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A Mississippi attorney is at the center of Texas’s unusual mid-decade effort to redraw its congressional districts, which has prompted a national battle between red and blue states over partisan gerrymandering. 

Tommie Cardin, an attorney in the Ridgeland office of national law firm Butler Snow, has listed in his online profile that he is counsel to the chair and staff of the Texas House Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting. 

Cardin and a spokesperson for the law firm did not respond to questions for this story. But Texas news outlets have reported that Cardin is the attorney for the committee, and the House member who filed the redistricting legislation said he received the proposed maps from Butler Snow.

After the U.S. Census is completed at the start of a new decade, states typically use the new data to tweak congressional district lines to account for population shifts.  But President Donald Trump pushed Texas leaders to redraw the state’s congressional maps to flip five safe Democratic U.S. House seats in favor of Republicans. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that states can draw electoral maps on partisan grounds. But under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, communities of color must still have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. 

The Texas House was set to approve the maps on Wednesday, launching a tit-for-tat battle among Democratic- and Republican-led states. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that he will ask voters in a Nov. 4 special election to approve redrawn districts intended to give Democrats five more U.S. House seats in the fight for control of Congress.

Cardin was perhaps enlisted to help the Texas efforts because Mississippi is in the same appellate circuit as Texas. Mississippi lawmakers also have a long history of tangling with civil rights groups, federal courts and themselves over congressional district boundaries. 

Cardin has represented the Mississippi Legislature in numerous complicated redistricting litigation cases, including its latest congressional redistricting effort. Civil rights groups attempted to challenge the state’s map, but a federal court dismissed the effort over legal technicalities. 

For decades, white Democratic leaders sought to diminish Black voting blocs during the redistricting process. Mike Espy became the first Black person elected to Congress from Mississippi when he won the 2nd Congressional District seat in the late 1980s. (Mississippi had two Black U.S. senators during Reconstruction, when senators were appointed rather than elected. Hiram Rhodes Revels served 1870-71, and Blanche Kelso Bruce served 1875-80.)

In the early 2000s, when Democrats still controlled both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature, lawmakers faced the difficult task of drawing new districts as the state went from five districts to four. 

House Speaker Tim Ford proposed drawing the state’s 1st District to encompass much of north Mississippi and stretching it down toward suburban Jackson. He dubbed his plan the “tornado district,” which opponents of his proposal used to prevent its adoption.

Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, the presiding officer of the Senate who was then a Democrat but later switched to the Republican Party, blocked the “tornado” plan. The chambers’ two leaders couldn’t agree on a plan, so the courts also drew the congressional maps that decade. 

Cardin helped represent the Legislature in that unusual scenario as well.

 Lance Pogue has coached Mississippi high school football teams to 246 victories and 71 defeats, an incredible winning rate of 78 percent. He has won five state championships and one national championship. Now, he takes on another challenge at Brandon High School.

Stream all episodes here.

The presidency at Jackson State University has had its fair share of tumultuous transitions. 

Students, faculty and alumni were left in disbelief when Mississippi’s higher education board announced Marcus Thompson’s resignation in May, just five days after graduation and two years into his term. 

He was the third president to suddenly depart at the state’s largest historically Black university in less than seven years. His predecessor, Thomas Hudson left after two years. Before that, William Bynum resigned after three years, following his arrest in a prostitution sting at a Clinton hotel. The typical college president has been in their current job for 5.9 years.

Yet, in all three cases, the JSU presidents left without formal explanation from the Institutions of Higher Learning board. 

During summer break, alumni have taken up the torch, leading email campaigns to voice their frustrations to board members, state lawmakers and elected officials about the university’s chronic leadership turnover. 

The effort forced the college board to confront lingering questions about its past choices of university presidents and, more importantly, scrutinize how it plans  to make the right decision this time. 

Still, the board only pulled back some of the curtain to reveal insights into its executive search process. It has remained mum about most of the plans for seeking the university’s next president. 

In any other era, a search committee and timeline would have been publicly announced by now. But, the pressure to hire a permanent leader has grown increasingly complex, polarized and secretive in a contentious higher education climate. 

“Discussions on the process have begun, but it’s important to make sure this process is efficient, thorough and timely,” John Sewell, a spokesperson for the board, said in a statement to Mississippi Today. 

The board says it wants to ensure Denise Jones-Gregory, the university’s current interim president, who was appointed immediately after Thompson’s departure, has the opportunity to settle into the role. 

But, repeated criticism about the board’s history of elevating internal hires and appointing interim leaders among Mississippi’s eight universities has left advocates increasingly wary that the IHL board will continue to ignore its own procedures to provide a fair and transparent search for Jackson State.  

Mississippi Today asked the board if Gregory had expressed interest in the role, the board said it was a “personnel matter” and members “have no comment on it.”

Jackson State’s next leader will enter the post amid sweeping federal research funding cuts, uncertainty about federal student loan programs and college support services like Upward Bound, TRiO and GEAR UP, and the Trump administration’s crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion policies. 

The university is also experiencing its own set of challenges: student housing shortages, financial constraints, fluctuating enrollment, low morale from faculty and staff, almost a decade worth of mistrust from alumni, community members and supporters. 

And there are the perennial questions of how to deal with the many and sometimes conflicting constituencies including the governor, state legislators, political activists and college governing board members.  

“This is certainly not a job for the weak,” said Mark Dawson, who chairs Thee 1877 Project, a renegade group of alums who aren’t affiliated with the university’s national alumni association. 

Through self-described “guerilla” methods, the group created a qualitative questionnaire for its roughly 3,000 email subscribers this month inquiring about leadership traits alums are looking for in the  university’s next president. 

They collected more than 370 survey responses, with specific qualities emphasized as being important, like “strong appreciation for HBCU culture, history and legacy,” “financial accountability and budget management” and “unwavering integrity and ethics.”

“Overwhelmingly, people were telling us in our survey that character counts,” Dawson said. 

The group’s data mimics national findings: A 2024 report by Academic Search, an executive headhunting firm, found that top education executives commonly listed attributes like trustworthiness and resilience as relevant traits for their presidencies. 

Among the 700 college presidents surveyed, more than 90% listed those qualities as “very relevant” to the job, with “behaves in a way that is trustworthy, consistent and accountable” cited the most frequently at 96%. Listening to and understanding stakeholder concerns was also highly cited. 

The alumni group said it will share its survey results with IHL board members at a meeting Thursday. With these efforts, they aim to send a clear message: If you’re going to be responsible for selecting  presidents, make sure you listen to all voices. 

“What we heard from IHL last month is that they believe their processes work and that to me sounds like they’re unwilling to change,” said Sharolyn Love, a member of Thee 1877 Project. “We really want to be in collaboration with IHL to get this right. These results let them know that we are also holding them accountable and we want someone living, breathing and walking these values.” 

‘It’s an eight-day-a-week job’ 

The role of a university president has shifted in recent decades to focus on external relations, while the provost handles many internal issues, said Judith Wilde, a George Mason University professor who studies college presidential searches. 

Most can agree being chief of a university has become increasingly harder. For HBCU leaders under Trump, that means a delicate dance of advancing legislative goals and bracing for change while addressing student fears. 

“I quote The Beatles and say, ‘it’s an eight-day-a-week job’’ ” Wilde said. “One of the most important qualifications that boards seem to look for now in a university president is their ability to raise money and that requires a lot of time meeting with tons of stakeholders at local, regional and statewide (levels).” 

Public universities rely on private donations due to decreasing state appropriations. Just this year, the Mississippi Legislature decreased support for public universities by 4.2% from last year, with an appropriation of $838.4 million to all eight institutions for the 2026 fiscal year. 

Even IHL commissioner Al Rankins stated during June’s IHL board meeting that the role of college president has become tougher and many universities “fight above their weight” to keep faculty and staff on campus. 

For years, Mississippi’s institutions have all agreed that faculty and staff are underpaid. The average salary of a professor at one of the state’s universities is $87,865 according to data compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education. But despite several years of state-funded pay raises, Mississippi’s faculty and staff continue to make far less than those in other Southern states.

“We’re at a time in higher education where we’ve seen more change and more flux than I’ve seen over my entire career,” said Rankins, who previously served as president of Alcorn State University. “We can’t continue to go backwards. If we do, it will be very hard for these individuals to provide the quality education and experience that they provide for our students.” 

Jackson State and  Mississippi’s other HBCUs have experienced historic underfunding compared to their predominantly white counterparts like Mississippi State University and the University of Mississippi, which have deep pockets and big stadiums largely due to private support. 

Constant leadership turnover can also disrupt private donor alumni relationships, as well as research funding. While many grants remain in limbo because of the federal administration, other unfriendly policies around international students at tuition-driven institutions could pose a problem. 

But Wilde said the  job will still attract qualified candidates, appealing to those interested in generous salaries and benefits and mansion-like residences on campus. Currently, Jackson State University presidents make $450,000 annually. 

“It’s not a crass way to think about it,” Wilde said. “Of course, there are problems with these jobs and it may attract individuals who don’t have any higher education experience.” 

Amid the many challenges, turnover at the president level is a growing problem. The years of experience of those in the job has been declining steadily for nearly two decades, and 55% of surveyed presidents say they plan to step down in the next five years, according to the American Council on Education’s 2023 college president report. 

Wilde also said it is not unusual for college boards to choose insiders rather than taking a chance on newcomers. Facing political and financial pressures, university boards appear to have grown more allergic to risk. 

In many cases, the IHL board can give itself two options when it searches for a new university president, according to its policy: an extended search with a consultant, or an expedited process in which trustees interview candidates that are “known to the board.” The board has latitude to flip-flop between the two types of searches. 

In 2023, the board spent $115,000 on Academic Search, an executive head hunting firm for Jackson State’s president search, after Hudson resigned. 

The board appointed Elayne Hayes-Anthony, chair of the journalism department, as temporary acting president. When Anthony expressed interest in the role, the board opted not to pick her for the permanent position. It followed its protocol, announcing a search committee, building a search timeline, and scheduling community listening sessions and a survey. 

But then the board went with an internal hire, yet again, and chose Thompson, who was the board’s communications chief and had no experience leading a university. While plans for the current search remain unclear, Wilde said the choices for fairness and transparency are up to those in charge of the process. 

“Search firms promote secrecy,” Wilde said. “What you’re really looking for is someone who has been president before and is maybe ready to do it again.” 

‘A gemstone that needs to be reset’ 

This week kicked off fall semester classes at Jackson State. One student,  Rayvn Webster, said she hopes her next president will prioritize needs around mental health and burnout. 

“So many of us are coming from out of state, and witnessing that instability of president changes since I’ve been here has made our school have a rocky foundation,” Webster, a junior from Memphis, Tennessee, studying industrial technology with a concentration in electrical systems. “We want to think of this place as our home away from home and not a place we can’t trust or feel free.” 

Angel Edwards, a sophomore studying political science, said she does not fault any president for leaving abruptly. 

She had admired Thompson for his engagement with students, which she saw as his biggest strength. He bridged JSU alums and new generations of future alums. 

“I think he understood that this school was our path to a better career, life and opportunity for many of us and our families, and the bonds we built here were sacred,” Edwards said. “But, it was also a lot of kids and a lot of responsibility. So, I get it.” 

From the outside, the job of Jackson State president may not seem appealing. 

The role requires overseeing nearly 6,000 students, four satellite campuses, a $250 million operating budget and millions of dollars in federal research funding. The next leader will also walk a tightrope, needing to please a mainly white board and advocate for the school. 

“Jackson State University is a gemstone that just needs to be polished and reset,” Dawson said. “We have a rich legacy and history and whoever takes the helm needs to understand where we are coming from, where we’re going and what we hope to achieve in the future.” 

Jackson Mayor John Horhn said he’s considering approaching the Legislature with proposals to protect tenants from negligent landlords. 

This comes after at least 20 families were forced to vacate their south Jackson apartment, where JXN Water had disconnected services due to the owner’s nonpayment of the property’s water bill. 

At the city’s request in recent weeks, a federal judge twice ordered the utility to restore the water. But Horhn said during a housing task force meeting Monday that Jackson would not ask for another extension, leaving the Wednesday shutoff in effect.

“The first question is: Do we want to look at approaching the Legislature about any sort of criminal charges that can be put together, that the Legislature would have to approve, to let folks know that we’re really serious about this?” Horhn said.

Jackson’s Housing Task Force was created this month in response to the ongoing battle over water services at Blossom Apartments and resident abandonment at Chapel Ridge Apartments in south Jackson. Its aim is to examine and improve policies and strengthen compliance to ensure safe conditions for renters.

It’s a tall order, considering the more than 7,000 registered rental properties and nearly 26,000 individual units across the city.

On Monday, nine of the 11 task force members discussed absent landlords and the millions in unpaid bills that complexes have accrued with JXN Water. The utility has publicized the names of 15 properties with the largest delinquencies. Many of the landlords in question live out of state.

“ It’s really hard to get to these people,” task force member Emma Redding said. “Most of them live in New York or California. The only thing they want is to get their rent money dropped in the bank every month, and they don’t care about the upkeep or anything.”

Jennifer Welch, whose Jackson-based company owns and manages properties in Jackson, Meridian and Hattiesburg, said that since the discontinuation of pandemic-era rental assistance, it’s been tougher for landlords to secure rent payments from tenants.

“If you don’t collect the rent, you’re not going to make the bank note and you’re not going to make the water payment,” Welch said. “I think we’re seeing some trickle down effects of that phenomenon, which was just a cause of COVID.”

This is exacerbated by JXN Water issuing larger water bills. Welch said she’s seen her charges double.

 ”I’ve got a bill that goes from $7,000 to $15,000, which is shocking. What do you do in that situation?” Welch said. “You owe a $15,000 bill and you cannot find the source of why your bills have doubled. I have found myself in that situation before.”

Earnest Ward, president of the Association of South Jackson neighborhoods, said he couldn’t understand how the water bills of various apartment complexes could reach over six figures.

“How did you all allow the water bill to get to $100,000, $200,000, $700,000?” Ward said. “We didn’t know. The only way we found out was when our associates brought the attention to the media.” 

Carla Dazet, a billing executive for JXN Water, was also in attendance, though not as the company’s designee to the task force. She said the private water utility is only concerned with water usage dating back to December 2022. Landlords and apartment owners have been difficult to reach, she said, causing JXN Water to disconnect services.

“We do everything we can prior to disconnections. I reach out. I do research. We call the offices. These property managers flip quickly,” Dazet said. “We don’t want to turn people off, but we don’t get a response until the water goes off. They don’t even respond to final notice letters.”

One of two attorneys present, Robert Ireland, said bad actors need to be held accountable for placing their tenants in a difficult situation. 

“We don’t have the power to control the resolution while the system is under a federal receiver, but there are folks that are not doing the right thing and are pocketing tenants’ money and not paying bills,” Ireland said. 

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate first ordered the water at Blossom Apartments to be restored on Aug. 8, calling it a “temporary humanitarian measure.”

“I think that the court has been very indulgent to us,” Horhn said. “They’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty in the 12 days that have been extended to the tenants.”

Water was set to be disconnected again at Blossom Apartments on Wednesday once the second order expires, and residents have until then to move out of the apartments. Earlier this month, Mississippi Home Corp. declared the complex to be unsafe, and residents have said they’ve dealt with poor living conditions, including mold, water leaks and dysfunctional appliances. 

Many rely on housing vouchers to cover a portion of their rent, meaning they don’t have the disposable income required to move on such a short notice. Stewpot Community Services is using a federal emergency housing grant to help residents with relocation costs. 

“We’ve got about $100,000 right now to assist the Blossom tenants,” Horhn said. “If they haven’t found a place to live within a few days, then we’re going to put them up in hotels … but we’re going to run out of that money if we don’t come up with a solution real soon.”

Another solution presented: creation of a rapid response team for when JXN Water terminates service at another housing complex. Region 6 Housing Authority stepped in to provide housing vouchers for residents at Blossom, many of whom are lower-income. Stewpot Community Services held a relocation assistance meeting Aug. 12, but Horhn said a majority of the 20 families who remain were still searching for housing. 

Members of the Housing Task Force are: 

• Brian Burns, staff attorney, Hinds County 
• Theresa Crisler, former staffing consultant
• Robert Ireland, attorney, Watkins & Eager
• Johnnie Patton, retired pharmacist
• Stacey Patrick, former resident of Blossom Apartments
• Emma Redding, retired Mississippi Division of Medicaid officer
• Rebekah Staples, policy consultant, Free State Strategies
• Stuart Tirey, government affairs director, Central Mississippi Realtors
• Earnest Ward, president of the Association of South Jackson Neighborhoods
• Jennifer Welch, property manager, VESICA Real Estate
• Pending JXN Water Designee

Mississippi’s July unemployment rate held steady for a fourth straight month.

And while Mississippi saw the largest increase in unemployment in the country year over year at 0.9%, that’s not necessarily bad news.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday published updated state employment numbers that showed Mississippi’s unemployment rate at 4% from May through July. The national unemployment rate was 4.2% in July. 

“What we’re seeing is kind of a continuation of what we’ve seen for the past few months. In Mississippi as well as across the country, it seems to be kind of a no-hire, no-fire labor market,” said Corey Miller, Mississippi’s state economist. 

The increase in unemployment is likely due to a 1% increase in the labor force. Miller believes that the rise in real wages and decrease in inflation at the end of 2023 may have motivated people who were not working or looking for work to rejoin the labor force.

Mary Willoughby, Mississippi Department of Employment Security chief economist, said Mississippi’s unemployment rate has historically been above the national number but for the past few years it has been below. For Willoughby, this is an encouraging sign.

“Mississippi’s labor market is in good shape. It’s very stable and doing a good job,” said Willoughby.  

Labor force participation, those 16 and older either employed or actively seeking employment, has been a major concern for the state. Mississippi goes back and forth with West Virginia for lowest participation rate in the nation. Over the past year it has gone from 54.5% to around 56% for the past few months, a positive sign that more people are in the labor market. 

 ”It’s increasing, which means that more people think that they have the opportunity and there are opportunities within the state to get,” said Willoughby.

However, there is some concern that the market is slowing.

Nationwide, payroll employment, the number of positions companies have on their payroll, has not changed significantly since April 2025. This is a trend that is also seen in Mississippi where payroll employment has remained around 1.2 million since January.

“I think employers are reluctant to let any employees go right now, because they had to work really hard to get people back into the labor force,” said Miller. “At the same time, they’re a little apprehensive about trying to hire people because of just a lot of uncertainty in the economy with different policy changes.”

INDIANOLA — The top of the Jeep was down, and Miskia Davis was behind the wheel, leading a parade through downtown Indianola.

She recalled feeling the first cool breeze of October as she waved at people who lined the street, smiling and celebrating.

It was 2019, just two years after the now 50-year-old Davis became superintendent of Sunflower County Consolidated School District. Back then, she wasn’t sure this moment would ever come. 

But it had — the district’s first “C” rating, its first passing grade, and the community had shown up to a parade to celebrate the achievement. Generations of teachers and Sunflower County graduates stood on the sidewalk, proudly cheering the assembly of cars and students.

“It was … Oh my God,” Davis said. “My children were like, ‘We did something.’”

The work hadn’t been easy, but it had been worth it, Davis thought — the number crunching, the doubt and lukewarm welcome she felt from the community, the tough decisions she’d had to make.

Now, she’s ready to move on.

Daughter of the Delta

From starting kindergarten to subbing for elementary classes, Davis’ childhood and career in Sunflower County and her identity as a daughter of the Delta were her strengths in the classroom, she said.

“I grew up in Drew, poor and with two young parents,” Davis said. “We didn’t have elaborate meals, and when I went home, the lights may have been off. But it made me who I am, and these children were experiencing the same things I experienced as a child.”

So Davis was relatable. But as a young high school teacher at Ruleville Central High School, some of her students looked older than her and many were taller than she was. She was forced to learn how to command respect, too. 

One particular child taught her an invaluable lesson. He was a star football player in her biology class, and he was failing the course by two points. He caused trouble in class and Davis was determined to fail him, despite more experienced teachers prodding her not to, to look past her own ego. 

So Davis gave him another chance. She had him do extra work and spent hours talking to him. She learned why he behaved poorly in class — he was one of seven children to a young, single mother. 

“He was angry at the world, and I just happened to be in the world,” she said. “It taught me the power of relationships. I think that’s the most important catalyst in transforming education.”

It was during that time that her superintendent “saw something” in her and pushed her to become a school leader. That kickstarted her journey in administration. 

Davis soon learned she had a particular gift for turning failing schools around. Under her leadership as principal, Ruleville Middle School went from failing to an “A” letter grade in three years. 

Her school improvement strategy began to take shape, similar to her teaching style. Davis was both a disciplinarian and someone to whom teachers and students could relate. She prioritized building strong relationships with teachers who were invested in their students. But she didn’t shy away from making controversial decisions, either. In Ruleville, she fired nearly all of the staff when she arrived. 

But as Davis was gaining her footing as an administrator, Sunflower County School District was struggling. 

After consistent failing grades resulted in the state takeovers of Indianola, Sunflower and Drew school districts, the Legislature decided to consolidate the three systems in 2012. 

District consolidation is a massive undertaking for any community, but especially for Sunflower County — smack dab in the middle of the Delta, an under-resourced region with a shrinking population, high poverty rates and a deep history of racial exploitation.

Davis arrived in 2014 to a school district that had lost hope — a district that she didn’t recognize.

All Sunflower knew was ‘failure’

Davis never wanted to be superintendent. 

She spent three years working under the leader of the consolidated district. But when the superintendent was dismissed in 2017, Davis was appointed to the head role in an interim capacity. She got the job in January of 2018 without ever applying.

So with another state takeover looming, Davis went to work. The biggest challenge? The district and the community seemed resigned to failure. 

“We had been failing so long, that’s all we knew,” she said. “No one was even sad.”

Early on, Davis visited a school to discuss recent test results. She was so struck by teachers’ apathy that she stopped the meeting midway and had them tear off a scrap of paper and write “yes” or “no” to a question: Did the teachers believe their school could ever be successful? 

More than half said no.

“They were teaching my children,” Davis said, tearing up. “And they didn’t think they would ever be successful.”

Davis went to the school board to tell members that she wouldn’t be renewing many of those teachers’ contracts. That’s when she realized she didn’t just need to boost test scores — she needed to change attitudes. 

The hashtag #WINNING was born.

“We started to celebrate every little accomplishment,” Davis said. “We got T-shirts, shades, whatever. That was our mantra.”

Children received certificates for a week of perfect attendance. When students did well on benchmark assessments, teachers were ushered into the hallway to be celebrated by students and colleagues. Davis created the “Killin’ It” awards, given to students and teachers for meeting their testing benchmarks. 

They were just certificates, at the end of the day. But it led to a changed school culture, a renewed belief that they could succeed. 

As an administrator, Davis leaned on what she knew worked as a teacher, relationship-building and strong discipline (she even sent her nephew to alternative school for fighting), and combined it with a data-driven approach and an eagle-eyed focus on testing. 

She put an academic coach in every building, whose sole responsibility was supporting teachers. 

Davis took teacher Dylan Jones out of the classroom and put him in the central office, where he was tasked with tracking district metrics. 

Jones uncovered which consultants were working and which were uselessly costing the district millions. The district went from contracting with 30 firms to just four. 

Jones also created an accountability system for teachers. With one click, Davis could see how each teacher’s students were performing, and she gave everyone access to the data. If teachers weren’t meeting their goals, Davis hosted regular meetings and had them explain — in front of everyone — what they needed to succeed. 

Davis’ methods weren’t popular at first. Educators went to the school board and complained that the system was “punitive.” Some even quit. But Davis was steadfast and implored board members to see the work she and her team could do, if given the chance. 

The district’s rating didn’t budge in 2018. 

But in fall 2019, after Davis’ first full year as superintendent, Sunflower County Consolidated School District had earned its first “C” rating.

What happened after the first ‘C’

Those early years were difficult, Davis remembered, because she felt so isolated, just her and her team “in the trenches.”

She hosted community meetings, imploring local parents, leaders and business owners to support the district. 

“They told me to come back when we were no longer failing,” Davis said.

So after that first “C,” when she started seeing the district’s hashtags on Facebook, when more people started coming to school events, when she started to get invited to speak at the local Rotary Club, it was bittersweet. 

Teachers, too, took a while to come around. Their performance was being closely monitored through the accountability system, but soon they realized that Davis wasn’t giving them mandates outside of improving test scores. She gave them autonomy in their classrooms. Teachers had the final say on how to improve their students’ achievement. That kind of trust isn’t common, Sunflower County teachers told Mississippi Today.

It wasn’t until 2021, when voters passed a $31 million bond issue that would pay for major school renovations, that Davis felt the full support of the community. 

Davis even won over Betty Petty, a local matriarch and fierce advocate for kids and parents. 

“She has actually shown a presence at the schools, constantly meeting with teachers and making sure all children are learning,” Petty said. “We had community meetings where she would actually come out and listen to our concerns.”

Petty attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Gentry High School last July. Before renovations, plumbing problems caused flooding when it rained, so students had to wade through water to get from class to class. Davis said she’d never forget the sight of generations of Gentry graduates in the school atrium, looking around in wonder at the new facility.

“At first, I chose the community,” Davis said. “But eventually, the community chose me.”

The legacy she leaves behind

Strong schools make strong communities, but it can take time for results to show. Indianola Mayor Ken Featherstone hopes to see the dividends soon. 

Featherstone took office four years ago, around the same time the district got its first “B” grade. It has maintained the grade ever since, the highest in the entire region.

He, like Davis, was reared in the Delta, but empathizes with her struggle garnering the support of a community deeply impacted by gun violence and low investment from state officials. 

“People are very result-oriented,” he said, leaning back at his desk in city hall. “You till the soil, but it’s not until you start your seed breaking the ground do you see other people starting to water it. That’s just human nature.”

He’s hoping the district’s academic gains will be a boon for Indianola’s struggling economy.

“We’re seeing things slowly come to our area,” Featherstone said. “To get manufacturing jobs to come to our area, we have to improve our public school system. Directors and presidents of manufacturing plants … they need to know where their kids are going to attend school.”

Davis announced in October 2024 that she would be leaving the superintendent job at the end of the school year. Now, she travels the state, consulting with other districts on how to replicate what she did in Indianola, as a director of District and School Performance and Accountability for The Kirkland Group, an education consulting firm based in Ridgeland. 

Her departure was a tough blow, Featherstone said, and leaves the district’s hard-fought success hanging in balance. 

Petty and her network of parents are concerned, too. 

“I don’t think any of us know what will happen moving forward,” she said. 

Davis said there was no big epiphany. She just felt her mission was accomplished. She said she’s adamant that the district’s “best days are ahead,” under new superintendent James Johnson-Waldington. 

Johnson-Waldington, who was most recently serving as superintendent of Greenwood Leflore Consolidated School District, is also Sunflower-grown, and he was Davis’ principal when she taught at Ruleville Central High School. He plans on employing strategies similar to Davis: holding teachers accountable and celebrating their achievements. 

After all, if it’s working, why change it?

“I feel a good kind of pressure,” Johnson-Waldington said. “I like challenges, and this is a new challenge for me. I’m not taking a failing school district to success. This is about maintaining and growing, and I accept that challenge for the very reason that this is home. I’m going to work very hard to maintain what Miskia has done.”

Davis leaves behind a legacy, Featherstone said, that makes her hometown proud. He was in the crowd that day at the parade. He remembers the excitement, the pride. 

“Older teachers were there, and you could see the look on their faces that they knew they had reared someone who threw the oar out to a sinking district and brought it back up,” he said. 

“She made us see ourselves in a better light, and we can’t thank her enough.”

IOWA CITY, Iowa — The U.S. gymnastics world was just recovering from a devastating sexual abuse scandal when a promising young coach moved from south Mississippi to Iowa to take a job in 2018 at an elite academy known for training Olympic champions.

Sean Gardner coached some of the most promising girls at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa. The club’s owner, Liang “Chow” Qiao, also thought highly enough of Gardner to put him in charge of a premier junior event.

But four years later, Gardner was gone from Chow’s with little notice.

USA Gymnastics, the organization rocked by the Larry Nassar sex-abuse crisis that led to the creation of the U.S. Center for SafeSport, had been informed by the watchdog group that Gardner was placed on its website’s banned list and was suspended from all contact with gymnasts.

The reason for Gardner’s removal wasn’t disclosed. But court records obtained by The Associated Press show the coach was accused of sexually abusing at least three young gymnasts at Chow’s and secretly recording others undressing in a gym bathroom at his prior job in Purvis, Mississippi.

The FBI arrested Gardner, 38, last week in Iowa on a federal child pornography charge from Mississippi. A parent in Iowa said her daughter, who had alleged wrongdoing by Gardner, did not want to seek criminal charges against him.

The arrest happened more than three years after Gardner was suspended from coaching, but his disciplinary case has still not been resolved by SafeSport, which handles sex-abuse cases in Olympic sports.

In cases like Gardner’s, the public can be in the dark for years while SafeSport investigates and sanctions coaches. SafeSport requires that allegations be reported to police to ensure abusers don’t run unchecked outside of sports, but critics say the system is a slow, murky process.

“From an outward operational view, it seems that if SafeSport is involved in any way, the situation turns glow-in-the-dark toxic,” said attorney Steve Silvey, a longtime SafeSport critic who has represented people in cases involving the center.

While acknowledging there can be delays as its investigations unfold, SafeSport defended its temporary suspensions in a statement as “a unique and valuable intervention” when there are concerns of a risk to others.

Nevertheless, in 2024, Gardner was able to land a job helping care for surgical patients at an Iowa hospital — two years after the abuse allegations against him were reported to SafeSport and the police.

And it was not until late May that West Des Moines police executed a search warrant at his home, eventually leading to the recovery of a trove of photos and videos on his computer and cellphone of nude young girls, court records show.

Authorities in Iowa sealed the court documents after the AP asked about the investigation earlier this month, before details of the federal charge were made public Friday. Gardner, Qiao and Gardner’s former employer in Mississippi did not respond to AP requests for comment. Mississippi Today also left phone messages Tuesday at Jump’In Gymnastics & Tumbling in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, seeking comment.

‘The job that I’ve always wanted’

Chow’s Gymnastics is best known as the academy where U.S. gymnasts Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas trained before becoming gold medalists at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

Qiao opened the gym in 1998 after starring on the Chinese national team and moving to the United States to coach at the University of Iowa. The gym became a draw for top youth gymnasts, with some families moving to Iowa to train there.

Gardner moved to Iowa in September 2018, jumping at the opportunity to coach under Qiao.

“This is the job that I’ve always wanted. Chow is really someone I have looked up to since I’ve been coaching,” Gardner told the ABC affiliate WOI-TV in 2019. “And you can tell when you step foot in the gym, just even from coaching the girls, the culture that he’s built. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful.”

A year later, Gardner was promoted to director of Chow’s Winter Classic, an annual meet that draws more than 1,000 gymnasts to Iowa. He also coached a junior Olympics team during his four-year tenure at Chow’s.

Several of his students earned college gymnastics scholarships, but Gardner said he had bigger goals.

“You want to leave a thumbprint on their life, so when they go off hopefully to school, to bigger and better things, that they remember Chow’s as family,” he said in a 2020 interview with WOI-TV.

Coach accused of sexual misconduct in Iowa and Mississippi

Gardner is accused of abusing his position at Chow’s and his former job at Jump’In Gymnastics & Tumbling, then located in Purvis, Mississippi, to prey on girls under his tutelage, according to a nine-page FBI affidavit released Friday that summarizes the allegations against him.

A girl in Iowa reported to SafeSport in March 2022 that Gardner used “inappropriate spotting techniques” in which he would put his hands between her legs and touch her vagina, the affidavit said.

It said she alleged Gardner would ask girls if they were sexually active and call them “idiots, sluts, and whores.” She said this behavior began after his hiring in Iowa in 2018 and continued until she left the gym in 2020 and provided the names of six other potential victims.

SafeSport suspended Gardner in July 2022 – four months after the girl’s report – a provisional step it can take in severe cases with “sufficient evidentiary support” as investigations proceed.

A month after that, the center received a report from another girl alleging additional “sexual contact and physical abuse,” including that Gardner similarly fondled her during workouts, the FBI affidavit said. The girl said that he once dragged her across the carpet so hard that it burned her buttocks, the affidavit said.

SafeSport shared the reports with West Des Moines police, in line with its policy requiring adults who interact with youth athletes to disclose potential criminal cases to law enforcement.

While SafeSport’s suspension took Gardner out of gymnastics, the criminal investigation quickly hit a roadblock.

Police records show a detective told SafeSport to urge the alleged victims to file criminal complaints, but only one of their mothers contacted police in 2022. That woman said her daughter did not want to pursue criminal charges, and police suspended the investigation.

Victims of abuse are often reluctant to cooperate with police, said Ken Lang, a retired detective and associate professor of criminal justice at Milligan University.

“In this case you have the prestige of this facility,” he said. “Do they want to associate their name with that, in that way, when their aspirations were to succeed in gymnastics?”

Police suspended the investigation, even as Gardner was on probation for his second-offense of driving while intoxicated.

A dormant case reopened, and a year later, an arrest

The case stayed dormant until April 2024 when another former Chow’s student came forward to the West Des Moines Police Department to report abuse allegations, according to a now-sealed affidavit signed by police detective Jeff Lyon. The AP is not identifying the student in line with its policy of not naming victims of alleged sexual abuse.

The now 18-year-old told police she began taking lessons from Gardner when she was 11 or 12 in 2019, initially seeing him as a “father figure” who tried to help her get through her parents’ divorce. He told her she could tell him “anything,” the affidavit said.

When she moved in 2021, she told police, he gave her a hug and said she could text and follow him on Instagram and other social media sites, where he went by the nickname “Coach Seanie,” because gym policy barring such contact no longer applied.

According to a summary of her statement provided in Lyon’s affidavit, she said Gardner fondled her during exercises, repeatedly touching her vagina; rubbed her back and butt and discussed his sex life; and made her do inappropriate stretches that exposed her privates.

She told police she suspected he used his cellphone to film her in that position.

Reached by the AP, the teen’s mother declined comment. The mother told police she was interested in a monetary settlement with Chow’s because the gym “had been made aware of the complaints and they did nothing to stop them,” according to Lyon’s affidavit. The gym didn’t return AP messages seeking comment.

It took 16 months after the teen’s 2024 report for the FBI to arrest Gardner, who made an initial court appearance in Des Moines on Friday on a charge of producing visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, which can carry up to 30 years in prison. A public defender assigned to represent him didn’t return AP messages seeking comment.

It’s unclear why the case took so long to investigate or when the FBI, which had to pay $138 million to Nassar’s victims for botching that investigation, got involved in the case.

Among evidence seized by investigators in late May were a cellphone, laptop and a desktop computer along with handwritten notes between Gardner and his former pupils, according to the sealed court documents.

They found images of girls, approximately 6 to 14 years in age, who were nude, using the toilet or changing into leotards, those documents show. Those images appear to have come from a hidden camera in a restroom in Mississippi.

They also uncovered 50 video files and 400 photos, including some that appeared to be child pornography, according to the FBI affidavit. One video allegedly shows Gardner entering the bathroom and turning off the camera.

Investigators also found images of an adult woman secretly filmed entering and exiting a bathtub, and identified her as Gardner’s ex-girlfriend. That woman as well as the gym’s owner, Candi Workman, told investigators the images appeared to come from Jump’In Gymnastics’ facility in Purvis, which has since moved to the nearby city of Hattiesburg.

SafeSport’s power has limits

SafeSport has long touted that it can deliver sanctions in cases where criminal charges are not pursued as key to its mission. However, Gardner’s ability to land a job in health care illustrates the limits of that power: It can ban people from sports but that sanction is not guaranteed to reach the general public.

While not commenting about Gardner’s case directly, it said in a statement provided to AP that a number of issues factor into why cases can take so long to close, including the 8,000 reports it receives a year with only around 30 full-time investigators. It has revamped some procedures, it said, in an attempt to become more efficient.

“While the Center is able and often does cooperate in law enforcement investigations,” it said, “law enforcement is not required to share information, updates, or even confirm an investigation is ongoing.”

USA Gymnastics President Li Li Leung called the center’s task “really tough, difficult to navigate.”

“I would like to see more consistency with their outcomes and sanctions,” Leung said. “I would like to see more standardization on things. I would like to see more communication, more transparency from their side.”

A case that lingers, even after the SafeSport ban

As the investigation proceeded, Gardner said on his Facebook page he had landed a new job in May 2024 as a surgical technologist at MercyOne West Des Moines Medical Center. It’s a role that calls for positioning patients on the operating room table, and assisting with procedures and post-surgery care.

Asked about Gardner’s employment, hospital spokesman Todd Mizener told the AP: “The only information I can provide is that he is no longer” at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the case lingers, leaving lives in limbo more than three years after the SafeSport Center and police first learned of it.

“SafeSport is now part of a larger problem rather than a solution, if it was ever a solution,” said attorney Silvey. “The most fundamental professional task such as coordination with local or federal law enforcement gets botched on a daily basis, hundreds of times a year now.”

The Associated Press’ Ryan Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa; Eddie Pells reported from Denver; and Will Graves contributed. Mississippi Today’s Emily Wagster Pettus contributed to this report.

U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock on Tuesday ruled that Mississippi’s state Supreme Court districts dilute Black voting rights and that the state cannot use the same maps in future elections. 

In a sweeping 105-page ruling, Aycock, a President George W. Bush appointee, found that the three Supreme Court districts were drawn in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. Aycock asked the Legislature to redraw those districts in the future to give Black voters a fair shot at electing candidates of their choice.   

Out of the 100-plus justices who have served on the Mississippi Supreme Court, only four have been Black.

Mississippi law establishes three distinct Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the Northern, Central and Southern districts. Voters elect three judges from each of these districts to make up the nine-member court. These districts have not been redrawn since 1987. 

The main district at issue in the case is the Central District, which comprises many parts of the majority-Black Delta and the majority-Black Jackson Metro area. Currently, two white justices, Kenny Griffis and Jenifer Branning, and one Black justice, Leslie King, represent the district. 

Last year, Branning, a white candidate who described herself as a “constitutional conservative” and was backed by the Republican Party, defeated longtime Justice Jim Kitchens, a white man widely viewed as a candidate supported by Black voters. 

No Black person has ever been elected to the Mississippi Supreme Court without first obtaining an interim appointment from the governor, and no Black person from either of the two other districts has ever served on the state’s high court. 

“In short, the evidence illustrates that Black candidates who desire to run for the Mississippi Supreme Court face a grim likelihood of success,” Aycock wrote in her ruling. 

The lawsuit was filed in April 2022 by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Southern Poverty Law Center and private law firms on behalf of a group of Black Mississippians, including state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, and Ty Pinkins, a previous Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Aycock wrote that the parties will convene a status conference soon to discuss an appropriate deadline for the Legislature to address the districts. The Legislature earlier this year adjourned its regular session, and Gov. Tate Reeves is the only person with the power to call lawmakers into a special session.

The state could appeal Aycock’s ruling to the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

If it weren’t for Drake, a row of abandoned homes next to Jackson State University might still just be sitting there, slipping into disrepair.

About a month ago, two real estate investors from California bought them up – a deal facilitated by the city’s former planning and development director Jhai Keeton, who met the pair through connections he had made working on tour logistics for the Canadian rapper. 

Keeton did this off the clock in part because he wanted to prove that something, anything, could happen in the economically stagnant city. 

But if another developer tried to rehab the properties through a more traditional route – that is, by securing a bank loan – Keeton said they might be out of luck. In recent years, so few homes have sold in this area of Jackson, it’s impossible to get what’s called a “comparable,” a measurement of a property’s value that without, banks won’t issue a loan. 

“It ain’t no comp because a bank ain’t financing any new thing to be built for somebody to buy,” said Keeton, who headed up the crucial city department for just a year.

In a city that struggles with poverty, low educational attainment and suburban competition, the lack of development justifies the lack of development, a paradox that has faced nearly every leader of the city of Jackson’s planning and development department in recent years.  

“The rule of money often is that money goes where it can grow,” said Mukesh Kumar, a former professor of urban planning who led the city department from 2017 to 2019. 

This problem isn’t going away any time soon, even as Jackson’s newly elected Mayor John Horhn had pledged to make the city more business friendly. His search for a new planning and development director has gone national, but with low salaries at City Hall, it might be hard to entice the leader Jackson needs to come work in the fastest shrinking large city in America. 

When that’s the case, what can any one head of the city’s planning and development department even do to turn the tide? Former department heads agree – it takes gumption, social capital and a good deal of finagling to bring development to a city as statistically challenged as Jackson: High poverty rates, low property values and poor economic mobility.

“People are always like why don’t we have this, why don’t we have that,” said Jordan Hillman, who served as director from 2019 to 2022 and is now the chief data officer at JXN Water. “Well, it’s math.” 

Historically, Jackson’s planning and development department has focused more on the process, pushing through zoning and permitting documents and writing comprehensive plans. That’s because most development in a city is led by the private market, not the government. 

“Rarely do cities drive economic development,” said Chloe Dotson, who led the department from 2022 to 2024. “It’s questionable to even look at a city, and say, ‘well why isn’t a city pushing economic development?’ That’s not its job.” 

The department’s goal, then, is to work to make a city’s conditions favorable for private development. When Kumar led the department, he said he tried to change its mindset from regulating to enabling, even as much of its work was purely administrative: issuing grants, conducting code enforcement or overseeing the bus system. 

For big businesses that want to come to Jackson, Kumar said the planning and development’s role was to “get out of the way” or offer an incentive, like tax-increment financing, that could help them locate in the city while turning a profit. 

But Kumar felt the department needed to do a better job of fostering the city’s small businesses. 

“The businesses that are not making the market-driven decisions, they’re making the personal decisions,” he said. “They may not even know they need a business license.” 

Dotson had a similar philosophy: “We can’t create demand, but we can shape it,” she said. 

Keeton, whose background is in economic development, not planning, took somewhat of a different course. Starting at the city in 2020 as a deputy director in the department, Keeton said he wanted to fly the plane, not set the runway. 

“I’m trying to get out of the abandoned group,” he said. “I’m at the bottom. I might make more money than my peers, but I’m trying to engage in power.” 

He found his taste for big-picture ideas aligned with former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s. The former mayor, who lost reelection last spring, found in Keeton a staffer who would prioritize a pair of long-held dreams: bringing a Top Golf and a Dave and Busters to Jackson.

“He was looking for some family-type of entertainment,” Keeton said. 

Keeton quickly realized that Jackson’s math didn’t compute for attracting Dave and Busters. But Top Golf seemed more promising — especially if the city could make it happen at a site on Lakeland Drive, one of the busiest corridors in the state, in a part of Jackson where residents have more disposable income. 

Though Keeton said the demographic data supported the project, state-owned institutions in the area opposed it. Top Golf ultimately went the way of other developments pitched for this particular site — to Madison County. 

“There’s not really much you can do when the institution shuts you out,” Keeton said. 

The day the news hit social media two years ago, Keeton was leaving Atlantic City. He said he texted Lumumba, “Mayor, I need you to help me to determine how to feel about this. He said ‘I feel just like you, I’m deflated, it sucks that we didn’t even get an attempt to play the game.’” 

It seemed that everywhere Keeton turned in his department, something was out of his control. After a stint at the Mississippi Development Authority, Keeton returned to the city as director in 2024.

Could he bring a shopping center to downtown Jackson? “We don’t have an after five population in downtown Jackson,” he said. 

Could he work with small businesses to help them meet Jackson’s regulations for storefronts in downtown Jackson? “We only have four, five inspectors for the whole city.” 

Then there was “the famous RFQ,” he said. 

The vacant lot across from the downtown Jackson Convention Center, the site of decades of failed development, was another task on Keeton’s plate.

But after the prospective hotel development became the center of an FBI corruption probe that led to federal indictments against Lumumba, the county prosecutor and two council members, Keeton said he couldn’t talk about the project because “it was political.” 

He decided to do something different. Keeton said he asked himself, “What do we have the resources to do right now without waiting for a $100 million deal?”

A project known as “The Pulse at Farish Street” was born. The goal was to turn the lot into an outdoor space with a skate park and pickleball courts that would attract more people to downtown Jackson, to provide a justification for building another hotel in the future. 

Then Lumumba lost reelection. Keeton got a text that Horhn would not be keeping him on as director. The new administration quickly announced it was abandoning The Pulse and turning the vacant lot into a “functional, upgraded parking area,” the Clarion Ledger reported.

Keeton has returned to his consulting firm, including working with One Voice, a civic engagement nonprofit born out of the state’s NAACP and headed up by Lumumba’s reelection campaign manager. 

Keeton considers breaking ground at The Pulse to be one of his biggest accomplishments in his year leading the office. His other was working with the 1% Sales Tax Commission to unlock funds to repave the roads around the Northwest Industrial Park in northeast Jackson. 

“That is a huge win,” Keeton said. “Site development is the name of the game.”                                                                          

Creative solutions exist to combat Jackson’s data doldrums. In areas of the city that lack “comps”, Dotson said investors who are shut out from traditional lending could turn to programs like the low-income housing tax credit to help them build rental properties tenants can eventually own. 

“I am not as pessimistic,” said Dotson, who is now the chief program officer at the HOPE Enterprise Corporation. “I believe that Jackson can do whatever it wants to do. It just has to have the correct leaders and it has to have the correct partnerships and the right people that know what they’re doing.” 

The secret to overcoming a city’s bad math, Kumar said, is twofold: A mindset shift that can lead to “momentum.”

“It is real,” he said. 

But a city’s priorities change when leadership turns over.

Recently, Kumar, who now works in planning in Waco, Texas, said he was looking at satellite images of Congress street in downtown Jackson, where he’d deployed a small grant the city received to build wooden benches, tables and an archway that became a popular destination for graduation pictures.

It looked like someone had already removed several of the pieces he’d built.

Editor’s note: This Mississippi Today Ideas essay is published as part of our Brain Drain project, which seeks answers to why Mississippians move out of state. To read more about the project, click here.

Though I imagine I’ll never return, more often than not, my brain drains back to Mississippi. My whole adult life has been a journey up and down the Hudson River, from New York City to the Adirondacks, but inevitably, I find my thoughts leaking toward another river.

I grew up fearing being left behind in the Rapture, but in earnest, it feels like I’m the one who left everyone behind. I’m not proud of this, but I’m certainly not ashamed. I have roots in the Northeast now, and a life that isn’t easily transplanted elsewhere, especially to the Red Clay Hills of Neshoba County. Life took me from Mississippi, and life keeps me away.

I left Mississippi for New York in 2015, and I estimate that I’ve returned only 11 times. My sporadic trips home have been mostly because I’m consistently broke, but now it’s a combination of that and concerns for my safety.

My mother, also limited by finances and Mississippi’s minimum wage, has visited me twice in 10 years, once in the spring of 2016 and then when I graduated from Yale Divinity School in 2023.

I haven’t been back since I came out as a trans woman and began medically transitioning in the winter of 2024. I try not to be overwhelmed with guilt or grief for the imagined, shared life I don’t experience with my mother. Rather, I’ve learned to cherish what we do have.

It’s strange to be who I am, mostly for her but also for me. She has learned to love me regardless of whether or not she understands what I’m doing. In her mind, if you go to college, you become a nurse or a lawyer. You settle down, probably in Jackson, maybe Oxford, most likely in my hometown of Philadelphia, and commute by car more than an hour to work. You probably see your mom weekly. She sees her grandkids as often as possible.

That is not how life turned out. We do talk on the phone. Sometimes we get into once-a-week phone call sprees, other times, I drop off for weeks, maybe a month, when I’m depressed.

When I come home, she picks me up from the airport and drives me back a few weeks later. We crack the windows, smoke cheap Mississippi cigarettes and try to cram 10 years of a strange-to-us mother-daughter relationship into a 90-minute ride to the airport in Jackson. Usually, we talk about suffering, death, sin, God, the end of the world, and what the hell I am doing with my life.

You go to college to get a job, to make more money than your parents and to buy a strange suburban-but-rural McMansion just beyond city limits where you start a family around the age of 25 at the latest.

According to my mother, I went to the University of Mississippi and got brainwashed. She tells me often that it’s like she doesn’t know who I am, and she’s mostly right. She hasn’t met anyone I’ve dated in person since high school. She hasn’t seen me in person since transitioning, and I changed my name to Romy. I explain my relationship with my family to friends, peers, new partners and congregations, always with an articulate sense of heartbreak that I’ve learned to intellectualize and package up in a story of “working-class origins,” single motherhood, a white Christian nationalist rural community and my stumbling through adulthood “refusing not to live by my values.”

I originally left Mississippi to be an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer in the Capital Region of New York. I’d never been there. I took a Greyhound from Memphis to New York City to Albany, New York  with two large suitcases and a backpack. Several of my friends from college had moved to New York City, and their couches and shared beds provided a safe launching pad for more of us. I had also fallen in love with a fashion student turned designer that I met on a trip to the city the year prior. Though that romance flamed and flickered for many years and ultimately flamed out, my reason for staying in the North was the life I was increasingly stumbling into.

I went there because, at the time, I had an insatiable desire to live out my values and politics. After all, I was maybe one of two socialist public policy majors at the Trent Lott Leadership Institute at the University of Mississippi, and I didn’t want to be a lawyer, a lobbyist or a policy wonk.

I wanted to be poor and engage in building sustainable autonomous communities. I wanted to learn how to be a person who had no work/life distinction, but a vocation and calling.

Through AmeriCorps, I luckily found a small group of activists, urban homestead types, organizers and ex-social workers living together helping others at the margins and themselves start businesses and worker-cooperatives while struggling through mental health crises, and taking on an impossible but seemingly always plausible dream of a directly democratic community owned, operated and governed only by those who live there.

This was my first “job” out of college. It was my dream come true, and the most difficult thing I’d ever done. I burnt out pretty hard after two years, and probably made somewhere between $25,000  and $30,000 during that whole time. Since then, the most I’ve made in a year is my current PhD stipend of about $34,000.

I was, however, helped along by friends, colleagues and the activist communities that I was stumbling into. Through them, I was encouraged to go to Union Theological Seminary, land a job at a prestigious artist residency in the mountains, go to Yale Divinity School, discern that I was called to be a priest and come to know myself as a trans woman.

My life outside of Mississippi has been sustained solely by relationships that transgress the boundaries between work and life, co-workers and friends. I regularly reflect on and often worry about how fragile this all is, and if my own vocational and intellectual pursuits have been worth what I’ve left behind or never had.

I’m not sure I’ll ever know. However, I’ve managed to find profound meaning in it all so far, and it keeps me digging myself into this hole in which I will hopefully find what I am  looking for, or dig my own damn grave.

Originally from Philadelphia, Romy Felder (she/her) is currently a PhD student at Union Theological Seminary. She is also pursuing the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of New York. She has a background in worker-cooperative development, community organizing, popular education and arts management. Romy lives cavalierly but contentedly in Brooklyn, New York.