Jackson

Largest city and state capital of Mississippi, USA, on the Pearl River, in the central part of the state, 70 km/43 mi east of Vicksburg; seat of Hinds County; population (2001 est) 185,800. It produces electrical machinery, furniture, cottonseed oil, and iron and steel castings, and owes its prosperity to the discovery of gas fields to the south in the 1930s. Jackson became state capital in 1821.

History
The earliest European settler to arrive on the site of Jackson was French-Canadian trapper Louis Le Fleur in the 1790s, and the area was called Le Fleur's Bluff. In 1821 the settlement was renamed after US democrat and future president, Andrew Jackson. It was virtually destroyed by Union troops in 1863, during the American Civil War. Jackson was blighted by racial unrest for much of the 1960s and early 1970s.