Mississippi Today journalists this year provided in-depth coverage that holds public officials accountable, shines a light on issues affecting people’s everyday lives and provides a sense of place in this complex state we call home.
The politics reporters dug beneath the surface of legislative coverage, reporting on how companies that want to spread sports betting in Mississippi paid for the state House speaker and his staff to attend the Super Bowl.
Our education team reported on teacher pay, Jackson State University’s presidential search and the cultural traditions of high school homecoming in the Mississippi Delta.
Journalists covering Jackson created an in-depth voters’ guide before elections and explained challenges for the capital city, including blight and water billing.
Our environment reporter wrote about the impacts of climate change in Mississippi, including on the insurance market.
Mississippi Today’s sports coverage provided thoughtful insight about something important to so many people — college football.
Through our Mississippi Ideas section, we have provided a forum for a wide range of people to write interesting, thoughtful essays.
Our video team has ramped up this year, opening our work to millions of people, both on our site and on social media.
As always, we are grateful for your support, whether it is through financial contributions or through reading our articles, looking at our photos and videos and listening to our podcasts.
For months, Chancellor Berrong, a 26-year-old in prison for assault and kidnapping, has been trying to tell authorities that he killed a man in a Mississippi jail seven years ago.
He told a prison guard that he had information about the crime, attempted to confess to a detective and gave a written confession to a prison warden, he said, but agents with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the state agency that typically investigates in-custody deaths, took no action.
In interviews, Berrong said that he attacked William Wade Aycock IV at the request of a guard in 2018. That allegation is disputed by a former inmate, who told reporters he overheard Berrong and others planning the assault to stop Aycock from implicating a member of their gang in an unrelated crime.
Previous reporting on the Rankin County Adult Detention Center, where Aycock died, revealed that for years, guards relied on some inmates as an attack squad to help keep order and to retaliate against trouble-makers.
A review of the initial investigation of the death reveals that authorities took steps that could have hindered a full accounting of what happened. Guards and inmates cleaned the cell where Aycock died with bleach before the state investigators arrived, according to four witnesses. In addition, the MBI’s investigation file contains no photos of the cell, no security camera footage and no notes from interviews with inmates.
Days after the death, MBI agents and the state medical examiner determined that Aycock died by accident after falling off his bunk bed — without documenting the evidence that led them to this conclusion.
Mississippi Today and The New York Times have uncovered evidence that supports Berrong’s confession and suggests that the authorities ignored or destroyed evidence that could have helped solve the case. His account is the latest allegation of wrongdoing by law enforcement in Rankin County, a Jackson suburb where sheriff’s deputies have been accused of torturing suspected drug users.
Jason Dare, the spokesperson and attorney for the sheriff’s department, said he had forwarded reporters’ request for comment to the MBI. He declined to comment further.
The commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, Sean Tindell, said that the MBI would reopen the case based on the new information.
Guards and inmates at the Rankin County Adult Detention Center cleaned up the scene of Aycock’s death before MBI investigators arrived, according to four witnesses. Credit: Rory Doyle for The New York Times
Berrong, a member of the Latin Kings street gang with a long criminal record, said that in June 2018, he yanked a sleeping Aycock off the top bunk in his cell, slammed him to the floor and stomped on his head. He said he never intended to kill the man, just to send him a message to keep his mouth shut.
Berrong said he has come forward out of a sense of guilt.
For seven years, he said, he had gotten away with the crime, in part because of missteps in the investigation. Shortly after killing Aycock, he watched a group of inmates and guards soak up the blood, which had spread past the cell door, and douse the cell in bleach.
A former inmate named John Phillips said he cleaned the cell before the MBI arrived and compared the scene to a horror film. Two former guards who spoke on the condition of anonymity witnessed the cleanup and confirmed the former inmates’ accounts.
When the investigators arrived, they were “angrily talking with each other about the fact that the whole cell has been bleached,” Berrong said. “They said, ‘There’s nothing here.’”
The MBI’s investigative report on Aycock’s death, provided by Tindell, makes no mention of the cleanup.
Tindell said he spoke with the agent responsible for the report, who said he did not recall the cell being cleaned or seeing men enter Aycock’s cell in security camera footage. Tindell said the footage was not preserved by the MBI.
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department declined to release investigative records related to the case, citing a state law that allows police agencies to withhold such materials.
The MBI’s file on the case amounts to a two-paragraph summary of the investigation and the autopsy report. There are no photos or security camera footage and no interview descriptions, even though several inmates said they were interrogated by investigators.
“The reporting at the time obviously left some things to be desired,” Tindell said in an interview.
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department declined to release records related to the case, citing its policy not to turn over investigative materials. Credit: Rory Doyle for The New York Times
In the years since he took over the department in 2020, the agency has improved its record-keeping practices by “making sure that we had witness lists, that we had narratives, that there was a narrative for everybody that you interviewed and that supervisors had to review their work,” he said. “In this report, there’s none of those things.”
Two days after the MBI filed its report concluding that Aycock had died from an accidental fall, the Mississippi state medical examiner ruled his death an accident.
Three pathologists who reviewed the autopsy at the request of reporters said that while it was reasonable to conclude he had died accidentally given what the authorities knew at the time, Berrong’s account aligned with the injuries recorded in Aycock’s autopsy.
Dr. Thomas Andrew, the former chief medical examiner of New Hampshire, said that he would have told the agents assigned to the case to investigate further before he could reach a determination.
Details missing from the report, like pictures of Aycock’s cell and security camera footage, could have led examiners to a different conclusion, he said.
The MBI had an opportunity to reopen the case in 2022, when an inmate eyewitness told a Rankin County Sheriff’s Department detective that he had seen Berrong and another inmate leave Aycock’s cell moments before guards found him lying in a pool of blood.
The witness, who was being held in the jail in 2018, spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retaliation from Berrong’s associates.
The detective relayed the information to an MBI agent, the eyewitness said, but the authorities never contacted him again. The witness said that he also wrote a letter to the MBI detailing what he had seen, and that his son called the Rankin County District Attorney’s Office to report the information, but they never heard back from the agencies.
The district attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
“We’ve gone seven years wondering what happened,” Aycock’s mother, Laurenda Provias, said. “I’m ready for closure.” Aycock, seen in this graduation picture, received his GED from Youth Challenge in Hattiesburg. Credit: William Aycock III Credit: Photo courtesy of William Aycock III
Aycock’s parents said they have long suspected that their son was killed. They described him as a jokester and as a loving father to his two daughters.
While grateful to have more answers about their son’s death, they said they were left with questions about how the sheriff’s office and the MBI investigated the case.
“ We’ve gone seven years wondering what happened,” Aycock’s mother, Laurenda Provias, said. “I’m ready for closure.
Berrong said his guilt over the killing has been eating at him for years.
“All I could think about was the fact that nothing was ever done,” Berrong said. “ What if it was me in a county jail that had been stomped to death and killed and nobody was ever charged?”
Over the past five months, he has tried to confess to the authorities on several occasions, he said.
While incarcerated at a state facility in Kemper County this year, Berrong said, he told a sheriff’s detective, Steve Windish, that he wanted to share information about Aycock’s death.
Windish said that he contacted an investigator at another agency to share that there might be new information on the case, but that the investigator said they had no interest in speaking to Berrong because they had spoken to him previously.
Berrong said that he and the other inmates in his cellblock were interviewed by MBI agents the day after Aycock’s death, but he did not confess at the time.
Windish said he could not remember whether the investigator who declined to interview Berrong worked for the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department or the MBI.
Berrong said that he also began confessing to a Wilkinson County Correctional Facility guard, but that the guard interrupted him and said it was above his paygrade.
Berrong’s most recent attempt to confess came a few months ago, he said, when he gave a written statement to a deputy warden at the prison where he is serving a 20-year sentence.
Two law enforcement officers visited him afterward and gave him paperwork detailing his confession, he said, but he lost it when guards searched his cell for contraband.
Tindell said that the MBI has no record of these interactions and that if agents had received these tips, he was unsure why they would not have responded.
“ When people contact us,” Tindell said, “ if there’s a stage in our organization where it’s just not being documented, then we need to address that.”
After repeated attempts to get the attention of the authorities, Berrong described Aycock’s death to reporters this month.
Berrong said several of his associates in the Latin Kings street gang assisted in the fatal assault by leading Aycock’s cellmate away from their cell and keeping watch while Berrong slipped inside.
After slamming Aycock to the floor, Berrong said, he stomped on his head as blood poured from his nose and ears. He could hear Aycock struggling to breathe as he fled the cell, a sound that still haunts him.
The former inmate who witnessed the encounter said that when Berrong and another inmate fled the cell, one of them had blood on his clothes.
After the attack, Berrong said, he returned to his own cell, showered and used the sharp edge of his bunk bed frame to cut his uniform into strips that he flushed down the toilet.
When guards found Aycock, they called paramedics, who took him to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The account of the former inmate who witnessed the events largely aligned with Berrong’s, but it differed in one significant way: the motive for the attack.
Berrong said that the jail guard who recruited him to attack Aycock did not explain why. But the former inmate said that he overheard the men involved, including Berrong, plan the attack because they believed Aycock was cooperating with investigators who were pursuing a case against one of them.
Rankin County jail records show that after Aycock was arrested on a burglary charge, a detective separated him from other inmates so that he could be questioned.
During that time, at least three other people were arrested in connection with the same burglary. Jail records show that one of them was housed in the same cellblock as Aycock. Three former guards said this violated a standard practice at the jail of separating inmates arrested together to prevent them from fabricating alibis or harming each other.
The witness said that after the authorities ignored his attempts to report what he had seen, he wrote to Aycock’s mother from prison about witnessing her son’s murder. Those letters were reviewed by reporters.
“It’s really weird that no one of the Miss. Bureau of Investigation has come to speak with me about your son’s murder,” he wrote in November 2022. “Your family deserves to know the truth.”
All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and its incumbent junior U.S. senator filed paperwork to run for reelection in 2026, according to news releases from the state Democratic and Republican parties.
Twenty candidates qualified to run in the party primaries, which will take place on March 10. The party nominees will compete against one another in the general election on Nov. 3.
Here is the list of Republican candidates running for Congress:
United States Senate
Sarah Adlakha
Cindy Hyde-Smith, incumbent
U.S. House of Representatives – District 1
Trent Kelly, incumbent
U.S. House of Representatives – District 2
Ron Eller
Kevin Wilson
U.S. House of Representatives – District 3
Michael Guest, incumbent
U.S. House of Representatives – District 4
Mike Ezell, incumbent
Sawyer Walters
Here is the list of Democratic candidates running for Congress:
A volcanic explosion 2,900 feet beneath Jackson forged the capital city’s very own superhero, Captain Jackson.
The immortal man – born 1822, the year Jackson was founded – wears a green suit inspired by the city’s flag and takes to the skies in the inaugural issue of Jackson Comics. He fights fire with fire to defend the city from flamethrower-wielding villains who seek the downfall of Jackson.
“He’s protecting not just the people of Jackson, but also the idea of Jackson,” said Blake Barnes, the writer behind Captain Jackson and the founder of Jackson Comics. “The villains show up in Jackson and they want to just burn the whole place down. They’re like, let’s just start from scratch, let’s burn it all up.”
Barnes said he wanted readers to be able to imagine their own villains, so he gave the antagonists stormtrooper-esque outfits to mask their identities.
“But I like to think they’re from Rankin County,” he said jokingly.
Barnes, a Mississippian who has lived in Jackson about five years, wanted to give local writers and artists a space to create comics about their home. Since launching in 2022, he’s published two issues of Jackson Comics so far, featuring short illustrated stories that explore a perennial topic for Mississippi writers – the relationship between the state’s past, present and future. A third installment is due to publish this spring.
The stories also consider Jackson’s relationship to the state of Mississippi.
“Faulkner was the one who said to understand a place like America you have to first understand a place like Mississippi, and I think it can be said on a smaller note to understand Mississippi you have to understand Jackson,” he said.
When Barnes envisioned Captain Jackson, he knew he wanted the superhero to be a Black man in his mid 40s. He teamed up with local comic book legend Steven Butler, who has drawn for Marvel and DC Comics, to bring the character to the page.
While Jackson is a city so often associated with the issue of access to water, Barnes turned to another key element in Jackson’s past: Fire. He drew inspiration from the dormant volcano beneath Jackson, the Civil War-era moniker “Chimneyville,” a reference to Union troops burning Jackson to the ground, and the fires that so many abandoned homes succumb to today.
Barnes wanted Captain Jackson to be able to use this element to protect the city.
A television producer at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Barnes said he was also inspired by an oft-repeated description of civil rights icon Medgar Evers.
“We just kept hearing all these people say that Medgar Evers had this fire inside him and he wanted to keep going,” he said. “I liked the idea of fire being a motivator and not necessarily something that was destructive.”
Captain Jackson belongs to the city in more ways than one: When Barnes held an exhibition at the Municipal Art Gallery in October last year, he donated a character sketch, created by Butler, to the city.
For the second issue, Barnes turned the clock forward, curating stories from students of all ages about the future of Mississippi.
“Most of it was dystopian,” he said. “But they all ended on some good note. … They haven’t lost hope, so that’s good.”
The stories contain imaginative plots: A bomb has fallen on the state, and a young boy discovers a ragged state flag among the ashes. Magnolia trees come to life and attack. The end times have come, but a biker and the owner of a home cooking restaurant still make conversation over a biscuit.
For his contribution, Barnes imagined Captain Jackson accompanying a group of students to a museum, where they encounter a man from the future who has traveled back in time to punish people for their historical wrongdoings.
The villain was inspired by Barnes’ own complicated feelings about Mississippi’s history. He challenged himself to embody that idea in a character.
“That’s something I have felt for some time,” he said. “We’re always having to pay the dues of people who came before us, and I wish we could just restart with every generation, have it be our own way.”
But Captain Jackson teaches the students that they can’t change the past.
“They go off with this idea that they can change the future and that’s really what they have to work for,” he said.
This year, Mississippians tuned into news about how federal funding cuts would affect child care and colleges. They also continued to follow news on the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and the death of Jimmie “Jay” Lee. Read the top stories of 2025 below.
Democratic candidates on Nov. 4 gained three Mississippi legislative seats, which included toppling a Republican incumbent in a special general election.
Latasha Chairse has a bizarre story. Equipped with a copy of someone else’s property deed, some elbow grease and a deluded interpretation of the state’s tax forfeiture process, Chairse claimed she thought she was acquiring one of Jackson’s many abandoned homes. Instead, the mother of three became the first squatter in Jackson exiled under a 2025 state law.
The U.S. Army purged the section that had lauded the late Army sergeant and civil rights leader, who was assassinated by a white supremacist in Jackson in 1963. The decision to erase Evers came after an executive order by Trump to eliminate all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programs.
A gold necklace with Jimmie “Jay” Lee’s name on it was found with human remains in Carroll County, but authorities did not publicly confirm if the remains belonged to the missing University of Mississippi student and well-known member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community.
A dozen parents from across the state told Mississippi Today about summer child care plans for their toddlers and elementary school-aged children. They shared a mix of anxiety about finding care and frustration with existing options.
For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University.
Twenty people, including 14 law enforcement officers, across the Mississippi Delta and Tennessee were arrested Oct. 30 by the FBI in a drug conspiracy takedown after a sprawling years-long investigation, federal authorities announced.
Mississippi Today reporters Gwen Dilworth and Michael Goldberg recap some of the findings from their series “Behind Bars, Beyond Care,” which uncovered widespread accusations of lack of adequate health care in Mississippi prisons and the suffering it causes. They discuss the potential for passage of reform in the upcoming 2026 legislative session.
As you solidify your New Year’s resolutions, it’s a great time to start having a conversation with your kids – whether they’re in elementary school, high school, or college — about smart ways to navigate finances. Starting the conversation earlier on will help to create healthy money habits as they grow, ultimately benefiting their financial future.
To help you get started, here are tips that make it easier for kids of all ages to learn how to save, budget and begin managing their finances more independently:
1. Start the conversation
It’s never too early to start talking about money in a realistic way so kids can understand how it’s used to support your lifestyle and help you achieve your goals and dreams. Begin the conversation in an age-appropriate way that highlights ideas, such as knowing the difference between needs and wants, saving for something special, and tracking the money you earn, as well as the money you spend. For example, young children can understand the idea of saving up money from their allowance or lemonade stand to buy something they want in the future.
2. Take notes and use tools
As your kids get older, explain the budgeting basics – even as simple as listing what you earn and what you spend, so you can ensure you won’t spend more than you have. Any leftover money is best put in savings first, then they can consider working toward items or experiences they might want to buy. There are many budgeting resources out there, so you can find the one that works for you, including budget worksheets to track spending.
3. Get organized and go digital
Financial confidence starts with getting organized. You can find easy-to-use budgeting tools that work for kids and parents both, with different levels of parental oversight and management suitable for different age groups. Whether it’s a first banking account, or an account geared towards a high school or college student, there are multiple options that can help students of various ages with firsthand digital transactions and account balances, assisting with budgeting and saving.
4. Plan for the future
According to Bankrate, 59% of Americans are uncomfortable with the amount of emergency savings they have, and 27% have no emergency fund at all. It’s important for kids of all ages to know that unexpected events in life can happen, so planning ahead may help reduce stress and better cope with whatever may occur. For this reason, building an emergency fund or saving for a rainy day is a crucial skill to learn.
Your kids can start learning and practicing vital money skills now that will stay with them for life, as well as how to use financial tools so they will be able to stay on top of their finances and achieve their goals.
Learn more about all the options available to get your kids started on the right financial footing at chase.com/studentbanking.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Seven decades after Rosa Parks was thrust indelibly into American history for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, new photos of the Civil Rights Movement icon have been made public for the first time, and they illustrate aspects of her legacy that are often overlooked.
The photos were taken by the late Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, and they depict Parks at the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 — a five-day-long, 54-mile trek that is often credited with galvanizing political momentum for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965.
History lessons tend to define Parks by her act of civil disobedience a decade earlier, on Dec. 1, 1955, which launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. On Dec. 5, some boycott participants and many of the boycott organizers’ descendants gathered to mark 70 years since the 381-day struggle in Alabama’s capital caught national attention, overthrowing racial segregation on public transportation.
The never-before-seen photos were released to the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery on Dec. 4. They were taken a decade after the boycott and are a reminder that her activism began before and extended well beyond her most well-known act of defiance, said Donna Beisel, the museum’s director.
“This is showing who Ms. Parks was, both as a person and as an activist,” Beisel said.
Never printed before
There are plenty of other photos placing Parks among the other Civil Rights icons who attended the march, including some that were taken by Herron. But others were never printed or put on display in any of the photographer’s numerous exhibits and books throughout his lifetime.
Herron moved to Jackson, Mississippi, with his wife and two young children in 1963 after Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated. For the next two years, Herron’s photos captured some of the most notable people and events of that time. But in most of his photos, Herron’s lens was trained on masses of everyday people who empowered Civil Rights leaders to make change.
Herron’s wife, Jeannine Herron, 88, said that the photos going public in December were discovered from a contact sheet housed in a library at Stanford University.
Jeannine Herron, the wife of the late Civil Rights photographer Matt Herron, returns to Alabama to reunite the photos her husband took with the people that his work depicts in Montgomery, Ala., Dec. 2, 2025. Credit: AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle
The photos weren’t selected for print at the time because they were blurry or included people whose names weren’t as well known In Parks’ case, the new photos show her sitting among the crowd, looking away from the camera.
Now, Jeannine Herron is joining forces with historians and surviving Civil Rights activists in Alabama to reunite the work with the communities that they depict.
“It’s so important to get that information from history into local people’s understanding of what their families did,” Jeannine Herron said.
A joyous reunion
One of Herron’s most frequent subjects throughout the Selma-to-Montgomery march was a 20-year-old woman from Marion, Alabama, named Doris Wilson. Decades after he captured her as she endured the historic march, he still expressed his desire to reconnect with her.
“I would love to find where she is today,” Herron said in a 2014 interview among Civil Rights activists and journalists who witnessed that transformative period in the Deep South.
Herron died in 2020, before he had the chance to reconnect with Wilson. But on Dec. 4, Wilson joined other residents of Marion, a rural town in the Black Belt of Alabama. Milling around an auditorium in Lincoln Normal School, a college founded by nine formerly enslaved Black people after the Civil War, people looked at black and white photos that Herron took over the years, pointing out familiar faces or backdrops.
Some photos were familiar to the 80-year-old. But others, including ones where she was the subject, Wilson had never seen before.
One of the photos depicts Wilson getting treatment at a medical tent along the path of the march. Wilson had intense blisters on her feet from walking over 10 miles each day.
Doris Wilson, a foot soldier who marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, sitting, is reunited with Dr. June Finer, the doctor who tended to her throughout the march, in Marion, Ala., Dec. 4, 2025. Credit: AP Photo/Safiyah Riddle
The doctor who was tending to her injuries, June Finer, also flew in from New York to reunite with Wilson for the first time since Finer gently cared for Wilson’s bare feet six decades earlier.
“Are you the one who rubbed my feet?” Wilson asked, as the two women laughed and embraced. Finer, 90, said she wasn’t even aware that people were taking photos — she was laser-focused on the safety of the marchers.
Later, Wilson reflected on how meaningful the reunion had been.
“I longed to see her,” Wilson said.
Robert E. Wilson, Wilson’s eldest son, said he had never seen the photos of his mother that were on display in the old school building where she went to school. He was a young child when she completed the march.
“I’m so stunned. She always said she was in the march, but I never knew she was strong like that,” said the now 62-year-old who was raised in Marion.
Years of searching
Cheryl Gardner Davis has faint recollections of the evening in 1965 when her family hosted the weary walkers on the third night of the march to Montgomery. She remembers hordes of strangers erecting tents on her family’s farm in the rural Lowndes County, Alabama. Just 4 years old at the time, she remembers how her mother and older sister had to mop up mud inside their hallway from people who had come in to use their landline phone.
It wasn’t until she was an adult that she fully understood the significance of her family’s sacrifice: Her mom’s job as a teacher was threatened, the family’s power was cut off and a neighbor menaced them with his rifle. For years, she scoured the internet and libraries for photo evidence of their hardship — or at least a picture of her family’s property at the time.
Among the hundreds of photos that made their way back to Alabama in the first week of December, were pictures of the campsite at Davis’ childhood home. Davis, who had never seen the photos before, said it was a vital way to bring light to the people who often are an afterthought in the recounting of that transformative historical period.
“It’s, in a sense, validation. This actually happened, and people were there,” Davis said.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, then-state Rep. John Reeves, a Jackson Republican, made the point of order on more than one occasion that economic development projects offering incentives to private corporations should require a two-thirds majority to win the approval of the Mississippi Legislature.
Reeves danced to his own tune and would often forgo the edicts of both political parties. He argued that it should require a two-thirds vote to provide the benefits to the private companies because of Article 66 of the Mississippi Constitution.
Article 66 states, “No law granting a donation or gratuity in favor of any person or object shall be enacted except by the concurrence of two-thirds of the members elect of each branch of the Legislature, nor by any vote for a sectarian purpose or use.”
Then-House Speaker Tim Ford, a Baldwyn Democrat, ruled against Reeves’ point of order, stating that the economic development package was for the greater good, not just to benefit a private company.
In later years, Rep.Bryant Clark, a Holmes County Democrat, raised a point of order saying that some of the funding in the annual end-of-the-session mammoth bill that doles out money for projects across the state was going to private entities, which thus would require a two-thirds vote. Clark later withdrew his point of order when it was pointed out that some of the money was going to private entities that he would support, such as Tougaloo College.
Money going to private Tougaloo College brings up the issue-du-jour – public funds being awarded to private schools under the moniker of school choice.
Republican House Speaker Jason White has proclaimed that school choice will be a priority during the session that begins in early January.
As the issue of vouchers for students to attend private schools is debated in the upcoming session, the question is whether there is in the current Mississippi Legislature a John Reeves-type who would argue that the voucher – whether to a school or to a student to attend a private school – is a gift, thus requiring a two-thirds majority vote to pass.
There is, as has been reported often, another section of the Mississippi Constitution – Section 208 – that states plainly that any public funds cannot go to any school that is “not a free school.”
On occasion, when points of order are raised, the presiding officer will respond that it is not up to the Legislature to decide constitutional issues. That is the job of the courts, they have said in the past.
But in reality, that argument is disingenuous, even hogwash.
After all, in their oath of office, legislators swear to “carefully read (or have read to me) the constitution of this state, and will endeavor to note, and as a legislator to execute, all the requirements thereof imposed on the Legislature.”
Each time, legislators call up a bill for a vote they do such in accordance with the mandates of the Mississippi Constitution. They allow legislators to enter a motion to reconsider after a final vote on a bill because that is what the Mississippi Constitution mandates just as they require a three-fifths vote to pass a revenue or tax bill because it is a constitutional requirement.
The list of areas where legislators adhere to constitutional mandates is long, and at times nonsensical and antiquated, but they do so because that is what the Mississippi Constitution says to do. Any legislator can request a bill to be read aloud to the chamber because it is constitutionally required.
In a sense, they seem to be cherry picking which constitutional mandates to follow.
Perhaps, they should at least consider and provide a reason for not adhering to the mandates preventing public funds from going to schools that are not free and requiring a two-thirds vote to provide a gift to a private entity.
POPLARVILLE — As Mississippi’s blueberry industry faces a steep decline, one Poplarville farm is finding new ways to keep the state fruit growing — from fresh berries to teas, baked goods and even dog treats.
J&D Blueberry Farm, co-founded by Donald Van de Werken and Jeff Brown, started small in 2004 selling fresh blueberries. Over time, they expanded their operation to include blueberry-infused products and a mobile bakery, part of an effort to build a lasting brand and reduce food waste. Van de Werken said their goal is to preserve the local blueberry market while creating new opportunities for future generations of farmers.
Evolution of the farm
Donald van de Werken, co-founder of J&D Blueberry Farm, stands inside the farm’s shop where blueberry teas, coffees and other products are sold. Van de Werken has worked in the blueberry industry since 2004. Credit: RHCJC News
Van de Werken, who has an agricultural background in citrus farming, said growing blueberries in south Mississippi felt like a natural fit. Poplarville, known for its annual Blueberry Jubilee, has long been a hub for growers across the region.
“We’re trying to build a brand more than we’re trying to sell,” Van de Werken said. “It makes great sense to sell, to make money because that’s what keeps you in business, but if you build a brand, people tend to recognize you.”
That mindset has guided J&D Blueberry Farm’s growth. What began as a micro fresh-produce operation has evolved into a year-round business that turns Mississippi-grown blueberries into teas, juices and baked goods. Van de Werken said the idea was to create products with longer shelf life and a stronger local identity.
Beyond the blueberry bushes
A roadside sign at J&D Blueberry Farms outlines U-Pick rules, safety guidelines and tips for harvesting blueberries in the fields. Credit: RHCJC News
At J&D Blueberry Farms, even imperfect berries have a purpose. Van de Werken said the team uses pulp and juice from fruit that might otherwise go to waste to make new products.
“For example, we take the fresh blueberries and then we pulp it to make juice, where otherwise, if the berry wasn’t perfect, we would have just tossed it,” he said. “It would have been complete food waste.”
That approach led the farm to partner with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce to research and refine its products. Today, J&D Blueberry Farm is known for its blueberry-infused teas but also sells coffee, baking mixes, juices and blueberry-based dog treats.
Van de Werken said their product line expanded even further in 2013 after acquiring a bakery from retired baker Capt. Karl Mueller, who was a neighbor and friend of van de Werken’s.
“We became self-taught bakers, and we’re known for our German stollen, which is a Christmas bread, and also blueberry pies, muffins, pound cakes — and we now dabble in gluten-free products,” he said.
Next season, the farm plans to add pear trees and begin producing pear cider as part of its goal to keep diversifying Mississippi-grown goods.
The local industry
J&D Blueberry Farm began selling its products at local farmers markets before expanding across the region. Van de Werken said his team sold their baked goods and teas at Oktoberfest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was selected to take part in the Christmas market in Tomball, Texas — one of only 150 vendors chosen from more than a 1,000 applications.
Closer to home, the farm is a familiar sight at the Poplarville Blueberry Jubilee, where thousands of visitors sample products and learn about Mississippi’s blueberry industry each year. Events like these, Van de Werken said, are vital to keeping the state’s blueberry community connected and visible.
But despite strong local support, the number of commercial blueberry farmers in Mississippi has fallen over the past two decades. Van de Werken estimates commercial farms decreased from about 85 growers in 2004 to roughly 15 today — as many longtime farmers retire and few new ones take their place.
Information from the 2022 Census of Agriculture shows evidence that supports these numbers, but at a slightly different angle. While the number of farmers has increased slightly through Mississippi, the number of acreage on farms has decreased from 2017 to 2022.
Fewer farms, Van de Werken said, means fewer local jobs and less visibility for a crop once celebrated across the region.
“There’s not a lot of young people jumping into it,” he said. “You either inherit it or you win the lottery, and you buy a farm. In our case, we started everything from scratch, and I would venture to say to start at our scale, it would cost a million dollars.”
Van de Werken now serves as president of the Gulf South Blueberry Growers Association, a small network of commercial farmers who meet twice a year to discuss the growing season, market trends and U.S. Department of Agriculture developments. He said the group offers one of the few remaining support systems for growers trying to keep the industry alive.
Room for improvement
The tea room inside the J&D Blueberry Farm shop offers seating for small groups to gather for teaor coffee and is available for meetings a visits. Credit: RHCJC News
While J&D Blueberry Farm continues to grow, Van de Werken said he’s keeping a close eye on how international competition could reshape the industry.
The USDA Horticulture Lab in Poplarville developed a variety of blueberry in 2008 known as Southern Highbush, or “Biloxi berry.” The plant has proven highly productive — but not in Mississippi. Instead, it thrives in countries like Peru, Mexico and Colombia, where the climate allows for longer growing seasons and higher yields.
Van de Werken said he believes Mississippi can still compete by investing in food manufacturing and processing facilities that turn local crops into market-ready products.
“We would be better off agriculturally and encourage more people to farm,” he said. “Right now, you can only sell so much fresh product before it goes to waste.”
For Van de Werken, that vision goes beyond his own farm. He said reducing food waste and strengthening local production could give Mississippi’s residents better access to high-quality foods while supporting the next generation of growers.
