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50 free Mississippi trivia questions with answers. Mississippi bottled the first Coca-Cola, named the teddy bear, gave the world Elvis, Kermit, Oprah, Faulkner and the blues, and was the last state to take the Confederate emblem off its flag. This Mississippi trivia quiz covers all of it: statehood and secession, Jackson and Vicksburg, the Delta and its cotton, catfish and casinos, Natchez and the Trace, the Gulf Coast and Katrina. The people are here too: Robert Johnson, B.B. King and Muddy Waters; Jimmie Rodgers; Faulkner, Welty, Tennessee Williams and Richard Wright; Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, Fannie Lou Hamer and Freedom Summer; Brett Favre, Jerry Rice and Walter Payton; and the Egg Bowl, cowbells and a landshark. Roughly a third of the questions are for anyone who has driven Highway 61, a third for Mississippians, and the rest for those who know how many columns still stand at Windsor. Every answer is checked against a cited source shown under the question.
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Q 01Mississippi became a state on December 10 of which year, as the 20th state?
1817
It seceded on January 9, 1861, the second state to leave the Union.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Mississippi?
Jackson
Founded as the capital in 1821, it is named after Andrew Jackson, and Sherman burned it in 1863.
Q 03The state's name comes from an Ojibwe word meaning what?
Great river
Settlers took the name from the river, which the Ojibwe called misi-ziibi.
Q 04Mississippi produces most of the nation's supply of which pond-raised fish?
Catfish
About 60% of U.S. farm-raised catfish is grown within 65 miles of Belzoni.
Q 05What was Mississippi's rank among cotton-producing states by 1860?
First
Enslaved people made up 55% of the state's population that year.
Q 06Coca-Cola was first bottled in which Mississippi city, in 1894?
Vicksburg
Joseph Biedenharn did it at his candy company on March 12, 1894; the building is now a museum.
Q 07The teddy bear takes its name from an incident on a 1902 hunting trip in Mississippi involving which president?
Theodore Roosevelt
He refused to shoot a bear that guide Holt Collier had tied to a tree; a Washington Post cartoon did the rest.
Q 08Barq's root beer was first bottled in which Gulf Coast city?
Biloxi
Edward Barq opened the Biloxi Artesian Bottling Works in 1898.
Q 09Elvis Presley was born in which Mississippi town?
Tupelo
Born January 8, 1935; his twin Jesse Garon was stillborn 35 minutes earlier, and the family left for Memphis when Elvis was 13.
Q 10Which Mississippi native created Kermit the Frog?
Jim Henson
Born in Greenville in 1936 and raised in nearby Leland, where Deer Creek is claimed as Kermit's birthplace.
Q 11Oprah Winfrey was born in which small Mississippi town?
Kosciusko
Her birth certificate reads Orpah, after the Book of Ruth; people mispronounced it and Oprah stuck.
Q 12William Faulkner set most of his novels in the fictional Yoknapatawpha, a stand-in for which real county?
Lafayette
He was born in New Albany, raised in Oxford, and won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Q 13Which Mississippi-born writer won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for The Optimist's Daughter?
Eudora Welty
Her home in the state capital is a National Historic Landmark; she was also a keen photographer.
Q 21How long is the parkway that runs from the state's oldest river town up to Nashville?
444 miles
The Natchez Trace Parkway runs from Natchez to Nashville, passing Jackson and Tupelo; the National Park Service maintains it as an All-American Road.
Q 22How many people did Hurricane Katrina kill in Mississippi in 2005?
238
Bridges, barges and houses were washed inland along the whole Gulf Coast; the state later let casinos rebuild on land.
Q 23Mississippi was the last state to remove which symbol from its official banner, in June 2020?
The Confederate battle emblem
Governor Tate Reeves signed the retirement on June 30, 2020; voters chose the New Magnolia flag that November.
Q 14Tennessee Williams, author of A Streetcar Named Desire, was born in which Mississippi city?
Columbus
He was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in 1911; the pen name came later.
Q 15Native Son author Richard Wright was born on a plantation near which river city?
Natchez
Rucker's Plantation sat between the rail town of Roxie and Natchez; his memoir Black Boy recounts the childhood.
Q 16Emmett Till was visiting relatives near which Delta town when he was murdered in 1955?
Money
The 14-year-old from Chicago was accused of whistling at a white shopkeeper; his open-casket funeral galvanised the civil rights movement.
Q 17Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in 1963 outside his home in which city?
Jackson
Byron De La Beckwith walked free after two hung juries in the 1960s and was finally convicted in 1994.
Q 18How many troops did President Kennedy mobilise to quell the 1962 riot at Ole Miss?
Above 30,000
It remains the largest deployment for a single disturbance in U.S. history; Governor Ross Barnett had briefly jailed Meredith to block him.
Q 19What was the goal of Freedom Summer in 1964?
To register Black voters statewide
Bob Moses directed it for COFO; three volunteers, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, were murdered in Neshoba County.
Q 20On what date did the Confederate stronghold on the river surrender to Grant in 1863?
July 4
Vicksburg was the last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, and its fall completed the Anaconda Plan's second stage.
Q 24What flower is at the centre of the Mississippi flag adopted in January 2021?
A magnolia
It sits among 21 stars with 'In God We Trust' beneath; the flag was designed by Rocky Vaughan.
Q 25What did the Ole Miss Rebels' teams go by before adopting the Rebels name in 1936?
The Mississippi Flood
The mascot has since gone from Colonel Reb to the Rebel Black Bear to Tony the Landshark in 2018.
Q 26Which mascot did Ole Miss introduce on the field in 2018, replacing the Rebel Black Bear?
Tony the Landshark
It replaced the bear in 2018; the bear had replaced Colonel Reb in 2011.
Q 27What is the trophy in the Ole Miss vs. Mississippi State rivalry game called?
The Golden Egg
The Egg Bowl has been contested since 1901 and the trophy awarded since 1927, on Thanksgiving weekend.
Q 28What noisy object do Mississippi State fans famously ring at games?
Cowbells
The Bulldogs began as the Maroons in 1895 and play at Davis Wade Stadium, the second-oldest in FBS.
Q 29Robert Johnson, the bluesman said to have sold his soul at a crossroads, was born in which town?
Hazlehurst
He recorded only 29 songs in two sessions and died in 1938 at 27, just before John Hammond came looking for him for Carnegie Hall.
Q 30B.B. King was born on a cotton plantation near which Delta town?
Itta Bena
He called Indianola, where he moved as a teenager, his hometown; the B.B. King Museum is there.