When Deion Sanders left Jackson State for Colorado in December of 2023, many observers predicted a Humpty Dumpty-like fall for the proud JSU Tiger football program.

Surely seemed that way. After all, not only did Neon Deion abruptly head for the mountains, he took his best players with him, most notably his quarterbacking son Shedeur Sanders and eventual Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. Losing Hunter was like losing three players in one: a wide receiver no one could cover, a shut-down cornerback and a kick returner deluxe. Nine Tigers in all, 11 if you count Hunter three times, transferred to Colorado, including the teams’s leading passer, leading rusher, leading receiver, leading scorer, best kick returner and best offensive lineman. Oh yeah, and Deion took six assistant coaches with him, as well.

This was going to be more than a rebuilding job, it was going to be like starting over. To former Jackson State football standout T.C. Taylor fell the task of reconstructing the Tigers. 

Don’t look now, but that mission has been accomplished — and then some.

I don’t know if all the kings horses and all the king’s men could have done it, but Taylor certainly has put the Tigers back together again. Two seasons in, Taylor has achieved what Sanders never did at JSU. That is, he has won the Celebration Bowl and the HCBU National Championship. After an impressive-considering-the-circumstances 7-4 season in year one A.D. (after Deion), Taylor’s Tigers finished the 2024 season with a 12-2 record, 10 consecutive victories, the SWAC Championship, a 28-7 victory over South Carolina State in the Celebration Bowl and the HBCU national crown. In that 10-game win streak, the Tigers’s victory margin was a whopping 24 points per game.

The contrasts between Deion Sanders and Taylor are stark. When Sanders was at JSU, all cameras and microphones were aimed at him and that was clearly the way he wanted it. Taylor, on the other hand, consistently deflects all praise and attention to his players and his assistants. Taylor is as low-key and humble as Sanders was flashy and egocentric.

At JSU, Sanders was a welcomed outsider, a native Floridian and Florida State All American who had spent little if any time in Mississippi before coming to Jackson. Taylor was born in McComb, played for the venerable Greg Wall at South Pike High in Magnolia and then at Jackson State for coaches James “Big Daddy” Carson and Robert “Judge” Hughes. He came to JSU as a quarterback, but switched over to wide receiver after passing master Robert Kent won the QB job. All Taylor did was catch a school record 84 passes for 1,234 yards and 12 touchdowns as a senior. He is a Tiger to his core. Put it this way: After games, when the coaches and players join together and sing the lovely JSU alma mater “Jackson Fair,” Taylor really knows the words and sings them proudly, hand over his heart.

Taylor is an old school coach who preaches blocking, tackling, sound special teams and protecting the football. The Tigers have been excellent in all phases under his leadership.

His success does not surprise Wall, who coached him for three seasons at South Pike. 

“T.C. was a good ol’ country boy who studied the game,” says Wall, who won 247 games and lost only 70 in 31 seasons as a high school head coach. “He was a smart kid who never made the same mistake twice. He had a good head for the game. He could have been a great safety or cornerback, too, but we couldn’t risk it. He was our offense.”

Taylor’s third Jackson State team will open the season Saturday at 2 p.m. at The Vet, before playing at Southern Miss the following week. After winning 10 straight and a national HBCU championship, what do the Tigers do for an encore?

“We are chasing greatness,” Taylor said Monday. ”We have a chance to go back-to-back as SWAC and national champions. That’s our goal. That would be great for the city of Jackson.”

The gun believed to have been used to kill Emmett Till is now in the hands of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

A news conference will take place at 10 a.m. Thursday, the 70th anniversary of Till’s murder, at the Two Mississippi Museums to announce the donation of the .45-caliber pistol that J.W. Milam is believed to have used to pistol-whip and shoot the Black Chicago youth, who had just turned 14.

It’s the second murder weapon in the department’s possession. The first is the .30-06 rifle used in 1963 to kill Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, which can be seen at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

Unlike many stories plucked from history, fascination with the Till case has grown over time, said Dave Tell, author of “Remembering Emmett Till.”

He called the Till story “the ‘Ur-Story’ of American racism,” alluding to author Joseph Campbell’s reference to the archetypal plot in all major stories.

A year after Tell and other scholars launched the Emmett Till Memory Project in 2019, George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Overnight, downloads quadrupled.

“In a moment when our country is on edge regarding race, the Till story is the story we keep going back to,” Tell said. “He’s the lens through which we understand race and what it means to be Black in America.”

In World War II, Milam served as a lieutenant in the Army Air Force and brought back the Ithaca Model M1911-A1 .45-caliber pistol, which has the serial number 2102279.

In Look magazine, Milam was quoted as saying, “Best weapon the Army’s got, either for shootin’ or sluggin’.”

A witness to Milam’s shooting prowess told the FBI, “I can tell ya how good he was with that old pistol. I seen him shoot bumble bees out of the air with it.”

Milam and his half-brother, Roy Bryant, abducted Till from his home in the wee hours of Aug. 28, 1955. The white men had heard that Till reportedly wolf-whistled at Bryant’s wife, Carolyn.

They took Till to a barn, where he was brutally beaten by Roy Bryant, Milam and others. Witnesses heard Till’s screams.

Till was beaten so badly there was talk of dropping him off at a hospital, but Milam reportedly killed him with a single bullet.

During the FBI’s 2005 investigation of the Till murder, authorities exhumed his body. X-rays revealed extensive skull fractures and metallic fragments in the skull. There were also fractures to the left femur and the left and right wrist bones. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office in Illinois concluded that Till died of a gunshot wound to the head.

During the autopsy, doctors found four lead fragments that experts determined were consistent with lead shot pellets. The size of those pellets matched the size of the lead shot manufactured for the Army Air Force.

An all-white jury acquitted Milam and Bryant of Till’s murder. Months later, they admitted their involvement to Look magazine.

The owner of the alleged murder weapon kept it in a safety deposit box in a Greenwood bank, according to Wright Thompson’s book, “The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi.”

While working on his 2005 documentary, “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” filmmaker Keith Beauchamp discovered the existence of the .45 pistol. “I received the email of where the gun could possibly be,” he said.

He shared the email with FBI agent Dale Killinger, who investigated the Till case.

“Keith got a lead and let me know who to go see, and I rolled out, and I was able to connect with the people who got it,” said Killinger, who wouldn’t divulge how the gun came into their possession.

Killinger said he turned in the gun, which was examined for fingerprints. 

He wouldn’t discuss who the owner is or what motivated that owner to donate the gun.

Beauchamp said he does have concerns about the gun being displayed in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. He doesn’t think Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, would have approved, he said, “but I don’t hold the keys of history to Emmett.”

The Emmett Till exhibit in the museum does have a pistol on display. That pistol belonged to a deputy at the trial.

The archives department’s announcement comes days after the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board’s release of more than 6,000 FBI files regarding the Till case. Most are from 1955, when then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the agency lacked jurisdiction to pursue the case.

READ ALSO: Emmett Till lynching documents detail federal government’s response

Till’s cousin, Priscilla Williams Till, said she is anxious for the rest of the more than 30,000 pages to become public. “There’s a lot of unfinished documentation left out,” she said.

Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” said he would like to see the release of all the documentation related to the FBI’s investigations on the case.

Beauchamp, too, is anxious to see all of the files released, he said. “That way people can see how the federal government, including the local authorities, dropped the ball in 2007 and 2017.”

In 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Bryant’s then-wife, Carolyn, who testified that Till had mauled her in the grocery store. Weeks earlier, she had told a defense lawyer that all Till did was ask for a date and whistle.

The FBI made the case active again after author Tim Tyson claimed in his 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” that Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted to him that she lied when she said Till all but raped her, grabbing her around the waist and propositioning her.

In its renewed investigation, the FBI found no such reference in recordings of his conversations with her, in transcripts of those recordings, or in Bryant Donham’s memoir, which maintains she told the truth when she testified.

READ ALSO: The Emmett Till lynching has seen more than its share of liars. Is Tim Tyson one of them?

The lack of independent corroboration, the FBI found, “would prevent the government from proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Bryant-Donham recanted her testimony when she spoke with Tyson over a decade ago and, consequently, that she lied to FBI agents when she denied having done so.”

The 2021 report concluded that no one could be prosecuted.

Donham died in 2023.

Editor’s note: Mississippi Today Ideas is publishing guest essays from people impacted by Hurricane Katrina during the week of the 20th anniversary of the storm that hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

Speaking about Hurricane Katrina feels almost like speaking at a funeral. There’s grief, memory and the weight of honoring both those who survived and those who did not. The storm was not just another hurricane. It was a turning point in countless lives, mine included.

The day before Katrina made landfall was a Sunday. I told my mother Lorna Rose Daniels to be ready at noon to evacuate our homes only blocks from the beach in Pass Christian. As we prepared to leave, my father Harold Thomas Daniels was busy moving vehicles out to my grandmother’s house in DeLisle.

Around noon, my mother, son and I left together. I told my son not to pack anything in the car because I was certain we would be back the next day. At that point, it felt like just another evacuation as we already had done several times that season. Tired of packing and unpacking the car, we left with only the clothes on our backs and a set of pajamas.

When I arrived at my mother’s house, she wanted to bring more things. I still clearly see her walking through her house with a bottle of holy water, sprinkling it in every room. “Mama, they said we have to go,” I told her.

She resisted, saying my father had not left yet. But I reminded her he was only shuttling cars to DeLisle. Finally, she came with me.

The plan was simple.  We would drive up U.S. Highway 49 to Wiggins, stay with a friend and come back the next day like always. But as the day wore on, plans changed. By 4 that afternoon, while the northbound lanes of Highway 49 were jammed with evacuees, our car was the only one headed south.

My mother had broken down crying. She wanted to go to her elderly mother,  who refused to leave her home. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind at her home in DeLisle about 10 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, but surrounded by water from the Bay of St. Louis.

That drive south is something I will never forget. Highway 49 north was bumper to bumper, but we were alone heading the other way. We turned onto state Highway 53 and stopped at a gas station. I remember buying milk for my son and a bag of ice, telling myself not to buy too much because we would be home the next day.

We made it to my grandmother’s house, the place we called “on the hill”.  My grandmother was in her 90s, and my aunt lived nearby. Family began to gather, parking cars on the high ground. That night we sat on the back porch, talking in the heat of late August, waiting for my father to arrive. He never did.

The first sign of how dangerous this storm would be came from a phone call. My cousin in Henderson Point, which is located on the Gulf, called his mother, my aunt, as the water rose rapidly around his home. He had stayed behind with his dog while his family evacuated, believing the storm would not be that bad.

By the time my aunt handed me the phone, he was standing on top of his van, with his dog, crying, as the water climbed around him. I still remember my aunt’s voice as she handed me her cellphone, ‘Here, I can’t listen anymore,” she said. I stayed on the line until it went dead. We thought we would never see him again.

The next morning, Katrina revealed her strength. Tin peeled off my grandmother’s roof as we huddled on the porch. At first, we even tried to collect the flying sheets so they wouldn’t damage the cars, but soon we realized the danger was far greater than we understood. As the hours passed, we could hear the wind speaking to us – unimaginable devastation.

Then the word spread. Pass Christian was gone. Just 10 miles away, an entire community had been destroyed. News spread fast that those who stayed behind were gone.

My daddy, who stayed at our home on Davis Avenue, was not heard from… not my daddy! Harold Daniels stayed behind along with my two brothers and a nephew. Within 15 minutes of water rising, it had reached its peak of 34 feet. People were asking all over, You saw this one who stayed? Have you seen that one? Who made it? Who didn’t? Where’s my daddy?

He was on the back of my nephew’s truck. They tied themselves to each other, and then to a tree and then watched the rush of houses floating by, cars floating by, appliances, trees. My daddy said if it had hit at night, they wouldn’t have survived. 

My daddy had 10 kids. His will to live and his faith in God brought him back to us. He passed on last year at 89.

For many people, anniversaries are a celebration of momentous occasions. Hurricane Katrina, however, is not something I celebrate.

What I celebrate is resilience, the strength to survive and rebuild. I celebrate Pass Christian and my father, who lived for almost 20 years after Katrina. I celebrate doing hard things, and the rebuilding of our close-knit community along the Gulf Coast. I celebrate the opportunity to rebuild.

The Coast is a state of mind. We love it here. It’s home.

Life in this community is centered around family. I’m very close to my family, and while disaster relief was not perfect, we were not overlooked. I remember people like Robin Roberts, the ABC personality, coming to the Pass not knowing if her family was safe. I remember the raw emotion of relief as she spoke on air. I still hear the tremble in her voice. 

The storm was catastrophic. Many families were destroyed by it, including my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Lang, and her husband, who stayed and died. My cousin, who had been stranded on a roof with his dog, was found a day or two later on his brother’s porch.

I still get panic attacks when the weather gets severe or hurricanes are mentioned. I am not the only one with this fear. Plenty of people left the Coast, but I stayed because my parents did.

After Katrina, the community came together. People leaned on each other. Our town, Pass Christian, is small but resilient. I celebrate the strength of our community, and the role of faith in our recovery.

Even now, I keep holy water in my nightstand as a reminder that we can survive and do without many of the things we once thought we needed. Katrina taught us that we can live with less and still thrive.

The Gulf Coast is thriving. Streets like Davis Avenue, North Street and Scenic Drive are full of life. Survivors of Katrina continue to show love and care for their community.

While some people may mourn the anniversary of Katrina, I celebrate the resilience, faith, and unity that allowed us to recover. I celebrate the churches rebuilt, and I celebrate knowing that if something like Katrina comes again, we can survive it. We did once, and by God’s grace, we can do it again.

Franchelle Daniels, daughter of Harold and Lorna Rose Daniels, has served for 25 years as the victims assistance coordinator for the 2nd Circuit Court District of Mississippi  She is the vice president of the Pass Christian School District Board of Trustees and has taught victim-based classes at William Carey University, where she earned a master’s degree. She has one son, Jordan Daniels, and his fiancée, Megan. Jordan has a son, Jackson Thomas Daniels, who is age 8  and has just started 3rd grade.

A panel of lawmakers on Monday heard from national education officials who whole-heartedly encouraged them to expand school choice in Mississippi, signaling the Trump administration’s support of passing such legislation.

There was standing room only at the first meeting of the “Education Freedom” select committee, formed by House Speaker Jason White to weigh the pros and cons of implementing a robust school choice program in Mississippi, ahead of the upcoming legislative session. 

Advocates, lobbyists and top education officials, including State Superintendent Lance Evans, were in attendance.

School choice — or “education freedom,” as White and other proponents of the legislation call it — refers to a plethora of policies that, in varying degrees, either give money to families to spend on their child’s K-12 education or allow families to move their children to different schools, regardless of their location or whether the schools are public or private. White has indicated repeatedly in recent months that it will be a key issue during the 2026 session.

Those skeptical of the policy, though, say that the state’s hard-fought academic wins hang in the balance. 

Rep. Rob Roberson of Starkville, who chairs the House Education Committee and the Education Freedom committee, opened the meeting by asking attendees not to get too “emotional” and stressed that “this isn’t about politics.”

But the only two speakers at the committee’s first meeting were officials appointed to top U.S. Department of Education positions by President Donald Trump — Lindsey Burke, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, and Laurie Todd-Smith, who currently leads the federal office that oversees head start and child care. She previously served as former Gov. Phil Bryant’s senior education and workforce policy advisor.

Mississippi’s decision to hold out on expanding school choice was emphasized by Burke, who said it was “time to think differently” about how the state delivers K-12 education, given the uptake of surrounding states.  

Burke pushed legislators to consider adopting a universal education savings account, or ESA, program, though White has conceded that option may not be popular enough to pass the Legislature.

A universal ESA program would allow parents to spend the money the state allocates toward educating their child on whatever educational expenses they’d like, whether that’s private school tuition, a tutor or another option. Nineteen states have some sort of ESA model in place, including Mississippi — where only students with disabilities currently qualify. 

Burke encouraged the adoption of that kind of program because of Mississippi’s rurality, for one. She said a slow adoption would encourage the growth of private schools and allow parents to choose other options if there wasn’t a nearby private school. 

A voucher program, on the other hand, is a sort of coupon that parents can spend on tuition at a private school of their choice, including faith-based schools.

Burke also gave a detailed explanation of the new federal tax credit program, a different sort of school choice model altogether. If Mississippi opts in, which is likely, the program will allow Mississippians to contribute up to $1,700 to an organization that awards scholarships to private school students starting in 2027 in exchange for a tax break of equal amount. 

Burke said expanding these types of programs would incentivize public schools to better serve students in order to avoid declining enrollment. But opponents of school choice say that public schools who struggle to meet the needs of their students are chronically under-resourced — any loss of funds would only exacerbate that problem. 

Mississippi has only fully funded its education formula — both the old version and the newer version established last year — four times since 2003, Democratic legislators noted at the meeting. 

Rep. Jeffrey Hulum III, a Democrat from Gulfport, said the state should wait to see how the new funding formula impacts education before “giving up public funds.” But Republican Rep. Jansen Owen of Poplarville, co-chair of the committee, argued the only way to extend the state’s education gains involves “continuous efforts and reforms to the system.”

If Mississippi’s academic gains are now a model for the country, some legislators wondered why they’d rock the boat by funneling money away from public schools. 

Rep. Kevin Felsher, a Republican from Biloxi, said that only two Mississippi school districts are considered failing by the state education department. 

“We’re having really great results,” he said. “What do you say to public school advocates who would say, ‘Why do we need to come in and do this?’”

Burke responded that “even the best school is not the best school for everybody” and that “not failing” was a low bar for the state to hold itself to. 

There’s practically no evidence to show that low-income students, who Burke said the programs would be aimed toward, see improved test scores from attending private schools. Some legislators also acknowledged that private schools have less oversight than public schools and have no requirement to admit a child. 

Todd-Smith, the other speaker, framed her comments on school choice around early education. The state’s early education model is already choice-based, she said — parents can send their child to a pre-K program associated with a school or a child care center of their choosing. She encouraged legislators to expand the state’s existing early education infrastructure, especially child care, to give parents even more choices.

Owens, a proponent of school choice, said he didn’t hear anything in the meeting that swayed him, but the Trump administration’s support came through loud and clear. 

Republican Rep. Kent McCarty of Hattiesburg, vice chair of the House Education Committee, said after the meeting that he appreciated the discussion but wants to see more data that supports expanded school choice. 

“We’ve heard a lot about all of the academic gains we’ve seen in Mississippi,” he said. “I don’t think this is a silver bullet to extend those gains. 

“We’ve come too far to regress.”

The committee is tentatively planning to meet again on Sept. 25. 

Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay counties’ economic development group announced the departure of its longtime chief on Sunday, with little explanation.

In a statement, the group’s executive committee said that it had “determined that a leadership transition is in the best long-term interest of the organization and the region we serve.”

CEO Joe Max Higgins had been with the Golden Triangle Development LINK for over 20 years. The organization is contracted by the three counties to lead economic development efforts.

Under Higgins’ leadership, the counties have seen $10 billion in investment from companies such as PACCAR, Airbus, Steel Dynamics and more. The successful growth of manufacturing, which had shifted overseas, has gained national attention. Higgins and his organization have been credited with much of the region’s economic growth.

“The Golden Triangle is booming – ‘@gtr_link’ and Joe Max Higgins are a big reason why,” Gov. Tate Reeves wrote on social media on Aug. 7.

Higgins’ economic development efforts have in the past drawn national media attention. This has included profiles on 60 Minutes and in The Atlantic. 

At an event last week, the organization celebrated the opening of its new headquarters that Higgins described as “in the middle of the kingdom.”

The executive committee said it will start looking for a new CEO and that “day-to-day operations remain under management of our dedicated and capable team.”

Mississippi Today reached out to Higgins for comment but did not receive a response.

Mississippians can no longer access the Bluesky app after the social media platform blocked access to users in the state.

Bluesky said on Friday that it made the decision after the U.S. Supreme Court declined for now to block a Mississippi state law that the platform said limits free expression, invades people’s privacy and unfairly targets smaller social media companies. The state law, passed in 2024, requires users of websites and other digital services to verify their age.

“The Supreme Court’s recent decision leaves us facing a hard reality: comply with Mississippi’s age assurance law—and make every Mississippi Bluesky user hand over sensitive personal information and undergo age checks to access the site—or risk massive fines,” the company wrote in a statement. “The law would also require us to identify and track which users are children, unlike our approach in other regions. We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies.”

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose office defended the law, told the justices that age verification could help protect young people from “sexual abuse, trafficking, physical violence, sextortion and more,” activities that the First Amendment does not protect.

The age verification law added Mississippi to a list of Republican-led states where similar legal challenges are playing out.

NetChoice is challenging laws passed in Mississippi and other states that require social media users to verify their ages, and asked the Supreme Court to keep the measure on hold while a lawsuit plays out.

That came after a federal judge prevented the 2024 law from taking effect. But a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in July that the law could be enforced while the lawsuit proceeds.

On Aug. 14, the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal from a tech industry group representing major platforms such as Facebook, X and YouTube.

There were no noted dissents from the brief, unsigned order. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that there’s a good chance NetChoice will eventually succeed in showing that the law is unconstitutional, but hadn’t shown it must be blocked while the lawsuit unfolds.

Bluesky grew after the 2024 presidential election. Many users of X, which is owned by Elon Musk, retreated from the platform in response to the billionaire’s strong support of Donald Trump.

In Bluesky’s statement explaining its decision to block access in Mississippi, the company said age verification systems “require substantial infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protections, and ongoing compliance monitoring — costs that can easily overwhelm smaller providers.”

“This dynamic entrenches existing big tech platforms while stifling the innovation and competition that benefits users,” the company added.

Bluesky said it did follow other digital safety regulations, such as the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act. Under that statute, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not track which users are under 18, the platform said:

“Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children.”

The Mississippi law, authored by Rep. Jill Ford, a Republican from Madison, is called the “Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act,” named after a Mississippi teen who reportedly committed suicide after an overseas online predator threatened to blackmail him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Where Daniel Lake Boulevard intersects with Terry Road in south Jackson sit a gas station, a strip mall with a blood donation center and the remnants of a failed grocery store. 

At one corner, there’s a recently renovated building, its painted exterior covered in brightly-colored sketches of people eating ice cream and sipping cups of coffee. 

This is the home of Riverside Collective, a weekend coffee shop and ice cream bar that opened its doors in July. It’s here where students such as Antonio Ramirez can learn what it means to be a part of a community. 

“I’m learning how to manage my money, how to make coffee, how to run a business, how to profit, and how to communicate with people and share the idea of Riverside,” the Provine High School sophomore said. 

Ramirez said that while many of his classmates don’t have jobs, he enjoys being able to spend his time working with a group of teenagers who have become his friends. Riverside Collective runs a student entrepreneurship program and currently has eight teens on staff. Ramirez said that he hopes through Riverside Collective, their work can change the narrative of the dwindling landscape of south Jackson.

“People say Jackson barely has anything in it,” Ramirez said. “I feel kind of bad about people saying that about Jackson. I want Jackson to be a city where people can have fun.”

Riverside Collective, co-founded by Vilas Annavarapu, was a project three years in the making. The nonprofit chose south Jackson for its location inside the abandoned Regions Bank because Annavarapu saw it as a place of untapped potential. 

“We wanted to do economic development work in a place where a lot of people aren’t doing economic development work, and in fact, stores are leaving,” Annavarapu said.

He points to the recent departures of Burger King and Dollar General stores nearby. 

“People are really nervous to open up businesses in that part of town, and we believe there’s economic opportunity there,” Annavarapu said. “It’s really important that west Jackson, south Jackson have really nice things and good things and places for the community.”

Annavarapu said that as a former middle school teacher, he noticed some of his students found it challenging to work as a team. He wanted to create a place where young people can learn the value of working together while making a fair wage. Most of the workers there are students from Provine High School, and they’re paid $15 an hour. Annavarapu said he hopes to eventually increase pay to $22 an hour, the amount United Way of Mississippi defines as a “flourishing wage” for single adults.

“ I realized so many of our young people have not had the opportunity, nor have they been given the skills to understand how to work in a team and how to work in a team in a way that feels really good,” Annavarapu said. 

Now, he’s hoping that spirit of creativity could lend itself to a fully fleshed out community calendar of events and classes, similar to the Briarwood Arts Center in northeast Jackson.

“What I hope Riverside opens up for young people is their imaginative potential. What can we create and what can we build that’s not already there? And how can that be a good thing?” Annavarapu said.

He hopes the impacts of Riverside Collective can be felt in tangible ways, like the number of people that they serve and the students who participate in the program. But he also wants there to be internal transformations for everyone who comes in contact with their initiative.

“ I think on the more intangible side, it’s when young people come into our program and when they leave it, do they leave feeling more confident and prepared to take on the world and are more attentive to the world around them?” Annavarapu said.

Riverside Collective is located at 3510 Terry Road. Its business hours are Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Sunday noon to 4 p.m.

CORRECTION 8/25/25: This story was updated to reflect that Riverside Collective currently pays employees $15 an hour, with hopes to increase to $22 an hour in the future.

Veteran editors Bobby Harrison, Geoff Pender and Emily Wagster Pettus recall the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a monumental special legislative session to address storm recovery 20 years ago. They are joined by multimedia and video editors Michael Guidry and Richard Lake for a preview of “The Bulletin,” a Mississippi Today video documentary that will premiere Aug. 29th, the anniversary of the destructive, killer storm.