The Weekly Panola Star (Panola, Miss.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
760 issues from 1857 to 1881, published in Panola, Mississippi, digitised for Chronicling America.
The flat to rolling terrain of Panola County, in northwest Mississippi at the eastern edge of the fertile Yazoo-Mississippi River Delta, was perfect for growing cotton, the cash crop of 19th-century Mississippi. Later in the century, additional profitable crops included corn, potatoes and sorghum. Farmers raised livestock including cattle, mules, and horses; and the timber industry was on the rise.
From 1856 until 1871 the county seat, Panola, had one newspaper, the four-page weekly Star run: the Southern Star (1856), the Panola Star (1856-57) and the Weekly Panola Star (1857-81). A June 21, 1856 editorial summed up the newspaper’s pre-war political stance: “Let no one suppose that in publishing a neutral paper, we do not sympathize with either party . . . as an individual citizen, we intend to vote for Millard Fillmore . . . .” This endorsement of Fillmore, who had formerly been associated with the Whig party, reflected the moderate views of the county citizenry. During the Civil War, while Matthew S. Ward, the proprietor/editor of the Weekly Panola Star, served in the Confederate Army, assistants managed the newspaper, which was reduced to two pages in 1862 until it was discontinued in 1864. Civil War reporting included muster lists for at least seven of the twenty military companies raised in the county. When the Star resumed publication on July 1, 1865, the paper supported the Democratic Party. Ward sold the newspaper in 1867, but continued for a time as editor. Among…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Panola, Mississippi, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress