Midnight is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

located in Humphreys County,

Mississippi Mississippi ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Alabama to the east, the Gulf of Mexico to the south, Louisiana to the s ...

, United States. Midnight is approximately north of Louise and southwest of Silver City along

Mississippi Highway 149 Mississippi Highway 149 (MS 149) is a state highway in Mississippi. The route designation is given to six former segments of U.S. Route 49 in Mississippi, U.S. Route 49 (US 49), and two former sections of U.S. Route 49W, US 49W, within the state ...

. Although Midnight is unincorporated, it has a zip code of 39115.

History

According to tradition, the original town site was won in a midnight poker hand, hence the name of the community. A post office called Midnight was established in 1897. The post office building survived the

Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, with inundated in depths of up to over the course of several months in early 1927. The period cost of the damage has been estimate ...

. On October 5, 2002 the Midnight post office closed. By 2010, it had been demolished as part of the USPS's service cuts. In the 2000s, resident Gwen McKenzie and other Midnight residents lobbied to have a highway sign installed that indicated the direction to Midnight. In 2009 the streets in Midnight received names and numbers.Bengali, Shashank.
Mississippi Delta: the land economic recovery never visits
"

McClatchy Newspapers McClatchy Media Company, or simply McClatchy and MCC, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law. Originally based in Sacramento, California, United States, and known as The McClatchy Company, it ...

. April 11, 2010. Retrieved on September 23, 2010.

2023 tornado

On March 24, 2023, a large and extremely destructive wedge tornado struck Midnight, causing severe damage. The same destructive tornado previously hit the town of Rolling Fork and would later hit Silver City as well. The tornado was rated high-end EF4, although only EF2 damage occurred in the town.

Demographics

As of 2010 Midnight has fewer than 200 residents.

Geography

Shashank Bengali of

said that Midnight "feels like a place whose time has expired." Bengali explains that the clapboard houses, which were built almost one century before 2010, "rot on their cinder-block legs, tilting at crazy angles" and that Midnight's principal road is "dotted with abandoned or half-burned cabins that, older residents complain, young men disappear into to shoot dice or smoke pot as the days fade into dusk."

Government and infrastructure

Houses in Midnight did not have street addresses until 2009. Midnight does not have a sewage system. Shashank Bengali of

says that Midnight's electricity is "spotty."

Education

Residents are zoned to the

Humphreys County School District The Humphreys County School District is a public school district with its administrative offices in Belzoni, Mississippi (USA). The district's boundaries parallel that of Humphreys County. History In 2019, the state Board of Education voted t ...

Notable people

* George Cartwright, founder of the band

Curlew The curlews () are a group of nine species of birds in the genus ''Numenius'', characterised by their long, slender, downcurved bills and mottled brown plumage. The English name is imitative of the Eurasian curlew's call, but may have been infl ...

. * John B. Nixon, convicted murderer executed in 2005.

In popular culture

In the 2000 film, '' Where the Heart Is'', starring

Natalie Portman Natalie Hershlag{{efn, Some Hebrew sources claim that her birth name was "Neta-Lee Hershleg" ({{langx, he, נטע-לי הרשלג) and later, her first name was Americanized to "Natalie". {{Cite news , last=Shamir , first=Oron , date=August ...

, an older couple came from Midnight to reprimand Novalee for having her baby out of wedlock. They called it an abomination and later abducted the baby.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Humphreys County, Mississippi Unincorporated communities in Mississippi