Wilkinson County, Mississippi

Wilkinson County is a county located in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of 2020, its population was 8,587.^[1] Its county seat is Woodville.^[2] Bordered by the Mississippi River on the west, the county is named for James Wilkinson, a Revolutionary War military leader and first governor of the Louisiana Territory after its acquisition by the United States in 1803.

Wilkinson County
County
Left to right: Clark Creek and Wilkinson County Courthouse
Location within the U.S. state of Mississippi
Mississippi's location within the U.S.
Coordinates: 31°10′N 91°19′W
Country	United States
State	Mississippi
Founded	1802
Named after	James Wilkinson
Seat	Woodville
Largest town	Centreville
Area
• Total	688 sq mi (1,780 km2)
• Land	678 sq mi (1,760 km2)
• Water	9.7 sq mi (25 km2)  1.4%
Population  (2020)
• Total	8,587
• Density	12/sq mi (4.8/km2)
Time zone	UTC−6 (Central)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−5 (CDT)
Congressional district	2nd
Website	www.wilkinson.co.ms.gov

History

Wilkinson County's Woodville Republican, begun in 1823, is (as of 2012) the oldest newspaper and the oldest business in continuous operation in Mississippi. The sign, facing Depot Street, is on the exterior west wall of the newspaper offices in Woodville.

After Indian Removal in the 19th century, European-American settlers rapidly developed cotton plantations along the Mississippi River, which forms the western border. The intensive cultivation depended on the labor of numerous enslaved African Americans; in the early 19th century, more than a million slaves were relocated to the Deep South from the Upper South in a major forced migration. The population of this county quickly became majority black as enslaved workers were brought in to develop plantations. Much of the bottomlands and interior were undeveloped frontier until after the American Civil War.

The West Feliciana Railroad was later built to help get the cotton commodity crop to market. Some planters got wealthy during the antebellum years and built fine mansions in the county seat of Woodville, Mississippi. Jane and Samuel Emory Davis moved here in 1812 with their several children, and lived at a plantation near Woodville. Their youngest son, Jefferson Davis, attended the Wilkinson Academy in Woodville for two years before going to Kentucky to another school.^[3]

After the Civil War, freedmen and planters negotiated new working arrangements. Sharecropping became widespread. Although cotton continued as the commodity crop, a long agricultural depression kept prices low.

Following Reconstruction, white violence against blacks increased through the later decades of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. According to 2017 data compiled in Lynching in America (2015-2017), some nine lynchings of African Americans were recorded in Wilkinson County.^[4]

The peak of population in the county was reached in 1900, after which many blacks left in the Great Migration to the North and Midwest. The county has continued to have a black majority population.

In the early 20th century the boll weevil infestation destroyed much of the cotton crops, and mechanization caused a further loss of agricultural jobs. The exit of many African Americans from the state did not change the state's exclusion of African Americans from politics. They were not enabled to vote until after passage of the federal Voting Rights Act in 1965 and its enforcement. Cotton cultivation was revived, but it is produced on a highly mechanized, industrial scale.

Southwest Mississippi was an area of continuing white violence against blacks during the Civil Rights Movement. In February 1964, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan officially formed. Clifton Walker, 37, a married father of five and employee of International Paper Company in Natchez, who was not politically active, was killed in an ambush on Poor House Road near his home. The evidence showed there had been a crowd of shooters on both sides of the road.^[5] This lynching cold case has never been solved, although it was among numerous ones that the FBI was investigating since 2007, before the Donald Trump administration ended the effort in 2018.

Timber has been harvested and processed in the county as a new commodity crop. The population of the rural county has continued to decline because of lack of jobs. It is still majority African American. Towns have started to develop heritage tourism to attract more visitors.

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 688 square miles (1,780 km²), of which 678 square miles (1,760 km²) is land and 9.7 square miles (25 km²) (1.4%) is water.^[6]

Major highways

• U.S. Highway 61
• Mississippi Highway 24
• Mississippi Highway 33

Adjacent counties

• Adams County (north)
• Franklin County (northeast)
• Amite County (east)
• East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (southeast)
• West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (south)
• Concordia Parish, Louisiana (west)

National protected area

• Homochitto National Forest (part)

State protected area

• Clark Creek Natural Area^[7]

Demographics

Historical population

Census	Pop.	Note	%±
1810	5,068		—
1820	9,718		91.8%
1830	11,686		20.3%
1840	14,193		21.5%
1850	16,914		19.2%
1860	15,933		−5.8%
1870	12,705		−20.3%
1880	17,815		40.2%
1890	17,592		−1.3%
1900	21,453		21.9%
1910	18,075		−15.7%
1920	15,319		−15.2%
1930	13,957		−8.9%
1940	15,955		14.3%
1950	14,116		−11.5%
1960	13,235		−6.2%
1970	11,099		−16.1%
1980	10,021		−9.7%
1990	9,678		−3.4%
2000	10,312		6.6%
2010	9,878		−4.2%
2020	8,587		−13.1%
2023 (est.)	8,058	[8]	−6.2%
U.S. Decennial Census[9] 1790-1960[10] 1900-1990[11] 1990-2000[12] 2010-2013[13]

Population

Wilkinson County had a population of 8,587 people, 3,170 households, and 1,843 families at the 2020 United States census.^[1]

Race

Wilkinson County racial composition^[1]

Race/ethnicity	Num.	Perc.
White	2,525	29.4%
Black or African American	5,764	67.12%
Native American	16	0.19%
Asian	8	0.09%
Other/Mixed	204	2.38%
Hispanic or Latino	70	0.82%

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Wilkinson County's racial and ethic makeup was predominantly Black and African American in 2020.^[1] The total racial and ethnic composition at the 2020 census was 67.12% Black and African American, 29.4% non-Hispanic white, 0.19% Native American, 0.09% Asian, 2.38% multiracial or other race or ethnicity, and 0.82% Hispanic or Latin American of any race.

Income

In 2010, the American Community Survey estimated the county had a median household income of $28,066.^[14] At the 2020 American Community Survey, its median household income increased to $30,760; the median monthly housing costs were $419. In 2020, the county had a mean income of $46,538, and married-couple families had a median income of $50,227 while non-family households averaged $27,468.^[15]

Education

Wilkinson County High School

Wilkinson County School District serves the county.^[16] Prior to 1970, when a federal court ruling forced the schools to integrate, the county maintained a separate and highly inferior educational system for Black students. When the schools were finally integrated, all but two white students initially chose to attend Wilkinson County Christian Academy, which was established in 1969 as a segregation academy,^[17] or other private schools rather than attend school with Black students.^[18][19] Barnard Waites, the superintendent of the public school system sent his own child to Wilkinson County Christian Academy, and harshly criticized the white parents who exposed their children to the "all negro environment" of Wilkinson County Training School.^[20]

Wilkinson County is in the district of Southwest Mississippi Community College.^[21]

Communities

Towns

• Centreville (partly in Amite County)
• Crosby (partly in Amite County)
• Woodville (county seat)

Unincorporated communities

• Doloroso
• Fort Adams
• Pinckneyville
• Possum Corner
• Rosetta
• Wilkinson

Ghost towns

• Artonish
• Clarksville
• Loch Leven

Notable people

• Regina Barrow (born 1966), Louisiana state senator from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, since 2016; former state representative from 2005 to 2016; native of Wilkinson County^[22]
• Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America; grew up at Rosemont plantation just east of Woodville
• Anne Moody (1940-2015), civil rights activist and author
• Edward Grady Partin (1924–1990), Teamsters Union business agent in Baton Rouge, native of Woodville
• William Grant Still, African-American classical composer and Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame inductee was born in Woodville in 1895

Politics

Wilkinson County has been a Democratic stronghold for decades. It has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since the 1972 national landslide election, and since then no Republican has managed to get even 40% of the county's vote.

United States presidential election results for Wilkinson County, Mississippi^[23]

Year	Republican		Democratic		Third party(ies)
	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
2024	1,075	36.68%	1,817	61.99%	39	1.33%
2020	1,324	32.08%	2,749	66.61%	54	1.31%
2016	1,318	31.25%	2,857	67.73%	43	1.02%
2012	1,415	29.16%	3,412	70.31%	26	0.54%
2008	1,560	30.36%	3,534	68.77%	45	0.88%
2004	1,563	35.64%	2,794	63.72%	28	0.64%
2000	1,423	34.72%	2,551	62.25%	124	3.03%
1996	1,016	24.77%	2,807	68.43%	279	6.80%
1992	1,399	28.29%	3,210	64.91%	336	6.79%
1988	1,528	36.18%	2,678	63.41%	17	0.40%
1984	1,722	39.28%	2,627	59.92%	35	0.80%
1980	1,442	32.04%	2,981	66.24%	77	1.71%
1976	1,273	33.11%	2,514	65.38%	58	1.51%
1972	1,608	52.65%	1,409	46.14%	37	1.21%
1968	272	6.94%	2,144	54.71%	1,503	38.35%
1964	1,473	93.46%	103	6.54%	0	0.00%
1960	174	14.24%	216	17.68%	832	68.09%
1956	240	28.20%	260	30.55%	351	41.25%
1952	699	55.39%	563	44.61%	0	0.00%
1948	21	2.40%	43	4.92%	810	92.68%
1944	80	8.48%	863	91.52%	0	0.00%
1940	46	4.66%	942	95.34%	0	0.00%
1936	21	2.66%	767	97.09%	2	0.25%
1932	18	2.16%	813	97.48%	3	0.36%
1928	73	8.69%	767	91.31%	0	0.00%
1924	40	10.13%	355	89.87%	0	0.00%
1920	15	3.46%	416	96.07%	2	0.46%
1916	8	1.69%	460	97.46%	4	0.85%
1912	8	1.92%	379	90.89%	30	7.19%

See also

• Mississippi portal

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Wilkinson County, Mississippi