THE LOWER RIVER 135 THE LOWER RIVER 135 White flight in Natchez, although not as great as elsewhere in the Lower River counties, was still considerable. After integration in January 1970, whites made up 30 percent of the Natchez Special Municipal School District although they were nearly 50 percent of the Natchez population. In Wilkinson County, the school board’s three white members drew up integration plans without consulting theirAfrican American colleagues. In the end, the local Citizens’Councils set up private schools that were attended by all white school- age children in the county. The Economy Modernizes By the 1970s, the age of cotton farmed largely on the sharecropping system planted, tended, and picked by hand was over. Cotton farming was almost completely mechanized. Cotton, although still important, was no longer Mississippi’s major agricultural product. By 1971, acreage planted in soybeans had overtaken that planted in cotton. Only ten years earlier, soybean planting had passed one million acres for the first time in the history of the state. Its growth was helped by the fact that it was one of the least expensive crops to grow. It was also possible to plant it on more unproductive farmlands and still get a decent crop. The importance of the soybean crop was so great that in 1973, the Mississippi legislature founded the Soybean Promotion Board to encourage the health and growth of soybean farming. From the 1960s onward, research by the MSU Extension Service and the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station resulted in new soybean varieties and better methods for dealing with weeds and pests. These methods included using herbicide-resistant varieties of soybeans, tillage, and crop rotation. Beginning in the 1980s, the Lower River counties were affected by long-term nationwide trends in manufacturing. Factories were shipped to countries like China and Mexico, and the jobs lost were typically replaced by service jobs. In the 1990s, these trends were accelerated by free-trade agreements that removed tariff protections for American industries. One plant after another closed in Natchez. In 1986, International Paper reduced the number of its employees from 1,000 to 600, and the town’s main employer, the Armstrong Tire Company, abandoned the Armstrong Tire Plant. At about the same time, Natchez was rocked by two The importance of the soybean crop was so great that in 1973, the Mississippi legislature founded the Soybean Promotion Board to encourage the health and growth of soybean farming. GRAND GULF NUCLEAR PLANT Nuclear power plants in the United States prevent two million tons of nitrogen oxide and 168 million tons of greenhouse gasses from being released into the earth’s atmosphere. The pictured turbine is used in the Port Gibson Grand Gulf Nuclear Plant. Water is heated by nuclear reactions taking place inside tubes and turned into steam, which then drives the turbine and produces the electricity. The only byproduct released in this process is pure water vapor. other major plant closings. In September 2002, the Johns Manville plant closed. It was followed, in 2003, by the International Paper plant. The three closings cost Adams County more than 1,000 jobs and deprived it of more than $2 million in taxes. The Natchez area has never entirely recovered from this loss, and efforts are ongoing to find new industries and strengthen old ones. In Port Gibson, the Port Gibson Oil Mill had been in PHOTO COURTESY OF ENTERGY CORPORATION