Greenwood, Mississippi - History

History

The flood plain of the Mississippi River has long been an area rich in vegetation and wildlife, feeding off the Mississippi and its numerous tributaries. Long before Europeans migrated to America, the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian nations settled in the Delta's bottomlands and throughout what is now central Mississippi. They were descended from indigenous peoples who had lived in the area for thousands of years.

In the nineteenth century, the Five Civilized Tribes suffered increasing encroachment on their territory by European-American settlers from southeastern states. Under pressure from the United States government, in 1830 the Choctaw principal chief Greenwood Leflore and other Choctaw leaders signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, ceding most of their remaining land to the United States in exchange for land in what is now southeastern Oklahoma. The government opened the land to settlement by European Americans.

The first Euro-American settlement on the banks of the Yazoo River was a trading post founded by John Williams in 1830 and known as Williams Landing. The settlement quickly blossomed, and in 1844 was incorporated as "Greenwood," named after Chief Greenwood Leflore. Growing in the midst of a strong cotton market, the city's success was based on its strategic location in the heart of the Delta; on the easternmost point of the alluvial plain and astride the Tallahatchie and the Yazoo rivers. The city served as a shipping point for cotton to major markets in New Orleans, Louisiana, Vicksburg, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri. Greenwood continued to prosper, based on slave labor on the cotton plantations and in shipping, until the latter part of the American Civil War.

The end of the Civil War in 1865 and the following years of Reconstruction changed the labor market to one of free labor. The state was mostly undeveloped frontier, and many freedmen withdrew from working for others. In the nineteenth century, many blacks managed to clear and buy their own farms in the bottomlands. With the disruption of war and changes to labor, cotton production initially declined, reducing the city's previously thriving economy.

The construction of railroads through the area in the 1880s allowed the city to revitalize, with two rail lines running to downtown Greenwood, close to the Yazoo River, and shortening transportation to markets. Greenwood again emerged as a prime shipping point for cotton. Downtown's Front Street bordering the Yazoo filled with cotton factors and related businesses, earning that section the name Cotton Row. The city continued to prosper in this way well into the 1940s, although cotton production suffered during the infestation of the boll weevil in the early 20th century. For many years, the bridge over the Yazoo displayed the sign, "World's Largest Inland Long Staple Cotton Market".

The industry was largely mechanized in the 20th century before World War II. Since the late 20th century, some Mississippi farmers have begun to replace cotton with corn and soybeans as commodity crops, because of the shift of the textile industry overseas, and stronger prices for those crops.

Greenwood's Grand Boulevard was once named one of America's 10 most beautiful streets by the U.S. Chambers of Commerce and the Garden Clubs of America. Sally Humphreys Gwin, a charter member of the Greenwood Garden Club, planted the 1,000 oak trees lining Grand Boulevard. In 1950, Gwin received a citation from the National Congress of the Daughters of the American Revolution in recognition of her work in the conservation of trees.