Mississippi's most famous political figure, Jefferson Davis (b.Kentucky, 1808–89), came to the state as a very young child, was educated at West Point, and served in the US Army from 1828 to 1835. He resigned a seat in Congress in 1846 to enter the Mexican War from which he returned home a hero after leading his famous regiment, the 1st Mississippi Rifles, at the Battle of Buena Vista, Mexico. From 1853 to 1857, he served as secretary of war in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce. Davis was representing Mississippi in the US Senate in 1861 when the state withdrew from the Union. In February 1861, he was chosen president of the Confederacy, an office he held until the defeat of the South in 1865. Imprisoned for two years after the Civil War (though never tried), Davis lived the last years of his life at Beauvoir, an estate on the Mississippi Gulf Coast given to him by an admirer. There he wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, completed eight years before his death in New Orleans.
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (b.Georgia, 1825–93) settled in Oxford in 1855 and only two years later was elected to the US House of Representatives. A supporter of secession, he served as Confederate minister to Russia in 1862. After the war, Lamar was the first Mississippi Democrat returned to the House; in 1877, he entered the US Senate. President Grover Cleveland made Lamar his secretary of the interior in 1885, later appointing him to the US Supreme Court. Lamar served as associate justice from 1888 until his death.
Some of the foremost authors of 20th-century America had their origins in Mississippi. Supreme among them is William Faulkner (1897–1962), whose literary career began in 1924 with the publication of The Marble Faun, a book of poems. His novels included such classics as The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner received two Pulitzer Prizes (one posthumously), and in 1949 was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
Richard Wright (1908–60), born near Natchez, spent his childhood years in Jackson. He moved to Memphis as a young man, and from there migrated to Chicago; he lived his last years in Paris. A powerful writer and a leading spokesman for the black Americans of his generation, Wright is best remembered for his novel Native Son (1940) and for Black Boy (1945), an autobiographical account of his Mississippi childhood.
Other native Mississippians of literary renown (and Pulitzer Prize winners) are Eudora Welty (1909–2001), Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams, 1911–83), and playwright Beth Henley (b.1952). Welty's work, like Faulkner's, is set in Mississippi; her best-known novels include Delta Wedding (1946), The Ponder Heart (1954), and Losing Battles (1970). Although Tennessee Williams spent most of his life outside Mississippi, some of his most famous plays are set in the state. Other Mississippi authors are Hodding Carter (b.Louisiana, 1907–72), Shelby Foote (b.1916), Walker Percy (b.Alabama, 1916–1990), and Willie Morris (1934–99).
Among the state's numerous musicians are William Grant Still (1895–1978), a composer and conductor, and Leontyne Price (Mary Leontine Price, b.1927), a distinguished opera singer. Famous blues singers are Charlie Patton (1887–1934), William Lee Conley "Big Bill" Broonzy (1898–1958), Howlin' Wolf (Chester Arthur Burnett, 1910–1976), Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield, 1915–83), John Lee Hooker (1917–2001), and Riley "B. B." King (b.1925). Mississippi's contributions to country music include Jimmie Rodgers (1897–1933), Conway Twitty (1933–1994), and Charley Pride (b.1939). Elvis Presley (1935–77), born in Tupelo, was one of the most popular entertainers in US history.