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The Wilkinson County Board of Supervisors has rejected a request to rename the road where a Black World War II veteran was gunned down in what is believed to be the first killing by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

In May, his family asked supervisors to change the road’s name from Poor House Road to Clifton Earl Walker Road. 

On Monday, the board’s administrator, David Wilkerson, told the family that supervisors had turned down the request because the “vast majority of the residents on this road opposed the name change.”

Walker’s granddaughter, Rosabel Hall, told Mississippi Today that she’s disappointed in the decision. She said some who didn’t want their addresses changed told her they would support a memorial or historical sign to honor him.

She wrote a letter to supervisors, proposing alternate ways to honor Walker’s “life, military service and historical significance,” such as a historical sign.

“Our goal has always been to ensure that Clifton Earl Walker’s story is remembered and that his family receives the recognition that has been absent for more than 60 years,” she wrote. “We believe these alternatives would allow the county to honor his legacy while addressing concerns regarding residential address changes.”

Groups can purchase historical signs to commemorate the state’s history. They cost $2,800 each for a regular marker and $11,000 each for a Freedom Trail marker, which includes copyright purchases for photographs.

Other alternatives the Walker family suggested:

• Naming a county-owned facility, park, bridge, community center or public space to honor him.
• Designating a portion of a county roadway as the Clifton Earl Walker Memorial Highway.
• Adopting a county resolution honoring his legacy and contributions.

It was nearly midnight on Feb. 28, 1964, when the 37-year-old Walker turned his cream-colored 1961 Impala onto Poor House Road, six miles north of Woodville. He had just finished his shift at the integrated International Paper plant in Natchez and was headed home to his wife and five children.

Three hundred yards after he pulled onto the gravel road, a mob of white men, including Klansmen, stopped his car and opened fire with their shotguns. The pellets tore Walker’s face apart. 

When he was found the next day, he was dead, all the windows had been shot out, and part of the steering wheel had been blown off.

FBI and congressional records show the Mississippi Highway Patrol wanted to arrest then-Wilkinson County Constable Gordon “Bud” Geter and Klansman Ed Fuller, but then-District Attorney Lennox Forman refused to charge them.

The killing of Walker was part of a series of attacks on Black men in southwest Mississippi. Mobs of white men wearing hoods or masks whipped, beat and robbed dozens of Black men. Some had to be hospitalized.

The FBI concluded the White Knights, the most violent white supremacist group in the nation at the time, carried out the attacks. The White Knights are believed to have killed at least 10 people in Mississippi.

In 2009, the FBI began to review the Walker case, thanks to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. After a rehash of the 1964 Highway Patrol investigation, the Justice Department closed the case again in 2013, saying all known suspects were dead.

Journalist Ben Greenberg, who investigated the case, said the FBI did not speak to anyone in the Walker family until an agent delivered a 2013 letter notifying them that the Department of Justice was closing the case. 

Greenberg urged supervisors to “transform Poor House Road from being a forgotten crime scene to a memorial to one of the county’s citizens whose life was violently taken when he was just 37 years old,” he wrote. “They can give Clifton Walker’s family some closure where all else has failed him.”

Former NBA player and 2007-08 league champion Kendrick Perkins has agreed to become the general manager for the Jackson State men’s basketball team.

ESPN.com first reported the deal on Friday. Perkins has been working as an analyst for the network, which also reported Perkins intends to continue in his current television role and will have ties to the university’s broadcast and journalism program.

School officials have not yet made an announcement. Perkins will be working with new Jackson State coach Trey Johnson and athletic director Ashley Robinson. The Tigers went 12-21 last season and have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2007.

Perkins spent 14 seasons in the NBA, playing for the Boston Celtics, Oklahoma City Thunder, the New Orleans Pelicans and Cleveland Cavaliers. He won his title with the Celtics and joined ESPN in 2019.

At a Monday hearing on data centers, Jackson City Council members made it clear from the start that they were not passing any data center ordinances that night, but regulations are coming. A proposed six-month moratorium has been tabled, but no data centers will move forward until regulations are in place. 

“The city is working on a regulatory structure to govern data centers in the city. No data center will be approved until the city finalizes those regulations,” said City Council President Brian Grizzell. 

Grizzell said that council members are drafting proposed regulations and when those are ready they will hold additional public hearings. He said that the earliest a public hearing would take place is late July.

Over 80 people showed up for the Monday hearing, only half were able to squeeze into the council chamber. The rest stood outside in the foyer. Over 20 people spoke before the council, overwhelmingly in favor of regulations or outright opposed to a potential data center, especially a proposed project in northwest Jackson. 

New Jersey-based developer, Saxum Investments, has applied to rezone 230 acres of mostly undeveloped residential and commercial land to industrial use in order to attract a data center to the city. The planning board hearing for rezoning of the property will not take place until city regulations are passed.

“I can stand at my front door and look at, if this zoning is passed, and see the top of the data center. Council, ladies and gents, we don’t want that center built in our area,” said Thomas Cheddum Jr. who lives in Ashley Acres, a neighborhood close to the site.

At the top of residents’ concerns are the impact of data centers on the environment and utilities, especially water. Multiple residents said they already have water and power issues and worry that a data center might worsen those problems.

“Jackson has already lived through a water crisis. Our community deserves to know what this means for our water supply before 230 acres of trees and land are cleared,”said Erin Shirley Orey. 

Robert Ireland, an attorney with Watkins and Eager representing Saxum, said at the hearing that the city has an “opportunity” to adopt amendments such as requiring data centers to minimize noise and prove that they are not driving up utility costs. 

“Jackson is not forced to choose between development and the health and welfare of its citizens,” Ireland said. 

Jackson is one of a growing number of Mississippi cities to consider data center regulations. Clinton and Ridgeland recently passed requirements for data centers, such as how far a center can be from a residential area.

Within the Jackson Metropolitan Area, there are four large-scale data centers being built and a total of seven are being built statewide. Local leaders and economic development professionals have said these projects will generate billions of dollars in investment, bring in millions in taxes for schools and create jobs. But multiple speakers at Monday’s hearing questioned whether a large investment from a data center was worth the potential downside.

“I know that it’s bringing plenty of money, but money is not always good,” said Wade Brown, president of Presidential Hills Neighborhood Association in northwest Jackson.

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.  

Children and educators in Mississippi are powering one of the biggest statistical anomalies in this year’s 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In this report, the most comprehensive annual 50-state overview of child well-being, Mississippi was a leader in education gains — but also ranked at the bottom nationally in categories such as child and teen deaths and children living in poverty. 

The Data Book aggregates and reports on 16 measures of child well-being in every state in the areas of education, economic stability, health, and family and community, and ranks the states accordingly. This year’s Data Book adds a new feature: each state receives a score of 0-1,000 in addition to a ranking, both overall and in each of the 16 indicators measured from 2019 to 2024.

While Mississippi ranked 50th in the Data Book for overall child well-being, with a score of 271 out of 1,000, we ranked 16th in education, with a score of 448. More impressively, while 47 states’ education scores have declined since 2019, Mississippi’s has improved.

Mississippi has proven through our educational gains we can do better. We’ve shown that when we put our minds to it, we can become a national example for transforming education. We are not destined to remain at the bottom. Now we have the opportunity to do more to improve Mississippi children’s lives and ensure they have what they need not just to survive, but thrive.

Much has been written and said about the “Mississippi Miracle.” While this is a catchy moniker, the improved reading outcomes are the result of intentional legislation backed by resources and accountability, teachers using their instructional time focused on the science of teaching reading and people and communities all over the state working together for our kids’ futures. We can celebrate this win (and we should!), but we must continue to build on this momentum.

Lawmakers came together across party lines in 2013 on two pieces of legislation  designed to work together and lay the foundation for reading success: The Early Learning Collaborative Act  establishing Mississippi’s first state-funded pre-K program and the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, a multi-pronged plan to get children reading at grade level.

The first law expanded access to pre-K, giving 4-year-olds a strong foundation for kindergarten.

The second focused on state-approved literacy curricula grounded in phonics and comprehension, literacy coaches for teachers so they know how to best use those curricula in their classrooms, frequent screening for reading progress, approved interventions for students who need support and holding back students who do not meet benchmarks by the end of third grade.

Crucially, these laws didn’t leave it to school districts to figure out how to improve students’ reading. They equipped educators with the tools and resources they needed to reach and engage every student and provided experts – literacy coaches employed by the Mississippi Department of Education – to walk alongside teachers in areas with the greatest need as they applied the science of teaching reading. The “miraculous” results of these efforts make it clear: to support our children, we must first support our teachers.

The same goes for Mississippi communities, which have been quietly, behind the scenes, supporting children and families so that today’s kids can break the cycle of generations of unfulfilled educational potential.

For example, in Vicksburg, the United Way of West Central Mississippi recently received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to expand its SOAR United Literacy Intervention Program from two counties to 21. SOAR — Serving Others by Accelerating Reading — supports students in kindergarten through fifth grade with tutoring grounded in the same evidence-based reading strategies mandated by the state, and giving children books to take home.

But SOAR, and other programs throughout the state, go beyond work with children. If we want our kids to succeed, we have to expand our focus on literacy to the adults in their lives – a multi-generation approach.  Local groups are convening adult reading groups in churches and community centers, talking to parents and grandparents without judgment about the importance of reading to children and providing educational games and books for families to take home.

We have to meet families where they are, not where we think they should be.

Our work in education is far from done. Next up is proposed legislation to improve math skills among all students and continue the third-grade reading gains through eighth grade. We need to continue screening children for reading difficulties and provide appropriate interventions when they need support to progress — without stigma and without penalty.

And even as we expand our progress, we cannot ignore racial and ethnic gaps, as the Data Book shows us that our Black and Latino students need more support to meet statewide reading levels. We cannot settle for statistics that mask harsh disparities, but have to recommit so Mississippi’s education transformation touches all students, regardless of ZIP code, county, race or ethnicity.

We also have substantial work to do in the other areas of our kids’ lives. Mississippi is leading in education gains — but we also trail the nation in infant mortality, low birthweights and children living in poverty.

Just think about how much better our children’s outcomes would be if we applied the same laser focus we have on literacy to children’s health and economic stability. Then our education ranking would no longer be an anomaly, but one of many measures of Mississippi’s excellence.

For Mississippi to reach its full potential, we must make sure our state’s children reach theirs.

Ashley Parker Sheils is the chief executive officer of the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, home to the Mississippi KIDS COUNT data center and a non-profit focused on improving the well-being of children in Mississippi by strengthening the systems, programs, and policies that impact communities, our young people and their families. With more than two decades in literacy education and programming, she has led students, teachers, research and statewide initiatives all toward the goal of improving reading.. In the past five years, Sheils has secured over $13 million in grant funding to support literacy-related work in Mississippi. Her most esteemed title is “Mom” to twin boys.  

Senate Public Health Chairman Hob Bryan said the lack of transparency around the governor’s program to spend millions in federal rural health dollars in Mississippi is “almost the Saturday Night Live parody of secrecy.” Bryan and his House counterpart, Chairman Sam Creekmore, share their frustrations over lack of input from communities, and the Legislature, in how the state spends federal rural health care money.

Veronica Robeson remembers witnessing the birth of her first and only grandchild, Kohen Wiley, and seeing the bond grow between him and her daughter. 

Robeson is now trying to support the 1-year-old’s mother Vellesiya Wiley, who is experiencing panic attacks, cries every night and doesn’t eat or sleep. On June 14, Wiley held the child in her arms and witnessed as officers in Senatobia fired into the car they were in, hitting him in the rib area and striking the woman driver in the arm and thigh. 

“I watched my baby take his first breath, and I watched my baby take his last breath,” Vellesiya Wiley said at a Monday news conference at Gospel Temple Church in Senatobia. 

Other relatives and their legal team, national civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Memphis civil rights attorney Van Turner, joined the mother to call for justice and answers. 

An independent autopsy, footage from law enforcement body and dashboard cameras and Walmart surveillance video can help provide the family answers and peace, the attorneys said. 

“Transparency plus accountability equals trust,” Crump said. 

Kohen’s funeral is set for Saturday, and the family is expecting a preliminary autopsy report Wednesday. 

READ MORE: ‘Can’t get him back’: Family and community mourn toddler killed in Senatobia

Last week, Senatobia police and Tate county sheriff’s deputies received a call about shoplifting from the Walmart on U.S. 51. Police said officers saw two adults and a juvenile get into a car and try to drive away. Then police said the car drove in the direction of officers, leading them to shoot. The family and attorneys dispute this claim and allegations of shoplifting. The women in the car have not been charged, according to the family’s attorneys.

Wiley said she raised her baby and tried to show officers he was in the car, according to a video shared by Crump’s office on social media. 

At the news conference, Crump raised issues about the law enforcement response, including how it did not make sense for an officer to shoot into a moving vehicle and use force because of an alleged theft of a box of diapers and a bottle of water. 

He led the crowd in chanting “Baby Kohen’s life mattered” and “Baby Kohen’s life mattered more than a box of diapers” as he held up a pack of diapers in one hand.

After the child was shot and killed, the Senatobia Board of Aldermen placed an unnamed officer on administrative leave. Marquell Bridges, an advocate working with the Wiley family who attended the meeting, previously told Mississippi Today the board did not vote to terminate the officer or release footage. 

After the meeting, hundreds of demonstrators went from Senatobia’s city hall to the Walmart where law enforcement used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Family and community members have set up a memorial at the site. 

On Friday, two Memphis television news stations reported the name of the Senatobia officer as Hunter Foster. Officials with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety said the name was inadvertently disclosed through a public records request. Crump said his office has not received any police background history about the officer, but he encourages people with experiences of excessive force to contact the office. 

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation took over the case and is expected to spend between six and nine months to complete an investigation, said DPS spokesperson Bailey Martin. 

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell acknowledged the tragic situation and said an independent investigation is underway with five agents assigned. He asked for patience during the process and said records will be made public once the investigation is complete. 

“I want you to be assured that it will be a thorough investigation, and it will be one where transparency is there,” Tindell said last week during a news conference. 

After MBI is finished, the case will be turned over to the attorney general’s office to review the officer’s use of force and present the case to a Tate County grand jury for any criminal charges. 

To date, few Mississippi law enforcement officers have been criminally charged in police shootings. The attorney general’s office has also cleared a majority of officers for their use of force. 

Senatobia community activists attended the Monday news conference, including Patrick Alexander, who said the police department has had other recent incidents of using force against residents. 

Alexander asked some of those victims to stand, including a 10-year-old child taken into police custody for urinating outside a law firm parking lot in 2023. Another case he referenced was of a woman who said she was Tased and beaten in the same Walmart parking lot last year for alleged illegal use of a handicap parking spot. 

Kohen’s paternal grandparents shared their loss and how they looked forward to sharing life moments with the child. 

“They took away so much,” said Lasandra Williams, Kohen’s grandmother. “I was looking forward to graduation, the first day of school. So much they took away from us. That’s why we demand justice, because it’s not right.”

The date for the special election between David Archie and Anthony “Tony” Smith for the Hinds County District 2 supervisor seat is uncertain after a judge changed a recent ruling.

In an amendment filed Thursday, Special Judge Barry Ford said the election date — which was set for July 14 — was void and that Gov. Tate Reeves would have to set an election date under Mississippi law. The law says that the governor or lieutenant governor shall call a special election for the office or offices involved.

Ford said in the ruling he hopes the governor will keep the same date that had been set by the Hinds County Election Commission.

Archie, the incumbent who lost to Smith by nearly two to one in the 2023 Democratic primary, sued Smith and the Hinds County Democratic Party over allegations of fraud and election tampering. What ensued was a multi-year legal battle over the matter.

The amendment comes one day after Smith filed an appeal with the Mississippi Supreme Court about Ford’s initial ruling. His lawyer, Warren Martin, had said he was excited about the appeal, and believed it would be overturned by the Supreme Court.

In his original ruling on June 3, Ford ordered that a special election be held, stating that the will of Hinds County voters could not be determined due to various missing materials during Archie’s 2023 ballot box review. 

Archie said Monday his team is ready for the special election. Smith said he “trusts the system.”

Reeves had not set a new date as of Monday.

The Mississippi Board of Mental Health appointed Teresa Mosley and Dr. Sara Gleason as its new chair and vice chair, respectively. They will serve in the posts for the upcoming fiscal year, starting July 1.

Mosley, who was previously vice chair, is the lead psychometrist at the Mississippi College Dyslexia Education and Evaluation Center and owns TRM Educational Consulting. She represents Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District on the board.

Gleason is a professor at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and assistant vice chancellor for clinical affairs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. She is the board’s psychiatrist representative.

They were named to the positions by fellow board members during last week’s meeting. The previous chair was Dr. Alyssa Killebrew.

The nine-member board governs the state Department of Mental Health. The members are appointed by the governor to staggered terms and require state Senate confirmation, The board includes a physician, a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, and a social worker with experience in the field of mental health.

The state Department of Mental Health has more than 4,500 employees working in state hospitals, residential programs in other programs provided by the agency.

“We look forward to working with Ms. Mosley, Dr. Gleason and all of our board members over the coming year,” Wendy Bailey, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health’s executive director, said in a statement.

“Their leadership and experience, both personal and professional, continues to make a difference for Mississippians in need of mental health, addiction and disability services throughout our state,”  Bailey said.

At the same meeting, the board was also informed that Mississippi was one of 10 states selected for the 2026 Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic Medicaid Demonstration Program. This federal program changes the reimbursement model, providing these centers more funding and allowing them to provide a wider variety of care options.

Communicare in north-central Mississippi and LifeHelp in the Delta will host pilot programs and receive four years of Medicaid funding.

Central and northern parts of Mississippi are seeing a continued flood risk Monday, the National Weather Service reported. Meanwhile, state officials’ ongoing assessments have counted 76 homes with damage from Tropical Storm Arthur.

Areas including Greenville, Greenwood, Eupora and Columbus face an elevated risk, including two to three inches of potential flash flooding. Other cities to the south, including Yazoo City and Philadelphia, have a limited risk of flash flooding, which includes one to two inches of rain in a short period.

Arthur inundated south Mississippi late last week. The tropical storm caused one death in Franklin County as of Friday morning, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said. Damages from the flooding and severe weather were also reported in Forrest, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Lawrence, Pearl River, Rankin, Stone and Walthall counties.

“Our thoughts are with the family (of the deceased) affected by this tragic loss,” said Gov. Tate Reeves, who declared a state of emergency on Friday. “MEMA remains fully engaged with our local emergency management partners to support response operations, assess damages, and ensure resources are available to communities impacted by flooding.”

Seven of the damaged homes were destroyed, and another nine received major damage, Reeves reported Monday. Additional damages included: nine businesses, one farm, 50 roads — including four destroyed — three bridges, two public buildings and three power associations. MEMA reported over 10,000 outages on Thursday, but most were resolved by Friday.

The impacts include “significant flood damage” to a wastewater treatment facility in Harrison County. In addition to flooding, Hancock County saw two confirmed EF-1 tornadoes on Friday, the governor said.

Arthur also threatened to compromise a dam in Pearl River County, emergency officials said, and 30 homes were evacuated as a precautionary measure, emergency officials said Thursday. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said Friday that the structure was operating as designed. As of a 2023 inspection, the dam was in “poor” condition and has a “high” hazard condition for downstream areas if it were to fail, according to the federal government’s inventory

Erosion from the storm also “undermined a portion of” another dam in Harrison County, but state officials said the hazard and downstream impact were low.

MEMA asked impacted residents to self-report damages through the agency’s online portal.

Deep South Today, a nonprofit network of newsrooms in Louisiana and Mississippi, is pleased to announce it has received a $500,000 grant from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation to deepen and expand investigative and justice-focused reporting to amplify its impact across the region.

“The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation was among the earliest investors in Mississippi Today and Deep South Today, as it recognized the need and potential for impactful investigative journalism in our region,” said Warwick Sabin, President and CEO of Deep South Today. “We are grateful for the opportunity to build upon that strong foundation and our record of achievement to further scale the reporting on behalf of the communities we serve.”

With this new support, the DST newsroom Mississippi Today will address a critical gap in how courts are covered in the state. Instead of focusing narrowly on proceedings, journalists will cover the broader systems and consequences that shape people’s lives and civic participation.

Building on Mississippi Today’s prior reporting on felony disenfranchisement, the newsroom will develop a justice-oriented reporting beat that examines how court decisions, prosecutorial practices and legal structures impact communities — particularly those historically excluded from the democratic process.

“This work will illuminate where barriers to participation persist, and how systems of justice reinforce or dismantle those barriers,” said Mississippi Today Editor in Chief Emily Wagster Pettus. “By covering the courts through this lens, Mississippi Today will shine light on stories that are too often invisible, while providing the public with a clearer understanding of how power operates within the legal system.”

Resources also will be directed toward increasing impact, which will include dedicating more time and resources to long-term reporting projects, strengthening collaborations across the Deep South Today network and continuing to partner with national outlets to amplify stories that resonate beyond Mississippi. Sustaining and growing the impact of this work requires more than reporting capacity — it requires editorial leadership capable of building systems, guiding strategy and scaling collaboration across multiple newsrooms.

The Deep South remains one of the most consequential and undercovered regions in the country, and Deep South Today is building a network of nonprofit newsrooms designed to meet that challenge by creating infrastructure for investigative reporting and amplifying its reach and influence.

“This kind of reporting doesn’t happen by accident. It takes time, resources and editorial infrastructure built for the long haul,” said Adam Ganucheau, executive editor and chief content officer of Deep South Today. “We’ve already used that infrastructure to expose police torture and the misspending of public dollars, and to dig into how courts shape who gets to participate in our democracy. This grant lets us go further, reaching more communities and strengthening independent journalism in Mississippi and across the Deep South.”

About Deep South Today

Deep South Today is a nonprofit network of local newsrooms that includes Mississippi Today, Verite News and The Current. Its new Arkansas Today newsroom will launch in fall 2026.

Founded in 2016, Mississippi Today is now the largest newsroom in the state, and in 2023 it won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Verite News launched in 2022 in New Orleans, where it covers inequities facing communities of color. The Current is a nonprofit news organization founded in 2018 serving Lafayette and southern Louisiana.

With its regional scale and scope, Deep South Today is rebuilding and re-energizing local journalism in communities where it had previously eroded, ensuring its long-term growth and sustainability.

About Jonathan Logan Family Foundation

The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, based in Berkeley, California, supports organizations that advance social justice by empowering world-changing work in investigative journalism, documentary film, arts and culture and democracy.