Why America's Poorest State Should Be Its Richest

Mississippi is the poorest state in the country, and list after list consistently ranks it as the worst in education, economy, health, quality of life, and more. But here's the weird thing, Mississippi has a superpower, a superpower that could and should have made it an economic titan. In fact, Mississippi should be a utopia, but it's not. So what went wrong? Why is Mississippi so broke and desolate today if its geography is anything but? I'm Jeff, and this is the Tragic Geographic Story of Mississippi. Geographically, Mississippi is probably one of the luckiest states within the United States, mostly because of where it sits within the North American continent at large. You see, while it's currently hemmed in by Louisiana and Arkansas to the southwest and west, Tennessee to the north, and Alabama to the east, its true superpower is in the exact manner that it's surrounded, particularly that western border with Louisiana and Arkansas. This is where the mighty Mississippi River courses down all the way from Minnesota to its final destination at the tail end of Louisiana. And while Louisiana technically gets the mouth of the Mississippi River, it's Mississippi itself that gets most of the river's benefits. But to understand that exact benefit, we need to zoom out a bit and look at the broader geography of this part of the United States, and see how it was created in the first place. This entire region is something that we call the Mississippi Embayment, a vast geographic region that actually covers so much more than the state of Mississippi, or the southern part of the Mississippi River. All told, the Mississippi Embayment covers an area of over 100,000 square miles, stretching from southern Louisiana all the way up as far north as the southern tip of Illinois, as far west as Texas, and as far east as Alabama. Mississippi the state is almost completely enveloped within it. Aside from just a sliver of land in the northeast corner. Now, you'd be forgiven if you've never heard of this feature, but believe me, its impact on Mississippi is profound. You see, the Mississippi Embayment is actually the remnants of an ancient ocean. Around 70 million years ago, this entire region was underwater, which means for those millions of years, sediment was brought down from the north, where it hit this underwater embayment and sunk to the bottom, slowly building layer after layer after layer of nutrient, dense soil. Of course, that soil doesn't do anyone any good if it remains under an ocean, but here's where the geography takes another turn. As the world grew colder, about 100,000 years ago, more and more water was being trapped in large continental glaciers, slowly spreading from the north and south poles. And as this happened, the water levels of the earth receded, trapped in those huge icy glaciers. Suddenly, where there was once vast oceans, there was new dry land. And for the Mississippi Embayment, it meant that for the first time in millions of years, all that nutrient-rich soil was suddenly available right around 12,000 years ago. Of course, this didn't happen all at once. It was a slow, meandering process. And over thousands of years, as the waters slowly receded farther and farther south, the Mississippi River acted like something of a conveyor belt, a sediment delivery system whose entire goal and purpose was to transfer the rich, glacier-grounded soil from up north to where it would be deposited at the new southern border at the ocean. And each part of the embayment would get vast quantities of this incredibly valuable soil every time the water moved further south. It is, without a doubt, one of the largest and most important geographic transfers of natural wealth in the entire world. All told, rich soil from 31 states and two Canadian provinces were deposited right here in Mississippi. Which brings us to the geography of the region today. Mississippi is the primary benefactor of that geographic conveyor belt. In fact, if you look over at its eastern edge, where it runs right up against the Mississippi River, you'll find a region called the Mississippi Delta. Now, despite its name, it should be pointed out that, geographically, this is not a delta. The actual delta of the Mississippi River is farther south in Louisiana. This area is actually something that we call an alluvial plain. It's an area bordered by two large rivers, the enormous Mississippi on the west end, and the smaller but still prominent Yazoo on the east, with dozens of rivers and creeks flowing within. And this is why it's called a delta, because in many ways, it mirrors the qualities and traits of an actual delta, even if it's not technically one. But the most important part in all this is the dirt within that delta. The Mississippi Delta is home to some of the most agriculturally productive soil on the planet. And because it's an alluvial plain, it's naturally irrigated and moistened year round. This, combined with the fact that Mississippi's growing season ranges anywhere from 220 days per year to a staggering 260 days, means that you can grow almost anything, almost any time, without needing to transfer water over great distances. It is, for lack of a better word, an agricultural machine. And the rest of Mississippi, while not an alluvial plain, is also still highly agriculturally productive because it still has amazing soil. So what we have in Mississippi is, quite literally, perfect dirt. It's dirt that was ground from hills and mountains into a fine, silky powder, where it was then washed hundreds of miles south to an ancient ocean, where it then sat for millions of years completely unmolested. All of which was made available to humans at the perfect time, a time when humans were beginning to understand agriculture. And some of those very first humans would make very good use of this dirt. Unfortunately, that same dirt would also bring about something truly horrific. Hey, I've been building an amazing geography community over at TheBite.co. And for a limited time, you can get a free month of ad and sponsor-free videos from all of my channels, exclusive articles, and a free digital world map of the Koppen climate system over on TheBite.co. Just click the link in the description below, or scan this QR code, and I'll see you there. It should come as no surprise, but humans have been living all along the Mississippi River for thousands of years. In fact, within Mississippi itself, we can date the earliest humans back to somewhere around 12,500 years ago. At the time, humans were relatively new to the entirety of the North American continent, having only recently spread from Asia across the Bering Strait land bridge. So, when the ancient ancestors to the Native Americans arrived in what we now call Mississippi, they were the first people there. And they were the first to stumble upon what would be the equivalent of a modern-day gold mine. Humans, after all, need a few core ingredients to thrive and multiply. When the earliest Native Americans settled here, they quickly adapted the land to their needs. Within the delta itself, those original people were already making and using advanced levee systems to hold back and store water while simultaneously making dry land that was perfect for growing crops. And after thousands of years, these ancient cultures transformed into robust and highly functional civilizations. Civilizations that would be roughly equivalent to the European, North African, and Asian empires of the time that we've all learned so much about. That's right. We're about to bust the myth of the pastoral Native American. You see, right here along the Mississippi River grew the ancient mound-builder civilizations. Civilizations that would create large earthen cities with intricate water engineering and political and social hierarchies. This manifested itself in a cultural epicenter and city called Cahokia sometime around 1050 CE. At its absolute peak, it's estimated that around 20,000 people lived within this one city alone, about 5,000 more than London had at the exact same time. And while not located within Mississippi itself, smaller earthwork towns as part of the same civilization spread up and down the Mississippi River, including in the Mississippi River Delta, a region that was well known to provide food to the larger cities such as Cahokia. Now, these civilizations would mysteriously vanish, so we don't know too much about them. But what came next would set the stage for the Mississippi that we know today. Fast forward a few hundred years and eventually Europeans would make their way to the Mississippi River. But unlike the east coast of what would become the United States, which was largely settled by the British, or the southern part of the continent, which was part of the vast colonial territory of New Spain, the Mississippi River region and Mississippi itself would be largely colonized by France. In fact, France would establish multiple forts up and down the entirety of the Mississippi River, including both Fort Maripas in 1699 along the Gulf Coast, and then later Fort Rosarie along the Mississippi River itself in 1716. Now, this is where things get a little complicated as far as sovereignty goes for Mississippi. Eventually, France would lose control of most of their North American land, including their southern Mississippi holdings to Spain following the Seven Years' War in 1763, also known as the French and Indian War, while northern Mississippi would transfer to ownership under the British Empire, which would then lose control of the land following the American War of Independence. By 1783, Mississippi itself was divided between the newly formed United States, which technically owned the northern two-thirds, and Spain, who continued to control the southern one-third as part of its Florida colony. It would take until 1812 for the entirety of Mississippi to be fully under the control of the United States. And of course, by 1830, the United States would remove all semblance of Native Americans from Mississippi under the Indian Removal Act. And while that was certainly terrible, Mississippi was also about to emerge as one of the most brutally oppressive states in the country. Here's the thing, during this entire period of colonization, each empire would continually bring in more and more enslaved people from Africa, because while the soil was unreasonably good at growing crops, particularly cash crops like cotton, the state required an incredible amount of manual labor to bring those crops to harvest. And so, white and wealthy settlers moved into Mississippi, established large plantations, and proceeded to bring in more and more and more enslaved people to work those fields. By 1833, Mississippi was the undisputed cotton capital of the world. But to earn that title, Mississippi had built one of the largest populations of enslaved people in the country. All told, by 1860, Mississippi had an enslaved population of 436,631 people, or 55% of the state's total population. It was a brutal society whose entire economy and way of life depended on slavery. Of course, by 1865, all those enslaved people were now free, and now it was their turn to exploit that perfect dirt. Now, despite being one of the best places to grow crops, the Mississippi Delta itself, at the end of the Civil War, was still about 90% wild frontier. Plantations and landowners really only settled in and around the banks of the Mississippi River, mostly because it was so much easier to transport crops out. And so, given their newfound freedom, a race of sorts was on to tame the rest of the Delta and convert it into profitable, mostly cotton, agricultural land. And this time, the freed people would have a shot at owning their own plot of land. By the end of the 1800s, roughly two-thirds of the land in the Delta was owned by freed black farmers. This was an incredible turn of events for a state that, just a few decades previously, had the largest population of enslaved people. A state which now had a growing middle class of black landowners, just waiting to capitalize on the cotton cash that the slave owners had capitalized on for decades. Unfortunately, a series of events would cause a cataclysmic shift in Mississippi's fortunes. Something that still curses the state to this day. By the late 1800s, things were looking up for Mississippi, all things considered. Sure, cotton prices were falling due to unprecedented global competition, but the land was still very valuable. The dirt was still, for lack of a better word, perfect, and all those new black farmers and landowners could still turn their land into something profitable, right? Wrong. You see, unlike other homesteading acts, the land that those freed black Americans managed to own wasn't just given to them. First, they had to clear the land, from which they earned a wage. And after they had earned enough, they managed to buy their own land. With the help of a bank, of course. Which means, most of those black landowners were in debt. And most of the land that those same black Americans owned, which some had even worked on as a slave, would be repossessed when cotton prices plummeted, and the landowner could no longer repay the debt. This started a vicious cycle where the land would then be repurchased by the wealthy elite of Mississippi, and those former black landowners would be converted into a sharecropper. This was a person who would work the fields in exchange for a percentage of the profit from the crop. It was essentially slavery again, with an extra middle step in between. All of which was perpetuated by a deeply racist state government that was intent on restoring what they perceived as the rightful hierarchy of the state. White people in control, black people working as laborers. It was a deeply disgusting period of time for Mississippi, and underlying it all was one thing. The dirt. The dirt of Mississippi was everything. It was the economy. It was the money. It was the whole reason why Mississippi was a state in the first place. Everyone was obsessed with the dirt. And having successfully removed most black people from ownership of the dirt, the wealthy elite returned to their plantation exploitation spirit. But here's the thing. The economy of the 20th century was not the same as the economy of the 19th century. And there were big changes happening in other parts of the country. Changes that Mississippi basically ignored to their own detriment because they believed that they had all they needed to be wealthy. Mississippi fell for the classic resource curse. Something happens when a single state or country has an absolute abundance of a single very wealthy resource. They become completely dependent on it. All industries grow in support of extracting and selling that single resource. All money flows through that single resource. Education is specialized in the extraction and economies of that single resource. It could be a great thing for a long time, but it also comes at a huge cost. Mississippi's single resource was their agriculture and plantation economy. They solely focused on that resource because, for decades, hundreds of years even, the state grew incredibly wealthy off it. Meaning, while other parts of the country were industrializing and diversifying their economies, which would ultimately lead to things like aeronautics, bioengineering, technology, manufacturing, and other advanced industries, Mississippi would remain rural and heavily plantation-focused, continuing to believe in the economic power of their perfect dirt. But of course, Mississippi was about to realize that you can't ignore technological progress forever. As the state entered into the latter half of the 1900s, a shift was happening right in front of their eyes. A shift that they had no control over. Technology and mechanization was upending the very way of life for farmers, sharecroppers, and even the plantation owners themselves. Suddenly, tractors and mechanized pickers replaced the need for human labor. Land that once required dozens or hundreds of people to manage now required just a handful. Technology and industry from other parts of the country had made its way to Mississippi, and those new inventions were obliterating the primary economic engine and job market of Mississippi, a state that had almost no other industry to fall back on. And so, people left. Rural farming towns became desolate. Plantations became hollow shelves. Mississippi experienced a brain drain as those with advanced skills and education moved to places where they could make a living, primarily the West Coast, the Great Lakes states, and the Northeast. In fact, between 1940 and 1970, nearly 500,000 people left Mississippi for other states, nearly three-quarters of which were black Americans. It would take until 1980 for Mississippi's population to really start growing again. Now, you might be thinking, this was decades ago. How does all of this translate to Mississippi's current situation today? Mississippi is largely considered to be the poorest state in the country today in 2026. And that's a record it's held for decades now. Its poverty rate is nearly 20%, higher than any other state aside from neighboring Louisiana. Its median household income is lower than any other state. And its population, while it has grown since 1980, is beginning to shrink once again. And we can trace all of this back to that perfect dirt. At every step of the way, throughout Mississippi's history, the state and its wealthy elite have relied on that dirt to fund everything. And while there are other agriculture-dominated states, Mississippi did something unique by disenfranchising its growing black population and recentering its wealth into the hands of a few people, which means the diversification of agriculture wasn't there. And it means that Mississippi didn't have any homegrown industries that might have popped up from one of those dispersed farmers. John Deere, the mega-industrial company founded to support agriculture, could have just as easily been founded in Mississippi as it was in Illinois, or a company like it. A Mississippi version, so to say. But at the end of the century, Mississippi didn't have the industry, diversification, or brains to turn itself around. And unless something changes in the near future, the state will continue to be cursed by its perfect dirt. Today, Mississippi is home to just under 3 million people, a number that has been slowly decreasing since 2020. And despite once being majority black, today it's majority white. In part because of that legendary brain drain. A brain drain that Mississippi still hasn't fully recovered from. Hey, are you tired of ads and sponsors? Then go get a full free month of videos across all our channels with no ads or sponsors at TheBite.co. You'll even get extra and exclusive articles and videos. Link is in the description below. I hope you enjoyed learning all about Mississippi. If you did, be sure to check out this video all about why Western Australia is so empty. Thanks for watching, see you next time.