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The capital city’s third-party water and sewer utility is again raising alarms over its inability to fund operations. JXN Water, in a Monday court filing, said it will continue to be “insolvent” without a rate increase or another large influx of money.

“The System is barreling toward insolvency, meaning it won’t be able to deliver water and
sewer services to citizens because system operations (will) shut down due to the lack of sufficient
funds,” the utility wrote.

JXN Water, the utility said, is losing $3 million a month. Many of its positions, such as plant operators and repair crews, are contracted out. The utility said it owes $31 million to those contractors after months of not being able to make payments. The $150 million the federal government set aside for operating expenses ran dry by May, the filing says.

Ted Henifin, the court-appointed head of JXN Water, pleaded with U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate in recent hearings to approve a 12% rate increase he first proposed in April. Wingate, though, insisted on exhausting all other funding options before raising rates in a city with a lower median income and higher poverty rate than surrounding areas.

“My team has repeatedly warned the parties and Court of the critical state of the system’s finances, which have reached a daunting level,” Henifin wrote in the report.

Both the Jackson City Council and recently elected Mayor John Horhn have come out against the proposed increase. Only Wingate’s approval, though, is necessary for the rate hike to move forward. City officials have called on the utility to improve collection rates, which are about 70%, before increasing rates. Even with 100% bill collections, though, Henifin maintains JXN Water would still operate at a deficit.

Wingate initially delayed ruling on the rate increase to track down the city’s spending from its settlement with Siemens over faulty water meters. The judge issued subpoenas in July to 18 different parties related to the city and the settlement, but it’s unclear how many have been fulfilled.

Wingate also prioritized chasing large debts from apartment complexes. Last week, WLBT reported, JXN Water arrived at a payment plan with Tracewood Apartments to resolve $910,000 in overdue bills. The judge is also overseeing an ongoing lawsuit between the utility and Blossom Apartments, which JXN Water says owes $400,000 in debt.

Aisha Carson, JXN Water’s communications officer, told Mississippi Today the utility hasn’t heard any updates from Wingate as far as addressing the rate proposal.

Carson said as of now, day-to-day services haven’t changed. Without giving a timeline, though, she added JXN Water could have to scale back certain operations at some point.

“That doesn’t include our large capital projects, but it will include things like field crews, our ability to respond to water leaks or sewer leaks that come up,” Carson said.

On top of reduced services, the utility also warned of impacts to Jackson’s finances. Part of the revenue JXN Water says it needs is to pay off the water system’s debt, of which it owes $5 million by Dec. 1. If it’s unable to tackle the debt, “sales tax revenues collected by the City will be intercepted and used for debt service beginning November 2025 and continue until debt service is paid,” Monday’s report said. Such diversions could reduce Jackson’s revenue by $7.5 million per year, it added.

The report, which JXN Water filed as a supplement to it’s required financial management plan, listed options for temporary relief, such as converting itself to a public water authority so that it can issue tax-exempt bonds — something the state Legislature paved the way for last session — and securing an “Emergency Drinking Water Loan” from the state Health Department. The former, Carson said, would require approval “from Wingate and/or the Legislature.”

The utility also raised the potential of privatization or a public-private partnership, saying it “understands the City may be interested” in either option.

“(JXN Water) wants to be on written record that the financial crisis has gotten to the point where if the City proposes privatization, we believe it needs to be seriously considered,” the report said.

The report also called on the city to, if possible, issue bonds to support the water system directly or help pay off debt.

Mississippi Today reached out to city officials for comment on Tuesday morning and will update this post if the city responds.

Wingate: Customers still not receiving bills

On Tuesday afternoon, Wingate ordered JXN Water to establish a self-reporting method for customers who don’t receive bills.

“Despite prior remedial efforts, the Court has received credible information that a substantial number of customers continue to receive no monthly bill, leaving revenues uncollected and accountability diminished,” the judge wrote.

Wingate went on to write, “to this day a significant percentage of accounts in Jackson are either unmetered, inaccurately metered, or not billed altogether.” Henifin, though, has recently said almost all customers have new meters the utility and city have installed in recent years. While the utility says there are over 11,000 accounts with meters but don’t pay bills, it’s unclear how many people aren’t receiving bills altogether.

“These failures have carried real consequences,” Wingate added. “They erode public trust. They place disproportionate burdens on those customers who do receive bills, often inflated, while their neighbors may receive none.”

The order requires JXN Water to set up ways for customers to reach out online, by telephone, or in person to tell the utility if they haven’t received a bill for at least 60 days. It also authorizes JXN Water to offer customers amnesty from late penalties if a customer reports unbilled usage before Dec. 31.

Wingate set a hearing for Sept. 19 for the utility and city to give their progress on locating unbilled customers.

Mississippi Delta native B.B. King, affectionately known around the world as the “King of the Blues,” would have turned 100 years old Tuesday.

King, who passed away in 2015, is still celebrated by fans around the world.

Hundreds were expected to attend a birthday celebration Tuesday evening at B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street in Memphis, which followed a block party on Beale Street on Sunday and celebrations this past weekend at Club Ebony in Indianola, the Delta hometown he claimed.

The show was set to feature Mississippi Blues legend Bobby Rush and include performances from Carla Thomas and Hi Rhythm, along with a special musical tribute by Shirley King and the B.B. King All-Star Legends.

“We’re looking to enjoy the music, the atmosphere,” Kara Kent, who traveled to the Bluff City from Seattle, told WREG.

The Mississippi attorney general is fighting a federal judge’s decision to block the state law that bans diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Mississippi public schools and universities. 

State Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office filed a notice of appeal on Tuesday against the preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate in August. The injunction prevented the law from being enforced until there’s a final decision in the lawsuit. 

Now, the case will go before a three-judge panel on the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“I don’t know why the state’s educational authorities would want to try and resurrect these ridiculous provisions which would create chaos in the schools and give our students a thoroughly substandard education,” said Rob McDuff, a Mississippi Center for Justice attorney and one of the lead lawyers representing the plaintiffs. 

“Hopefully, their appeal will fail and sanity will prevail,” he added.

McDuff said the preliminary injunction, in the interim, will stand unless and until the 5th Circuit reverses it. 

Over the past few months, attorneys for the plaintiffs have argued that House Bill 1193, passed by the Legislature this year following a wave of similar bills across the country, is unconstitutional. They said it violates the First and Fourteenth amendments by banning classroom discussions about race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. The attorneys have said that would include books and discussions about the Civil War, women’s rights and slavery — topics that define the country’s history. 

But the state’s attorneys said that the plaintiffs were reading the statute in bad faith, and that public employees do not have First Amendment rights in the workplace. 

It’s unclear what the timeline will be for the New Orleans-based appellate court to consider the appeal, but it will likely issue a schedule in the coming weeks for the parties to file legal briefs.

Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the Delta State University student whose body was found Monday hanging from a tree on the Cleveland campus, did not have broken bones or “injuries consistent with an assault,” according to a coroner’s preliminary examination. 

“At this time, there is no evidence to suggest the individual was physically attacked before his death,” Bolivar County Coroner Randolph “Rudy” Seals Jr. said in a statement Monday.

Reed, 21, was from Grenada, Mississippi, and was Black. Mississippi has a history of lynchings of Black people, and speculation has been rampant on social media that Reed had broken bones or was a victim of an attack.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat who represents that area, referred to Mississippi’s history in calling for the FBI to launch an investigation into Reed’s death.

“We must leave no stone unturned in the search for answers,” Thompson said in a statement released Tuesday. “While the details of this care are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans.”

He urged the FBI’s involvement to ensure a full and impartial investigation.

Reed’s body is being sent to the Mississippi State Crime Lab for an autopsy, Seals said. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department and the Cleveland Police Department are working with campus police in the death investigation. 

Reed was a first-year student at Delta State and had only been on campus about a month before his death, an attorney representing Reed’s family, Vanessa Jones, said Tuesday, according to WREG-TV. The law firm where Jones works will investigate the death and will order an independent autopsy, she said.

“Trey’s family is not willing to accept any cause of death until they have been presented with all of the facts that will be independently verified through our own investigation,” Jones said in a statement.

She said at a news conference Tuesday that the president of Delta State had not reached out to the family, WREG reported.

“As we move forward, we’re just looking for answers that a simple camera on the university’s campus would answer,” Jones said. “The media knew about his death before Trey’s family did.”

Delta State University said in a statement Tuesday that hundreds of people took part in a prayer vigil Monday night to honor Reed’s life.

The university’s president, Dan Ennis, said in a video statement Tuesday that school officials remain in contact with Reed’s family.

“We give them our love and support, and we know that we can never fully heal this wound,” Ennis said. “None of us will fully heal, but we have to go on.”

Ennis also said school officials and Reed’s family are keeping track of the investigation.

“As you might imagine, we can only release information that’s appropriate, and we will never release any information or make any statement that compromises the ability of authorities to get to an answer that is true, that is real, and that, if not satisfying, at least helps us understand a little bit better what occurred,” Ennis said.

Delta State University Chief of Police Michael Peeler said at a press conference Monday there was no evidence of foul play. Both he and Ennis said there was no threat to students or the community.

Update 9/16/25: This story has been updated to include comments from U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson and from attorney Vanessa Jones.

WASHINGTON — An inspector general’s investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to discuss sensitive military operations in Yemen with national security officials will likely be released soon, according to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker. 

Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Mississippi Today in an interview that the inspector general’s report is complete. 

“I understand the report is complete, it’s under review and we should get it soon,” Wicker said.

The report looking into Hegseth’s messages and participation in the chat follows a joint letter from Wicker and U.S. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, asking the Pentagon’s watchdog to investigate the Signal conversation.

Former national security adviser Mike Waltz set up the message in March to coordinate the Trump administration’s plans for strikes against the Houthis and accidentally invited Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to the chat. 

Signal is a free messaging app that allows users to communicate with strong end-to-end encryption to make conversations more secure. But security experts have warned that electronic devices using Signal could still be hacked by foreign adversaries. 

The chat between the Cabinet and national security officials described launch times of U.S. fighter jets, enemy targets, and munitions that would typically be classified as secret. 

The Department of Defense declined to comment for this story, but Hegseth has repeatedly said that he did not share classified information in the chat. 

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

I grew up in Calcutta, now Kolkata, a large city in India. Then, there were parts of Kolkata that smelled of raw sewage. When I came to the United States, I thought I had left that odor behind. And so I had — until I moved with my family to Jackson.

During the first 20-odd years we lived in Jackson, there was always somewhere in my neighborhood I could smell sewage. This indicated there was a leak, even though I couldn’t see it.

Sewage leaks are a health hazard. Contamination of drinking water with sewage can lead to a number of diseases. Further, the kind of mosquitoes that prefer to breed in sewage-contaminated water carry West Nile disease and encephalitis.

Unfixed sewage and water leaks can undermine nearby infrastructure, such as roads and buildings, thereby increasing the ultimate cost of repairs.

When the water and sewage systems were taken over by JXN Water in 2023, there were two sewage leaks near my house. JXN Water has repaired both of them.

For the first time since I moved to Jackson a quarter century ago, I have well-founded confidence that the quality of the water in Jackson is being adequately controlled, and the sewage disposed of properly. This is because these systems are being handled by JXN Water, which was created three years ago expressly to oversee repair and improvement of the city’s water infrastructure.

Less than a year after its creation, JXN Water also was given the job of repairing the failing sewer system, which over the previous three years had leaked 111 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the environment, and discharged 4.5 billion gallons of untreated or under-treated sewage into the Pearl River.

Since JXN Water took control there has been tremendous progress in providing reliable water to the city, and in ensuring that sewage does not leak onto city streets or elsewhere into the environment. However, this progress is now imperiled.

JXN Water is collecting insufficient money from Jackson’s ratepayers to meet operating expenses. JXN Water discovered this financial shortfall only earlier this year. This was not discovered earlier because until the end of 2024 JXN Water had not controlled the sewage and water systems for long enough to properly evaluate the cost of running them.

The federal government did give Jackson between $650 million and $800 million to fix its water woes, but most of this money came with strict conditions: it was to be used for repairing the water system and for projects that brought Jackson’s drinking water supply into compliance with federal standards. Funding the day-to-day operation of the water system was left as the responsibility of the municipality, as it is everywhere else in the country.

Using the federal funds for the sewage system was also excluded. Consequently, JXN Water has to rely on remittances from ratepayers to fund sewage system repairs and operating expenses for both systems.

JXN Water is making every effort to obtain payments for the water it delivers. When JXN Water took control of the water and sewage systems, many ratepayers’ meters were giving erroneous readings.

JXN Water replaced all the meters, but after sending out bills with readings from the new meters, thousands of customers did not submit remittances. After waiting months for payment, JXN Water pursued delinquent accounts and raised the proportion of collections to 70%.

Officials located and resolved over 1,000 unmetered connections and increased monthly revenue about 40%. Unfortunately, their projections indicate that even if they manage to raise collections to 100%, they will not be able to make up their financial shortfall. 

JXN Water is not a for-profit company: all the money it collects goes into running Jackson’s water and sewage systems. JXN Water has requested a rate increase corresponding to the amount that would be needed to fund its operations assuming an unrealistically high collection rate of 100%.

This increase was opposed by former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the outgoing City Council and Jackson’s present Mayor John Horhn, none of whom have the final say on the rate increase. Most of these officials have declared the increase to be unaffordable for the city’s lower income residents.

The final decision on the rate increase rests with U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, who oversees the repair of the water and sewer systems. He is considering other options such as legislative interventions and empaneling a Water Authority which could authorize a bond to cover JXN Water’s financial shortfall.

However, legislative measures take time, and a bond is a loan which will have to be repaid, presumably by rate increases borne by JXN Water’s customers. Issuing bonds for ongoing expenses is not a sustainable solution.

Jackson has the unsavory distinction of being the only city of its size in the entire country that does not cover its own water and sewer expenses.

For decades, city government has underinvested in these systems by obscuring the true costs of maintaining them. The present arrangement, which demands separating water and sewer expenses from the other finances of the city, makes the lack of financial support clear to the public.

While Judge Wingate works on options, JXN Water continues its work. It has been short of funds since July. It has resorted to not fully paying contractors who work to fix leaks or the engineering firm that runs the water plant, and promising them payment in the future.

Jackson is financing its water and sewage systems on the goodwill of companies with which it does business. It is unclear how long this goodwill will last.

The only sustainable solution proposed so far to funding Jackson’s water and sewer systems is a rate increase.

City government is abdicating its responsibility to provide safe drinking water for all its residents. It must find another mechanism to support those with low income.

Ranjan Batra retired after serving for 20 years on the faculty of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and continues to live in Jackson. He recently graduated from Jackson Water Academy, and is now a water ambassador.

Yellow buses pulled up to grassy curbs and carried students from the far reaches of Copiah County to school campuses in Crystal Springs and Wesson. For teachers, parents and students,  the first day of the fall semester was an ordinary August day in central Mississippi. Hot, humid and long. 

For administrators, it was the end of a probation that started over half of a century ago.

After 55 years, the Department of Justice lifted Copiah County School District’s desegregation order. The district had integrated to the agency’s satisfaction and can now forgo regular audits that check for inequity.

However, across the county, parents along a racial divide still see existing inequalities: better facilities and programs in mostly white Wesson and older buildings and few offerings in Crystal Springs, which is majority-Black.

Sixteen years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools were unconstitutional, Mississippi was compelled by a subsequent court decision to dismantle its dual school system beginning in 1970. Some districts like Copiah County faced specific desegregation orders based on their level of compliance.

“The goal was to ensure that school districts were meeting their obligations,” said Shaheena Simons, who up until April worked for the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice. “That meant that the DOJ would ask questions and would review information and would sometimes go out on site and talk to people. The goal was to ensure that the school district was treating students fairly.”

In 1970, Copiah County School District joined over 200 others across the South under school  desegregation orders: 33 in Mississippi,  53 in Alabama, 49 in Georgia, 44 in Louisiana, 28 in South Carolina, 27 in North Carolina and 35 in Virginia. Now, 29 districts remain under that order in Mississippi, 30 in Georgia, 12 in Louisiana, and 39 in Alabama. The other Southern states have fewer than five districts remaining. 

More than 50 school districts were released from DOJ desegregation orders during Donald Trump’s first presidential term, more than during the two terms of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and the single term of George H.W. Bush. President Ronald Reagan released just under 150 school districts from orders, more than any other president.

In July, Copiah County School District Superintendent Rickey Clopton submitted paperwork through the board attorney after communication from the Department of Justice that the new administration intended to clear desegregation orders with a greater sense of urgency than past administrations. He didn’t expect to hear back so soon. The turnaround was a week.

“We’re just fortunate that someone in the Department of Justice has taken the initiative to try to settle some of these things and get us out of the past and move into the future,” Clopton told Mississippi Today.

The court order came down on the first day of school – and was news to longtime administrators and local activists. One central office employee found out from a press release, while an assistant superintendent got the news from a 20-second evening news clip. The local NAACP chapter president didn’t know until Mississippi Today informed him.

District officials hadn’t visited a courtroom, stood before a judge or escorted DOJ officials around Copiah County’s  four public schools in over a decade. Instead, assistant superintendents would traditionally go classroom to classroom to count students and staff by race and the school attorney would write up a report. Facilities and extracurricular offerings at each school were compared. So were yearbook spreads. The documents were slipped into an envelope and sent to a federal judge and emailed every March and October. 

The cycle would repeat until the court was pleased.

“ We were trying to justify what we were doing, but it had been very difficult for someone sitting in an office in Washington, D.C., to understand. It was the most frustrating part of the job that we totally understood and totally wanted to comply with but could not,” said Martha Traxler, longtime assistant superintendent with the district. She noted the challenges in particular of recruiting enough Black teachers.

Whether the school district made adequate progress was regular chatter in barber shops and on front porches for decades. Whether in a cafe in Crystal Springs or outside the Stop N Wash in Wesson or sipping on a tea on the patio of Stark’s Restaurant in Hazlehurst, you’re likely to hear a different story with characters depicted as negligent or stretched thin, malicious or doing the best they could with what they’ve got.

But in each telling of the county’s crawl towards progress, some details remain true, some statistics are irrefutable and some comparisons speak for themselves.

The county schools

Copiah County is mostly rural with lush farmland, three quaint towns and one county school district and a separate city school district in Hazlehurst. The county district has a K-12 school to the south in Wesson, which is 73.7 percent white with a student body over 78% white. It also has a high school, middle school and elementary school to the north in Crystal Springs, which is over 65% Black with a student body nearly 80% Black.

Wesson Attendance Center, established in 1960 with a new high school campus built in 1978, has all three schools on one expansive stretch of green bordered by trees. The campus boasts impressive facilities, including a separate baseball and softball field and  an indoor basketball court with maple floors.

Until 1978, Wesson students attended high school on the campus of Copiah-Lincoln Community College, whose football field Wesson students still practice and play on.

Crystal Springs High School, built in 1928, stands on the same few acres of land as Crystal Springs Elementary School. The campus has a football field with a track as well as a baseball field. The high school is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A past district administrator, two former teachers, one current teacher and three current students cited their concerns about aging and unclean facilities in interviews with Mississippi Today.

Crystal Springs Middle School is housed in the old Black high school, the William H. Holtzclaw School, which was built in 1958. Now, 67 years later, the campus remains seven  single-story brick buildings partly connected by breezeways and bordered by chain link. It’s apparent that the school was built as cheaply as possible, said former superintendent Dale Sullivan. The ceiling supports are a fraction of the size they should be. 

It’s also the worst performing school in the district. For the last four years, the school, which had a 2023-24 enrollment of 368 students, has received a “D” on the state accountability system. 

On average, while the district spends $179 more per pupil at Crystal Springs’ schools than Wesson’s, Crystal Springs teaches 383 more students.

August 1970

Jimmy Buchanan, who is Black, still remembers the day he became principal of Crystal Springs High School, one of the first integrated high schools in the county. He was recruited at age 28 from the Hotzclaw School for Black students.

“I just assumed that that’s just the way it was. Everything had always been separate that way and they just kept it like it was,” he told Mississippi Today.

School was set to open the following week when the desegregation order came down. Superintendent George Myers delayed school for a week. He called a reluctant Buchanan into his office and offered him the principal position at Crystal Springs. Buchanan was content at Hotzclaw and didn’t want the position but was told he had no choice  because there would be no Hotzclaw in a week’s time.

In the days leading up to the first day of school, he was up past midnight working on rearranging schedules for students. 

“It was different,” he said. “Because you had whites and Blacks that (had) never been together. And you had white teachers that never taught Black students.”

By the first day of school, enrollment at Crystal Springs High School was 66% Black, the middle school was 71% Black and the elementary school 81% Black. Many white families enrolled their children in Copiah Academy, which had recently expanded after merging with a segregation academy in Crystal Springs in April. Construction on a larger private school was underway.

Buchanan was undermined both by white parents who felt he was favoring Black students because of his race and by Black parents who felt he was favoring white students because of the racial make-up of the district office. They thought he was a token.

For the first semester at least, there were no assemblies. It took enough time and energy for district employees to manage new schedules and bus routes. Black and white students had to be equally represented in each class. Band and football were first reintroduced with an integrated roster.

“The idea was that the less contact these kids had with each other initially until they got used to doing what they were doing, the better. ‘Cause there was always some smart little kid that said something that he shouldn’t,” said Sullivan, who served as superintendent from 1973 to 2001.

The school board attorney went from school to school meeting with parents about “what’s fixing to happen.”

For the first few decades after the order, the district made do with a lot of “co-’s” – a white student body president and a Black student body president, a white homecoming queen and a Black homecoming queen. Even for superlatives like ‘best dressed” and “most likely to succeed” there was Black and white representation.

It was implemented not because of friction but because of what might happen should tensions arise, said Sullivan.

“I would say integration was as smooth as it could have been,” Buchanan said. “It got as integrated as you’re going to get. … At least here.”

Sullivan remembers how some white families were committing fraud to be zoned into Wesson schools, which remained primarily white, because of “housing patterns.” They would move campers to land owned by friends and family in Wesson in time for school registration.

Greg Brock, who was a high school senior then and wrote columns for the local paper, remembers no fights on campus but plenty of tantrums in town. His dad’s auto body shop was boycotted by locals who disapproved of his columns urging people to accept change. He remembers a racist rant from a customer.

In a column at the time for the city newspaper, he wrote “How is school? … What has happened? … How do we like the teacher? … Will it work? These questions and many more permeate the minds of interested persons as the school year of 1970-71 progresses.”

August 2005

In August 2005, the county schools were declared integrated except for staff and teacher assignments. The court order came down during another weeklong school delay with this one brought by Hurricane Katrina.

The storm knocked out power for many residents in Copiah County and destroyed homes. Some students enrolled in schools in neighboring states.

When school resumed, “I don’t think the numbers changed as much as it was more or less accepted among the races that: ‘Hey, Black teachers are not as bad as we thought. They can teach. They’re really knowledgeable. Hey, white teachers, they do care. And they are human beings, too,’” Buchanan said. 

The challenge for assistant superintendent Traxler who took on the role of assistant superintendent in 2003 was to find enough Black teachers for predominantly white Wesson. The court order demanded that the ratio of Black and white students in each school reflect the ratio of Black and white teachers at the school.

Traxler traveled to job fairs, visited local high schools and colleges, set up booths at conventions and approved faculty transfers – but the percentages didn’t seem to budge. 

Until her retirement in 2016, Traxler experienced a worsening teacher shortage, which made the job of satisfying the DOJ orders more difficult. She struggled to find more than a single qualified math and science teacher at conventions in her later years on the job. 

“It was impossible what they asked of us. Even if we transferred teachers over. They mostly didn’t want to commute further. They would’ve chosen another district,” Traxler said.

In the district’s most recent status report for the Department of Justice and the courts, percentages of white and Black teachers at the four schools remained stagnant. District officials were seeing no change. The percentage of Black teachers at Wesson’s schools hovered around 10%.

“The only thing we had left is to balance out the professional staff of our schools without transferring them out from all sides of the county,” said Superintendent Clopton. “It was unrealistic because of the patterns of where people lived and patterns of where people want to work.”

September 2025: Crystal Springs

Crystal Springs High School junior Marissa Marsaw remembers the first time she played Wesson High School in volleyball. She slung her duffel bag on a spare chair and marvelled at the locker room for guest teams. It had clean floors without rat poop and roaches, an entire working restroom, and new-looking lockers. 

She couldn’t believe she was in the same school district. 

Only 22 miles down Highway 51 from her native Crystal Springs, she encountered a very different city and school. A school where students could partake in a robotics team and a Beta club. She had grown accustomed to fundraising for the athletic teams to cover fees and equipment. Wesson had its own stadium.

Marissa Marsaw said  it disturbed her and her mother to learn that Wesson and Crystal Springs hold high school graduations on the same day – and that board members, split along lines of race and geography, didn’t attend the others.

Three current Crystal Springs students expressed concerns about dirty locker rooms and a lack of class trips and extracurriculars like robotics. 

“The district gives to who they want to give to,” Crystal Springs senior Alivia Newell said. “I don’t think they want us to be a better school.”

They acknowledge community members are more comfortable voicing concerns online but not in person. It doesn’t help that the Copiah County School District holds board meetings at 3 p.m. on a weekday when most parents and teachers are still at work and students are just getting out of class.

Marsaw and her friends gather at Book Street Cafe in downtown Crystal Springs some days after school. They interact with classmates from not just the local high school.

Greg Brock, the proprietor and a former New York Times and Washington Post editor, bought the cafe last year after moving home. He had gotten his start as a student journalist at the city paper and covered integration and its aftermath.

Mid-to-late afternoon on a weekday, his cafe boasts a lively clientele that pretty much represents the diversity of the city. Teens pull books from the shelves and sip on colorful refreshments and frappes.

It’s meaningful for Brock who believes the death of the city came with white flight.

“They wrote that school off,” he said of the Crystal Springs schools. “That’s the day this town started dying. When whites started abandoning it.”

September 2025: Wesson

Across the county, in Wesson, locals had been congregating at Wash N Stop for years. From the outside, it resembles an ordinary gas station convenience store with a regular crowd of commuters and townies. It’s the most active parking lot in town.

To many in Wesson, Larry Ashley is best known as the proprietor of the convenience store that serves mouth-watering fried chicken and potato wedges. Ashley also builds homes with the help of his son.

Ashley, who has lived in Wesson most of his life, switched to Hazlehurst City School District from Wesson his junior year but was recruited to join Copiah Academy’s football team his senior year. He went on to attend Copiah-Lincoln Community College and graduate from Mississippi State University. 

“I think Crystal Springs has all the same things that Wesson has school-wise,” Ashley said. “But they’re starting a hundred-yard dash with 10 kids that have to run an extra 10 yards to get to the finish line. So what does a teacher have to do? A teacher has to lower her standards.”

For mom Barbie Stroud,who is white and new to Wesson, the decision to home school while her family lived in Crystal Springs was easy.

“The schools are just not the same,” she said.

She feared school fights that she heard about in Crystal Springs and Hazlehurst would endanger her child’s wellbeing. She didn’t want her child around purported gangs in those communities.

At Crystal Springs High School, nearly 44% of the student population was suspended in 2023-2024 with 45 violent incidents reported. Less than 10% of Wesson Attendance Center students were suspended the same year with 12 violent incidents.

One has double the chance of becoming a victim of violent crime in Crystal Springs than in Wesson, though a majority of crimes reported are property crimes.

Wesson is a town where, in the words of one resident, “the most common crime is speeding tickets and residents keep each other accountable on Facebook.” Public school teaching posts are hardly vacant because a majority of teachers are from the community.

“I wouldn’t drop my kid by himself at a football game there on a Friday night,” Stroud said of Crystal Springs.

Crystal Springs has  some extracurriculars that Stroud wants for her child, such as JROTC and more vocational classes.

Blake Allen, a Wesson graduate and musician, said the problem is that the accountability system used by Mississippi public schools incentivizes teachers to raise the bottom 25 more than work with the middle 50 or top 25. He feels his kid wouldn’t get the same attention in a Crystal Springs classroom where many more students are starting off with less knowledge.

He also said Wesson’s facilities seem nicer.

“There’s probably more favoritism towards Wesson,” Allen acknowledged.

A ‘cultural difference’

When asked whether the schools in Crystal Springs and Wesson are similar in quality, Copiah County residents and stakeholders held up statistics, rattled off anecdotes and shared photos of leaking roofs. 

Among Crystal Springs students, 34% on average enroll in college and 31% take an advanced placement course in high school. Among Wesson students, 77.6% enroll in college and 63% take an advanced placement course.

Wesson is an “A” school. Crystal Springs High School is a “B” school.

Kenneth Thrasher, who is Black, remembers a tense conversation with administrators in the central office about a transfer for his high-achieving daughter from Wesson to Hazlehurst School District. They wanted him to keep her there. 

But he felt a “cultural difference” at Wesson. He was getting messages from a teacher he felt didn’t have experience teaching enough Black students. The teacher scrutinized his daughter’s knack for dancing when popular music was played in class. He also didn’t like that she was a minority in the classroom.

The decision to enroll her in Hazlehurst wasn’t hard. 

“I had seen the last Confederate flag fly in the line-up at parent pick-up,” he told Mississippi Today.

Asked whether the Copiah County School District successfully integrated to the extent there isn’t a noticeable Black school and white school, a majority of the more than a dozen local residents surveyed by Mississippi Today said no.

Crystal Springs has the Black schools in the district and Wesson the white ones, they said.

“We are all prejudiced,” Ashley said. “Because if I walk into a football game, you got families, mama, daddy, Black, white, Mexican, whatever, sitting in the middle section. And in another section you’ve got Black looking thugs, dreadlocks, all this stuff. I ain’t saying they’re bad people. You got white tattooed out all over their faces and all this thug looking white guys over here. And I’ve got my 9- and 10-year-old daughter with me. Where am I going to sit? I’m going to choose the family section in the middle. Is that prejudice? Maybe so, but I’m still going to choose it.”

Mississippi Today also asked stakeholders whether moving a certain percentage of Black teachers to Wesson changed the dynamic in the county between the races and community schools.

A majority of school officials said it would be hard to say.

“A part of me felt that I didn’t achieve the goal that I set out to achieve, which was to get everyone to love our school as much as I did,” said former assistant superintendent Traxler. “I’d like to say I can’t change hearts. Only God can do that.”

Correction 9/16/25: This story has been corrrected to change the name of the school Kenneth Thrasher’s daughter transferred to.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to sharply curtail the federal Voting Rights Act by limiting who can sue to enforce protection against racial discrimination at the ballot box. 

The Mississippi appeal could have significant repercussions nationwide and for the federal law that stems from the Civil Rights era. If the nation’s highest court rules in Fitch’s favor, it would mean civil rights groups could no longer bring a suit on behalf of citizens.

“This direct appeal presents an important legal question that has divided the courts of appeals: whether private parties may sue to enforce section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Fitch’s office writes. “The answer is no.” 

The AG’s office declined to comment on why it filed the appeal, which stems from a lawsuit brought by the Mississippi branch of the NAACP over the state’s legislative districts. The litigation resulted in a federal three-judge panel ruling last year that Mississippi’s legislative districts diluted Black-voting strength in three areas of the state.    

The panel, comprised of all George W. Bush-appointed judges, ordered lawmakers to redraw its districts to give Black voters in three areas of the state a fairer shot at electing candidates of their choice. Special elections for these races are currently ongoing, with the general election scheduled to happen in November. 

Ari Savitzky is a senior attorney with the ACLU voting rights project, and he is one of the attorneys who represented the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. He told Mississippi Today that the plaintiffs will oppose the state’s request. 

“What the Mississippi defendants and the GOP are asking is to overturn 60 years of law and history,” Savitzky said. 

The appeal procedure for redistricting cases is different from normal lawsuits. A member of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sat on the initial three-judge panel, so the state’s appeal will not go to the appellate circuit court. 

Instead, the appeal goes directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it must address it in some capacity. The court can ask for additional briefings, oral argument or summarily dismiss it outright. 

If the court does rule in Mississippi’s favor, it would mean only the Department of Justice, under the control of a presidential administration, could sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act. 

Mississippi’s appeal follows a similar case pending before the court. 

Several appellate circuits, including the 5th Circuit, have ruled that private citizens do have a right to sue under the federal act. But the 8th Circuit in 2023 and 2025 said that only the government, not voters and other private parties, can sue to enforce the provision, meaning circuits have been split on the issue.

The Supreme Court paused the 8th Circuit’s ruling in July, but it may agree to hear an appeal in the coming months since three members of the court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — dissented.

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s lone Democrat in Washington and someone who has used the courts to enforce civil rights laws, decried the state’s attempt to gut part of the federal law. 

“I’ve been elected all of my adult life, and in every instance, it was through legislation in the Voting Rights Act that created that opportunity,” Thompson told Mississippi Today. “To now try to deny citizens their day in court is the complete opposite of the intent of the Voting Rights Act.”

Delta State University is investigating the death of a student who was found hanging from a tree on the Cleveland campus early Monday.

The student was a 21-year-old Black man from Grenada, Mississippi. Delta State released his name, but Mississippi Today is choosing not to do so pending the results of the investigation.

Col. Michael L. Peeler, director of public safety and police chief at Delta State, said his department was notified a body was found hanging from a tree in the central part of the campus at 7:05 a.m.

While he said there was no evidence of foul play, he asked the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department and the Cleveland Police Department to assist in the investigation.

Several scheduled events on campus were canceled.

“Wait here while I check your information. Everything will be alright.” 

That’s what Mario Reyes Rodas’ attorney said the federal immigration officer told his client the morning of Aug. 27 during a traffic stop along Interstate 20 in Rankin County. The Morton resident provided a current driver’s license and work authorization card that has allowed him to work as a landscaper while he sought permanent residence. 

Then came the questions. 

Where are you from? Mexico, Reyes Rodas answered. Do you have a visa or authorization to be in the country? No, the man replied, though he had been trying to obtain permanent residency for years. 

That was enough information for him to be detained, even though he has no criminal record. 

Reyes Rodas left his car on the side of the road as he was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He was taken to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Pearl to be processed and then to the Madison County Detention Center. Within a week, he was taken to River Correctional Center, an ICE facility in Ferriday, Louisiana.

“He hasn’t seen freedom since then,” said Jeremy Litton, who is representing Reyes Rodas in an ongoing immigration case. 

Reyes Rodas was charged with the civil violation of entry into the country without authorization, his attorney said. 

The 40-year-old father of two was not given a reason for his detainment, his attorney said, nor was there documentation of a warrant to arrest or detain him. 

Litton said his client also was not stopped that day under suspicion of violating a state law, such as speeding. 

Why, then, Litton wondered, was Reyes Rodas detained. A week and a half later came a potential answer. 

On Sept. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal immigration officers can stop people without reasonable suspicion based on their apparent race or ethnicity, if they speak in Spanish or accented English, if they are in a place where undocumented immigrants are known to gather and if they work in specific jobs that undocumented people are known to work. 

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the Sept. 8 majority order that multiple considerations taken together “can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States.” 

In her dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor argued the Trump administration has declared all Latinos regardless of U.S. citizenship who fit those criteria “are fair game to be seized at any time.” 

Reyes Rodas isn’t the only person detained who doesn’t have a criminal background. 

As of September, 70% of all people held in immigration detention centers around the country have no criminal convictions, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse immigration data by Syracuse University. Of those with criminal convictions, many committed minor offenses such as traffic violations. 

A spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection confirmed the detention of Reyes Rodas and that he was turned over to Immigration and Custom Enforcement for removal processing. An ICE spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. 

Federal immigration agents have conducted immigration enforcement along I-20, including in March and May that resulted in at least 70 arrests and seizure of firearms and ammunition.  

Emmanuel Reyes, the eldest American-born son of Reyes Rodas, remembers finishing work on Aug. 27 when his girlfriend called. 

Don’t worry, she told him, but immigration officers picked up your father. Reyes said the news immediately sent him into a panic. 

Reyes said his father is a loving man of faith who has supported him and his 17-year-old brother, coming to every game, meet and match for the multi-sport athletes. 

His parents came to America 20 years ago to provide support for their family members in Mexico, and they stayed to give their sons a better life. Reyes said he and his brother have grown up aware of their U.S. citizenship and looked for ways to help their parents, including how to help them gain legal status. 

“My dad was trying to live for what he came here for, the American dream,” Reyes said. “ … They wanted to give us opportunities. It’s better here.”

Litton has represented Reyes Rodas since 2019, not long after he was one of more than 600 mostly Latino workers detained in raids at chicken processing plants in central Mississippi. 

That year, he filed an application requesting the cancellation of removal proceedings against Reyes Rodas, which is a defense available to those facing deportation who meet certain requirements, including a clean criminal record, continuous presence in the country for at least 10 years and potential hardship to his U.S. citizenship children if he were deported. 

Litton said the 42B application is a pathway to a green card: permanent residency that allows people to live and work in the United States.   

As they waited for the application to be processed, Litton said Reyes Rodas applied and received authorization to work, which is valid through 2029. That document enabled him to get a Mississippi driver’s license.  

It took several years for Reyes Rodas to be issued notice to appear in immigration court to be able to file the 42B application. His first court date scheduled in 2021 was delayed several times, Litton said. 

By 2023 as they prepared for the hearing, Litton looked up the case and found it was gone, which he said is something that has happened in a handful of other cases relating to the poultry raids. 

Reyes Rodas had a court date scheduled for Tuesday with the LaSalle Immigration Court in Jena, Louisiana. But like his earlier case, the date disappeared off the court calendar, Litton said he learned Friday afternoon. 

As a result, Litton plans to request a bond hearing to argue that Reyes Rodas had valid work authorization and a pending immigration application when he was detained and mention the administrative challenges with his case.  

However, Reyes Rodas may not be able to receive it in light of a recent Board of Immigration Appeals decision stating that immigration judges lack the authority to approve or hear bond requests for those already in the country without authorization. 

Litton said it’s “indefinite detention” for anyone, regardless of when they entered the country.