Soldiers returning to Tennessee from the military campaigns near New Orleans in 1815 built a public road that connected Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana to this district.

After surveying areas north and east of Jackson, they proceeded southwest along with the Pearl River until they reached LeFleur's Bluff in today's Hinds County.

[8] On the same day, it passed a resolution to instruct the Washington delegation to press Congress for a donation of public lands on the river for improved navigation to the Gulf of Mexico.

The city of Jackson was originally planned, in April 1822, by Peter Aaron Van Dorn in a "checkerboard" pattern advocated by Thomas Jefferson.

On May 14, Union troops under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman burned and looted key facilities in Jackson, a strategic manufacturing and railroad center for the Confederacy.

[18] In 1875, the Red Shirts were formed, one of the second waves of insurgent paramilitary organizations that essentially operated as "the military arm of the Democratic Party" to take back political power from the Republicans and to drive black people from the polls (Mississippi Plan).

[20] This was the first of new constitutions or amendments ratified in each Southern state through 1908 that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites, through provisions making voter registration more difficult: such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests.

He described the harsh and largely terror-filled life most African Americans experienced in the South and Northern ghettos such as Chicago under segregation in the early 20th century.

This failure did not stop Ella Render from obtaining a lease from the state's insane asylum to begin a well on its grounds in 1924, where he found natural gas.

[26] During Mississippi's extended Prohibition period, from the 1920s until the 1960s, illegal drinking and gambling casinos flourished on the east side of the Pearl River, in Flowood along with the original U.S. Route 80 just across from the city of Jackson.

Those illegal casinos, bootleg liquor stores, and nightclubs made up the Gold Coast, a strip of mostly black-market businesses that operated for decades along Flowood Road.

The Gold Coast declined and businesses disappeared after Mississippi's prohibition laws were repealed in 1966, allowing Hinds County, including Jackson, to go "wet".

[28] Numerous casinos have been developed on riverboats, mostly in Mississippi Delta towns such as Tunica Resorts, Greenville, and Vicksburg, as well as Biloxi on the Gulf Coast.

During World War II, Hawkins Field (at that time, also known as the Jackson Army Airbase) the American 21st, 309th, and 310th Bomber Groups that were stationed at the base were re-deployed for combat.

Beginning in 1960, Jackson as the state capital became the site for dramatic non-violent protests in a new phase of activism that brought in a wide variety of participants in the performance of mass demonstrations.

Efforts to desegregate Jackson facilities began when nine Tougaloo College students tried to read books in the "white only" public library and were arrested.

A portion of U.S. Highway 49, all of Delta Drive, a library, the central post office for the city, and Jackson–Evers International Airport were named in honor of Medgar Evers.

In 1994, prosecutors Ed Peters and Bobby DeLaughter finally obtained a murder conviction in a state trial of De La Beckwith based on new evidence.

Following the decades of the Great Migration, when more than one million black people left the rural South, since the 1930s the state has been majority white in total population.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent $6.8 million on levees and a new channel in 1966 before the project completion to prevent a flood equal to the December 1961 event plus an additional foot.

Many well-known Southern artists recorded on the album, including the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, Barry Beckett), Carson Whitsett, the Onward Brass Band from New Orleans, and others.

The label has recorded many leading soul and blues artists, including Bobby Bland, ZZ Hill, Latimore, Shirley Brown, Denise LaSalle, and Tyrone Davis.

[44][45] The 1980s in Jackson were dominated by Mayor Dale Danks Jr. until he was unseated by lawyer and legislator J. Kane Ditto, who criticized the deficit funding and the politicized police department of the city.

[50] In 2006 a young African-American businessman, Starsky Darnell Redd, was convicted of money laundering in federal court along with his mother, other associates, and Billy Tucker, the former airport security chief.

Lumumba was a popular yet controversial figure due to his prior membership in the Republic of New Afrika, as well as being a co-founder of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America.

Most parts of Jackson are considered a food desert because important grocery stores and restaurants have closed down or left the city as theft and other crimes have worsened since 2000.

[citation needed] Also in 2021, the Jackson Police Department stated that the city had a serious street gang problem which is a major contributor to violent crimes.

[100] In 2023, Mayor Lumumba announced the opening of the Jackson Crime Center which is a facility that houses monitoring cameras strategically placed around the city to better identify criminals so they can be held accountable for their actions.

[103] Jackson is home to several major industries; these include electrical equipment and machinery, processed food, and primary and fabricated metal products.

[148] After issuing the state of emergency, the City of Jackson filed a letter of intent to Department of Health to borrow $2.5 million to repair broken water pipes.