing further decline.<ref name="Hellmann"/> In the 21st century, [https://web.archive.org/web/20121123231059/http://www.bungenorthamerica.com/index.shtml Bunge North America] operates a large [[grain trade|grain port]] in Millers Landing north of town. In 1958, the current county courthouse in Mayersville was built.<ref name="Hellmann" />
[[File:Mayersville_Mississippi_mapped_by_USGS_in_1970.jpg|thumb|Mayersville, Mississippi, mapped by USGS in 1970]]
With federal legislation in the mid-1960s, African Americans regained the ability to register and vote. In 1976, famed civil rights activist [[Unita Blackwell]] was elected mayor of Mayersville and the first female African-American mayor in Mississippi.

Mayersville's small population and quiet character are in sharp contrast to its years as a booming Mississippi River port.