Short answers, pulled from the story.
Natchez was established by French colonists in 1716, making it one of the oldest European settlements in the lower Mississippi River Valley. It later passed to British rule in 1763, then Spanish rule in 1779, before becoming part of the United States in the late 1790s.
The Forks of the Road was the principal slave-trading site in Natchez, located at the intersection of Liberty Road and Washington Road (now D'Evereux Drive and St. Catherine Street). It made Natchez the second-largest slave-trading city in the United States after New Orleans. In 1833, traders John Armfield and Isaac Franklin began sending annual coffles from Virginia to this market.
The Devil's Punchbowl is a natural pit in Natchez where the Union Army established a refugee camp during the Civil War. Thousands of formerly enslaved people and refugees died there of starvation, smallpox, and other diseases after being confined in the overcrowded, poorly managed site.
Robert H. Wood served as Mayor of Natchez from 1870 to 1871. He was one of only five African Americans to serve as mayor in the United States during the Reconstruction era and is recognized as one of the first Black mayors in the country.
The 1840 Natchez tornado killed 317 people and injured 109, ranking it as the second-deadliest tornado in U.S. history. Historians note the actual death toll may be higher because deaths of enslaved people were not counted in the South at the time.
Richard Wright, author of Black Boy and Native Son, was born on a plantation near Natchez and lived in the city as a child. Anne Moody, author of Coming of Age in Mississippi, attended Natchez Junior College. Novelist Ellen Douglas, nominated for the National Book Award, and best-selling novelist Greg Iles, who set many of his works in Natchez, are also associated with the city.