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Claiborne County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 9,604.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/28/28021.html )〕 Its county seat is Port Gibson.〔(【引用サイトリンク】accessdate=2011-06-07 )〕 The county is named after William Claiborne, the second governor of the Mississippi Territory. Claiborne County is included in the Vicksburg, MS Micropolitan Statistical Area as well as the Jackson-Vicksburg-Brookhaven, MS Combined Statistical Area. It is bordered by the Mississippi River on the west and the Big Black River on the north. According to the United States Census Bureau, this county has the third-highest percentage of African-American residents of any U.S. county, an 84% majority of the population.〔"Minorities now in the majority in nearly 10% of U.S. counties", ''Lexington Herald-Leader'' August 8, 2007, p. A8〕 Located south of the area known as the Mississippi Delta, this area was long a center of cotton plantations and related agriculture; many African Americans have stayed here because of family ties and making the land their own. Claiborne County was the center of a little-known but profound African-American civil rights movement and struggle during the middle of the 20th century. ==History== The county had been settled by French, Spanish, and English colonists, and American pioneers as part of the Natchez District; organized in 1802, it was the fourth county in the Mississippi Territory.〔 European-American settlers did not enter this area to develop it much as cotton plantations until after Indian Removal in the 1830s. Using enslaved African Americans as laborers, planters created long, narrow plantations that fronted on the Mississippi to the west and the Big Black River to the north,〔 the transportation byways. As in other parts of the state, the bottomlands areas were undeveloped until after the American Civil War.〔(John C. Willis, ''Forgotten Time: The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta after the Civil War'' ), Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000〕 Planters brought numerous enslaved African Americans here, who were chiefly transported from the Upper South in a forced migration to the Deep South; well before the Civil War, the county had a majority-black population. Grand Gulf, a port on the Mississippi River, shipped thousands of bales of cotton annually before the Civil War, much sent west to it by railroad from Port Gibson and three surrounding counties. The trading town became cut off from the river by its changing course and shifting to the west. The town had 1,000 to 1500 residents about 1858; by the end of the century, it had 150 and became a ghost town.〔(''Mississippi: Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions ...'' ), ed. by Dunbar Rowland, Southern Historical Publishing Association, 1907, p. 794〕 Businesses in the county seat of Port Gibson, which served the area, included a cotton gin and a cottonseed oil mill (which continued into the 20th century.) It has also been a retail center of trade. After the Reconstruction era, white Democrats regained power in the state legislature by the mid-1870s; paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts suppressed black voting through violence in many parts of the state.〔Nicholas Lemann, ''Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War,'' New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Paperback, 2007〕 These groups acted as "the military arm of the Democratic Party."〔George C. Rable, ''But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction'', Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984, p. 132〕 Redeemers redefined districts to "reduce Republican voting strength," creating a "'shoestring' Congressional district running the length of the Mississippi River," where most of the black population was concentrated.〔Eric Foner, ''Reconstruction, 1863-1877'', New York: Perennial Classics, p. 590〕 Five other districts all had white majorities. Claiborne County is within the black-majority 2nd congressional district, as may be seen on the map to the right. The state has three other congressional districts, all white majority. Democrats passed Jim Crow laws and in 1890 a new constitution including poll taxes; these and later literacy tests were used in practice to disfranchise most blacks and many poor whites.〔Michael Perman, ''Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908'' (2000), ch 4.〕 This second-class status was enforced by whites until after the civil rights movement gained passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.〔Neil McMillen, ''Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow'' (1989), pp. 1-17〕 The county's economy was based on agriculture, and after the Civil War, the system of sharecropping developed. More than 80 percent of African-American workers were involved in sharecropping from the late 19th century into the 1930s, shaping all aspects of daily life for them.〔Crosby (2005), ''A Little Taste of Freedom'', p. 3〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Claiborne County, Mississippi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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