Weather Data Source: Mississippi Weather
Over 2,100 people have lived in the Starkville region. Clay pot fragments and artwork dating from that period have been discovered east of Starkville at the Herman Mound and Village site, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Indian Mound Campground provides access to the settlement site. Early Native Americans of moundbuilder societies built the earthwork mounds as part of their religious and political worldview.
The Choccuma (or Chakchiuma) tribe lived in the region just before the American Revolutionary War. A uncommon partnership between the Choctaw and Chickasaw peoples wiped them off at that period.
Early 19th Century
The modern European-American settlement of the Starkville area was started after the Choctaw inhabitants of Oktibbeha County surrendered their claims to land in the area in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830. Most of the Native Americans of the Southeast were forced west of the Mississippi River during the 1830s and Indian Removal.
Two enormous springs, which Native Americans had utilized for thousands of years, drew white settlers to the Starkville region. Boardtown got its name in 1834 from a mill on the Big Black River southwest of town that made clapboards. In 1834, the first court convened under a big tree. Boardtown was renamed Starkville in honor of Revolutionary War hero General John Stark in 1835, when it was created as the county seat of Oktibbeha County. In 1835, a wood courthouse and a one-room jailhouse were built. There were no doors or windows in the jailhouse, which was uncommon. Prisoners were forced to climb a ladder to the roof and then be lowered using a rope through a trap door.
In 1847, the first newspaper was published. It was once known as The Starkville Whig before being renamed The Broad Ax.
Reconstruction in the twenty-first century
During the restoration of Starkville in 1865, the commander in charge let a negro suspected of raping a white girl to be lynched by having hounds chase him down. A fire in 1875 destroyed 52 structures. The business district was completely devastated.
In his residence, a carpetbagger called McLaughlin, who served as the local director of the Freedmen’s Bureau, helped to construct a negro Methodist church and a negro cooperative shop. The white folks were incensed by the negroes’ bravado, so the Klan stormed the business. McLaughlin was disguised as a woman and taken out of town, only to return with Federal soldiers later.
Nevlin Porter and Johnson Spencer, two black men convicted of burning a barn, were dragged from the jail and hanged from the Mobile and Ohio Railroad’s crossties on May 5, 1879.
Eli Bryant, an African-American man, was hung by a mob in 1888 for allegedly assaulting a white woman.
Several publications, notably The Starkville News, were launched during this time period. The Peoples Bank was founded in 1889, while the Security State Bank was founded in 1896.
The communities of West Point, Columbus, Artesia, and Kosciusko quarantined Starkville’s railways due to a yellow fever epidemic in 1898. This led in a shortage of medical and other supplies, necessitating government action.
20th century
Colonel Montgomery brought cattle from Jersey before the Civil War, establishing the area’s reputation as a dairy powerhouse. The Borden Condensary was founded in 1926, while the co-operative creamery was founded in 1912.
Gabe (also spelled Abe) Coleman, an African-American man suspected of assaulting a farmer’s wife, was shot to death by a mob in April 1912. The murder was tried by nine men. Mann Hamilton, an African-American man, was murdered by a mob in February 1912 for allegedly assaulting a lady. A group of black men organized a march in Starkville after whites opened fire on a Republican meeting in a church in Chapel Hill, Mississippi, killing a black man.
They were met at a bridge near the A & M dairy barn by white men from Starkville and West Point armed with cannons loaded with buckshot and iron.
White men from Starkville and West Point met them at a bridge near the A & M dairy barn, armed with cannons filled with buckshot and iron.
Dit Seals and Peter Bolen, two African-American males, were hung in front of a crowd of 5,000 people, including blacks and whites, as well as children, in a public execution in 1915. While the execution was taking place, the audience ate lunch. Popcorn, soda water, and sandwiches were sold by vendors.
Willie Taylor, an African-American porter on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, was killed by the men. Various publications, notably the New York World and Chicago Tribune, generally portrayed the tale as a “gala hanging” sponsored by Starkville businessmen, while the Detroit Times regarded it as nothing better than a lynching.
Starkville was the scene of a big Ku Klux Klan assembly in 1922.
The Borden Condensery, the first in the southern United States, opened in 1926. The Illinois Central and the Mobile and Ohio Railroads both served Starkville at the time.
A boycott or selective purchase campaign was planned by many Black organizations in 1970. Firebombings were launched in response, and a mass of African-Americans gathered outside Henderson High School was dispersed by gunshots.
The twenty-first century
Starkville became the first city in Mississippi to prohibit smoking in indoor public areas, such as restaurants and bars, on March 21, 2006. On May 20, 2006, the ordinance entered into force.
A local LGBTQ organization was refused a permission to hold a pride parade in Starkville in February 2018. The organizers filed a lawsuit, and the city later changed its judgment. In March 2018, over 3,000 people attended the procession.
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