Jackson

Jackson is the capital of Mississippi, on the west bank of the Pearl River in the center of the state. The writer Eudora Welty, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist's Daughter, lived in the city all her life, and her house is kept as a museum with the garden she tended with her mother.

Louis LeFleur, a French-Canadian trader, kept a trading post at a bluff on the Pearl River, and in 1821 the site was chosen for the new state capital. It was named after Andrew Jackson, who was then a general and later became president, and its streets were laid out on a checkerboard plan proposed by Thomas Jefferson, with squares left open as parks. The Old Capitol, a Greek revival building with a dome, was finished in 1839 and served the state for most of the 19th century. Jackson was rebuilt after the Civil War and grew in the 20th century as the railway and business center of the state.

Malaco Records, based in Jackson, has recorded soul and blues singers such as Z. Z. Hill and Bobby Rush. Farish Street, a historic district of black-owned businesses in the early 20th century, was the center of the blues scene of Jackson with clubs and record shops.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, opened in the late 2010s, tells the story of the movement for equal rights in the state with a central gallery lit by a sculpture of light. The Mississippi Museum of Art holds paintings by artists from the state and has a garden with sculptures beside it.