A chorus of birdsong lured artist Lucia Duque outside, where she saw an avian crowd descending on her Clinton yard one day in the fall. They filled trees and crowded on power lines, creating a compelling scene as well as a riot of sound. She took her young son, Rio, outside to watch and hear as the birds lingered on just this one stop on a long journey south toward warmer climes.

The image stayed with Duque, forming just the connection she needed for artworks underway  about migrant people and their journeys. “I didn’t want to just put what you see in the newspapers. Everything is ugly with violence, war,” Duque said in her native Spanish, speaking from the heart as Deisy Carrera translated her words. “I wanted to do something … more like poetry.”

Through the 26 striking paintings of “The Nomad’s Journey,” on view at the Arts Center of Mississippi in Jackson through  April, Duque channels migrants’ experiences through the stories they shared with her. She heard their reluctance to leave, memories they took, situations that drove them, dangers that plagued them and hope that sustains them on the way. Birds symbolize their flight, the lift of their hope, the ascendance of souls and the despair of violence and death. Broad strokes of color convey the emotions of migrants’ journeys, from the bright pink and yellow of hope for a better life to the dark grays and blues of sadness and loss. Her artist signature is “Calu,” a family nickname combining syllables of her first and middle names, Carmen Lucia. 

Duque was 4 when her family moved from her and her father’s native Colombia to Spain, her mother’s homeland, for safety. A couple of years after she married Mississippi-born Josh Brister in Madrid, the couple moved to the United States to be closer to his family as they started their own, settling in Clinton in 2018.

Duque draws from her experiences as an artist in Spain during the migration crisis in Europe in 2015, as refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq sought asylum in Europe, overwhelming many European countries. News reports recounting the numbers — “thousands arrived” or “thousands disappeared” — hit her hard. “Behind those numbers, there were real people with stories, with lives. I felt the need to do something, even if it was small, to make their suffering visible.”

With a journalist friend in 2016, she traveled to the island of Lesbos, a main point of arrival, to see the refugee camps, talk to the people and better understand their plight. “I heard the hurt of the people,” she said, deeply affected by the experience. The war in Ukraine and ongoing migrant crisis at America’s southern border added more fuel for paintings in this show.

Duque’s aim is not political but humanitarian, by giving voice to people searching for a safe home, and creating a space for dialogue, sensitivity and connection to displaced people and their journeys.

Migrants’ journeys are not to a single, fixed destination, hence“nomad” in the show’s title. “They’re people who go from one place to another, but they’re not stable,” she said through Carrera. “We speak about refugees, but they’re not refugees until you give them political asylum.” 

The people she met, moving from Syria to Greece on the island Lesbos had to remain there for a long time, in a refugee camp that struck her as more like a prison. ““It wasn’t an official prison, but they couldn’t leave. From that first site, they would go to another site … and then they would be sent to another country or another region, to be aided by some organization that would help them relocate.” 

Similarly, “People from Honduras or El Salvador or Guatemala that come to the border — they’re coming here and they’re waiting. They’re not established there. It’s just a momentary spot.”

Abstract paintings with some figurative elements combine European sophistication and the color she inherited from her Latin American roots, Duque said.“When the Winds Call” merges two memories in its hint of a horizontal line, figures in motion and birds on the wing. It recalls the wire birds perched on, and news reports she saw growing up, of people trying to jump the border fence in Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish cities bordering Morocco on the North African coast. “I wanted to portray the people jumping, with the hope of something new and the wings to fly,” Carrera translated for Duque. 

Artworks depict migrants’ means of travel, by ship, inflatable rafts and La Bestia (“The Beast”), the freight train Central American migrants climb onto in a perilous attempt to make it through Mexico to the U.S. border.

In a painting of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv before the war, flying cranes may be harbingers of civilians’ flight following the Russian invasion. In another, painted after the bombing of a children’s hospital in Kyiv, vultures circle and perch in barren trees amid broad swipes of stormy gray, angry red and yellow, darkened in the layers.

An image of a refugee camp speaks of being stuck in time, waiting to move on. She recalled the chaotic scene in Lesbos at the refugee camp and the tears she shed. People told her they had not wanted to leave their home, even in wartime, but wanted to hang on and hope it would end. “A father with four or five children told me, ‘The moment that I decided to go was when a bomb fell on my kids’ school.” With that, he knew, “There is no more hope here.”

Through her friend’s contact, they visited a little-known cemetery on Lesbos — donated land for burials because there simply was no where else. “When you got there, you would see just a type of rock on top of the grave and it would say ‘2-year-old child’ or ‘woman died in (the year).’ This always makes me cry,” she said, thinking of the many who died on their journey, the lack of identifying information, the families who would not know. “These were a type of mass graves. The people that were burying them tried to give them some type of dignity with whatever details they could, but they didn’t know anything.” 

“Between Two Shores” is her artistic response — a large canvas of blue and golden hues and a flock of birds in the sky. A touch of gold graces their wings, representing ascending souls with a message of“We haven’t forgotten you, you were here.’”

“We see images of refugees in the news, and we think, ‘Oh, my gosh, they’re so different. They’re desperate.’ But really, they’re just like us,” Duque said. “And if something ever happens in the United States, we would be next to go and try to find refuge somewhere else.

“i want people to be conscious of the fact that this is a situation that is growing,” she said, citing a news report that projected 16 million people would be in a situation of displacement in 2025. “It’s growing, it’s not stopping, it’s not getting better and we need to keep talking about it. 

“This exhibit is really to honor the people that are suffering, and to do it with dignity and give them all of the respect that they deserve. And also with the hopes that it would wake up in our hearts the response of ‘OK, this is happening. How can I help?’”

Lucia Duque’s “The Nomad’s Journey” is on view at the Arts Center of Mississippi in Jackson through the month of April. Join Duque for an Artist Talk, 2-3:30 p.m. April 26 at the Arts Center. For viewing at other times, call 601-960-1500 to enter the building.

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Former SEC golf champion and PGA touring pro is Crooked Letter’s resident expert on all things golf. He’s back with us to tell us who might win this week’s Masters and why.

Stream all episodes here.

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The state Senate Republican leadership didn’t plan to fail on a Mississippi tax overhaul. It failed to plan.

And when pressed late in the 2025 legislative session to come up with a proposal to counter the House Republican leadership’s sweeping bill, Senate leaders did so behind closed doors and hurriedly.

The result: a majority of legislators passing a tax overhaul bill full of math errors that accidentally did what Senate leaders didn’t want. And it stripped out safeguards for taxpayers that both the House and Senate leadership said were prudent.

No matter how much Gov. Tate Reeves praises House Bill 1 as “one big, beautiful bill,” borrowing a phrase from President Trump as he signed it into law, it was passed through secrecy, subterfuge and error, not representative democracy.

Had the Senate perhaps taken a little more time, allowed more input from and access to its strategizing from rank-and-file lawmakers, and who knows, maybe even a little crowd-sourcing allowing the public to scrutinize the bill before passing it, maybe the blunder could have been prevented.

READ MORE: OOPS! Senate sent House an income tax bill with typos. House ran with it. What’s next?

And while House leaders should receive praise for coming up with an initial public-facing tax overhaul plan through months of public hearings and forums, that’s not what was passed into law. House leaders played a game of secret squirrel to pass the Senate’s mistakes into law. Then instead of negotiating in good faith to fix the problems, House leaders tried to shanghai the Senate in backroom negotiations to pass a few plums they wanted, such as legalized online sports betting and a sales tax increase.

The end result: Historically bitter infighting among state GOP leaders to the point they couldn’t even pass a state budget, their main job. And we have communications between Mississippi’s top legislative leaders and governor, all Republicans, that these days are often reduced to mean tweets or Facebook posts about each other, not earnest negotiations.

READ MORE: The Typo Tax Swap Act of 2025 may be the most Mississippi thing ever

Mississippi government’s default setting is secrecy, from public records and meetings to access to elected officials, and it has never served our citizens well. From a black-ops agency that spied on its citizens for nearly two decades to festering, generational government corruption that has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, secrecy is neither good politics nor good policy.

READ MORE: Mississippi lawmakers end 2025 session unable to agree on (or even meet about) state budget: Legislative recap

Major, sweeping state policy should be conducted in the open and with public input. But as the national and world economies plunge into turmoil that is sure to impact Mississippi, our new tax code lacks safeguards that both House and Senate leaders said were needed — all because of secrecy and lack of planning and communication.

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Driving down roads in south Jackson in recent weeks, residents were inundated with placards of smiling faces and names in bright, bold fonts of people hoping to be the next Ward 6 councilman. 

In some neighborhoods, the streets were as littered with campaign signs as they are overgrown lots and abandoned properties in between neatly kept homes.

“The homes in the surrounding area and businesses in Ward 6 have been decimated. It looks like a bomb went off,” said Sylvia Walker, Ward 6 board member for the Jackson Association of Neighborhoods. “We’ve seen the businesses hollow out and nothing come back in. It’s disheartening. It’s sad.”

Walker said the image of south Jackson must be interrogated. Not enough people are talking about the good happening in Ward 6, she said. 

“South Jackson is very diverse and not just one specific area,” said Walker. “I think the biggest misconception is that south Jackson is just full of dilapidated homes, and the people are poverty-stricken and destitute, and that’s not true.”

Ward 6 has the largest population of Jacksonians, with just over 23,000 people. It also has the highest number of Black residents, according to data from the City of Jackson’s website.

Jackson also has a high number of abandoned properties owned by the state. According to data from the Secretary of State’s office, there are about 1,900 tax-forfeited properties in the City of Jackson. 

There will be a Democratic runoff on April 22 between two candidates for the Ward 6 city council seat. Emon Thompson Sr. garnered 714 votes and Lashia Brown-Thomas came in second with 652 votes. Voter turnout was low, with less than 3,200 votes cast in a ward with a voting age population of more than 16,000. There were nine contenders for the coveted council seat, more than any other council race. 

Candidates for the coveted Ward 6 seat envision a more beautiful, thriving south Jackson. After a stacked primary, two candidates have made it to the runoff to replace Aaron Banks, former council person who faces criminal charges for allegedly accepting cash bribes in exchange for his vote on a development project. He pleaded not guilty. 

Banks is familiar with the image problem in south Jackson. He said he’s made progress with more demolitions and landscaping work done than others in the past. This includes the demolition of Casa Grande Apartments and Appleridge Shopping Center.

“I’ve always said that I would serve two terms, and we got a lot of work done,” Banks said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today.

Brown-Thomas said that crime and blight are the biggest issues affecting Ward 6. The law enforcement officer wants to hold people accountable for their part in the perceived image of a decaying south Jackson.

“The city has codes, and if these people are not holding up to the codes, they need whatever punishment there is,” Brown-Thomas said. “If they aren’t holding the property up, then they should not have the property.”

She said that if she’s elected, she’ll work to get police officers higher wages, and will remain transparent and available to constituents. 

“It’s not going to happen overnight, but it will take some time,” Brown-Thomas said. “I’m not saying it’s going to come in a year, not even two years, but we have to address the issues first, then everything else will fall in line.”

Thompson Sr., a business owner and retired veteran, said that a lot of the issues with blight comes down to enforcement.

“We need to, first of all, clean up our blighted properties by using the laws that we already have,” Thompson said. “The city already has ordinances with enough teeth to deal with blight.”

South Jackson voters don’t turn out like they should, he said, which can lead to a distrust in the system. He hopes, if elected, to be able to reach constituents where they are and keep them a part of the process in restoring their communities, like water improvement or curbing crime.

“Out of the 40 something thousand people that’s in south Jackson, maybe 3,900 people vote in the municipal elections,” he said. “They don’t have faith in the government anymore.”

“…If there’s a reason why we’re not getting any services out here, then I want to make sure I communicate that with a constituent so they can continue to have hope,” he said. 

Representative Ronnie Crudup, Jr., D-Jackson, said that residents’ migration out of Jackson creates bigger issues for communities.

“To me, blight is just a symptom of a larger problem. The people are leaving the city of Jackson, and the population is decreasing,” Crudup said. “When people leave the properties, you end up with squatters and vagrants who move into these properties and tear them up.” 

Crudup has been renovating and demolishing blighted properties in south and west Jackson for nearly eight years. So far, he said he’s renovated about 35 homes. 

“Even though we are demoing and tearing down one or two properties, when people leave, that leaves other ones there,” he said. “You got all these blighted properties all around south and west Jackson, and some even in parts of north Jackson now, because people are leaving.” 

He said the one thing that’s needed most: more funding from all levels of government for blight mitigation work.

“There needs to be more money from the legislature, but there needs to be more money allocated from the city council too,” Crudup said. “I think the city is going to have to take clean up efforts to a higher circumstance, and let the legislature see that they’re serious about this, and also get the county involved and let them know ‘Hey, we need all the help we can get.’”

And, the perception that city leaders have abandoned south Jackson is not necessarily right. Former Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson said that blight is an issue that affects not only south Jackson but all parts of the city. Mitigating blight is going to take an intergovernmental approach, he said. 

“I know that in some cases, some people feel they’ve been sort of abandoned, but I don’t think that’s the case,” Johnson said. “It may be a lack of resources to attack the problem and it’s going to require all governments to work together.”

Walker said she remembers when the city’s southern boundary changed and her neighborhood, which had been part of Byram, came inside Jackson city limits. A small portion of her ward was annexed by the city of Jackson in 2006 as part of Byram’s reincorporation. In the last couple of decades, she said she’s seen people be forced out of their homes due to the recession. Others simply chose to leave.

“We’ve had a turnover, but the neighborhood is still relatively stable,” Walker said. “When we moved in, a lot of people moved out.”

Walker said that while her neighborhood isn’t struck by blight, she sees abandoned properties while making her way through the community and near her church. 

When thinking of a candidate that she would want to vote for, Walker said she’s looking for a good communicator who can be an advocate for the ward. 

“We need someone that’s forward thinking. Someone that has the best interests of the residents of south Jackson and an understanding of the vast diversity of the ward,” she said. “Someone that’s able to work with other members of the City Council. Someone able to work with our board of supervisors and state legislators to find solutions to some of these issues.”

Banks said that his greatest achievement as city councilman was hosting quarterly town hall meetings to inform his constituents on the importance of ordinances and legislation created to better their lives.

“There’s one piece of legislation that deals with overhanging tree limbs and limbs. That idea came from a constituent,” he said. “When you see constituents being able to give informed ideas on legislation, which is the job of a council member, I think that’s an achievement because then what that says is there’s involvement in the process.”

“I hope the next person will understand that communicating with the people is key, and that the people of Ward 6 are resilient,” Banks said. “As long as they continue to communicate and stay in the scope of their job and work with the administration, there’s a lot that can be done.” 

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After over three hours and two executive sessions on Tuesday, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s Permit Board denied Drax’s application to become a “major” source of Hazardous Air Pollutants, or HAPs. The new permit would have allowed the company’s wood pellet facility, Amite BioEnergy, to release more potentially harmful air pollutants than what its currently allowed under state regulation.

Drax, a British wood pellet manufacturer, opened the facility just outside downtown Gloster in southwest Mississippi in 2016. The company turns locally sourced wood into pellets that it then ships to other countries for their clean energy goals, although many scientists believe the practice is actually more harmful than other energy sources in terms of net carbon emissions. Drax and other wood pellet companies have faced a wave of both local and international scrutiny for repeated air emissions violations across multiple Southern states.

In 2020, MDEQ fined Drax $2.5 million for underestimating certain pollutants it had released into the air since 2016, one of three times the state has fined the facility and one of the largest such penalties in the state’s history.

Last year, the state fined Drax $225,000 for releasing over 50% more than its permitted limit of HAPs into the air. Shortly after, MDEQ announced Drax’s application to upgrade the facility from a “minor” source of HAPs to a “major” source. Doing so would have removed the limit over how much HAPs the facility could release, but it also would have put in stricter regulation over the rate at which it released HAPs.

Jaricus Whitlock, MDEQ’s Air Division Chief, explained that Drax has come into compliance since the fine by lowering production. Drax officials, though, told the Permit Board that in order to produce as much as its permit allows, it would need to exceed the “minor” source allowance for HAPs.

After some confusion among the Permit Board over whether Drax’s actual output of HAPs would increase, Whitlock clarified: “There is a guarantee that actual emissions will increase (if Drax was given “major” source status), and based on my speculations, (HAP emissions) could very likely increase above those thresholds (that Drax currently has to stay under).”

Residents and activists argued that Drax shouldn’t simply get to raise the amount of pollution it can release because it failed to meet its current limit. Jimmy Brown, a Gloster resident and vocal critic of the wood pellet facility, compared Drax’s request to getting caught speeding and then asking the Department of Transportation to raise the speeding limit.

“I’m gonna get mad and say, ‘I can’t do 70 no more, I need to do 80,’” Brown said. “Do you think the (government) is going to listen to me and raise the speed limit for me? But that’s what Drax is asking this board to do today.”

Before it voted, the Permit Board heard impassioned pleas from Gloster residents who believe Drax’s pollution has caused them respiratory issues. A group of residents took a charter bus early Tuesday morning to attend the hearing.

“How many of us have to die for these pellets to be made?” cried Carmella Causey, who said she has to carry an oxygen tank with her everywhere she goes.

Out of six voting, five Permit Board members sided with denying Drax’s permit request, and one abstained. The room in MDEQ’s downtown Jackson building filled with applause after the vote. Chairman Doug Mann cautioned that MDEQ may revisit the issue in the future.

“Drax has a lot of resources and a lot of scientists, and there’s probably a way we can clean all this up,” Mann told the room.

Charlotte Keys, a pastor from Columbia, then wandered, unprompted, up to the podium facing the board members to deliver a closing sermon.

“I’m grateful good neighbors showed here how to be good neighbors,” Keys said.

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A state commission scrubbed academic research from a database used by Mississippi libraries and public schools — a move made to comply with recent state laws changing what content can be offered in libraries.

The Mississippi Library Commission ordered the deletion of two research collections that might violate state law, a March 31 internal memo obtained by Mississippi Today shows. One of the now deleted research collections focused on “race relations” and the other on “gender studies.”

The memo, written by Mississippi Library Commission Executive Director Hulen Bivins, confirmed the scrubbing of scholarly material from a database used by publicly funded schools, libraries, community colleges, universities and state agencies. The database, MAGNOLIA, is funded by the Mississippi Legislature.

Bivins’ memo was emailed to a small group of library and academic administrators who oversee the state-run research database, telling them state laws affecting library collections prompted the deletion.

“In this challenging time with many different viewpoints concerning library materials and material content your willingness to work with these issues is appreciated,” Bivins wrote. “The deletion of these two databases shall be permanent until such time as when the Legislature changes their position regarding the content of materials made available in Mississippi libraries.”

The memo did not cite the specific state laws that prompted the deletion of research material related to race and gender. But in a phone interview, Bivins cited a 2023 law that regulates digital resources available to minors in public libraries, focusing on “obscene materials.” Bivins said there were other laws that warranted the deletion, but he could not remember all of the specific laws when asked.

Bivins said the Library Commission received a tip in late February or early March that the two databases might violate state law. By the end of March, the material had been deleted.

“In all cases we comply with state law,” Bivins said. “We’re not acting fast. We are acting as we discern.”

The two research collections state officials ordered for deletion included material from professional journals, conference papers, books, student dissertations, periodicals and newspaper articles.

The Gender Studies Database included academic content from 377 peer reviewed journals. Subjects include, “Gender inequality, Masculinity, Post-feminism (and) Gender identity.” The other deleted database, titled “Race Relations Abstracts” focused on a wide range of subjects, including “Ethnic studies, Discrimination, Immigration studies (and) Ideology.”

A current employee at a public library, who was granted anonymity by Mississippi Today to discuss internal orders handed down by state officials, said the research collections are compiled by librarians in a process that can take months. Students and academics use the collections to wade through a vast assemblage of research, a process that could now be upended based on political motives, the employee said.

“You have to know what you’re looking for rather than clicking on the guide and having all this information here where you can go through it,” the employee said. “That’s the big problem, it’s crippling a lot of the research. It takes so much more time to have to individually go through every book.”

In his memo, Bivins said individual libraries could potentially maintain two databases at their own cost through EBSCO, the platform that feeds information into MAGNOLIA, the state run database. But library employees were left uncertain about what sort of academic material might violate state law, and what other research could be wiped from the state database without warning.

Democratic Rep. Jeffrey Harness, a Black lawmaker who has spoken out against a recent law passed by the Legislature to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, said the removal of scholarly material from library databases would provoke backlash in a state where minorities have fought for equal access to education.

“There was a lot of sweat and hard work put into this research. This is an attempt to erase history and make history the way they want it to be interpreted,” Harness said. “When you do things like this, take away that important content, they’re creating a powder keg. I’m just going to tell you, the Republicans are creating a powder keg. People are not going to stand for this.”

The memo was sent out on the same day Mississippi lawmakers filed their final version of House Bill 1193. The measure bans diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system.

The DEI ban approved by the Legislature had been a subject of public debate for months. The measure is headed to Gov. Tate Reeves, who is likely to sign the bill into law and let it take effect on July 1. Bivins said he had not heard about the state DEI ban and that it did not influence his memo.

The wiping of academic material unfolded at the same time lawmakers were at loggerheads over the state budget. They ultimately adjourned their regular session without passing a budget to fund state entities, including the Library Commission, which receives about $1.3 million to operate the MAGNOLIA database.

The Commission has asked for another state appropriation to maintain the database, but hasn’t received any assurance their request would be honored.

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