The Yazoo Sentinel Archive

Yazoo, created in 1823 and named after indigenous Native-Americans, was Mississippi's 19th county. Near the southern tip of the fertile flood plain of the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers, known as the Delta, the county has always been an agricultural and commercial center. By the early 20^th century farmers had diversified crops, growing in addition to cotton, hay, oats, sugar cane, and potatoes; livestock included cattle, hogs, and sheep. Valuable timber, such as oak, cypress, and red gum, was also harvested in the county.

After the end of the Civil War, three Democratic newspapers began within eight years of each other: the Yazoo City Democrat (1868-76), the Yazoo City Herald (1872-77), and the Sentinel (1876-78). Consolidation began in 1877 when the Democrat's successor, the Yazoo Valley Democrat (1876-77), merged with the Herald (1872-77) to form the Herald-Democrat (1877). The weekly newspaper, briefly known as the Yazoo Herald-Democrat (1877-78), reverted to the Yazoo City Herald (1878-1976), by which it was known for nearly a century. The Herald was four pages in the 1880s, but had expanded to ten pages by 1906. In 1914, Norman A. Mott, co-owner of the Sentinel from 1885 to 1889, purchased the Herald. In 1946, the successor to the ten-page weekly Yazoo Sentinel (1878-1916), again called the Yazoo Sentinel (1946), was absorbed by the Herald. Members of the Mott family owned and edited the Herald until it was sold in 1976; the paper exists in 2015 as the semiweekly Yazoo Herald (1980- ).

The Yazoo City Herald and the Yazoo Sentinel, both Democratic newspapers, had similar content: lots of local news, personal notices, marriage and death announcements, town council and school board proceedings, meeting announcements and coverage, and advertisements. Neither newspaper claimed to be the official newspaper of the town or county or carried legal notices. The Sentinel, whose motto in the 1890s was "God Helps Those Who Help Themselves," carried items of more general interest and printed articles on such subjects as elephant and lion hunting in South Africa; state news was primarily excerpted from other papers. Columns were devoted to women's concerns, agriculture, popular science, and jokes/anecdotes. In contrast, the Herald carried fewer general interest and informational articles and more news on local politics. Although neither paper concentrated on current national events, they both provided news and editorials on politics of the day; for example, a May 7, 1891 Sentinel article endorsed Ethelbert Barksdale, editor of the Jackson paper the Weekly Clarion (1863-82) and a Democrat, for United States Senator.