Matthew Snipp, also a demographer, commented on the increase in the 21st century in the number of people identifying as being of more than one race: "In a sense, they're rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed.

[10] During the first half of the 20th century, a total of nearly 400,000 African Americans left the state during the Great Migration, for opportunities in the North, Midwest and West.

[11] The late 1800s and early 1900s in the Mississippi Delta showed both frontier influence and actions directed at repressing African Americans.

So, in this region, they were lynched at a rate that was over 35 percent higher than their proportion in the population, primarily due to being accused of crimes against property (chiefly theft).

Whether concluding old contracts or discussing new arrangements, [landlords and tenants] frequently came into conflict in these months and sometimes fell to blows.

"[13] Conclusions of numerous studies since the mid-20th century have found the following variables affecting the rate of lynchings in the South: "lynchings were more numerous where the African American population was relatively large, the agricultural economy was based predominantly on cotton, the white population was economically stressed, the Democratic Party was stronger, and multiple religious organizations competed for congregants.

Spending the summer with relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a white woman.

The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S.[15] Vann R. Newkirk| wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy".