The following photos are the special contribution of Wiley Previtt, a scholar from Mississippi state, who has been documenting rural life in the state for years. Mississippi is a predominantly rural state, half of it is covered by forests. More than one-third of the population is black (before 1940, they gave the  majority), an inheritance from the former cotton plantations in the Mississippi valley. Perhaps the most famous person from Mississippi is Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner, most of whose stories take place in the state.