History of the Mississippi State Fair

The fair has a long and relatively unknown origin here in our state. In 1859, ten years after the gold rush and two years before the civil war, our then governor Ed Wesley Jenkins decided his re-election campaign needed a boost. He sent telegrams to all neighboring states asking if they would send their worst toothless criminals to Jackson to be put on "display". The neighboring states gladly complied. Our governor then had barred cages constructed after the sort he had seen on plantations and in "zoos". He lined the field under the Capitol with two rows of twenty cages, and put a criminal in each cage with his crime listed on a sign by the cage. Jenkins sent word to churches all around his state: come bring your congregations and let them see how Satan can verily corrupt the souls of the unrepentant. People came in droves. The gov. gave a loud speech warning that the end was at hand and only a strong stick could weed from our garden the sinners you see here. That stick was he, Ed Wesley Jenkins. Vendors sold rotten vegetables to throw at the criminals. Tickets were sold to see who could hit the criminal on the head with a baseball. It was such a success that it became a tradition with the same convicts coming back year after year. They developed followings. "I wanna see Johnny Lee Mathers the rapist!", little Robbie would exclaim. Eventually the cages turned into chains, eventually the chains turned into ropes, ropes to a roped off area, then the roped off area to merely a guard standing watch. "Let's put them to work!" commanded the next governor Eugene Collins Summer, and it is from this genepool that we get the delightful drunks in our bars come October.