Area, 47,716 sq mi (123,584 sq km). Pop. (2000) 2,844,658, a 10.5% increase since the 1990 census.
Capital and largest city, Jackson. Motto, Virtute et Armis [By Valor and Arms].
State bird, mockingbird. State flower, magnolia. State tree, magnolia. 
Mississippi is the birthplace of American music and Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis Presley. In 1965, manufacturing became the leading revenue-producing sector of Mississippi economy. Tupelo is a furniture industry boomtown and is the largest manufacturing sector in the state. Tupelo is also home to Northeast MS Medical Center, the largest non-metropolitan hospital in the U.S. and an innovator in the arts. In 2000, Mississippi ranked third in the nation in the production of cotton. The other most important crops are rice and soybeans. Today broiler chicken production, aquaculture (chiefly catfish raising) and dairying are increasingly important. The state's most valuable mineral resources, petroleum and natural gas, have been developed only since the 1930s.
Industry has grown rapidly with the development of oil resources and has been helped by the Tennessee Valley Authority and by a state program to balance agriculture with industry, under which many communities have subsidized and attracted new industries. Revenue from industrial products, including chemicals, plastics, foods and wood products, have exceeded those from agriculture in recent years. On the Gulf coast there is a profitable fishing and seafood processing industry.
There are military air facilities at Columbus, Biloxi, and Meridian, as well as the Stennis Space Flight Center at Bay St. Louis.
*Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, Copyright (c) 2003 with additional text from official sources.