Sunflower County

Sunflower County, Mississippi
Sunflower County Courthouse
Location in the U.S. state of Mississippi
Mississippi's location in the U.S.
Founded	1844
Seat	Indianola
Largest city	Indianola
Area
• Total	707 sq mi (1,831 km2)
• Land	698 sq mi (1,808 km2)
• Water	9.2 sq mi (24 km2), 1.3%
Population (est.)
• (2015)	27,005
• Density	42/sq mi (16/km2)
Congressional district	2nd
Time zone	Central: UTC−6/−5
Website	www.sunflowercounty.ms.gov/Pages/Default.aspx

Sunflower County is a county located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2010 census, the population was 29,450. Its largest city and county seat is Indianola.

Sunflower County comprises the Indianola, MS Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Cleveland-Indianola, MS Combined Statistical Area. It is located in the Mississippi Delta region.

Sunflower Country was created in 1844. The land mass encompassed most of Sunflower and Leflore Counties as we know them today. The first seat of government was Clayton, located near Fort Pemberton. Later the county seat was moved to McNutt, also in the Leflore County of today. When Sunflower and Leflore Counties were separated in 1871, the new county seat for Sunflower County was moved to Johnsonville. This village was located where the north end of Mound Bayou empties into the Sunflower River. In 1882 the county seat was moved to Eureka, which was later renamed Indianola.

The Boyer Cemetery, located in Boyer, goes back to the early days of Sunflower County.

After the U.S. Civil War, across several decades African Americans migrated to Sunflower County to work in the Mississippi Delta. In 1870, 3,243 black people lived in Sunflower County. This increased to 12,070 in 1900, making up 75% of the residents in Sunflower County. Between 1900 and 1920, the black population almost tripled.

Many African Americans who had migrated to the North from the 1940s to 1970 in the Great Migration struggled with the loss of jobs in their regions following industrial restructuring. In the 1980s and 1990s, they began to send their children to the Mississippi Delta to live with relatives, thinking social conditions were better than in the inner cities. Gangs and drug trade activity were transported to the Mississippi Delta from northern inner cities. As a result of this trend, crack cocaine began to be distributed in Sunflower County.