Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons and Chief Judge of the Northern District of Mississippi Sharion Aycock were among those who addressed the public at an urban planning meeting for Greenville on Wednesday.

GREENVILLE — The General Services Administration has announced that the new federal courthouse will be at the Stein Mart site, located at the northwest corner of South Poplar Street and Washington Avenue.

This will put it in downtown Greenville, bringing an injection of $40.1 million of federal investments into the city’s downtown revitalization efforts.

The other site considered was the Levee Site, located at the northwest corner of South Walnut and Central Streets, which also would have put the courthouse downtown.

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

The Stein Mart Site, an option for the new federal courthouse in Greenville, sits at the corner of South Poplar Street and Washington Avenue.

Both options were discussed at a recent public meeting about urban planning and a new federal courthouse, which grew somewhat tense. One resident voiced concerns about preserving the history of whichever site is chosen for the courthouse; another about what will happen to an old building downtown.

That halted when Bill Boykin stood up, faced the room and said, “Y’all all know I just spent $9.1 million. We’ve all sat around in this community, and we’ve asked for and we’ve wanted new development. We’re getting $40 million and we’re getting a brand new courthouse. We don’t need to argue over anything. It’s $40 million and by the grace of God, we got it.”

Mississippi Today

Bill Boykin

Boykin, a Greenville businessman, spent the $9.1 million in 2016 renovating an abandoned downtown building, transforming it into a boutique hotel.

Then, at the end of the year, Congress officially authorized the U.S. General Services Administration to use $40.1 million of the FY16 Omnibus Spending Bill for a new federal courthouse in Greenville.

Revitalizing downtown has been key for many Greenville residents.

The town shares the woes of many others in the state – lack of opportunity leads to population decline. Lack of people leads to financial decline. Lack of funds leads to fewer opportunities. And so on.

Federal investments aim to rejuvenate Greenville and places like it that might not have the industry needed to sustain a local community.

“We’ve done some great things in the city of Greenville, but this courthouse piece, it speaks volumes,” said Errick Simmons, mayor of Greenville. “It’s going to be really, really wonderful. Also, the authorizations mark an important step, I think, in moving the courthouse projects forward in local communities. It prompts that local economic development that is needed and I think this project is going to do exactly that.” 

The hope, of course, is that the courthouse will bring increased foot traffic, which will bring business to Greenville by the time of its scheduled opening in Fall 2021.

Greenville’s federal courthouse has seen less legal action than it could, as multi-defendant criminal trials have been taking place in Oxford for at least the past year for safety reasons. 

“We don’t hold (multi-defendant trials) here any longer because the [Greenville] criminal courthouse is not a safe environment. We don’t have a prisoner elevator. We have to transport prisoners down public hallways where jurors walk, where judges walk, where the public walks. That is an unacceptable safety problem,” said David Crews, Clerk of Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.  

Multi-defendant criminal trials are rare, but officials feel that the new courthouse in itself will allow more cases to be litigated in Greenville.

“I am confident that a new federal courthouse will cause more trials to be tried, civil and criminal in this area. And that’s going to bring revenue,” said Sharion Aycock, Chief Judge of the Northern District of Mississippi.

uscourts.gov

The current federal courthouse building in Greenville

Construction is scheduled to begin in March 2019, which locals have pointed out will also help boost the economy while residents wait for the courthouse to open its doors.

And though the $40.1 million on its own won’t be enough to completely negate decades’ worth of fiscal neglect in one fell swoop, it will be transformative for Greenville’s downtown.

For Simmons, transforming downtown is pivotal to remaking the city.

“Successful cities have successful downtowns. That shared vision of the community … creates the return of a successful downtown in Greenville. It builds upon our assets. It strengthens the vitality of our city,” said Simmons.

The post GSA selects site of Greenville federal courthouse appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hayden in Army Reserve uniform

Hayden, now 18, remembers visiting his grandfather in Dayton, Ohio, as a child and listening to stories about what it was like serving with the Air Force in the Vietnam War. Hayden marveled at the photos which hung on a wall next to his grandfather’s war patches and flight suit. Those visits made Hayden want to serve himself one day.

Last year, he realized that dream when he enlisted in the Army Reserves. Around that same time, Hayden also realized he was trans. His assigned sex at birth was female but he identifies as male. (Mississippi Today refers to Hayden by only his first name out of respect for his privacy.)

However, a directive signed by President Donald Trump in August could ban transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military, meaning Hayden would have to continue to hide his identity, as he does now, or give up on his dream altogether.

Growing up, Hayden didn’t spend much time in one place. He was born in Russia, but soon after was adopted by an Atlanta couple. His father’s engineering job moved the family to France for three years, then back to Atlanta. They finally settled in Oxford the year Hayden began 8th grade.

Hayden’s childhood hobbies foreshadowed his military career: playing Call of Duty on Xbox, feeling the thrill of simulated combat, as well as drawing pencil portraits of soldiers. He’s hoping his sketches (such as the one below) can earn him a scholarship at Mississippi State University, where he’s currently a freshman.

One of Hayden’s military drawings.

(Hayden clarifies one point about gaming: “When you’re in boot camp, they tell you everything in Call of Duty is completely wrong.”)

Recruiters from the Army visited Hayden’s high school in Oxford, and he learned about a signing bonus to help pay for college. After taking extra electives, Hayden graduated from high school in December of his senior year and started boot camp in January.

But it was at the start of senior year when Hayden realized he was trans; since enlisting, Hayden has had to get used to sleeping in the female barracks. 

“When I was younger I didn’t understand, ‘Why am I not like the other boys?’ But I kind of just put it in the back of my head,” he said.

In high school, Hayden spent a lot of time with the school’s gay-straight alliance group.

“I had better resources and started to learn about the different terms, what being trans means, what it’s like to question your sexuality versus questioning your identity, the difference between gender and sex and all that,” he said.

Hayden graduated from basic training at Missouri’s Fort Leonard Wood last April. 

“My grandfather was really excited. He came to my graduation,” Hayden said. “He wore his Air Force hat and everything. He was pretty proud of me. It had been a pretty long time since he had been to someone’s graduation or military ceremony.

“When I had a program with the ROTC in high school, I would always go down to his house in my uniform and show him, and we’d compare our different ribbons to each other. That was pretty cool do to. We always talked about the differences between the Army and the Air Force. I think we have a pretty good relationship, and I think a lot of it’s built off the military experience.”

Hayden was assigned to the Reserve base in Millington, Tenn., where he reports once a month. He began college classes at Mississippi State in July. But a few weeks later, President Donald Trump tweeted his wishes to ban transgender individuals from serving “in any capacity” in the military.

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

Trump’s Aug. 25 directive reversed a 2016 initiative by former President Barack Obama lifting a ban on transgender troops serving openly. Currently, the directive forbids new transgender recruits; by March. 23, 2018, the military will not cover sex reassignment surgery and, depending on the results of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ panel study, currently enlisted transgender troops such as Hayden may not be able to serve at all.

There are currently more than 15,000 transgender military members, according to the Human Rights Campaign, making the Department of Defense the largest employer of transgender people in America.

Kara Stanford, 32, also attends Mississippi State and is one of 134,000 living transgender veterans in American, according to the HRC.

“I served nine years, earned my Combat Infantry Badge and multiple awards,” said Stanford, who was deployed twice to Iraq with the U.S. Army. Her other awards include an Iraq Campaign Medal and an Overseas Service Ribbon. She says the Combat Infantry Badge is her “point of pride” because it’s given only to infantry who react well under enemy fire. 

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Stanford said about President Trump’s directive. “It did make me angry. Trump doesn’t listen to people who know what they’re talking about, he only listens to people he agrees with.”

“(President Trump) speaks about the burden and the cost of transgender people in the military. What is that based on?” said Malaysia Walker, coordinator of the Transgender Education and Advocacy Program for the ACLU of Mississippi. “He bases that on nothing, because if you look at it, the cost of transgender people to be in the military is almost zero. And no one has heard of any altercations or misfortunes with trans people being in the military.”

A 2016 study by the RAND Corporation estimated that offering gender transition-related health care would create between $2.4 million and $8.4 million in costs annually, or a 0.04 to 0.13 percent increase of the military’s current health care expenditures.

The ACLU and the Human Rights Commission each filed lawsuits against the directive.

“The cost for offering comprehensive inclusive health care to transgender service members is negligible,” said Sarah McBride, the HRC’s national press secretary. “In fact, it costs more for the president to take two trips to Mar-a-Lago than it does for the Pentagon to provide medically necessary health care to transgender troops. So this was just a pretext for discrimination.”

Hayden earns roughly $400 a month from his engineering position with the Reserves, and he was planning to use that money to pay for hormone replacement therapy. His other options are using Tricare, a military health care service, or his parents’ insurance. Tricare requires a psychiatrist’s note to permit hormone replacement therapy (no one uses that, Hayden said), and he isn’t sure he should come out to his parents.

So he has decided to to hold off on the therapy because, as he puts it, “what if they start kicking people out?”

Hayden hopes to join the active duty after college, lead soldiers and deploy overseas.

“I love serving my country,” he said. “I love having that family [at the base]. I always say, I don’t see black, white, gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, whatever, everyone’s green to me in the Army because our uniforms are green. When I put on my uniform I’m in the Army, and I don’t let stupid comments get in the way of completing my mission. 

“Just because I go see a doctor more than most people, just because I ask to go to a different restroom, doesn’t mean I can’t serve or protect my country. It wasn’t a problem until they made it a problem.”

Hayden added that the president, despite being his boss, may not have the best perspective on the issue.

“Trump didn’t serve in the military,” he said. “He got out of the draft twice. So for him to be picky about who serves, he’s got a lot of dirt under his nose for saying that.”

Walker, of the ACLU, and who is also trans, mentioned a contradiction between Trump’s policy and his campaign promises.

Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2016

“I’m fortunate enough to say that transgender people, like myself, know how to fight,” Walker said. “We’ve been fighting our whole lives for freedom. We’ve been fighting our whole lives to be included. We’ve been fighting our whole lives for acceptance. This is just another thing that we have to fight for.”

Hayden wants to come out to his fellow soldiers; it would help explain his attire and his short hair. But for now, he’s waiting on the White House’s next move, which may not happen until March.

Although he has been cautious about who he comes out to, Hayden says he doesn’t think his veteran grandfather would mind.

“I don’t think he’d be disappointed in me, I think he’d be disappointed in the system.”

The White House did not respond to a request for a comment.

The post Trans Army Reserve soldier delays therapy: ‘What if they start kicking people out?” appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Kayleigh Skinner/Mississippi Today

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves speaks at a school choice rally in the Capitol rotunda on Jan. 24, 2017.

Mississippi is one of nine states to receive millions of federal funds to help develop future high-quality charter schools in the state.

On Thursday, the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board received a 5-year, $15 million grant from The U.S. Department of Education to help get future charter schools off the ground and provide technical assistance to existing ones.

“We are thrilled to be one of nine state entities to receive this award as well as have the opportunity to expand access to excellent public charter schools for families and students across Mississippi,” Authorizer Board Executive Director Marianne Schutte said in a statement.

The funding comes from a federal program called Expanding Opportunities Through Quality Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities. Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and Wisconsin also received funding.

There are currently three charter schools in Mississippi, each located in Jackson; the authorizer board recently approved a fourth to open in Clarksdale next fall.

“This funding has the potential to be transformational to opening high-quality public charter schools in Mississippi. We are thrilled to support the Authorizer Board as they continue to grow the public charter school network in Mississippi and strengthen public education for all students,” Rachel Canter, executive director of Mississippi First, said in a release. Mississippi First is a nonprofit advocate for school reform, including development of charter schools.

The authorizer board will partner with Mississippi First, the National Charter School Authorizer Board, and the Mississippi Education Accelerator to reach its goals for the program.

According to information about the program on the U.S. Department of Education website, the funds are intended to help increase the number of high-quality charter schools in the state and specifically expand educational opportunities for underserved students. Mississippi’s funding will target public school students who attend D- or F-rated schools. The plan states that one of the authorizer board’s goals for the funding is to increase the number of new, high quality charter schools “by at least 375% over the next five years to create 15,000 new high-quality charter school seats.”

Ninety percent of the money will go towards helping charter schools in their infancy, so that the schools can hire staff and teachers, secure facilities, and other start-up costs. Charter schools rated an A or B will also receive support.

The board can also use the money on charter school operator recruitment, technical assistance for applicants and approved charter schools, as well as the board itself to “enhance authorizer quality.”

The post Mississippi charter schools get $15M boost from Feds appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A new lawsuit against the state of Mississippi calls for the removal of what plaintiffs describe as monuments to racial discrimination, but the case has little to do with bronze statues of Confederate veterans.

Rob McDuff, a civil rights attorney, and Reilly Morse, president of the Mississippi Center for Justice announced a new lawsuit over voting rights.

The suit, filed in federal court in Jackson, challenges a section of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 that prevents people from voting if they were convicted of certain crimes. Plaintiffs argue that the framers of the state constitution, which governs Mississippi today, believed that several of these crimes were more likely to be committed by African Americans and were therefore a way to disenfranchise black voters.

Reilly Morse, president of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which filed the suit, said the case is the first in a 10-year initiative to take on high-profile cases to advance racial and economic justice. Attorneys for the center cited a Mississippi State Supreme Court decision from the late 1890s as evidence for their argument.

In the 1896 case of Ratliff v. Beale, Mississippi justices noted: “Restrained by the federal constitution from discriminating against the negro race, the (1890 Mississippi constitutional) convention discriminated against its characteristics and the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.”

At the time, these crimes included bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement and bigamy. Rape and murder were added later, but the Mississippi Center for Justice suit does not challenge those crimes as grounds for disqualification.

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is the only named defendant in the suit. Hosemann’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jim Hood’s office, which typically defends state agencies in legal matters, said the office does not comment on pending litigation.

Three plaintiffs are named: Kamal Karriem, a restaurant owner and former city council member in Columbus who was convicted of embezzlement in 2005 and who has completed his sentence; Gabrielle Jones, who was convicted of forgery and receiving stolen property; and Roy Harness, who was convicted of forgery in 1986 and recently received his bachelor’s degree in social work from Jackson State University.

The suit alleges that the state’s felon disenfranchisement has both discriminatory intent and impact toward African Americans.

“We think it’s very important as part of the ongoing effort in Mississippi and elsewhere to remove the vestiges of white supremacy not only from our town squares, but from our laws,” said Rob McDuff, one of the lawyers on the case, “and from the legal system and to try to get closer to the goal of allowing people to participate in the democratic process without having to deal with the legacy of racial discrimination.”

McDuff estimates that about 50,000 Mississippians are barred from voting because of a disqualifying conviction. In Mississippi, if a person is convicted of a disqualifying crime, it takes an act of the Legislature to restore his or her voting rights.

During the 2017 legislative session, lawmakers approved six such bills.

The post Lawsuit seeks to end lifetime voting ban for some crimes appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Ask for a snippet from Treemonisha and Laurence Albert booms out a bit from the chief conjurer’s bag of tricks, his bass-baritone filling the room. Definitely opera. In another moment, shoulders relax and arms take a rhythmic sway as he dips into a slow drag. Distinctly American.

“You cannot not dance when you hear that,” he says with a knowing chuckle.

Laurence Albert rehearses music from Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha.

Albert is about to sing again in Treemonisha, 45 years after he was part of the world premiere of Scott Joplin’s only surviving opera in 1972 Atlanta — a first full staging that came more than 60 years after the work’s creation.

A concert version of Treemonisha opens the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra’s flagship Bravo season Oct. 7 in Jackson. The concert tagged Voicing Joplin is the orchestra’s piece in the celebration of Mississippi’s bicentennial year — 200 years after Mississippi became a state. And 100 years after Joplin’s death.

The 11 soloists include a suite of nationally acclaimed singers — soprano Hope Briggs in the title role, lyric tenor Robert Mack, bass Kevin Maynor and mezzo-soprano Christin-Marie Hill — as well as Mississippi’s own James Martin as Parson Alltalk. Choruses from Jackson State University, Tougaloo College and Mississippi College, plus dancers from Mississippi Ballet, will join the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra for this non-staged production.

“We wanted something that was fresh,” for the orchestra and Jackson listeners, something Southern and a nod to Mississippi’s own music heritage and the African-American influence, orchestra maestro Crafton Beck says. Every music major knows about the opera Joplin wrote at the end of his life, but fewer classical music fans do. “It wasn’t forgotten, because it was in history books. But it was essentially forgotten. It was never performed.”

The opera, music and libretto by Joplin, is a fable about young African-American heroine Treemonisha who, taught to read by a white woman, aims to lead her rural community on a former plantation away from superstition and ignorance in the late 1800s.

“There’s actually a lot of symbolism in the opera,” Martin says. Treemonisha is so named because she was born under a tree. “Trees grow and bear fruit. She is one of the first strong female characters in American opera, for certain. She’s a radical in the fact that she’s an educated woman,” unafraid to stand up to the status quo and lead her people forward.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

James Martin rehearses a tune from Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha at the Mississippi Arts Center.

That’s what Joplin did with ragtime, Martin says, incorporating folk styles of the time and moving into a new form of American music that modern forms still reference. “It comes at a time when we’re moving from western European music into our own voice, which Scott Joplin is often credited for being the father of.”

Musically, “it’s like a time capsule to 1908,” Beck says, by the country’s greatest African-American composer by that point. “In 1890, at the height of his fame with all the ragtime, Scott Joplin was the most famous person in the world, because everybody was buying sheet music and playing ragtime in their houses. But 12 years later, he was poor, not well and living in New York City and determined to write, really, what was the first American opera.”

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Laurence Albert, left, and James Martin will perform together in Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha at Thalia Mara Hall.

Joplin had spent his life on the road as a piano player, itinerant musician and famed ragtime composer. “This opera does reflect all of that,” Beck says, with the early seeds of what blues and jazz would become. The opera has moments of ragtime, but more. “It’s like stepping into Americana in the teens and ’20s,” with little marches, two-steps, waltzes, street music and vaudeville.

“Scott Joplin was definitely a genius,” Albert says. “He brought music everybody knew from every two-bit tavern in St. Louis and made all forms of it important. We need to embrace it as one of the great American pieces.”

As upbeat and enchanting as Treemonisha is, its real-life back story is riddled with elements more tragic — struggle, defeat, ambition in a race against time. Joplin had moved to New York in 1907, where syphilis would claim his mind and his life within a decade.

“He just got it into his head, he was going to do something outstanding, absolutely astounding, and make a statement not for himself, but as an African American,” writing, publishing and staging this opera and spending every penny he had in the effort, Beck says. Only the piano vocal score survived.

Photo by Melanie Thortis

Laurence Albert rehearses music from Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha for an upcoming performance at Thalia Mara Hall.

Albert, assistant professor of music (voice) at Tougaloo College, was a Morehouse College freshman when he was part of the chorus in the opera’s first full staging in Atlanta. He had no idea then of the scope of what Joplin was trying to accomplish.

“That’s something I learned much later.” But he could tell it was a key production. “In 1972, for us as African Americans, to be singing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, with (Robert) Shaw conducting — that was big stuff. For us, we knew it was important. We didn’t have any clue as to how important. At least I didn’t.”

The story of a poor community manipulated by fear, and people choosing their own leader, learning for themselves and reaching for a better life, resonates through history and current times. The opera touches him deeply, Albert says, from that heady experience in college to its inherent themes.

“We explored many things we as African Americans lived, things we wanted to change and improve upon. … And that first time onstage singing opera was just overwhelming. It’s very dear to me many years afterward to be around young people onstage having the same experience.”

Elijah Middleton, 22, a junior at Jackson State and among the youngest in this cast, grins big when he talks about Treemonisha, but “I can barely put my finger on it” to peg its appeal. There’s the dialect (“I get to talk a little more country than I already do!”), the emotion, the movement and the music. “Being that I’m so young, it gives me that old ragtime feel,” he says.

“We get a little bit of everything in this opera,” says Gavin Hughes, also a JSU student and soloist. “There is a lot of joy and hope.”

“It’s a clever and wonderful way to celebrate Mississippi’s bicentennial,” Martin adds. “It talks about and shows off, in a wonderful way, the music that’s indigenous to our culture, that brings us from jazz and blues and two-step into what is now American music.”

While Treemonisha, written as an all-black opera, is a showcase for African-American voices, the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra’s production consciously brings diversity to the stage, from the combination of choruses to the soloists onstage.

“That’s an element not necessarily of the score,” Beck says, “but it’s an element of Mississippi.” And it works for the bicentennial celebration’s “go forward together” momentum.

The music folds into that, too. “It hits home,” Albert says. “All of us love this music. And that’s what we need — something that makes us love things together.”

Photo by Melanie Thortis

From left, Laurence Albert, Gavin Hughes and James Martin share a laugh outside the Mississippi Arts Center. Albert and Martin will perform together in Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha at Thalia Mara Hall.

The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra’s concert version of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha  premieres at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 7 at Thalia Mara Hall. For tickets, $25 and higher, call 601-960-1565 or visit msorchestra.com.

Also Oct. 7, the Mississippi Humanities Council presents Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, at 6 p.m. at Davis Planetarium. The talk is free and open to the public.

The post Mississippi Symphony resurrects Scott Joplin’s only surviving opera appeared first on Mississippi Today.

U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.

U.S. Congress allowed funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program to expire on Saturday, leaving 88,000 Mississippi children uninsured by next March. Nationally, 9 million children are now projected to lose their health insurance in fiscal year 2018.

Funding for the program, which was last reauthorized in 2015, was due to be renewed by Sept. 30. When that date passed without action from either the Senate or the House, the funding expired.

Several Democrats in Congress were quick to blame the lapse on Republican colleagues, whom they said had gotten sidetracked by the now-stalled Graham-Cassidy bill, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act.

“No child in America should be without health insurance. Congress should extend #CHIP funding immediately. We can’t waste another week,” Rep. Eric Swalwel, D-Calif., said on Twitter Sunday. As of Sunday, none of Mississippi’s elected officials have released public statements on the funding.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program, which was created in 1997 and passed with bipartisan support, provides inexpensive health insurance to low income children and pregnant women whose income levels make them ineligible for Medicaid. In Mississippi, this means people in households earning up to 209% of federal poverty level.

In the 20 years since the program was implemented, the percentage of uninsured children in the United States has dropped from 14 percent to just under five percent. But that trend is likely to reverse quickly unless Congress reauthorizes funding.

Like Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program is paid for by a combination of federal and state funds. But in 10 states the federal government covers 100 percent of the funding for the program. Mississippi is one of those states, and funding for fiscal year 2018 was projected to be $282 million.

Mississippi currently has $98.5 million remaining in funds from fiscal year 2017. As a result, funding is not expected to fully run out until March 2018. But three states and the District of Columbia will run out of funds and have to shut down their programs by December 2017.

Congress also missed a deadline Saturday to approve $1.5 billion in funding for community health centers. Without the new money, the Department of Health and Human Services estimates 2,800 health center sites would close and eliminate more than 50,000 jobs and access to care for about 9 million patients.

The post 88,000 Mississippi children to lose health insurance in March appeared first on Mississippi Today.

AP photo/Emily Wagster Pettus

Roberta Kaplan speaks outside the federal courthouse in Jackson on Nov. 12, 2014.

Action from a federal judge could cause another wrinkle in the saga of Mississippi’s so-called religious-objections law.

Late Monday, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves reopened a 2014 case that successfully challenged Mississippi’s gay marriage ban, raising the question of whether the state’s controversial House Bill 1523, which takes effect Friday, violates an earlier Reeves order giving gay couples the right to marry.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs in Mississippi’s gay marriage case, Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant I, first asked Reeves to reopen the case last year. Passed in 2016, House Bill 1523 would, among other things, let county clerks with sincerely held religious objections to gay marriage recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. Attorneys, however, argued that this recusal could deny gay Mississippians equal access to marriage—thereby violating both Reeves’ ruling and the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

However, Reeves delayed a decision to reopen the case pending the outcome of a federal appeals court decision about the legality of HB 1523.

That ruling came down Sept. 29, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cleared the way for the law to take effect after nearly a year and a half of legal challenges.

Gov. Phil Bryant, a vocal proponent of the law and the defendant in the two cases that challenged it before the Fifth Circuit, praised the court’s decision in a statement Sunday.

Gov. Phil Bryant

“As I have said from the beginning, this law was democratically enacted and is perfectly constitutional. The people of Mississippi have the right to ensure that all of our citizens are free to peacefully live and work without fear of being punished for their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Bryant said.

Although the Fifth Circuit’s decision allows the law to take effect, the three-judge panel did not actually rule on the merits of the case, in contrast to Reeves’s earlier federal court ruling that had declared the law unconstitutional. Instead, the Fifth Circuit decided the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the law because, until it went into effect, they were not able to claim they had been harmed by it.

In his order reopening the case last June, Reeves expressed concern that if House Bill 1523 took effect, it would “significantly change the landscape of Mississippi’s marriage licensing laws.” And he also questioned whether House Bill 1523 was written to protect religious freedom—or to make it more difficult for gay couples to wed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges.

“Mississippi’s elected officials may disagree with Obergefell, of course, and may
express that disagreement as they see fit – by advocating for a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision, for example. But the marriage license issue will not be adjudicated anew after every legislative session. And the judiciary will remain vigilant whenever a named party to an injunction is accused of circumventing that injunction, directly or indirectly,” Reeves wrote.

House Bill 1523 singles out three “sincerely held” religious beliefs as worthy of protection: that marriage is between one man and one woman; that people should not have sex outside such marriages; and that a person’s gender is set at birth.

Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill on April 5, 2016.

Cleoinc.org

U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves

In June, Reeves heard arguments from two other cases that challenged the law, Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant IV and Barber v. Bryant. On June 30, 2016, minutes before the law would have taken effect at midnight, Reeves struck down House Bill 1523 in a blistering opinion that declared the law “does not honor (this country’s) tradition of religion freedom, nor does it respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi’s citizens.”

HB 1523 requires any person recusing themselves from marrying gay couples to provide written notice to the state registrar’s office, ordering that the person recusing themselves “take all necessary steps to ensure that the authorization and licensing of any legally valid marriage is not impeded or delayed as a result of any recusal.”

However, the law does not require that list to be made public. In their petition to reopen the case, plaintiffs are seeking the names of any clerks who recuse themselves, arguing that it is impossible to prevent delays unless couples seeking to marry know ahead of time whether their county clerk will recuse himself.

“Defendants should not be permitted to impose a “separate, but (un)equal” system of marriage for gay and lesbian couples in Mississippi,” the plaintiffs wrote in their brief.

In her response to the Fifth Circuit’s decision on Sunday, Roberta Kaplan, lead attorney on both Campaign for Southern Equality lawsuits, said that she would consider several types of challenges to HB 1523.

“Rest assured that we will do everything humanly possible to continue to fight this harmful law on the merits in order to protect our nation’s constitutional values and the LGBT citizens of Mississippi,” Kaplan said.

On Monday, Rob McDuff, lead attorney on Barber v. Bryant, also announced that he would appeal the Fifth Circuit’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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This July 8, 2017 photo shows members of the Ku Klux Klan in Charlottesville, Va., carrying banners that resembles the Mississippi state flag. Events in Charlottesville touched off a new round of debate over public displays of Confederate symbols.

Public opinion of the Mississippi state flag — the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem — is shifting, according to a poll conducted last month.

A September survey of Mississippi voters by Jackson-based, Democratic-leaning polling firm Chism Strategies shows that just 49 percent of Mississippians favor the current state flag while 41 percent want to retire it and 10 percent are undecided about the issue.

The percentage of Mississippians who told pollsters they support the flag is down from the 2001 flag referendum vote total, when 64 percent of voters affirmed the current state flag design. That same year, 36 percent of voters favored a new, specific flag design — one that critics at the time said was a political stunt to sway voters from voting against the current design.

While African Americans posted “strong support for a new flag,” the Chism poll results said 62 percent of white voters oppose changing the flag. However, “a slight majority” of whites under the age of 55 said the flag should change. Most voters polled — 55 percent to 27 percent — believe the 2001 vote settled the issue, pollsters found.

The politically charged debate gained new life in Mississippi after the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., in August, when several hate groups flew the Confederate emblem. A Ku Klux Klan member at that rally was photographed holding a flag similar to the Mississippi state flag.

All eight public universities in Mississippi have taken down the state flag, along with several of the state’s largest cities and counties. Pro-business and tourism groups have cited economic losses when discussing desire to change the flag — the Mississippi Economic Council, the state’s chamber of commerce, created a bicentennial banner in hopes it could spur a conversation about changing the state flag.

Key religious groups including the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest religious group in the state of Mississippi, have spoken against the symbol.

Several notable Mississippi political leaders have said the state should adopt a new flag, including U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran, House Speaker Philip Gunn, Treasurer Lynn Fitch and Attorney General Jim Hood.

Republican commentator Andy Taggart penned a letter last month, calling for the Mississippi Republican Party to “stand in favor of making this extremely important change for the future of our state.”

Memo to GOP: Changing state flag would put party on right side of history

Meanwhile, other top Mississippi leaders have balked at talks of changing the flag, instead pointing back to the 2001 referendum and saying voters should again decide whether a change should occur. U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper, Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have all said the issue should be left to voters.

Some legislators have written bills the past two years that would punish universities for refusing to fly the state flag. All legislation – about three dozen bills either for or against the flag – has died in committee the past two years.

The U.S. Supreme Court has requested more information from attorneys representing Gov. Bryant in a federal lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the state flag. The lawsuit, which cites the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, argues that the state flag is “one of racial hostility” and “the state’s continued expression of its message of racial disparagement” labels African-Americans as second-class citizens.

Political operatives who support the flag believe the 2001 vote should stand, even after the national tragedies that have brought new light to the flag. Many politicos who oppose the flag, however, say the risks of taking the issue to the polls are too great.

“Opponents of a new state flag feel much more strongly than do new flag advocates,” a Chism Strategies statement said. “Moreover, this flag debate would probably get high-jacked by the Far Right as a rallying cry in the culture wars and the final vote would not reflect the merits of a new flag.”

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After years of asking the Legislature to increase funds for the Department of Mental Health, Mississippi’s attorney general is saying it’s time to change the conversation on mental health in the state.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Jim Hood convened the state’s first task force on mental health. The meeting brought together 50 leaders in state law enforcement, healthcare and policy. Their goal he said was to generate new approaches to mental health in the state — and not, he insists, to ask for more money.

“I told them, I don’t want this to be about funding because I’ve fussed enough about that,” Hood said. “But it’s gotten to where we’ve got to make this a more efficient system to try to help people that have a mental health issue. They deserve a better system that they can more easily use.”

Right now, the system that Mississippians who struggle with addiction and mental health issues have is Byzantine, according to many in the field. Following a series of budget cuts, the Department of Mental announced in April a workforce reduction of nearly 650 jobs, the largest single-year reduction in state history, according to the State Personnel Board. And the unpredictability of these cuts has led to haphazard changes within the agency and how it works with its partners.

“You keep saying you’ve got to cut the fat, cut the fat. Well, eventually there’s no fat left to cut,” said Dr. Charles Carlisle, director of East Mississippi State Hospital, in an interview in July. “And as the cuts get bigger and they happen more often, it makes it harder to plan for them.”

As attorney general, Hood is also defending the state in a 2016 complaint filed by the Justice Department. That complaint alleges that Mississippi’s Department of Mental Health violates patients’ rights by sequestering too many of them in antiquated state hospitals.

In response, the Department of Mental Health has worked steadily to shift many patients from hospitals to community-based care. But making that shift work, Hood says, requires intricate coordination between the Department of Mental Health, community mental health centers and law enforcement agencies.

Certain strides have been made. Some law enforcement agencies have undergone mental health de-escalation training. But the effort has been patchwork across the state, something Hood says he hopes can be solved by getting these different agencies in the room together.

“It’s the first meeting I’ve seen where law enforcement is agreeing with mental health professionals, and that’s the kind of thing we’re hoping to get more of,” Hood said.

Melody Winston, Director of the Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Services, echoed Hood’s hope that coordination between agencies would lead to better care for patients.

“At DMH, we believe that increasing access to treatment, implementing evidence-based prevention strategies and providing recovery support services as related to substance use disorders should be a state wide effort. A convergence of state resources supporting these efforts is necessary to address this growing problem in our state,” Winston said.

Use of task forces to tackle important issues isn’t new for Mississippi. In late 2016, Gov. Phil Bryant convened an Opioid and Heroin Study Task Force to battle what he said was “the scourge of drug abuse and addiction” in the state. In August, the task force released its first set of recommendations.

While task forces themselves are relatively cheap — membership on both the opioid and mental health task forces is entirely voluntary — the suggestions they generate often are not. The 41 suggestions from the opioid task force ranged from changing the rules on opioid prescriptions to funding six new positions within the state crime lab.

So while Hood has insisted that his task force is not about money, he said he knows that effective change will ultimately require some financial commitment from the state.

“You just can’t get around the funding. Everyone split up into subcommittees — and all these different groups met and each one came back and said, ‘this is something we want to do but we’ve still got to have funding,'” Hood said.

“What we’re trying to do is help the money follow the patient. And if we can take this institutional stuff and make that more efficient, the funding will flow to the medical providers.”

The post AG’s task force tackles mental health appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

John Szwed gives the keynote speech at Delta State University’s annual International Conference on the Blues.

CLEVELAND — Perhaps Alan Lomax’s greatest contribution to storytelling was letting the South speak for itself, John Szwed said to a room full of Blues academics this week.

“I think everyone knows there are terrific complexities of culture and mysteries in the South. Lomax certainly did,” Szwed said during his keynote presentation Delta State University’s annual International Conference on the Blues.

Lomax’s goal was to capture that heritage.

While Lomax and Johnny Lee Hooker were the dual focus of the conference, dozens of scholars and musicians traveled across the country to present on topics from how Blues influenced the music that came out of Parchman Penitentiary to how rap finds its roots in the Blues.

“[This conference] is about academic dialogue, it’s about sharing the Blues with people around the world, and it’s about an ongoing conversation that’s gone on about the Blues for about the past 50-60 years,” said Don Allan Mitchell, co-chair of the three-day  conference that wrapped up Tuesday.

Lomax, a writer, musicologist and producer, spent his life promoting folk music by recording it and advocating to have it housed at Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress.

Though Lomax traveled the world documenting cultures, he collected a body of work in Mississippi from 1933 – 1942, chronicling everyday people as well as greats like Lead Belly and Muddy Waters.

“These recordings also include interviews, life histories. It’s a sound picture of a people in a region. I don’t think there’s anything quite like this. Usually when nations and states do things like this they pick famous people. They want the best spokespeople. Seldom has anybody said, ‘This is what people were talking about. This is what they were doing,’” said Szwed, an anthropologist, jazz scholar, author and Grammy winner. 

Now, Lomax’s daughter is working to bring those stories back to Mississippi.

Anna Lomax Wood is the president of the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), which her father founded.

In June, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) recently awarded a grant to ACE and the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at DSU for a collaborative project that will transfer, digitize and repatriate Lomax’s Mississippi recordings.

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

Jorge Arévalo Mateus, the director of the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE); Anna Lomax Wood, president of ACE; Emily Jones, University Archivist; Rolando Herts, the Director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at DSU; and keynote speaker John Szwed speak on a panel at Delta State University’s annual International Conference on the Blues.

“Our goals are to primarily get that material into an online database and share that database with our collaborating partner institutions. We’re also hoping to do ceremonies, events, programs with families,” said Jorge Arévalo Mateus, the director of ACE.

Finding the families of those featured in Lomax’s work will likely be the most important part of this project, Mateus said during the conference at the Grammy Museum.

“It’s just always very moving to see people recognizing the film that Alan (Lomax) shot to see their grandfather or their father or uncle or mother or grandma, to see their family,’ Mateus said. “That just never stops amazing me.”

This concept of bringing stories back home and sharing back home stories with the world infiltrated almost all aspects of the conference.

“I think [this conference was] a desire by the local Cleveland community and Delta State University to recognize the Blues’ impact on the world  …  It’s definitely academic, but what we tried to do is make sure there’s something for everybody because one of the charms of the Blues, one of the great aspects of the Blues is that it’s accessible to anybody,” Mitchell said. 

Kelsey Davis, Mississippi Today

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Marquise Knox and Jontavious Willis play at the downtown Cleveland Courthouse grounds after the first full day of the conference.

So naturally, the first full day of the conference had to end with a Blues concert.

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Marquise Knox and Jontavious Willis — three young Bluesmen hailed as the next voice of the genre — set up stage on the downtown Cleveland Courthouse grounds for a free show, and proved the Blues aren’t a thing of the past.  

“The blues have always been one of the outlets for our people. It’s been a way for us to relay how we feel sometimes without us getting into trouble,” Knox said. “Today there’s even a bigger need for some kind of music that speaks directly to the position in which we find ourselves now, the totality of all of it. So I still think there’s a need for more blues to talk about the time we live in, because these times are unparalleled.”

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Rep.-elect Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg

Newly elected Rep. Missy McGee will list a Republican “R” behind her name, but her votes under the dome in Jackson might not always align with the policy of staunch conservative Republican leadership.

A self-proclaimed moderate Republican with close ties to road builders and the University of Southern Mississippi, McGee’s conservatism resembles that of her predecessor, now Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker. McGee was elected by a 2-to-1 margin by voters in House District 102 on Tuesday and will be sworn in Oct. 13.

“This is not about party to me,” McGee told Mississippi Today on Wednesday. “District 102 is an eclectic, moderate district. I’m so proud to be able to represent this district that has so much character and folks from all walks of life.”

“My hope is that I will always have the opportunity and wisdom to do what I believe is in the best interest of the district first,” she continued. “That will be my first and foremost concern.”

McGee’s win Tuesday solidified the GOP supermajority in the House, meaning no Democratic votes are necessary to pass budget and tax bills that require a three-fifths vote. But on the campaign trail, McGee outlined several platforms that run counter to policy pushed by House Speaker Philip Gunn and other legislative leaders.

McGee wants to fully fund the state’s public K-12 funding formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program – something that has been done just twice since its inception in 1997.

She also said that she would not be an automatic “yea” vote on a new funding formula, which Gunn and legislative leaders have been crafting for a year. Instead, she said, she would first assess whether the formula was beneficial for schools and taxpayers in her district.

Gunn campaigned against a ballot initiative in 2015, when Mississippi voters were asked on statewide ballot whether to force the Legislature to fully fund MAEP.

“It’s not all funding,” McGee said in an August debate held for District 102 candidates. “We need strong leadership at the administrative level, in the principal’s office, and in the classroom. But we’ve got to make sure we offer our kids the very best that we can.”

She wants to delay implementation of the $415 million tax cut, which eliminates the corporate franchise tax, the 3 percent individual income tax bracket and certain self-employment taxes. McGee also wants to amend the cut to include growth triggers that ensure further tax phase-outs won’t go into effect until revenue growth is first realized.

Gunn helped carefully guide that 2016 tax cut through the House and continues to defend its merit.

“(The tax cut) has given us a more competitive business environment, which is a good thing,” McGee said at the August debate. “But it has come at the expense of us being able to fund critical parts of our budget such as education, mental health, and infrastructure.”

She wants to take down the current state flag, which is the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem, and she sternly opposes House Bill 1523, the state’s religious objections law allowing business owners to refuse certain services to same-sex couples.

Kayleigh Skinner, Mississippi Today

House Speaker Philip Gunn shows off the collection of baseball bats he keeps in his office before a briefing with reporters.

Gunn is one of few Republicans to publicly call for removing the state flag, but he was the principal author and behind-the-scenes pusher of HB 1523.

“I see no point in 1523,” McGee said on Wednesday. “It was a solution looking for a problem. I think that’s the best way to sum it up. It’s unnecessary. Marriage equality is law at the federal level. I just completely saw that as an unnecessary bill that did nothing but put our state in a bad light.”

After McGee’s election on Tuesday, Gunn tweeted: “Congratulations to Representative-elect Missy McGee on her special election win for House District 102.” In the interview Wednesday, McGee spoke highly of Gunn and his staff and said she was “really looking forward to working with them.”

“Congratulations to Missy McGee on a hard-earned victory,” Gov. Phil Bryant, another conservative Republican, said in a statement this week. “Missy ran a strong campaign outlining a positive vision for the future of Hattiesburg. There is no doubt that she will be a fierce advocate for her constituents and a leader in the Mississippi House of Representatives. I look forward to working with her in this capacity.”

District 102, anchored by the University of Southern Mississippi and downtown Hattiesburg, has traditionally been moderate. Barker, who served as a Republican state representative for the district for the past 10 years, was elected mayor in June as an Independent, not a Republican.

Barker was one of seven House Republicans who voted against the 2016 tax cut and one of five House Republicans to vote against House Bill 1523. He voted against an amendment in the 2017 session that would have penalized universities that refused to fly the state flag.

McGee, who worked for Barker’s mayoral campaign, said while she respects Barker’s legacy and service to her hometown, she will bring her own leadership to the Capitol.

“Toby and I have laughed about whether my voting record will look like his,” McGee said. “Am I to the right of him, to the left of him? I don’t know. I can’t predict what those votes would be. But I’m looking forward to it, and I’m to learn as much as I can.”

“I think the best thing I can do is to be an advocate for what’s best for Hattiesburg,” she said.

The post Missy McGee brings moderate Republican values to House appeared first on Mississippi Today.

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

Nashville might get credit for being the hub of the country music industry, where the deals are made and records are cut, but the music itself doesn’t always come from Music City. A lot of times, the music comes to it.

Country music’s roots begin farther south along the Natchez Trace Parkway, across two state lines and deep into Mississippi, where the organic, traditional music of Appalachia intersected the rural blues music of the Delta.

Tourists and residents can discover the origins of this enduring American music on the Mississippi Country Music Trail, a series of 30 marked sites that celebrate the art form’s genesis with Jimmie Rodgers in Meridian and continue through its evolution and commercial peaks. The trail started June 1, 2010, with a marker celebrating Rodgers’ contributions. Each marker has a short biography of the performer being honored or a description of the significance of a particular place, as well as photographs of people, places and memorabilia.

“It’s our cultural story that sets us apart,” says Malcolm White, executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission. “(It’s important to) tell our cultural story through music, literature, the arts, culinary, civil war, civil rights — all these huge components that we lay claim to.”

White has worked on the historic trails initiative as a member of the Mississippi Blues Commission and as former director of Visit Mississippi, the tourism division of the Mississippi Development Authority. He also was part of the first group to attempt the blues trail project in the 1980s under Gov. Ray Mabus, although it never was funded and eventually dissolved. Gov. Haley Barbour established a new effort in the 2000s that led to the current blues, country music and freedom trails.

“In the beginning it was just about marking things,” said White. “Then it began to be about making creative corridors and communities where people would show up to do one thing and end up doing 10 things.”

The Mississippi Blues Trail brought together more than 200 historic sites across the state under one constellation, putting a narrative to Mississippi’s legacy in blues music and its cultural impact. Attractions such as the B.B. King Museum in Indianola and the Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland, as well as Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, expand upon the narrative that Mississippi is the birthplace of American music.

Music Mississippi

People gathered for the unveiling of the Mississippi Country Music Trail’s 30th marker, honoring Faith Hill, on Dec. 19, 2015, in Star.

On the heels of the success of the blues trail, an advisory board put together a commission of scholars including Barry Mazor, author of the biography Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, to draft a list of names and events for the Country Music Trail’s initial 30 sites, which included famous performers Faith Hill, Tammy Wynette, Charley Pride, Conway Twitty and more from every corner of the state.

The trail aims to trigger more music tourism and invigorate the state’s creative economy, and that idea appears to have legs. Site preparation and construction of the Mississippi Arts & Entertainment Experience are underway in Meridian. The 58,000-square-foot facility, located two blocks from “father of country music” Jimmie Rodgers’s Country Music Trail marker, will tell the state’s artistic history through immersive, media-driven, interactive exhibits and events.

AP Photo/Tina Fineberg

Marty Stuart, left, and His Fabulous Superlatives perform at the 35th Annual Mississippi Picnic in New York’s Central Park June 14, 2014.

White gives much of the credit for getting the Country Music Trail project done quickly to Philadelphia, Miss., native and performer Marty Stuart, whose personal collection of 20,000 country-music memorabilia pieces makes up a large portion of the displays at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

“He took it on as a personal project,” says White. “He’s such a historian of country music that he went before the Legislature and really pushed hard to build the Country Music Trail.”

Stuart, a country music historian and archivist since his days in Johnny Cash’s backing band, also helped bridge the span between his home state, where many of the genre’s pivotal performers and songwriters grew up, to Nashville, where Mississippi-raised songwriters such as Paul Overstreet and Craig Wiseman moved to make their mark on the industry.

When Stuart, White and Mac McAnally, a Nashville songwriter and director of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, set out to commemorate the contributions Mississippians have made to country music with a trail marker in Nashville, they ran into roadblocks everywhere they went. They were told that it would never happen. But they had a plan and a crucial ally.

The trio recruited Craig Wiseman, another singer-songwriter with deep roots in Mississippi but wide branches in Music City, who happened to own a building on Music Row, the heart of the city’s music business.

“When I went to talk to Craig about putting a marker on his property, he was all for it,” says White. “He allowed us to place a marker on Music Row that talks about everything from Elvis Presley to Jimmie Rodgers, Tammy Wynette and all the great Mississippians who came to Nashville to make their mark.”

From left, Malcolm White, Craig Wiseman, Mary Margaret Miller White and Americana Music Triangle founder Aubrey Preston stand in front of the Nashville marker.

White noted that the goal wasn’t to get anyone to move from Nashville, but to tell a fuller version of Mississippi’s story.

“We’ve always seen this trail as a way to honor Mississippians and tell our story,” said White. “We have blues markers in Los Angeles, Chicago, France and all over the world, because the blues is a global phenomenon, and so is country music.”

For information on the Mississippi Country Music Trail, including views of the trail markers and maps, visit mscountrymusictrail.org.

The Markers:

• Ben Peters, Hollandale
• Bob Ferguson, Philadelphia
• Bobbie Gentry, Greenwood
• Carl Jackson, Louisville
• Charley Pride, Sledge
• Chris LeDoux, Biloxi
• Conway Twitty, Friars Point
• Country Music Comes of Age, Meridian
• Elsie McWilliams, Meridian
• Elvis Country, Tupelo
• Faith Hill, Star
• Hank Cochran, Isola
• Hoyt Ming, Ackerman
• Jerry Clower, Liberty
• Jesse Rodgers, Waynesboro
• Johnny Russell, Moorhead
• Leake County Revelers, Sebastopol
• Mac McAnally, Belmont
• Marty Stuart, Philadelphia
• Moe Bandy, Meridian
• Narmour and Smith, Carrollton
• Nashville, Nashville, Tenn.
• O.B. McClinton, Senatobia
• Paul Overstreet, Vancleave
• Rod Brasfield, Smithville
• Smith County Jamboree, Polkville
• Sparta Opry, Sparta
• T. Tommy Cutrer, Osyka
• Tammy Wynette, Tremont

The post Historic trail celebrates success of country music in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

One of the country’s foremost food organizations was established on a hot summer day in Birmingham.

The late John Egerton, an author and activist, convened a two-day meeting of 50 people who lent their names to a non-profit organization dedicated to the documentation, study and celebration of the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. The year was 1999 and what Egerton started was truly groundbreaking — using food as a way to learn about other cultures and to see how those cultures are interwoven with the culture of the South. The Southern Foodways Alliance provides the pathways to consider the history of the South as well as the future in a spirit of respect and reconciliation.

Photo by Danny Klimetz

John T. Edge outside his home in Oxford

The name most often associated with the Foodways Alliance is John T. Edge, who has served as director of the organization since its founding in 1999. He came to his position in a serendipitous way, beginning with his dissatisfaction with working in a traditional corporate job in Atlanta. Despite not having finished college, Edge worked in sales, then marketing and, finally, corporate engineering. And although he continued moving up in that world for a decade, Edge had a niggling feeling he simply could not shake.

“I was doing the same work as others in my company who had advanced degrees,” he said. “I felt bad and knew that I really wanted to finish college.”

About that time, the Georgia native was having deep thoughts about the South. He became increasingly frustrated with decisions made in the region.

“I felt myself often angry at the people and the place,” Edge said.

He had read about the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford. Following a business trip to Memphis, he drove to Oxford and toured the center. Within a month, he had sold his house, quit his job and moved to Oxford, where he finished his undergraduate degree at Ole Miss.

Feeling he had found his purpose, Edge went straight to graduate school, where he began exploring the many ways people thought of the South. He wrote his master’s thesis on potlikker, the broth created when cooking greens. He found a 1931 debate that examined whether cornbread should be dunked or crumbled into potlikker. Surprisingly, that debate, which ran in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, spurred many letters to the editor and, in addition to very strong stances on dunking and crumbling, the letters included larger issues such as race relations, gender and identity.

Photo by Brandall Atkinson

Grits is one of the Southern foods featured as themes at the annual Southern Foodways Alliance symposiums.

“Writing about food makes you think about the bigger issues at hand,” Edge said.

Those bigger issues are constantly explored through the many efforts of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Mary Beth Lasseter is the associate director of the alliance, and her enthusiasm for its projects is boundless.

“From Foodways symposia to film and oral history work, plus our quarterly Gravy print journal and Gravy podcast, our staff is always busy,” Lasseter said.

Each member of the alliance staff is passionate about what they do.

“Under the editorial direction of SFA’s Sarah Camp Milam, Gravy — both print and podcast — won the James Beard Foundation’s Publication of the Year,” Lasseter said.

The idea behind both is to tell stories in a compelling way.

“These are nuanced stories about a rapidly changing Southern narrative,” Lasseter explained. “The podcasts are long form non-fiction reports, exploring the untold and often hidden stories of the American South.”

The alliance also produces documentaries with Ava Lowery leading the film charge.

A Pihakis Foodways Documentary Fellow, Lowrey is a native of Alexander City, Ala., and her films focus on her Southern roots.

Content produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance is shared on the association’s website, www.southernfoodways.org.

“We are a financially independent organization,” Lasseter stated. “SFA is responsible for raising all of its own operational funding. We are member-supported, but we also rely on sponsors and donors who support us because they believe in what we do. They believe in our documentary work and mission to share truthful stories about our region.”

The cost to be a member of the Southern Foodways Alliance is $75 a year.

“That’s a $75 investment in the storytelling mechanism of the South,” Edge said. “Food is a cultural product, and the study of food as a product of a region is a way to learn about ourselves. People tell stories about food because we like telling stories about ourselves. It’s not about the latest hip chef, but instead, people are interested in the overall-wearing farmer who is raising collards and has been before collards were cool.”

The organization is an institution of the University of Mississippi, where the Center for the Study of Southern Culture agreed to act as an incubator for the alliance early on and provided start-up capital earned from the sale of the center-researched and written cookbook, A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South. When Edge became the executive director of the newly formed alliance in 1999, he remained its only employee until 2004, when managing director Melissa Booth Hall was added. Hall was introduced to the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2003, when she volunteered at the Fall Symposium in Oxford.

“We have grown to a staff of eight now,” said Lasseter, who also explained that all staff members are employed by the university.

Lasseter said the events the alliance presents are a celebration of a changing South.

“We embrace change,” she said. “As a matter of fact, we don’t ever use the word ‘preserve’ because we don’t like the idea of a static food culture.”

Edge continues his quest to spread the gospel of Southern foodways in his latest book, The Potlikker Papers, a Food History of the Modern South. The book begins in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott and shows how black cooks leveraged their skills of baking cakes, pies and fried chicken to raise money for the growing civil rights movement.

Photo by Danny Klimetz

John T. Edge sits inside his home office.

“I see this as a collection of untold stories,” Edge said. “When we respond to the South and when we respond to Southern food, we are actually responding to the stories embedded in that food. These are the stories I think aren’t told enough. Food is one way to see how the South has reinvented this region by finding beauty in the kitchen.”

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Despite lagging corporate tax revenue collections and a slow September, the state collected more revenue than expected through the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

Tax revenues feed the state’s general fund, which funds basic public services like K-12, community college and higher education, various public health programs like Medicaid and mental health, and public safety departments.

Lawmakers budget each year based on projections. If revenue projections are not met, state leaders often have to cut agencies’ budgets mid-year or draw from reserve funds.

But through the first three months of this fiscal year, revenues have exceeded projections – a first in the past three fiscal years.

Total tax collections are $20.2 million above the estimate through the first quarter, which is $30.7 million, or 3 percent, higher than this time last year.

Individual income tax collections came in 6 percent higher than expected through the first quarter of the year. However, sales tax missed projections by 1 percent, and the corporate taxes, which include corporate income and corporate franchise taxes, missed projections by 14 percent.

Experts, including major credit ratings agencies, have expressed concern about the future of the state’s revenue collections as they pertain to corporate tax collections. Lawmakers in 2016 passed the largest single tax cut in the state’s history – most of which benefits corporations through the complete elimination of the corporate franchise tax, which is a state tax on capital companies have in Mississippi.

The franchise tax will be phased out gradually over 10 years, but the revenue impact of the cut will first be felt in the current fiscal year. When the corporate income and corporate franchise phase-outs begin starting Jan. 1, Mississippi stands to lose $46.5 million in fiscal year 2019. By fiscal year 2022, the tax cuts are projected to reduce state revenue by $70.8 million each fiscal year.

In September – four months before the franchise tax cut officially goes into effect – corporate tax collections came in $18.1 million, or 21 percent, lower than projected. Total corporate tax collections for the fiscal year are $27.4 million, or 22 percent, lower than they were last fiscal year.

Still, total tax collections beat first quarter projections.

Click here to read the September revenue report.

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Senate leaders say they are open to a lawmaker’s proposal to hold a statewide vote to fund road and bridge projects around the state.

Mississippi Senate

Sen. Dean Kirby, R-Pearl

Sen. Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, is drafting a bill that calls for statewide referendum in each of the state’s transportation districts.

Based on a similar model in Georgia, he said his proposed legislation would give voters more power when it comes to funding which projects get the green light, but also bumps up related taxes and fees.

In recent years, Georgia has held several referenda on what are called transportation special-purpose local option sales tax with mixed success.

Kirby, a member of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee, said each district would have transportation projects presented to them and they would be the ones to decide which would get funded.

“Voters would know exactly what they are voting for and where their money would be spent,” Kirby said in an email.

The draft plan calls for an 8 percent of the 8 percent, about 1.5 cent increase, on the state’s 18.4 cents-per-gallon fuel tax. MDOT receives no general-fund dollars, and most of the agency’s funding comes from the fuel tax.

Kirby’s proposal also includes an increase of $2.50 per tire when customers buy new tires, and an annual fee of $150 on electric cars and $75 for hybrid vehicles.

Kirby argues that most voters buy tires every four to eight years, and that owners of electric and hybrid vehicles do not pay a road use tax since they do not purchase fuel.

“Automakers have already announced they are moving toward electric vehicles and we must plan for the future,” Kirby said.

Mississippi Transportation Commissioner Dick Hall addressed Mississippi’s infrastructure and possible transportation funding mechanisms at the Capitol press corps luncheon.

Mississippi Transportation Commissioner Dick Hall announced Kirby’s draft proposal while addressing Mississippi’s infrastructure funding mechanisms at a recent Capitol press corps luncheon.

Hall, the Central District commissioner and chairman of the Mississippi Transportation Commission, said the department needs about $400 million more a year to sufficiently address the state’s infrastructure problem, and he considers the state’s gas tax outdated.

The Senate Transportation Committee held hearings in August with MDOT leaders about their needs and asked the Department of Revenue to estimate new revenues if the state’s gas tax was raised by 8 cents. Revenue officials said the rate would generate about $164 million per year more.

The agency also submitted a budget request in September reflecting a decrease of about $100 million for next year’s general operations.

“Today, we are dealing with what is rapidly becoming in Mississippi a desperate, short-term situation problem that we need some kind of quick time response to,” Hall said. “A fuel tax is the easiest thing to adjust.”

Sen. Willie Simmons, chairman of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee, said he is pleased to see any proposals, as he thinks the state’s current transportation funding system is too antiquated to meet the state’s growing infrastructure needs.

“I have not taken anything off the table,” Simmons, D-Cleveland, said. “… Hopefully, as we go through the process, we can work together and get enough votes to pass a meaningful piece of legislation that would generate some funds for our highways and bridges.”

Ultimately, the decision hinges on the desires of Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, who has been a staunch opponent of raising the gas tax but has supported ballot initiatives in the past, such as on the question of whether to keep of change the state flag.

Although Reeves maintains that the state’s transportation agency should look for ways to improve efficiency, he indicated that government watchdogs should pay close attention should a ballot initiative take place.

“I continue to believe the first step must be for MDOT to more efficiently manage the more than $7 billion the Legislature has spent on roads and bridges over the past six years,” Reeves said in a statement. “If voters were to vote to increase funding, there should be detailed plans on how to spend the money on projects that are necessary to grow our economy.”

Speaker Philip Gunn declined to comment on the draft legislation in the absence of all the details of the plan or bill at the moment.

The post Key Senate lawmakers receptive to roads referendum plan appeared first on Mississippi Today.

This story is our weekly ‘Sip of Culture, a partnership between Mississippi Today and The ‘Sip Magazine. For more stories like this, visit The ‘Sip’s website.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Mississippi actor Morgan Freeman

Hear that famous voice and you expect something wise.

Morgan Freeman can explain the intricacies of Hinduism, which he’d learned amid his worldwide ramblings — he’s made recent trips to Guatemala, Jerusalem, Egypt and India. But, deep-voiced and resonant, he admits there’s no lesson at all.

“It’s their thing,” he said. “Not mine.”

It’s just a little piece of trivia to recount.

*

Freeman’s intellect is sharp and sometimes contradictory: he is clear-voiced and opinionated, but he does not want to be the “voice of God.” He called that an old joke — and a tiring one.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Morgan Freeman smiles as preschool students walk the hallway of Charleston Elementary.

Freeman recently visited an elementary school library in Charleston, Mississippi — his home now, or at least his resting point between his journeys. Here he likes to “cave up,” he said.

With one stoplight, one grocery store and around 2,000 people, nearly half of whom live below the poverty line, it’s a strange home for a world-renowned star. But he’s called it his safest place — and, in another contradiction, a place that has no assets.

“We’re trying to build assets,” he said, lifting his hands to indicate the bright books on the surrounding shelves. “This is the best shot.”

Freeman knows the dismal facts. Mississippi’s education system is perpetually ranked as one of the nation’s worst; based on recent ACT scores, only one in eight high school graduates is fully prepared for college. For black students, who make up 85 percent of the public-school students in Tallahatchie County, where Charleston is situated, that number drops to 1 in 30.

“It just didn’t sit well,” Freeman said. “Moving back home, I just couldn’t stand the idea of living in a state that was that stupid.”

Freeman attended elementary and high school in Mississippi, and remembers a better education.

“Even though we were segregated, we still had a really terrific system,” he said. “I could quote Chaucer, I could quote Shakespeare — I still can. That’s what we had to learn.”

In high school in Greenwood, he sang in the glee club, argued on the debate team, and played in the band, traveling to compete with other schools. He won his first acting award, a statewide prize for a one-act play, as a 12-year-old.

Since he moved home 25 years ago, he’s given widely to arts and education organizations.

“But if you don’t have a really targeted focus, you can get lost in such a broad vision,” his daughter, Morgana Freeman, said.

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Morgan Freeman stands inside the Charleston Elementary gymnasium with his daughter Morgana Freeman, who runs the actor’s Tallahatchie River Foundation.

Three years ago, when she took over his philanthropic organization, the Tallahatchie River Foundation, she sharpened its mission. She wants to overhaul early childhood education in Tallahatchie County. She wants students to “thrive by third grade.”

The research is clear: investing in effective pre-kindergarten can save money — as much, in some studies, as $12 for every dollar spent. But experts bemoan the state’s perpetually low funding.

In 2014, Mississippi paid for statewide pre-kindergarten for the first time — but just $3 million, enough to affect about 6 percent of Mississippi’s 4-year-olds. A national literacy test that year showed that two-thirds of the state’s kindergarteners were not ready for school. Small, rural counties like Tallahatchie face some of the steepest challenges.

The Tallahatchie River Foundation aims to help such counties support their children. Their first move was to launch TELA, or Tallahatchie Early Learning Alliance. The organization supports community efforts to provide holistic assistance to young children in the county — training for excellent early childhood educators, resources to local schools and childcare providers, and support for new parents.

Morgana — who calls herself a city girl — said that after early efforts, she had to learn a key lesson: You need to listen before you can make change. Now that idea is built into the foundation’s five-year plan, which launched in June. She wants community itself, rather than the foundation, to take ownership of TELA.

“The foundation is built on collaboration,” she said. “No one can do this work alone.”

“Listen to her,” her father said, rising jokingly, as if this were the final word that need be said. Listening is a role that suites Freeman just fine. Despite his commitment to education, when asked if he has a vision for the ideal classroom, again he demurred.

“Give it to the experts,” he said. “I’m not an expert on any of this. I just happen to have some money.”*

He didn’t always. Born in Memphis in 1937, Freeman moved from community to community as a child — from Mississippi to greater Chicago and back. After high school, he turned down a drama scholarship to Jackson State University, thinking it couldn’t lead to Hollywood. Aiming simply to get out of the state, he joined the U.S. Air Force.

But he soon realized he preferred the movie version of the military to the real thing. So, in 1961, 11 years after winning his statewide prize, he caught a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles. While attending dance and acting class, Freeman worked clerical jobs. He tried his luck in New York, too, where between auditions and Broadway gigs, he kept up a stream of temp jobs.

“There were a few times where I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing whatever I happened to be doing to eat,’” he said. “Even after my career had gotten what I had thought was a good, firm foothold, I had to say, ‘OK, my 15 minutes are up, now what?’”

When he was nearly 40, his luck turned: he landed a role on The Electric Company, a Children’s Television Workshop program for kids who had aged out of Sesame Street.

It was not a role he relished; those years were tough in their own way, marked by drinking and divorce. But he had money and a career.

Finally, in 1987, nearly 50 years old, he scored a role in Street Smart. His performance earned critical raves. Within two years he starred in Glory and Driving Miss Daisy, launching a nearly unbroken series of acclaimed performances. Since, he’s won an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe; he is the fourth-highest grossing actor of all time.

It took years, hard work and life lessons, but finally, suddenly, Freeman arrived.

*

A short inventory of 78-year-old Freeman’s recent filmography: he’s played a government scientist seeking to save the world; a U.S. senator; the speaker of the House and eventual U.S. vice president; and an all-powerful wizard. In a commercial that aired during the United Nations climate talks in Paris last year, Freeman spoke as the voice of the Earth. In 2003’s Bruce Almighty, he became our Hollywood stand-in for God.

No wonder he seems to have lessons to teach. But that voice, like so much in his life, is the result of hard work. Early on, he practiced speaking slowly, enunciating his final consonants, shedding his Southern accent and deepening his tone.

But, Freeman does use his voice to guide. The foundation has just rolled out a messaging campaign, with Freeman as narrator, pitching Mississippians statewide on his daughter’s key idea — students must “thrive by third.”

And in a six-part documentary which aired on the National Geographic channel in April, he shared, as the title puts it, “the Story of God.” It was for this project that Freeman, acting as producer and narrator, recently traveled the world.

On the subject of God, Freeman said he wants to make clear that he is not an atheist.

“Write that down,” he said. “Morgan Freeman believes in God.”

What he does believe, though, is idiosyncratic: he identifies with Zoroastrianism, an ancient Persian religion little talked about outside of history class.

He held up his hand to tick off its three key principles, seemingly fuzzy and warm: good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

“That’s all that life requires of you,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye. “After that, have babies and die.”

*

At one point, noting that the biggest employer in Tallahatchie County is a prison, Freeman’s voice dropped, almost mournful.

“I don’t think that’s helpful,” he whispered. “I really don’t.”

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Charleston, Miss., is actor Morgan Freeman’s “safest place.”

He’s at his most open when he speaks of his adopted home state. At one point, he called it special. Why? What makes Mississippi different, he replied, is the way we are stuck in the Confederacy. He enunciated that final word with mock grandeur.

“Y’all lost,” he said. “That’s over, that’s done with.”

The state flag, the last in the nation to retain the Confederate saltire, is not a symbol of heritage, as many argue, he said.

“No, it’s, ‘You all are not welcome here.’”

Of course, Freeman still came. He said he had a “quiet epiphany” while visiting his parents in the early 1980s, just as his career was beginning to rise.

“I’ve always had this sense of, ‘Ah, OK, just relax. I’m good.’”

Melanie Thortis / © The 'Sip

Charleston, Miss., in the Delta is where Freeman goes to relax between projects.

In a town like Charleston, he said he can go to the grocery store and no one will follow wielding cell phones.

Morgana shook her head. “Yes, they do.”

“I haven’t seen them,” Freeman replied.

His daughter is right. Cell phones did appear on a recent trip home for Freeman. It was after a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new wellness center in town that Freeman and his daughter attended. A woman in the lobby made giddy plans to get that selfie with a man who was her favorite actor, as she told her friends.

Freeman smiled politely, then, photo done, said goodbye to his daughter, and climbed alone into a gleaming black sedan. His 160-acre ranch was somewhere in these hills. And, Freeman seemed eager to head home — to, perhaps, cave up in his safest place.

The post Morgan Freeman adds his voice to improving education appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jeff Amy, AP

Approximately 300 people march in front of the Governor’s Mansion protesting the Mississippi law allowing religious groups and some private businesses to deny services to same-sex couples and transgender people.

Just hours after House Bill 1523 took effect on Tuesday, plaintiffs in the original lawsuit appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping the high court will declare the law unconstitutional.

On Sept. 29, a full panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied plaintiffs’ requests to rehear their challenge to House Bill 1523, known by some as Mississippi’s religious freedom law, finally opening the doors for the law to take effect after 18 tumultuous months of legal challenges.

Rob McDuff, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs on Barber v. Bryant, said that despite the Fifth Circuit’s decision, he believes the law is unconstitutional.

“We are asking the Supreme Court to review this case because it is unfair and unconstitutional. These laws are wolves in sheep’s clothing — it is LGBT discrimination disguised as religious freedom. By promoting discrimination in the name of religion, HB 1523 violates both the First and the Fourteenth Amendments,” McDuff said.

In June, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit had declared that the plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge House Bill 1523 because they could not prove they had been harmed by a law that had yet to take effect. Although the judges did not rule on the merits of the case, their decision overturned an earlier federal court ruling that had declared the law unconstitutional.

By appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, the plaintiffs say they are hoping for a nationwide ruling on whether individuals have standing to challenge state laws “that permit and fuel anti-LGBT discrimination on religious grounds,” according to press releases from the Mississippi Center for Justice and Lambda Legal, which are challenging the ruling along with McDuff.

“HB1523 goes into effect today, but our clients have been experiencing the ill effects of the law since it passed,” said Beth Orlansky, advocacy director for the Mississippi Center for Justice. “The Fifth Circuit’s decision is out of step with decisions in many other circuits and we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will grant review and provide clarity on this issue.”

Gov. Phil Bryant, a vocal proponent of the law and the defendant in the two cases that challenged it before the Fifth Circuit, praised the court’s decision to not rehear the case.

“As I have said from the beginning, this law was democratically enacted and is perfectly constitutional. The people of Mississippi have the right to ensure that all of our citizens are free to peacefully live and work without fear of being punished for their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Bryant said in an emailed statement on Oct. 1.

Barber v. Bryant’s appeal also adds some legal heavyweights to their challenge. Joining the legal team are former U.S. Solicitor General Don Verrilli and attorney Paul Smith, who argued the landmark case of Lawrence v. Texas, which declared laws criminalizing same-sex relationships to be unconstitutional.

Barber v. Bryant is one of two lawsuits that challenged House Bill 1523 in U.S. District Court and before the Fifth Circuit. Attorneys on the second case, Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant IV, have indicated interest in appealing.

In addition, last week U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves, indicated he would potentially revisit a case challenging Mississippi’s gay marriage ban, raising the question of whether House Bill 1523 violates an earlier Reeves order giving gay couples the right to marry.

House Bill 1523 singles out three “sincerely held” religious beliefs as worthy of protection: that marriage is between one man and one woman; that people should not have sex outside such marriages; and that a person’s gender is set at birth.

Gov. Phil Bryant signed the bill on April 5, 2016.

On June 30, minutes before the law would have taken effect at midnight, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves struck down House Bill 1523 in a blistering opinion that declared the law “does not honor (this country’s) tradition of religion freedom, nor does it respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi’s citizens.”

The post Plaintiffs appeal HB 1523 to U.S. Supreme Court appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Contributed by Campbell McCool

John Maxwell performs the one-man play Oh, Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write? at last year’s Conference on the Porch.

TAYLOR — Most Southerners pass by front porches without even noticing, except maybe to admire a particularly beautiful one. Most of us aren’t measuring the sociological connotations of the porch and what its absence in modern suburbia signifies.

That will not be the case at the annual Conference on the Front Porch, where people will come together to celebrate the porch and discuss its meaning.

“It’s really more we’re celebrating life on the porch and what the porch represents, but we get into some hardcore porch academia as well,” said Campbell McCool, who conceptualized the event.

The two-day event in the Plein Air neighborhood of Taylor, will feature lectures, panels, six meals (one of which will be in the Field at Plein Air) a porch concert and a porch play. Speakers include Bill Dunlap, Robert Khayat, Curtis Wilkie and others.  

The idea began to formulate four or five years ago when McCool started studying the whole history of the front porch in America, and the South in particular. He found that in the 1940’s with the advent of air conditioning, cars and television, the porch started to fade out of American architecture, which impacted how we interact with each other.

“You had air conditioning, so there was no longer the need to sit out on that front porch and catch the cool air at night,” McCool said. “Also you had that new invention inside called the television set so there was no longer a need to talk to people. You could just watch the idiot tube.”

Of course, there are caveats to this, but the phasing out of porches has in some sense led to the diminishing of community, the lessening of neighbors stopping by to visit when they see a familiar face sitting outside.

“If you’re on your stoop, you are in fact advertising yourself as being available for social interaction. It doesn’t mean that somebody can ask you out to the movies, but it does mean that if somebody comes by and says, ‘Hey,’ you have kind of a social obligation to go, ‘Hey, what up.’ That transaction is the beginning of human connection,” said Mike Dolan, a speaker at this year’s conference and author of “The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place.”

They’re also a place where we cultivate the culture of our families. Where you sit in a rocking chair next to your grandfather and watch an afternoon storm roll over the pond. Or crack pecans that fell out of your grandmother’s backyard tree with your cousins.

“The porch means something to us. It means home. It means a place we can relax. It means a place where you’re welcome,” Dolan said. “Bad things have happened on porches. Martin Luther King’s grandfather’s porch was bombed on the street in front of his church in Atlanta. But in the main, porches are places of shelter and interaction on a pleasant level and relaxation and familial encounters.”

To learn more about the Oct. 18 – 19 conference, click here.

The post ‘It isn’t just about lumber’: Conference explores porch’s role in Southern culture appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Locals and world-travelers who enter the White Front Café/Joe’s Hot Tamale Place all come for the same thing — legendary hot tamales made famous by the late Joe Pope. They are part of a tradition in the Delta, one that Joe’s sister, Barbara Pope, is carrying on in the white clapboard building in Rosedale, a small community on the banks of the Mississippi River, just west of Cleveland.

Like most folks who make hot tamales, Barbara never aspired to run a hot tamale business. The beloved treat just somehow claimed her as it did the small circle of tamale people in the Delta. A Mississippi tourism booklet has even called the tamale one of the more unexpected official state delicacies.

But it took a few years to get there.

Tamales at Doe’s Eat Place, photo by Megan Wolfe

The history of hot tamales isn’t crystal clear, but it is widely believed the tamale originally came into the United States from Mexico — either from soldiers returning from the Mexican-American War or from migrant Mexican workers brought to this country in the early 1900s to work the cotton fields. The tamale was portable — it could be taken to the field — and it was easy to prepare. Working alongside African-Americans, the Mexicans shared their recipe of pork and masa. It wasn’t long before the tamales were made by the African-American cooks, changing the recipe to fit their tastes and availability of meat and cornmeal. As the recipes evolved, spices were added and the hot tamale we know today was born.

Don’t ask hot tamale makers for the recipes, however; they are closely guarded. The basic ingredients — meat, cornmeal or masa and seasonings — are the same, but you won’t find out how much of the seasoning goes into the pot.

“There are three things that aren’t secret about a hot tamale,” said Eugene Hicks of Clarksdale. “The texture, the taste and the juice aren’t secret.”

He should know. Hicks has been making hot tamales for more than 55 years. He serves them up, covered in juice, at Hicks World Famous Hot Tamales in a building that was once the city jail. He learned how to make them at 12 years old. By 14, he was making his own and letting friends and family taste them.

“It’s a lot of work to do tamales. It takes two days,” Hicks said. “But there is something special when a person tastes a tamale for the first time and they like it. Money can’t buy that.”

The meat, whether beef or pork — sometimes chicken — is cooked on the first day, shredded or ground and refrigerated to make it easier to handle. The cornmeal is also prepared and cooled. On the second day, the meat mixture is placed inside the cornmeal either by hand or with the help of a machine, then rolled in a corn shuck.

Over the years, some hot tamale makers have gone to extreme measures to keep their tamale recipes secret. One of the most far-fetched has to be the late Big Doe Signa. Founder of the iconic Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, Signa got his hands on a partial hot tamale recipe that was perfected by his wife, Mamie. According to Signa’s sons, Charles and Little Doe, they would help their dad make the hot tamales in the middle of the night, after closing the eatery earlier in the evening.

“When it came time to add the seasonings into the meat, Daddy would go into another room and lock the door,” said Charles. “He wanted to make very sure no one saw what he was putting in those hot tamales, even if it was the middle of the night.”

Scott’s Hot Tamales, photo by Megan Wolfe

About the same time Signa began making hot tamales, so did the Scott Family of Metcalfe. Aaron and Elizabeth Scott were living in Texas when Elizabeth was pregnant and had a craving for hot tamales. Her husband couldn’t keep up with her demand, so he decided to make them himself. When they moved to Greenville, they began to sell their hot tamales from a cart they rolled around downtown. A hot tamale stand was erected on Nelson Street, then later Mississippi Highway 1, where it stands today.

“Our daddy started this business, and we have kept it going all these years,” said Loretta Scott Gilliam. “I think he would be proud.”

Today, several of Aaron and Elizabeth’s children and grandchildren gather every week in the kitchen he built especially for making hot tamales. There, they make about 100 dozen tamales to sell at the stand. And weekly orders come in for shipping across the U.S.

Mark Azlin is also working hard to introduce the rest of the country to the lure of hot tamales. Delta born and raised, Azlin invented the fried hot tamale. Since Southerners love anything fried, it was surprising that no one had thought of this idea before. A frozen hot tamale is dipped in a beer batter and deep fried until it has a crispy, golden crust. It was an immediate hit at his restaurant, Bourbon Mall in Leland. Other eateries began to copy the idea, and it took off. But Azlin wanted to take the hot tamale a step further – out of the Delta.

His company, Juke Joint Foods, wholesales hot tamales to the food service industry, putting them on restaurant tables across Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee. A few grocery stores even sell Juke Joint Hot Tamales — already cooked, ready to heat and serve.

“People love hot tamales and this is just one way we can offer them to folks outside the Delta,” said Azlin, who now lives in Oxford. “We’ve got a good Delta recipe to share with the world.”

While hot tamales are known primarily as a Delta cuisine, various hot tamale businesses have sprung up around Mississippi, each with a distinct flavor and unique, highly guarded recipe.

“Folks have worked too hard in developing their recipe,” says cookbook author Susan Puckett and native Mississippian. “They are a bit reluctant to share their recipe with anyone.”

Perry Gibson of Sho-Nuff Hot Tamales, photo by Megan Wolfe

But sharing is how Perry Gibson of Greenville got into the hot tamale game. He wanted to learn how to make tamales. A lady who was once married to legendary hot tamale maker Joe Pope showed him the ropes. The recipe he perfected now lives in his head, but he said one day, someone will find a copy in his safe. Perry sells his hot tamales under the name Sho Nuff out of a modern day tamale cart, a decades old tradition he wanted to keep alive.

It is because of hot tamales that a new tradition has evolved – the Delta Hot Tamale Festival. Founded in 2012 by three women — Betty Lynn Cameron, Valerie Rankin and me (Anne Martin) — the festival was inspired by a backyard hot tamale tasting. The inaugural festival attracted more than 5,000 visitors and has grown to about 20,000. A former Greenville mayor, the late Chuck Jordan, even had the city declared the Hot Tamale Capital of the World.

Each year on the third weekend in October, visitors flock to Greenville. The event offers a hot tamale championship cook-off, a hot tamale eating contest and the crowning of Miss Hot Tamale.

Meanwhile, hot tamale makers across the Delta, such as Barbara Pope, usually spend a couple of days a week making hot tamales. Some use a machine to form the tubular tamale while others use only their hands to shape the treat. But all are hand-rolled.

Barbara Pope said she is still amazed why people like them so much, but she admits there is something special about hot tamales. She’s right. After all, you can’t say hot tamales without smiling.

Photos by Megan Wolfe

The Delta Hot Tamale Festival, a three-day event celebrating local and regional artists, musicians and tamale makers, will be Oct. 19-21 in Greenville. For information, visit the festival website here.

The post Delta Hot Tamales: Clues to the secret of their success appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Kierre Rimmer

Kierre Rimmer, center, with kids from his program F.L.Y. Zone in Cleveland.

Mississippi’s black boys are more likely to live in poverty than children in all other racial and ethnic groups.

Black boys in Mississippi consistently perform worse on national reading and math standardized tests than other groups.

Black males are twice as likely to be unemployed in Mississippi.

These are a few of the findings of two new reports from the Hope Policy Institute that examine education and economic security gaps of black males in Mississippi. The recently published reports conclude that “creating opportunities for young men and boys of color to reach their full potential helps to advance individual opportunity, family sustainability, community prosperity, and Mississippi’s overall economic competitiveness.”

In other words, given the immense challenges that African American males face, policies that help them could also help Mississippi start climbing off the bottom of any number of lists where the state ranks low for citizens’ quality of life, according to people who work with black boys and teens.

For example, Mississippi has a 5.3 percent unemployment rate — the nation’s sixth highest — but one in 10 African American males is unemployed, according to the Hope report “Closing the Economic Security Gap for Mississippi’s Black Males.”

The Jackson metropolitan area has the highest concentration of out-of-work black men in the state; Carroll County is where black male unemployment is highest, about 30 percent at the time of the report by Hope, a Jackson-based nonprofit that analyzes data about poverty, health, housing and other issues and advocates for policies that help low-income families.

Kierre Rimmer founded the Cleveland-based group called F.L.Y. (Forever Lifting Youth) Zone for boys and girls ages 10 to 18. A focus of the organization is connecting kids to business owners, professionals and other community leaders as well as teaching basic life skills like how to change a flat tire. It’s important to introduce young people to the concept of entrepreneurship because there aren’t a lot of places to get jobs in the Mississippi Delta, especially for kids, according to the group.

“The pressure to have money at 13 or 14, shouldn’t be a focus. That should be the parents’ responsibility. You should be enjoying being 13 or 14. White kids don’t have that problem. You ask 14- or 15-year-old black (kid), they don’t know what an allowance is,” Rimmer said.

Jackson State University

Natalie Collier is founder and director of the Lighthouse project in Jackson.

Natalie Collier, director of the Lighthouse Foundation in Jackson, which works with young women of color in the South, agrees that there’s an expectation that black kids grow into adulthood quickly, which she believes can be harmful to black families.

“We do this disturbing thing, like say (to boys) ‘You’re the man of the house.’ No, you’re still a child. We don’t let girls be girls and boys be boys. We don’t let them be children,” she said.

The Hope report illuminates those pressures. It shows that while Mississippi has the highest-in-the-nation poverty rate, 22.5 percent, more than 30 percent of Mississippi’s black males are poor compared to about 10 percent of white men in Mississippi. Of all black males in poverty, black boys represent largest age group: In Mississippi, more than 15 percent of black males under 18 are poor compared to 3 percent of white boys.

“Poverty shapes the health, education and long-term outcomes of Mississippi’s black men and youth. The stress of poverty can also affect the psychological health of individuals and families. Mississippi’s black men are much more likely to encounter the negative effects of poverty and live in communities that are similarly affected by entrenched generational poverty,”  write the report’s authors, Molly Bashay and Corey Wiggins.

Men living in poverty in Mississippi. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year Estimates; Hope Institute

Cassio Batteast runs a leadership institute for black boys in Jackson, including at the youth detention center where he says the cycle of generational poverty comes into sharp focus. The boys he works with come from single-mom-headed households and feel pressure to contribute to the household’s finances even if legitimate work is hard to come by when you’re a teenager.

“A lot of them get in trouble because they’re trying to help their moms. They’re breaking in people’s houses and doing some stuff just to help their moms out not because they’re trying to ball,” Batteast said.

Of course, when kids are locked up in juvy they can fall behind in school making them more likely to drop out, or if they’re not old enough to drop out, just hang around until they can, added Batteast.

From standardized test scores to high-school completion to college remediation, Mississippi’s black boys are lagging behind, according to another Hope report titled “Closing the Education Equity Gap For Mississippi’s Black Males.” It shows that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores for Mississippi black males are consistently lower than state and national averages.

Advocates say we need to rethink policies that have disproportionate negative effects on black males.

Cassio Batteast directs runs a leadership institute in Jackson

“With our young men, if we want to have safe productive communities and society why not focus on the group that’s having the most challenges? If we say these are the students that are having the most challenges, if we make sure they’re successful it automatically increases the district’s and the state’s success,” said Batteast.

Jeremiah Smith, a former teacher who runs the Rosedale Freedom Project in Bolivar County, said schools should adopt what are known as restorative practices over zero-tolerance school discipline policies. For example, if two kids get into fight at school, restorative practices would involve mediation with peers and support staff instead of calling the police and automatic suspension, he said. Smith believes such a policy change would help the students as well as overburdened and under-resourced schools.

“The idea that people will do this out of noble motives is not the case and what we have to do is tap into people’s perceived self interest. How do I convince them that it’s taxing their test scores to criminalize their young men of color?,” Smith asks. “Stressed out administrators and teachers would have an easier jobs if they would do the hard work now to reconfigure discipline systems so that later we’re not putting out the same fires.”

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