I spent 7 months there (Biloxi) in the Summer of '95 and all I remember is that it wasn’t as bad as Louisiana.
When I was in grade 4 (about 8yrs old) I learned how to spell Mississippi, and that was quickly followed by hippopotamus. Both sorta rolled off’ve your tongue once you got the rythym going, and I’ve never forgotten either.
So, I like Mississippi, because I could lord it over my peers in latter-year spelling bees. Not that Mississippi came up all that often in my Australia-centric classes, but just every now and again… 
My father was career military, and we spent 4 years back in the 70’s in the Gulfport-Biloxi area. It truly was my favorite and most fun place to live. This was before the casinos and all of the growth started to take off, so all the usual redneck stereotypes were present and in effect. Still it was a great place to grow up. I’ve looked into moving back to the area several times but there just isn’t much of a job market for my career.
I don’t have a firm opinion of Mississippi. I’ve been to Jackson. Happenin’ town. It has both and Outback AND a Red Lobster!* 
Driving from Jackson to Baton Rouge, I do remember wondering exactly how many bibles anyone could possibly need, and whether demand was actually sufficient to maintain the rather ridiculous (IMO) number of bible “superstores” we passed.
The people were awfully nice, for the most part.
*To be fair, we did find a lovely restaurant, which I can’t remember the name of at the moment except that it began with an R. While I was there, I noticed that Jackson also only has one plastic surgeon, because there was a preponderance of women in there who all had the exact same nose, and the exact same breasts, and they couldn’t have ALL been related.
It works pretty well instead of “one thousand” when counting seconds without a watch…
I got nothin’. Never been there, don’t know anyone from there. My totally uninformed ignorant opinion is that it’s not quite one of the worst states - in terms of racism and poverty and lack of education - but it’s closer to the bottom than the top.
I’m a social liberal, and slightly right of center otherwise. I’m also an amateur musician (old blues and country). I have vacationed in the Delta (not just Mississippi – I also go to Memphis and Helena, Arkansas) for close to ten years. I visit historic blues sites and play on radio shows. I found it more interesting when I first started visiting, because the increased interest in blues tourism has resulted in more commercialization.
I find the area charmingly anachronistic. People are indeed more polite, but the poverty is very sad. I’m from West Virginia, where there is a lot of poverty, but the poor are able to live off the land (hunting deer, chopping wood, etc.) The poor in MS seem to have less such options, so they seem to be even poorer than they appear on paper.
Regarding friendliness: on one of my ‘pilgrimages’ around 1999, I drove up to a farmer’s house. I told him I was a music teacher from up north, and was looking for Robert Johnson’s gravesite nearby. The farmer was just leaving in his truck, but he volunteered to show me to one of the purported sites ((the one near Quito), and then told me how to find the second one (the Morgan City one – the one near Greenville hadn’t been suggested yet). He was clearly a busy man, and it took us pretty far out of his way. That was damn nice of him.
To be fair to Mississippi, grateful as I am to it for all the wrong reasons, it has always struck me as a fitting and proper state in the United States (even if its people didn’t always think so).
As bad as Mississippi is, it’s a long step up from Texas, which strikes me as a Third World country that has somehow managed to slide into the U.S., then stunk the place up with its tasteless oil wealth, its eagerness to execute children and retarded people, it’s eagerness to execute folks period, and its dynastic families of Third World banana republic wannabe dictators (I’m looking at you, Bush family.)
I’ve been to and through Mississippi many times, and I like the state and the people. It is unfortunate that the whole of the state gets painted with a broad brush by some. That seems a popular tactic when assessing the South and Southerners in general.
Admittedly, I’ve never been to Mississippi. But nothing I’ve ever heard about the state inspires me to visit. My general impression is that Mississippi has all the bad parts of the South and none of the good.
What? Are they sending out agents to recapture people who leave the state?
I love listening to the blues. But I wouldn’t want to live in a place that inspires people to sing the blues.
MS gets extra bonus points from me right now. The NPR folks in town recently sold off a station. The one station left plays classical music 80 percent of the time. They cut the hour of freshair in half.
BUT if I’m very lucky, I can pick up MPB from Oxford. It’s the best.
But it’s the best place in the universe to visit if you want to understand where the blues came from.
E.g., my friends chide me for visiting Mississippi in the summer. Why go when it’s so hot?
Which is, to me, a little like like visiting Disneyland when it’s closed, because it’s less crowded.
Are there any particular places you go in Helena?
The Delta Cultural Center, where Sonny Payne hosts King Biscuit Time on radio KFFA (1360 AM) every weekday at 12:15. (Sonny, 82, has hosted KBT since the forties, over 14,000 shows. He’s a national treasure). And every Friday afternoon, Terry Bucklew hosts ‘Delta Sounds’. I love to play on both shows.
I also like to drop in on Mr. Morris Gist, Sonny Boy Williamson’s former landlord, who has a music store on the main street in Helena. Last trip, I recorded about an hour of material with an Australian musician who was in the states doing a documentary. We filmed in the storefront of Gist Music.
Then there’s Bubba Sullivan, who has a record store on the corner.
To quote Sonny Boy himself, “Don’t start me to talkin’…”
I’ve only driven through the state, but I know a number of wonderful and very intelligent people from Mississippi. They’re all educators, or in education. They all come from humble means, are quite successful, and never forgot where they came from.
Speaks volumes to me about the character of folks from the state. Assholes live everywhere, and any act of intolerance in Mississippi has likely been committed in every other state - but when I think Mississippi, I think of these wonderful people, and I smile.
Ditto.
As for Mississippi, it seems to me that’s a state John Grisham writes about a lot, isn’t it? That and WhyNot is right - it IS very convenient when counting off seconds.
Lifelong Alabamian here.
The unofficial state motto is “thank god for Mississippi.”
Best part of being from Mississippi : being able to weed the potential idiots out a bit faster by the knee jerk reactions, such as that from the criminal crustacean above.
As for the OP: I do my best to be apolitical, however liberal seems to be a label the people I agree with the most espouse.
Do I like the state? Yes, very much so. As NinetyWt pointed out, Mississippi is absolutely no different than any other arbitrary geographic region; there is much to love and much to hate. I prefer the climate, culture, and (mostly) the social norms of the rural / freshly sub-urban areas here, and after a decent bit of travel came back to it. I do hate the fact that we seems unable to resolve the Delta problem to the detriment of the rest of the state, but perhaps that will come in time. After seeing what a ‘boom-town’ reputation did for Austin and a few other places, I’ll be happy for us to stay low key forever.
As to the OP, I’ve never been there so not much of an opinion. It’s supposed to be a very poor state, with a really messed up court system and bad education. But all of that is hearsay. I’m sure that there are some very beautiful parts of the state.
You’re a bit obsessive on this topic. What’s so fantastic about getting murdered?
True, true. We are planning to leave the 'burbs of Jackson for deer camp in a couple of years, on account of the growth headed up I-55.
Say, next time I go up to First Monday, I should trot over your way and us go to the fish house. They’ve got one near Verona where the hush puppies are good enough to make you slap yer gran’maw. 