Mississippi became the 20th state on December 10, 1817. In the USA's early history, Mississippi was a slave state, leading to its secession and affiliation with the Confederate States during the American Civil War (1861-5). Following the war, Mississippi's white residents resented the presence of the black former slaves. As late as the 1960s, Mississippi was the site of notorious acts of violence caused by racial disharmony.
Mississippi was one of several independent countries in an alternateNorth America where the United States failed to make a lasting union. Unlike other former slave-holding countries, blacks had successfully revolted in the 1970s, dominating the country and creating an oppressive hierarchy that disenfranchised whites. Crosstime Traffic had begun to sow seeds of racial equality in this alternate, but regarded Mississippi as a low priority, as it seemed that the whites deserved it. When Justin Monroe pointed out that the whites living in 2097 hadn't been born when their ancestors oppressed the blacks, he was told that, ideally, Crosstime hoped to better the whites' lot someday down the line, but as yet simply didn't have the resources, and was taking care of higher-priority areas first.
Beginning in 1964, Cecil Price had a recurring nightmare in which the state of Mississippi had a racial hierarchy that was the reverse of the one that he'd known and sought to maintain. In this dream, blacks dominated the state, oppressing whites, and doggedly fought against all outside attempts to change this status quo. Further, in his dream, Price and two Black Muslims from the North were murdered by black law officers in much the same way Price had helped to murder three men in his real life.
Mississippi was a founding state of the Confederate States. Until the rise of the Freedom Party and its implementation of the Population Reduction, Mississippi was the CSA's "Black Belt", and one of the few places in the country where Negroes outnumbered whites. Mississippi was also one of the few Confederate States that remained largely untouched by the Second Great War. United States troops did not arrive to occupy Mississippi until after the War was over.
The borders of this province do not correspond to those of the OTL state. This version of Mississippi takes up OTL western Minnesota west of the Mississippi River, southeastern North Dakota, South Dakota east of the Mississippi River, all of Iowa, and Missouri north of the Missouri River. The OTL Mississippi is part of the Cherokee Nation (the northern portion), Florida (the southern portion bordering the Gulf of Mexico), and Louisiana (the center portion) in this timeline.[2]
The Prairie Schooner passes over a land with 10,000 lakes in the novel, but it is not clear whether this is Mississippi or New Guernsey, which contains the remainder of Minnesota.
