OurTupelo

The winter storm that contributed to downed power lines, gnarled trees and hazardous roadways across the state is also spurring school closures. 

Almost half of the state’s public school districts had announced plans to close or operate virtually on Monday, as of 6 p.m. Sunday, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Education and official posts. In some areas, such as Oxford and Lafayette County, schools will close for longer.

Many colleges and universities have announced plans to operate virtually.

The following list of weather-related closings announced for Monday is not exhaustive. Email information about school closings to mbrown@mississippitoday.org.

K-12 schools (public and private)

• Ambition Prep
• Benton County School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Brookhaven School District
• Canton Public School District
• Chickasaw County School District
• Claiborne County School District
• Clarksdale Municipal School District
• Cleveland School District
• Clinton Public School District
• Coahoma County School District: Closed through Tuesday; virtual learning
• Copiah County School District
• DeSoto County Schools
• East Tallahatchie School District
• Forest Municipal School District
• Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District
• Greenville Public School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Hinds County School District
• Hollandale School District
• Holmes County Consolidated School District
• Humphreys County School District
• Jackson Academy
• Jackson Preparatory School
• Jackson Public Schools
• Kosciusko School District
• Lafayette County School District: Closed all week
• Laurel School District
• Lawrence County School District
• Leake County School District
• Lee County School District
• Leland School District
• Lincoln County School District
• Lowndes County School District
• Madison County Schools
• Magnolia Speech School
• McComb School District
• MIssissippi Schools for Deaf and the Blind
• Natchez-Adams School District
• New Albany School District: Closed through Tuesday
• North Panola School District
• North Pike School District
• Okolona Separate School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Oxford School District: Closed all week
• Pearl Public School District
• Philadelphia Public School District
• Quitman County School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Rankin County School District
• RePublic Charter Schools
• Scott County School District
• Senatobia School District: Closed through Wednesday
• Simpson County School District
• Smith County School District
• South Panola School District 
• South Pike School District
• SR1 College Preparatory & STEM Academy
• Sunflower County Consolidated School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Tishomingo County School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Tunica County School District: Closed through Tuesday
• Tupelo Public School District
• Vicksburg-Warren School District: A decision about a Tuesday closure will be made by 2 p.m. Monday.
• Walthall County School District
• Wayne County School District
• West Jasper School District
• Western Line School District
• West Tallahatchie School District
• Winona-Montgomery Consolidated School District: Operating virtually
• Yazoo City Municipal School District 
• Yazoo County School District

Colleges and universities (public and private)

• Alcorn State University: Operating virtually; opens at noon on Tuesday
• Coahoma County Community College
• Copiah–Lincoln Community College
• Delta State University: Closed through Tuesday
• East Central Community College: Operating virtually
• Hinds Community College: Operating virtually
• Itawamba Community College
• Jackson State University: Operating virtually 
• Jones College: Operating virtually
• Meridian Community College: Operating virtually
• Millsaps College: Operating virtually
• Mississippi College: Operating virtually
• Mississippi Delta Community College: Closed through Tuesday
• Mississippi State University: Operating virtually
• Mississippi University for Women
• Mississippi Valley State University: Operating virtually at instructors’ discretion
• Northeast Mississippi Community College: Closed through Tuesday
• Northwest Mississippi Community College: Operating virtually
• Rust College: Operating virtually
• Southeastern Baptist College: A decision about a Tuesday closure will be made by 5 p.m. Monday.
• Southwest Mississippi Community College: Operating virtually
• Tougaloo College: Operating virtually
• University of Mississippi: Closed though Tuesday

The winter storm that pushed through the state Saturday and Sunday temporarily knocked out power at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman and Delta Correctional Facility in Greenwood, even as temperatures plunged below freezing.

“At Parchman, we had a limb fall on a line,” Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain told Mississippi Today on Sunday afternoon. “The power is coming back on.”

He said during the afternoon that Entergy workers spent about three hours fixing the problem, but during another call later in the day, Cain said the crew had continued its work. That brought the work to about six hours and delayed the full restoration of power beyond what Cain had originally said.

Parchman is in rural Sunflower County near Tutwiler and has about 1,900 inmates. Delta Correctional is in Greenwood and houses about 300 women. Both are in areas that received snow and ice.

Generators were supplying power Sunday at Delta Correctional, Cain said. “The only place we’ve had a problem is at Parchman.”

“I just had a mama tell me that the inmates were banging on the wall all night, that they were cold and hungry,” Cain said. “All that’s bullshit.”

Inmates had sack lunches Sunday, Cain said, “and we should be able to cook supper. We have water and everything.”

House Corrections Committee Chairwoman Becky Currie said Sunday that she asked prison officials if they had checked generators at Parchman before the ice storm.

“They said no,” Currie said. “I’m raising hell, but it is an emergency. This is another major mistake for the Department of Corrections.”

Currie told Mississippi Today that she spoke to a staff member at Delta Correctional on Sunday afternoon who told her the generator was working but was only keeping some lights on. It was not sufficiently heating the building, the staff member told her.

“I can’t imagine being in a tin can with no heat,” Currie said. “We all plan for storms in Mississippi. That’s why there is not a loaf of bread on the shelf (in the grocery store). They are responsible for thousands of lives. There are hospice patients, dialysis patients. And they can’t make sure the generators are going to work in time of need?”

Temperatures at Parchman fell to 19 degrees Sunday.

An inmate in Parchman’s Unit 29, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said he awoke at 1 a.m. Sunday to the lights flickering on and off. He said that at 3 a.m., a fire was set down the hall from his cell. He said inmates were trying to get the attention of correctional officers after the power went out, and the temperature inside the block got “too damn cold.”

The only light visible was coming through the windows, he said. “The officers aren’t doing anything, they’re not checking to see if inmates are cold or anything.”

Inmates were hollering for warmer clothes after the temperature dropped, he said. A warden later announced to inmates that “nothing could be done,” he said.

Mississippi Today was able to review photos of both the inmate’s icy window and the fire that was set in his block. Dark cells and hallways can be seen in an additional photograph obtained. Parchman’s fields are blanketed with white snow in another.

At around noon Sunday, the inmate said he was given a cold breakfast. It’s unclear, he said, when the next meal could be served. Security checks that usually happen every half hour had ceased since early Sunday morning, he added. Besides breakfast at noon and a nurse making a medication drop at a nearby cell, he said no guard or other person had come by his cell Sunday.

Stephen C. McCraney, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said Sunday he received a phone call about three to four days ago that three generators at the Delta Correctional Facility were “iffy.” He said he sent three extra generators to the prison.

Parchman is a new problem, he said. When power went out there, it became a priority, he said.

“Sometimes things break in the middle of the night. Those customers within those facilities, they can’t go home for the weekend, they can’t go to the neighbor’s house and we realize that,” McCraney said of the prisoners in Parchman and Delta Correctional.

Mississippi Today obtained text messages from a Parchman guard, who wrote: “Most of their stuff doesn’t work. What does work is rigged up. They don’t have a maintenance team that actually knows what they are doing.

“And our heaters work well,” the guard wrote. “They just aren’t turned all the way up because we don’t want to burn them up and then be without them all together. They are set at 65 or 68 I can’t remember. So inmates probably still want a blanket to keep comfortable but they definitely are not freezing.”

At a Sunday news conference, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said he was “aware” of the prison problems. “I’m confident that we will get that back online via a generator if not already, then very soon,” Reeves said.

Facebook entries by people concerned about prison conditions alleged that Parchman inmates were suffering without heat or food. 

When someone made a joke on Facebook about inmates freezing to death, Drea LaSha responded that they are “still human beings that breathe the same air we do. They are not dead but will be in such conditions and you joke about it … Could be you.”

Terell Harris added, “These are humans and not animals, and let’s be honest, the animals get protected in these conditions. Everyone in prison don’t deserve to be there, and some are actually innocent. Either way, these are humans, and we all have family that has been to prison.”

Update, 1/25/2026: This story has been updated to show an Entergy crew worked longer than Commissioner Burl Cain had originally said.

Snow and ice left widespread damage across northern Mississippi as a massive storm moved across large parts of the U.S., creating dangerous travel conditions. Trees split open and dropped heavy branches, and power lines crashed down in some areas.

Though the worst damage was in the northern part of the state, areas as far south as Natchez saw icy conditions.

As much as 12% of Mississippi customers were without electricity at peak outages Sunday, and the hardest-hit areas were in the northern part of the state, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. 

“The situation is expected to get worse before it gets better,” Gov. Tate Reeves said, warning that restoring power could take days. He said 47 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have been affected by the storm.

“We haven’t seen a storm of this magnitude in terms of ice since 1994,” Reeves said. “This magnitude, this large an area in our state, and quite honestly, this much ice, we haven’t seen anything like this for 32 years.”

Reeves said that things could change, but “at this time we do not anticipate the need to call out the (National) Guard” as North Carolina has done to deal with the storm.

About half of Mississippi’s public school districts will be closed Monday. In hard-hit Oxford and Lafayette County, where fallen trees were blocking many roads, officials announced schools will close all week.

Like many other Oxford residents, Lee Ragland said he and his wife, Jana, were without power Sunday. He said some trees and large limbs fell in their yard, but luckily none had hit their house.

“Laid in bed last night listening to transformers blow and trees snapping and falling up and down street,” Lee Ragland said in a text message. “Not a good feeling. Now need to find a chainsaw crew to clear my driveway.”

Holly Springs resident Pat Stubbs said his home lost power Saturday night, and trees were down all around his neighborhood.

“I’ve got gas logs and a gas stove and oven. I’m better off than most,” Stubbs said Sunday. “Looks like it’s gonna be a few days before all this melts.”

In Clarksdale, Shawn Thomas-Erving said Sunday he helped six people who were stuck in the storm Saturday evening, including law enforcement. He said he used a shovel to get tires out of areas thickly blanketed with snow and ice. 

Thomas-Erving said afterward that he was tired, but “I felt like it was my duty.”

He said wintry conditions haven’t been this bad in Clarksdale since the early 2000s. He described the situation Sunday as “unbearable,” with cars still sliding and getting stuck.

Reeves said power outage numbers have been fluctuating and are likely to get worse as temperatures drop overnight and into Monday morning, but that at a peak Sunday about 180,000 customers, about 12% of customers statewide, were out.

Lafayette County, home to Oxford, had about 20,000 customers without electricity at midday Sunday, about 75% of the customers in that county.

Lee County, home to Tupelo, had nearly 13,000 customers without electricity, about 35%.

Tippah Electric Power Association reported that TVA, one of the largest power providers in northeast Mississippi, had “catastrophic damage” to one of its main distribution lines “and because of that, it could be a lengthy time before they are able to get power to every customer,” Reeves said.

Jackson firefighters extinguished flames Saturday night at what was supposed to be a vacant building at Chapel Ridge apartments. The Jackson Fire Department’s chief investigator, Charles Felton, said the building was being used by people “without permanent housing.”

Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill said on social media Sunday that crews were working to clear streets for emergency vehicles. She implored people to remain home and to stay away from downed power lines.

“It looks dire right now, I know, but Oxford’s a community that takes care of each other and comes together when things are most challenging,” Tannehill said. “And this challenge will be no different.”

Coahoma County resident Elicia Martin Mosley said in a written message Sunday that her husband and the county road department worked until 5 p.m. Friday to prepare for the storm as much as possible.

“Unfortunately, you can’t always prepare for what God has in store!” she said. “Why invest in a $200,000 machine for a once every 2-3 years storm! If you wanna get out … gone do what you need to do. If it’s an emergency call for help otherwise watch and pray!”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Saturday night that President Donald Trump has approved an emergency declaration for Mississippi for this winter storm, which allows federal financial assistance for recovery.

Reeves said at a press conference Sunday that Mississippi has requested 30 generators and truckloads of water from federal emergency management officials. He said he does not anticipate needing to call out the National Guard to help with recovery efforts.

1/25/2026: Michael Goldberg, Geoff Pender and Marquita Brown contributed to this story, which has been updated with information from Gov. Tate Reeves and Oxford and Lafayette County schools and comments from a Coahoma County resident.

While Speaker Jason White said he did not pressure House members for their support to garner the narrow 61-59 margin to pass his massive school choice/voucher bill, he at the least had a laser-like understanding of how representatives were going to vote.

Normally, during final passage of a bill in the House, the speaker opens the voting machine and then asks three times “has everyone voted” before closing the machine.

When it came time to vote on the controversial school choice/voucher bill, White opened the machine, which displays on two giant boards on the House floor how members are voting, and asked twice “has everyone voted?” Before he repeated that phrase the third and final time, he took the unusual move of interjecting, “waiting on the gentleman from Grenada,” presumably Republican Kevin Horan.

White then asked, “anyone else?”

Without the momentarily delayed vote of the gentleman from Grenada, the bill would have passed by a one-vote margin instead of the two-vote difference. A tie vote would have been a rejection of the bill.

The bottom line is that White can say he did not apply pressure, as he told reporters after the vote earlier this month, but it was obvious he had a clear understanding of the members’ votes he needed to pass his signature bill for the 2026 session.

Being able to see the members vote on the giant screens can be a powerful influencer. Former House Speaker Billy McCoy used to say he lost only one vote as Education Committee chair. It was on a bill that allowed public schools to offer preschool classes. He said he lost the vote because then-Speaker Tim Ford held the machine open an unusual length of time and a handful of members got cold feet and changed their votes before Ford closed the machines. It is not likely that Ford was intentionally trying to sabotage the bill from McCoy, a fellow Democrat. After all, Ford voted for it.

After the closeness of the recent vote on the school choice/voucher proposal, it became questionable whether the bill would ever leave the House and advance to the Senate, where opposition to sending public funds to private schools seems even more intense.

The Mississippi Constitution gives any member the authority to hold a bill – after a final vote – on a procedural move called a motion to reconsider. The voucher bill was held on a motion, meaning it would require another majority vote to pass and advance to the Senate.

There was at least a little uncertainty on whether the bill could garner another majority. After all, two Republicans did not vote. One of them, Rep. Price Wallace of Mendenhall, said he was absent because of commitments on his family farm, but if he had been there he would have voted no. The other – Rep. Clay Deweese of Oxford – was apparently in the Capitol or close by, but did not vote.

It is not known for certain how he would have voted. But Bradley Roberson, the school superintendent in Deweese’s hometown of Oxford, has been a vocal opponent of spending public funds on private schools.

In the end, though, the motion to reconsider was disposed of on an anticlimactic voice vote and the bill was sent to the Senate.

It was a bit surprising to many that the opponents of the bill – all of the Democrats and 17 of White’s Republicans – did not demand a recorded vote that would have been visible on the two giant boards in the House chamber.

But, perhaps the thought was that at this point it was better to keep the coalition opposing the bill publicly together and not give someone, though White says it would not be him, the opportunity to twist arms to get additional votes for the bill.

The bottom line is if the bill passes the Senate there will be at least one other vote – perhaps multiple votes – on the bill in the House, and members already have taken a tough vote on the measure.

It is likely that if the Senate does kill the bill, White and his allies will attempt to amend another bill and reintroduce the school choice effort. Knowing that, perhaps members thought there was no need to have another tough vote this early in the session. Additional tough votes would come later.

And White says he will not be pressuring members – just reminding the gentleman from Grenada to vote.

A powerful winter storm that’s sweeping across a broad swath of the U.S. blew into Mississippi on Saturday, leaving much of the northern part of the state coated in ice and creating dangerous travel conditions.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation said ice had been reported on roads and bridges in at least 26 of the state’s 82 counties, primarily in northern Mississippi. In a social media post, the agency urged residents in heavily impacted areas to use roadways only for emergencies as crews monitored conditions and treated major routes.

People hunkered down in their homes after stocking up on groceries, and officials warned that electricity outages are likely in some places if ice coats power lines or knocks trees onto the lines.

Local officials echoed warnings about avoiding travel as temperatures dipped below freezing. Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill and the city’s police department reported that several major roadways were icy on Saturday afternoon, with conditions expected to worsen overnight and into the weekend.

“Please stay off the roads if at all possible,” Tannehill said. 

Severe winter weather is a rare occurrence in the Deep South, so it can have outsized impacts because Mississippi has limited winter weather infrastructure. Ice accumulation, even in small amounts, can quickly make roadways impassable and increase the risk of crashes.

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency warned that the storm could cause major power outages that could last several days across much of the state. MEMA had also urged residents days in advance to prepare by having enough water and non-perishable food on hand.

A blanket of snow covered much of the Delta. Clarksdale resident Myles Forrest said Saturday that he hasn’t seen so much snow for a couple of years.

“It was 50 degrees the day before and that was our warning that this may stick!” Forrest said in a message to Mississippi Today. “We are warm and inside with a bowl of Gumbo for my son’s Judah Birthday! He said this was his wishes for his Tenth birthday!”

Like many Mississippians, Clarksdale resident Joanne Shedd said she was praying not to lose electricity during the cold snap.

“I have gas in my house so we will stay fed and warm if we do,” she said.

Gov. Tate Reeves has declared a state of emergency and said at a Friday news conference he had been in contact with federal authorities to prepare for the storm.

Churches and social services agencies opened shelters in several parts of Mississippi, including in the capital city of Jackson, where advocates were working to help homeless people. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency published a list of warming shelters on its website and encouraged Mississippians to make emergency supply kits. 

The Associated Press reported that almost 12,000 weekend flights in the U.S. were canceled as the massive storm started to wreak havoc.

Roughly 140 million people, or more than 40% of the U.S. population, were under a winter storm warning from New Mexico to New England. The National Weather Service forecast warned of widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina. By midday Saturday, a quarter of an inch of ice was reported in parts of southeastern Oklahoma, eastern Texas and portions of Louisiana.

“What really makes this storm unique is, just following this storm, it’s just going to get so cold,” said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts.”

Correction, 1/24/2026: This story has been updated to attribute separate comments to Clarksdale residents Myles Forrest and Joanne Shedd. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Jackson’s homeless shelters opened additional beds ahead of a potentially devastating ice storm to protect vulnerable residents from the freeze.

But advocates say it would not be enough to serve the city’s entire unhoused population – some of whom will weather the storm outside in tents, tarps and sleeping bags. 

It’s not just homeless people in open-air encampments who will be left in the cold: Jacksonians with poorly insulated homes — as is common across the Southeast — may also need to seek refuge, further straining shelter capacity across the city. In other parts of Mississippi, churches and social services groups started opening shelters Friday as a winter storm with snow, freezing rain and sleet started moving across parts of the state Saturday.

Jackson’s roughly 250 shelter beds, operated by Stewpot Community Services, Shower Power, Gateway Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army, will accommodate the homeless or unstably housed during the coming week’s freezing temperatures, according to Melvin Stamps, the planning director for the Central Mississippi Continuum of Care. 

But the number of available beds is in flux, with advocates reporting that two of the year-round centers, the men’s shelter at Gateway Rescue Mission and the adult shelter at Salvation Army, are full or near capacity. The Salvation Army typically charges a boarding fee, but it waives that cost during inclement weather.

During past weather events, the city of Jackson has opened a temporary shelter at the Johnnie Champion Community Center, often called Champion’s Gym, near Jackson State University. With more than 100 beds, the building offers the largest capacity of any shelter in the city.

It will not be open during this storm because the heaters need to be replaced, according to city officials. An additional city facility that has been used as a temporary shelter, the Jackson Police Training Academy on Charles Street, is also not in sufficient condition to open. 

Nic Lott, the city’s spokesperson, said the building and maintenance department is working to secure new heaters. “We would love to use the facility, but the heaters need to be replaced and there’s a process we’re going through to get that done,” he said. 

Shower Power, which has operated at Champion’s in the past, opened 75 beds on Saturday at its building on South Commerce Street. 

Stewpot offers beds at two shelters, a men’s facility and a facility for women and children, all year round. On Friday, it opened an additional 30 beds at its downtown Opportunity Center – usually a day center – in anticipation of the falling temperatures. 

The city announced in a press release that the American Red Cross would be offering shelter, but as of noon on Saturday, the nonprofit was not affiliated with any shelters in Jackson or in the state of Mississippi, according to its online map.

“We probably won’t have enough inventory to be able to support the number of beds that may need that warming space,” said Stamps from Continuum of Care, which is composed of several organizations working to reduce homelessness. “Now, I think it would have been OK if Champion’s Gym was open.” 

While some homeless people in the Jackson area will attempt to weather the ice storm, Stamps said he anticipates the vast majority will attempt to seek shelter. Earlier this week, his organization conducted a survey of the number of homeless people in Jackson and found 123 people living at roughly 50 encampments throughout the city. 

“It’s all about establishing a positive rapport with them so that when a situation like this occurs, it’s not like we’re trying to poke and prod,” Stamps said. “We already have relationships.” 

Even so, the number of people outside who will attempt to seek shelter is likely higher, as point-in-time counts often fail to accurately capture how many homeless people live in a community. 

For the people who don’t seek shelter, advocates and outreach coordinators like Dee Dee Barlow Moore say the coming days will be life-threatening. Last month, a homeless man died of hypothermia after opting to sleep outside a building in downtown Jackson — mere blocks away from a shelter. 

“So many of them, in their minds, equate shelter to confinement and to so many horrible, traumatic things in their past,” she said. 

Another reason people avoid the shelter: Their dogs can’t come with them. 

Teresa Renkenberger, the founder of Shower Power, said she wishes it were possible to accommodate pets, but it is too disruptive.

“They would fight and bark, and trust me, I want to take them,” she said. 

To help the folks outside, she said they will be making repeated visits with sleeping bags and even pet food. And if people do choose to go to Shower Power, Renkenberger promises warmth: She said they recently finished installing blown-in insulation to complement two 5-ton heaters inside the large sleeping area.

Moore has also been visiting encampments throughout the city – collections of tents on streets in a mostly deserted industrial area close to downtown Jackson or groups who congregate behind chain retailers in the city’s northern limits – to pass out camping gear and other supplies. 

“But the ones that are the diehards, that truly believe that they can make it through anything, I ordered some of these camping mats that are insulated,” she said. 

That’s in addition to doling out what Moore estimates is three cars-worth of thermal blankets, tarps, hats and gloves, and sleeping bags. She is also planning to pass out propane camping heaters. 

Chemical hand warmers in particular can save lives, she said. 

“I’ve had one guy that literally didn’t die from hypothermia because his entire encampment pooled all of those together,” she said. “He had fallen in the mud and all they saw was his shoes sticking up. They got 20 to 30 HotHands and covered him in it until AMR got there.” 

Belonging to a group can help in other ways, too, Moore said. Some people who don’t want to go to shelters will pool funds they have made from panhandling to buy motel rooms. But for that to work, at least one person in the group must have identification — leading to the sometimes fatal resort of staying outside. 

“The wet and the cold is what will kill them,” she said. 

It’s not just the ice that can lead to death. The winter months in Jackson are known as “fire season,” due to the number of homes — abandoned or otherwise – that ignite, said Jeremiah Howard, the Hinds County coroner who also works as a volunteer firefighter in the tiny town of Pocahontas. 

The city of Jackson will sometimes see multiple fires in one night, Howard said. One cause of the repeated blazes: Homeless people seeking shelter inside abandoned houses and lighting fires to stay warm. 

Moore said she’s recently started passing out hand sanitizer to people living in encampments so they can safely start fires, as she’s seen too many people try to light tires to stay warm, then breathe in toxic smoke. 

“They come out looking like they’ve been rolling in soot,” she said. “But they’re trying to survive.” 

Another reason for the fire season: Drafty windows and poor insulation that force residents to heat their homes through unsafe methods, such as multiple space heaters or the oven. 

Jill Buckley, Stewpot’s executive director, said the extended freezing temperatures mean a higher likelihood that people will face financial hardship from trying to stay warm.  

“It’s a cascade of events that starts here and now and will take months to recover from,” she said. 

In one scenario, Buckley described a resident’s gas usage going up because they’re relying on the oven to stay warm, leading to a higher bill the next month. 

“Then you have to figure out how to pay your regular bills,” she said. “Or something happens with your plumbing, you can’t afford to get the plumber out, and JXN Water charges you thousands of dollars.” 

Buckley said her coordinators will keep going out to make sure people know they have a place to get warm. 

“They’re making that decision when it’s 54 degrees outside,” she said. “It might be a different decision when it’s 32 degrees outside.” 

Warming shelters in Jackson 

Stewpot Community Services, 601-353-2759

• Opportunity Center, 845 West Amite St.
• Matt House Shelter for Women and Children, 355 Livingston St. 
• Billy Brumfield Men’s Shelter, 1244 South Gallatin St.

The Salvation Army, 601-982-4881

110 Presto Lane

Shower Power, 769-610-6296

836 South Commerce St. 

Gateway Rescue Mission, 601-353-5864

410 South Gallatin St. 

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney is accusing Mississippi coach Pete Golding of tampering with transfer player Luke Ferrelli and said Friday he has forwarded evidence to the NCAA.

“If you tamper with my players, I’m going to turn you in. It’s just that simple,” Swinney said during a news conference. “I’m not out to get anybody fired, but there has to be accountability and consequences for this type of behavior and total disregard for the rules.

“If this happened in the NFL, which is an actual league with rules, they would be fined, they would take draft picks, they hit the cap, whatever,” Swinney continued. “This is such a terrible example for young coaches in this profession. … To me, this situation is like having an affair on your honeymoon.”

Ferrelli, a former linebacker at California, entered the transfer portal on Jan. 2 and committed to Clemson four days later. Ferrelli subsequently enrolled, began classes, and began attending meetings and workouts, Swinney said.

Ferrelli reentered the portal on Jan. 22 and committed to Ole Miss.

“You can’t sign with the Browns and practice a week, and then the Dolphins call you and say we’re going to give you a little more money and you say, ‘See ya, boys,’ and go play for the Dolphins. That’s not the real world,” Swinney said.

Ole Miss athletic officials did not respond to Swinney’s allegations when contacted on Friday by The Associated Press.

NCAA vice president of enforcement Jon Duncan said in a statement that the association “will investigate any credible allegations of tampering and expect full cooperation from all involved as required by NCAA rules.”

Swinney alleged that Golding maintained contact with Ferrelli after the linebacker had enrolled at Clemson, even texting, “I know you’re signed, but what is your buyout?”

When Swinney found out about it, he said he initially told Clemson general manager Jordan Sorrells that he wanted to give Golding “some grace” because the Rebels’ coach was newly promoted after Lane Kiffin left for LSU over Thanksgiving weekend.

Swinney asked Sorrells to tell Ole Miss officials “that we know what’s going on, and if he doesn’t cease communication, I’m going to turn him in. I really thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t.”

Swinney said Ferrelli’s agent confirmed that Golding had continued reaching out to the player, so Clemson officials asked for copies of the text messages.

“The agent communicated that if we were to add a second year at $1 million to the already agreed-upon deal with Luke, then they would gladly give us whatever we need to turn Ole Miss in,” Swinney said. “Jordan, appropriately, said, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’”

Clemson athletic director Graham Neff said the university’s main reason for making the allegations public was to spur changes to the college football calendar and related rules — or lack thereof — that have contributed to upheaval across the sport.

“The NCAA was surprised a school was willing to come forward as directly and transparently as we were,” Neff said. “We need to look real hard at how we got here, but (also) how to get out of it.”

Neff added that Clemson was exploring its legal options.

“This is not about a linebacker at Clemson,” Swinney added. “I don’t want anyone on our team that doesn’t want to be here.

“It’s about the next kid and about the message being sent if this blatant tampering is allowed to happen without any consequences.”

Swinney also called the January transfer portal window “stupid,” saying it causes “flat-out extortion in some cases” because players and schools are making major decisions during “such a short period of time, right in the middle of when people are trying to play bowl games, playoff games, et cetera.”

If the system is not reformed, Swinney warned, there will be unintended consequences for players who transfer among multiple schools while chasing short-term financial payouts — particularly if they don’t make it to the NFL.

“We’re going to have some screwed-up 30-year-olds … that have no degrees, that have spent their money, that can’t play football anymore and aren’t connected to anything,” Swinney said.

Correction, 1/24/2026: This story has been updated to correct the author’s byline.

The 1967 bombing of the Beth Israel Congregation was far from a solitary act. The attack on Mississippi’s oldest synagogue came as part of a reign of terror by the nation’s most notorious Ku Klux Klan.

The newest attack on the house of worship, which happened this month, shows that “history repeats itself,” said Lindsay Baach Friedmann, South Central regional director for the Anti-Defamation League. “The question is not whether we are teaching the next generation, but what are we teaching them?”

The FBI has charged Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, of Madison, with burning the synagogue in the predawn hours of Jan. 10. According to federal court documents, Pittman referred to it as “the synagogue of Satan” — a term used by followers of Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that teaches that Adam and Eve were white, that non-whites are “mud people” and that Jews are the offspring of Satan.

What makes the latest attack scary is “there are a lot more of him out there,” said Rabbi Valerie Cohen, who served Beth Israel from 2003 to 2014.

During the Civil Rights era, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan became the most violent white supremacist organization in the U.S., responsible for at least 10 killings in Mississippi. They were also responsible for dozens of church bombings as well as the bombings of the homes of civil rights and Jewish leaders.

The White Knights rose to the fore after the University of Mississippi enrolled its first Black student in 1962. By 1964, the Klan group boasted more than 90,000 members.

When news came in early 1964 that civil rights workers planned to “invade” Mississippi that summer, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers told his Klansmen, “The events which will occur in Mississippi this summer may well determine the fate of Christianity for centuries to come.”

He urged them to get their guns ready.

“When the black waves hit our communities, we must remain calm and think in terms of our individual enemies rather than our mass enemy,” he told them. “We must roll with the mass punch which they will deliver in the streets during the day, and we must counterattack the individual leaders at night.”

Then he advised them, “Any personal attacks on the enemy should be carefully planned to include only the leaders and prime white collaborators of the enemy forces.”

On the first day of summer 1964, Klansmen killed three young civil rights workers, who were investigating the Klan’s burning of a Black church in Neshoba County. A deputy jailed Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and released them into the hands of waiting Klansmen, who shot them to death and hid their bodies in an earthen dam.

Forty-four days later, FBI agents discovered the buried bodies. By killing the trio, the White Knights meant to send a message not just to those in the movement, but across the nation, about who held power in Mississippi, who could do as they pleased and who needed to live in fear.

Between June and October 1964, Mississippi saw the bombings of at least 48 Black churches, homes and “freedom houses,” according to records kept by the Council of Federated Organizations, an umbrella group for civil rights organizations.

That same year, the White Knights began to regard Jews as their major enemies, just as the Klan had done in the 1920s. Klansmen embraced the views of Christian Identity, which teaches that white people are the true Israelites and that Jews are imposters.

On Sept. 18, 1967, the White Knights bombed the Beth Israel synagogue, the opening salvo of the White Knights’ campaign against the Jews.

A month later, the White Knights suffered their biggest setback when a U.S. District Court jury convicted seven, including Bowers, on federal conspiracy charges for the 1964 killings of the three civil rights workers. They received prison time up to 10 years, but they initially remained free on appeal bonds.

The violence continued.

On Nov. 15, 1967, the White Knights bombed the home of the Rev. Allen Johnson, a Black Methodist member and NAACP leader in Laurel, where Bowers lived. Four nights later, a bomb ripped through the home of civil rights activist Bob Kochtitzky in Jackson.

Two days before Thanksgiving, the White Knights bombed the home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, leader of the Beth Israel congregation in Jackson.

More attacks followed in 1968, including the bombings of Black churches and a synagogue in Meridian.

After Meridian police determined that Klan bomber Thomas Tarrants was behind the synagogue bombing and others, a shootout took place between him and officers. He somehow survived, but his companion, Kathy Ainsworth, was killed.

After the death, Bowers wrote to an officer involved in the shootout and questioned why he would protect the Jews, calling them “the synagogue of Satan.”

Tarrants went to prison for the bombing. While there, he underwent a religious conversion that he later wrote about in his book, “Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love.”

Tarrants, now president emeritus of the C.S. Lewis Institute, became friends with the Rev. John Perkins of Jackson, who was beaten in jail by law enforcement for his involvement in the civil rights movement.

The latest burning of Beth Israel “is not just an attack on a building — it is an assault on human dignity, on faith and on the sacred truth that every person is made in the image of God,” said Elizabeth Perkins, co-president of The John & Vera Mae Perkins Foundation.

“My father has always said that reconciliation is born where truth and love meet,” she said. “That belief still stands. We grieve with Beth Israel. We stand with Beth Israel. And we commit ourselves again to the long, holy work of justice, reconciliation, and peace. Hate will not have the last word. Love will.”

Secretary of State Michael Watson says that strengthening Mississippi’s notoriously lax campaign-finance laws will be his top legislative priority this year. 

Attempts to tighten Mississippi’s campaign spending laws have sputtered in recent legislative sessions. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have been reluctant to consider any reform. But Watson, a Republican who helps administer the state’s elections, said recent criminal corruption allegations against local officials have renewed his push. 

“This is not just a political issue,” Watson said. “This is a crime-fighting issue.” 

A federal grand jury last year indicted two county sheriffs in the Mississippi Delta on charges of corruption linked to an alleged drug-trafficking scheme. The two have pleaded not guilty, though court documents allege that undercover law enforcement agents bribed the officials through campaign donations. 

READ MORE: Want to launder some money? Just use your Mississippi campaign account

Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba are also fighting federal bribery charges, where law enforcement agents accuse them of accepting bribes in the form of campaign donations. They have pleaded not guilty. 

Watson’s proposal would require local and state candidates to file reports online, cap cash donations to political candidates at $1,000 and transfer enforcement authority from the Mississippi Ethics Commission to both the Secretary of State’s office and the Attorney General’s office.

If a candidate does not have reliable access to the internet or is unable to operate a computer, they can send a facsimile copy or a letter of their report to the Secretary of State’s office, who will then upload the report online. 

READ MORE: Campaign finance transparency bill faces uphill battle in Mississippi Legislature

The secretary of state said he has worked with Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch in crafting a bill. 

MaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for Fitch, told Mississippi Today in a statement that the Attorney General’s Office was proud to work with Watson and legislative leaders on the bill, and Mississippians deserve to control their own elections. 

“Together, we have created a package of reforms that will close the loopholes that allow outside, special-interest dark money to flow into Mississippi elections,” Lee said. “We are hopeful that this year the Legislature will make these reforms.”

Mississippi’s current law has a confusing, conflicting enforcement system that gives some responsibilities to the secretary of state’s office, the attorney general’s office and the Ethics Commission. 

The new proposal would task Watson’s office with investigating violations and Fitch’s office with prosecuting them if a crime has occurred. The only time the Ethics Commission would step in is if the secretary of state’s office was involved in alleged violations. 

England is the author of the legislation, and the lieutenant governor’s office has referred the measure to the Senate Elections Committee, which England leads. 

The Jackson County lawmaker said he’s hopeful the Legislature will pass the measure because it’s important for the state’s elections to be as “transparent as possible.” 

The state Legislature kicked off its current session with a heavy focus on school choice, or expanding K-12 options beyond traditional public schools. 

Those conversations, and related policies, address a broad swath of policies such as expanding charter school accessibility and using public funds to pay for private-school tuition. Both chambers want to expand school choice in Mississippi over the next three months, but they don’t agree on how. 

Mississippi Today education reporter Devna Bose and political reporter Michael Goldberg have been at the state Capitol reporting on those and other education policy discussions since the session began. 

On Jan. 16, Bose and Goldberg answered questions from readers on Reddit and Facebook. The following are some highlights from those conversations.

If you want to be alerted about future AMAs with our reporters, sign up here.

Some questions have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: We were promised that charter schools would thrive where districts were performing poorly. How have charter schools scored over the last few years compared to the public schools near them?

Q: Why are lawmakers singling out Copiah County School District and Hazlehurst City School District, and FORCING a school board consolidation?

Q: Will private schools be required to accept all students who want to attend? Will private schools have public financial reports so taxpayers can see where their money is going?

Q: How are private schools that receive funding originally allocated to public schools going to be held accountable? Why are they not held to the same methods (state tests and accountability model) that public schools use?

Q: Is HB 2, the House’s school choice bill, constitutional?