Laurel, Mississippi

Hickman, Mississippi Harvest: Lumbering in the Longleaf Pine Belt, 1840–1915 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, new edition, 2009) Gilbert H.

== History == Following the 1881 construction of the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad through the area, economic development occurred rapidly.

The city of Laurel was incorporated in 1882, with timber as the impetus.

In 1893, the new Eastman-Gardiner Company mill began operations, using the best technology and labor-saving devices of the day.

In 1906, the Gilchrist-Fordney Company, whose founders hailed from Alpena, Michigan, began construction on their own lumber mill in Laurel.

By March 1907, the Mobile, Jackson and Kansas City Railroad made four stops a day in Laurel, which was 110 track miles from Mobile, Alabama.

The Wausau-Southern mill from Wausau, Wisconsin, followed in 1911, and the Marathon mill from Memphis, Tennessee, in 1914.

In 1942, Howard Wash, a 45-year-old African-American man who had been convicted of murder, was dragged from jail and lynched by a mob.

At midnight on May 8, 1951, Willie McGee was electrocuted in Laurel after being convicted of raping a white woman.

On December 28, 1954, an F3 tornado tore directly through the city, injuring 25 people.

In March 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.

Mississippi-born singer-songwriter Steve Forbert released the song "Goin' Down To Laurel" as the first track on his 1978 debut album Alive on Arrival.

== Demographics == As of the 2020 United States census, 17,161 people, 6,825 households, and 4,278 families were residing in the city.