Marianna is a city in and the county seat of Jackson County, Florida, United States, and it is home to Chipola College, part of the state's public system. The official nickname of Marianna is "The City of Southern Charm". The population was 6,245 at the 2020 census.

Marianna was founded in 1828 by Scottish entrepreneur Scott Beveridge (2010 source) aka Beverege, who named the town after his daughters Mary and Anna. The following year, it was designated as the county seat. It attracted businesses from the former sear, Webbville, which became defunct.^{[citation needed]} Marianna was platted along the Chipola River.

Many planters from North Carolina relocated to Jackson County to develop new plantations to take advantage of the fertile soil. They relied on the labor of enslaved African Americans brought from the Upper South in the domestic slave trade.

Governor John Milton, a major planter who owned the Sylvania Plantation and hundreds of slaves, was a grandson of Revolutionary War hero John Millton, and a descendant of Sir Christopher Milton, the brother of the famous English poet, John Milton. A Marianna resident, he was elected as governor of Florida, serving during the Civil War years. Governor Milton opposed the Confederate States of America rejoining the United States.

As federal troops were preparing to take control of Tallahassee, Governor Milton received word that the Civil War had ended and that Florida would again be part of the United States. On April 1, 1865, as the Southern cause was collapsing, Milton was found dead of a gunshot wound at Sylvania. The New York Times reported that Governor Milton had committed suicide, noting that he had said he "would rather die" than suffer Federal invasion. The West Florida News, by contrast, reported the sudden death of Florida's fifth Governor as a hunting accident. Governor Milton was buried in the St. Luke's Episcopal churchyard at Marianna. During Reconstruction, the Times account dominated.

Marianna was the site of a Civil War battle in 1864 between a small home guard of about 150 boys, older men, and wounded soldiers, and a contingent of approximately 700 Federal troops.

During the early years after the Civil War, violence flared in Marianna and Jackson County, where 150 to 200 Republicans, some black, were assassinated in what was known as the Jackson County War by members of the Ku Klux Klan in an effort to secure white supremacy. Locals claimed this was the work of "ruffians" from border states and carpetbaggers. Bishop Charles H. Pearce of Massachusetts, an AME minister who became a state senator in Florida, had first-hand knowledge of the situation. He placed the blame on the planters of Jackson County, who supported action against black Republicans. Disputes over farm land caused much of the disorder, as poor whites objected to negro ownership of choice farms.

Violence continued in the state after Reconstruction, reaching a peak in most areas at the turn of the 20th century. This was the period in which southern states also disenfranchised most blacks and thousands of poor whites by raising barriers to voter registration. From 1900 to 1930, Florida had the highest rate of lynchings per capita in the South and the nation. Refusing to accept the violence, thousands of African Americans left the state during the Great Migration of the early 20th century, going to northern and midwestern industrial cities for work and other opportunities.