Winona, Mississippi

Winona is the seat of Montgomery County, Mississippi, and it carries a name borrowed from a Sioux word for 'firstborn daughter,' likely applied here by railroad surveyors who established the town around eighteen sixty along the Illinois Central line. The town was incorporated in eighteen sixty-one, became the county seat when Montgomery County was organized in eighteen seventy-one, and grew as a cotton shipping point serving the red-clay hill country around it. Winona entered a darker chapter of national history in nineteen sixty-three, when civil rights workers including Fannie Lou Hamer were arrested and beaten in the local jail after returning from a voter registration training session in South Carolina. The Winona incident galvanized the movement and Hamer later testified about it before the Credentials Committee at the nineteen sixty-four Democratic National Convention, in testimony that shocked the nation and was carried live on television.