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Two Mississippi State football legends were huge in the news over this past weekend. Within a 24-hour window, two blockbuster NFL stories shook the league.

One, Kansas City Chiefs great Chris Jones, a Houston, Miss., native and former Bulldog, signed the most lucrative contract ever for a defensive lineman when the Chiefs agreed to pay him $158 million over the next five seasons. That’s roughly $31.8 million per season — about one hundred grand a year more than Los Angeles Rams superstar Aaron Donald makes.

Two, Yazoo City’s Fletcher Cox, another former Bulldog, announced his retirement from the Philadelphia Eagles, thus ending one of the most productive careers of any defensive lineman in pro football history.

Cox retires at age 33, still playing at an elite level, still double-teamed by any offense that cares anything at all about the health of its quarterbacks and running backs.

Jones signs one of the richest deals in NFL history at age 29. It says much about Jones’ worth that the Chiefs would pay that many millions for that many years when he will play his next next game at the ripe, old football page of 30.

Cox and Jones share many more attributes, besides the fact they have made enough money to buy their hometowns. To wit:

• Both are clearly the largest men on the field any time they step onto a field. In a sport that puts a premium on height, weight and muscle, both still stand out. Even on a TV screen, they make other huge men appear smallish. Jones is listed at 6 feet, 6 inches and 310 pounds. If anything, he appears even bigger. Same goes for Cox, listed at 6-4 and 310.
• Both are remarkably quick and fast for their girth. Both know how to use their long arms and strong hands to shed blockers. Both are athletic enough to play inside or on the edge.
• Both grew up in small-town Mississippi, where Friday night high school football is king, and where little boys grow up dreaming of being part of that royalty.
• Both stand as living, quarterback-ravaging proof of why defensive linemen have become among the highest paid position players in football, much more highly valued than touchdown-scoring running backs who once commanded the higher salaries. You see, if you do not assign two offensive linemen to block people like Cox and Jones, they blow up anything you try to do offensively. Two blockers sometimes aren’t enough. And, of course, when you use two of your players to block one of them, that usually frees up another defender to make the play.
• Both have been consistent Pro Bowlers and both own Super Bowl rings. Indeed, Jones now has three. Both are among the primary reasons their teams won it all.
• Both seem as easy-going and pleasant out of uniform as they are dominating and disruptive when they don the helmets and pads. In small-town Mississippi terminology, they are good folks. They were raised right.

Here’s a sample. In Yazoo City, the football facility is now called Fletcher Cox Stadium because of how he has given back to his high school alma mater. Last summer, Yazoo athletic director Tony Woolfolk remembered the first time he ever saw Cox. It was in the summer before Cox’s ninth grade year at Yazoo City High, where Woolfolk was then the head football coach.

Said Woolfolk, “There were a bunch of kids out on the field playing ball and one of them was at least a head taller and a whole lot faster than the rest of them. I pointed and said, ‘Who is that kid?’ Somebody said, ‘That’s Bug-eye Cox.’”

Bug-eye?

“Yeah, that’s what everybody called him back then. His granny named him that because his eyes kind of bulged,” Tony says. “It stuck. Over time, I shortened it to Bug. I still call him Bug, but I knew the first time I saw him, we had us one — a potential superstar. Even then, he was bigger than everybody else and he could really, really run. You know Bug ran the 4 x 100 relay in track for us.”

Imagine: A defensive tackle fast enough to run sprints. That pretty much says it all.

Funny thing: At first, Cox’s mama didn’t want him to play football because she was scared he would get hurt. Said Woolfolk, “I told her not to worry about that. The only worry was how many people he was gonna hurt.”

Jones, too, has given back to Houston High School, where he presented the Houston Hilltoppers athletic program a $200,000 check in 2022. 

“If I hadn’t have come from here, I wouldn’t have my attitude,” Jones once told a reporter when asked about the contribution. “If I were given a silver spoon, I’d probably be different. Your background kind of makes who you are. After you see the houses I grew up in, and the hardships I faced, it makes me almost more excited where I am today.

“It makes me want to give back more.”

One thing certain: With this new contract, the three-time Super Bowl champion has plenty more to give.

The post Why are D-linemen getting so rich? Chris Jones, Fletcher Cox show us appeared first on Mississippi Today.

March 12, 1998

Thirty-two years after Mississippi created a segregationist spy agency, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, its long secret records were finally opened to the public. 

State lawmakers created the agency in 1956 in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ordered desegregation in public schools and gave the agency broad powers to fight federal “encroachment.” 

Under the direction of Gov. Ross Barnett, the commission promoted propaganda, sending white and Black speakers up North to talk about how wonderful segregation was. The commission also hired informants, infiltrated civil rights groups, smeared civil rights workers and got them fired from their jobs. 

The commission collected spy files on more than 10,000 people, including such people as Elvis Presley. In addition, the commission sent more than $193,000 of taxpayers’ money to the white Citizens’ Council — a practice that drew criticism from Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. 

In spring 1964, the commission spied on two young white civil rights workers, Mickey and Rita Schwerner, after they began to work in the movement in Meridian, Mississippi. The commission shared its spy report with the local police, which included the brother of Klansman Alton Wayne Roberts, who was involved in killing three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. 

In 1973, then Gov. Bill Waller vetoed the Mississippi Legislature’s appropriation to the commission, effectively shutting it down. In 1977, the Legislature abolished the agency and sealed the files for 50 years, but a lawsuit by the ACLU succeeded in opening those files.

The post On this day in 1998 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Guard Fox appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Polls will be open in Mississippi on Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for Republican and Democratic primaries for president, a U.S. Senate post and U.S. House seats.

In the Republican primary, Sen. Roger Wicker of Tupelo, who was first elected to office in a 2008, faces two challengers: Ghannon Burton of Tishomingo County and state Rep. Dan Eubanks of DeSoto County.

While Wicker is a heavy favorite to capture another six-year term, it appears he is not taking his reelection for granted. He has been active on the campaign trail, running television and radio advertising since last fall.

Burton, a pilot, retired from the Marine Corps in 2021 with the rank of colonel. He said he retired because of the “wokeness” in the military. On his campaign website, he also cited “the stolen election,” referring to the 2020 presidential election.

Eubanks was elected to the state House in 2015. He has been affiliated with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party in the House.

Former Republican President Donald Trump has endorsed Wicker.

The winner of the Republican Primary will face Democrat Ty Pinkins in November. Pinkins, a civil rights attorney, is unopposed in the Democratic primary.

Democratic President Joe Biden also is unopposed in the primary.

On the Republican side, Trump will be on the ballot with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, a vocal conservative and entrepreneur. While all will be on the ballot, DeSantis and Ramaswamy have dropped out and Haley has suspended her campaign.

The only contested race in the Democratic primary is for the 1^st District congressional seat where Dianne Dodson Black and Bronco Williams are vying to advance to November and take on Republican incumbent Trent Kelly. The 1^st District includes much of north Mississippi.

All four U.S. House posts are up for reelection this year.

In the 2^nd, which consists of southwest Mississippi, parts of Jackson and the Delta, longtime Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson in November will face the winner of the Republican primary where Ron Eller, Andrew Scott Smith and Taylor Turcotte are on the ballot.

In the 3^rd District, which encompasses primarily central Mississippi and a portion of southwest Mississippi, Republican incumbent Michael Guest in unopposed in both his primary and the general election.

And in the 4^th District, which consists of much of south Mississippi, incumbent Mike Ezell is being challenged by Carl Boyanton and Michael McGill. Craig Elliott Raybon is running for the unopposed in the Democratic primary for the seat.

People with questions about where they vote can contact their local circuit clerk or go to the Mississippi at the My Election Day portal at the Mississippi secretary of state’s website.

The post Vote: Mississippi presidential, Senate and House primaries on Tuesday appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today’s investigation into Gov. Tate Reeves’ campaign donors who later received state contracts was named a finalist for the 2024 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting.

The investigation revealed that some of Reeves’ top political donors received at least $1.4 billion in state contracts from agencies he oversees. The newsroom also released the first publicly available, searchable database of Reeves’ campaign donations since he began his political career in 2003.

Mississippi Today’s Julia James led the newsroom’s data collection and presentation for the investigation, while Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison, Taylor Vance and Adam Ganucheau contributed reporting.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves’ top political donors received $1.4 billion in state contracts from his agencies

The Toner Prizes, awarded annually by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, “recognize and reinforce quality, fact-based political reporting — work that illuminates the electoral process, reveals the politics of policy and engages the public in democracy,” according to the prize website. The prizes were established to honor Robin Toner, the first woman to serve as national political correspondent for The New York Times.

Other finalists for this year’s local journalism prize are The Texas Tribune, Miami Herald, WBEZ Chicago and Chicago Sun-Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, THE CITY, and The Coronado News. 

The winner will be announced at a March 25 ceremony in Washington, D.C.

READ MORE: How we reported our investigation into state contracts awarded to Gov. Tate Reeves’ top donors

The post Mississippi Today named finalist for 2024 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting appeared first on Mississippi Today.

KOSCIUSKO – About once a year, usually as the late Mississippi winter hits, a peculiar odor wafts into the homes of residents on the east side of Kosciusko.

“It’s the equivalent to the smell of a bad perm, like when people used to get perms and it would smell like burning hair,” described resident Amanda DuBard. “And it is so strong, you can’t breathe.”

DuBard said in February that her kids, who she homeschools, had headaches for a week. 

“Honestly, I would sell my house today just because of the smell,” she said. 

Robert Black, another resident in the neighborhood, said this year’s stench was as bad as any one prior, and even woke him up one morning around 5 a.m.

“I’m not one to voice (issues), you know, I usually let it go,” Black said. “But they’ve had enough time to figure out the problem and get it resolved.”  

The culprit, Kosciusko’s officials and residents agree, is a 20-acre, murky colored lagoon, tucked behind some forest along the Natchez Trace Parkway. It’s one of several the town has to store and treat wastewater before releasing it into the Yockanookany River. 

The lagoon in question, though, is almost entirely made up of waste from a nearby dairy plant owned by company Prairie Farms, according to Kosciusko Mayor Tim Kyle. The Illinois-based business, which makes milk, cheese and other dairy goods, bought the facility from local dairy company LuVel in 2007.

“I would say probably 99% of the volume in that (lagoon) comes from (Prairie Farms),” Kyle told Mississippi Today. “There’s a lot of milk and other products that go in that thing, and I’ll tell you, I’ve learned more about sewer than I ever wanted to know.” 

The plant, which Kyle said employs about 125 people and is a major economic asset for the small city, jacked up its production about five years ago. The mayor said that’s around when the odor issues began, while DuBard and other residents say it’s been closer to 10 years. 

“I initially started complaining about it publicly in 2014,” said Emily Bennett, who lives two miles from the sewage spot and also said she gets headaches from the odor. “It’s progressively just gotten worse over the years.”

Records from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality show a dozen complaints the agency has received since 2021, several of which mention residents feeling sick from the smell. 

“I don’t know what it’s doing to us, but it can’t be good for us,” Black said. “Everyone says, ‘Get fresh air, get Vitamin D,’ and you go out and (the odor) hits you in the face.”

Kyle, who was elected mayor in 2021 after serving as an alderman, lives less than half a mile from the lagoon. Around February or March of last year, he remembered, the smell from the lagoon was especially pungent after a malfunction at the Prairie Farm facility.

“Prairie Farms did notify us that they accidentally broke a valve unloading a truck, and they dumped a full tanker load of milk into that lagoon at once,” the mayor recalled. “Now, you couldn’t hardly live in this town for about six weeks, it was so bad. I mean, it would gag you to death, it’s horrible.”

Kyle said he’s worked with the MDEQ to limit the amount of waste the plant’s allowed to dump in its permit. Prairie Farms buys 4 million gallons of water per day to wash its waste into the lagoon, he said. 

MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaeffer said the agency couldn’t comment as it has a pending enforcement case against Prairie Farms. Since November, 2022, the state has cited the facility for five violations dealing with the content of its sewage disposal.

The facility’s wastewater repeatedly exceeded limits for “biological oxygen demand,” or BOD, which is a way of showing how much organic waste is in water. One test result from February 2023 showed Prairie Farm’s BOD output reaching over 16 times the legal limit. 

In January, when MDEQ issued the most recent violation, the agency told Prairie Farms that it was in “significant non-compliance,” and that the case was being turned over to MDEQ’s enforcement branch.

The dairy company, which did not respond to Mississippi Today’s requests for a comment, has had similar waste issues elsewhere. At a Prairie Farms location in Iowa, state regulators found that the company regularly exceeded limits for wastewater contaminants for a five-year stretch. 

Kosciusko’s Public Works Director Howard Sharkey showed Mississippi Today around the lagoon, and explained the various methods the city’s used to try to curb the odor. Its main strategy, Sharkey said, has been adding oxygen. The reason the smell is so bad during the colder months, he said, is because there’s less oxygen coming from the sun. 

Five years ago, the city spent $240,000 on aerators, including one attached to a tractor that Sharkey runs non-stop to keep the device turning. That’s in addition to the 40 bags of sodium nitrate he dumps into the lagoon every month. 

All of those expenses, he said, are just ways to create more oxygen. Of the roughly seven feet of depth in the lagoon, Sharkey added, two feet of that is just sludge that’s built up over the years.  

“We’ve done everything (MDEQ) has told us we could do in the past to try to alleviate this,” Kyle said. “It’s not like the city’s not doing anything.” 

In all, the mayor said the city – which has a population just over 7,000 – spends about $212,000 a year just on that one lagoon. 

But new funding will give Kosciusko one more chance to eradicate the foul odor: Kyle said the city recently received $1.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to make infrastructure fixes, and that the plan is to spend all of it on dredging the lagoon, as well as raising its walls so it can fit more water to dilute the waste. The mayor said he hopes to have a contractor working on the project by the fall.  

Whatever it takes, Kyle hopes to cleanse the area of its reputation. 

“Every time anybody comes through town, it’s ‘what’s that smell?’” he said. “Ducks won’t even land on the lagoon it smells so bad.”

The post Curdled creek: Kosciusko residents sour over town’s milky lagoon appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down the one and only Malcolm White. White and Ramsey talk about this year’s Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade, which will be held on March 23, 2024 with the theme of Telling the Mississippi Story. This year’s Grand Marshal will be Walt Grayson. The pair discuss what the future holds for Mississippi’s own party that’s a wonderful mix of St. Patrick’s Day parade and Mardi Gras. What does it take to put on a parade and keep it going? Malcolm tells it all.

The post Mississippi Stories: Founder of Hal’s St. Paddy’s Parade Malcolm White appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A large majority of House members voted on Thursday to approve a plan that creates a process for people previously convicted of some nonviolent felony offenses to have their voting rights restored — the first of such a vote in Mississippi in more than a decade. 

The House voted 96-11 to pass House Bill 1609, a bipartisan proposal to automatically restore suffrage to people convicted of nonviolent disenfranchising felonies after they’ve completed the terms of their sentence. 

“It lets folks, five years after they’ve finished their sentence and satisfied all conditions, restore their rights … for folks that have cleaned their life up and gone straight,” House Speaker Jason White, R-West, told Mississippi Today. “It’s not about rewarding that, but it’s about recognizing it and placing them on that better path.”

Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of any of 10 types of felonies lose their voting rights for life. Various opinions from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office expanded the list of disenfranchising felonies to 23. 

White, the first-term speaker, tasked House Constitution Committee Chairman Price Wallace, R-Mendenhall, and House Judiciary B Chairman Kevin Horan, R-Grenada, with coming up with a feasible plan to restore suffrage to some people convicted of nonviolent felons.

READ MORE: Speaker White asks GOP leaders to explore restoration of voting rights to some people convicted of felonies

The House measure would allow people convicted of nonviolent offenses such as bad check writing and theft to regain their suffrage if they have not been convicted of another felony for five years after completing their sentence and paying any outstanding fines.

But people convicted of murder, arson, armed robbery, carjacking, embezzling more than $5,000, rape, statutory rape, bribery, perjury, human trafficking and voter fraud would still lose their voting rights for life. 

Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus, has filed legislation for years to restore voting rights to people convicted of felony offenses, but it never gained major traction at the Capitol. Karriem called the bill’s passage a “historic moment” and thanked Republican leaders for working with him on the proposal.

“I think this bill restores hope as it makes its way through the process,” Karriem said. “It gives folks who have walked around with a scarlet letter on their chest for so long who have paid their debt to society a sense of hope.”

About 37,900 names are on the Secretary of State’s voter disenfranchisement list as of Jan. 29. The list, provided to Mississippi Today through a public records request, goes back to 1992 for felony convictions in state court.

That number, however, may not be fully accurate because no state agency tracks people once they are struck for the voter rolls. Studies commissioned by civil rights organizations in 2018 estimated between 44,000 and 50,000 Mississippians were disenfranchised.

The practice of stripping voting rights away for life from people originated in the 1890 Constitution, when white supremacist leaders intentionally tried to disenfranchise Black Mississippians or keep them out of elected office. With a justice system fully on their side, the white leaders at the time chose to include crimes they believed Black people were more likely to commit.

Rep. Cheikh Taylor, D-Starkville, who is also the current chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party, said that while the practice has racist roots, he believes the bill’s passage debunks the notion that only Democrats and people of color are convicted felons.

“People suffer from these conditions in every village and hamlet in the state of Mississippi in all of our districts — and not just minority districts,” Taylor said.  

The current process to have someone’s suffrage restored is burdensome. It requires a lawmaker to introduce a bill on an individual’s behalf, and two-thirds of lawmakers in both legislative chambers must agree. A person can also seek a gubernatorial pardon, though no executive pardon has been handed down since Gov. Haley Barbour’s final days in office in 2011.

The bill now heads to the Republican-majority Senate, where it may receive a frosty reception.  The 52-member Senate on Wednesday voted 29-23 to reject a separate bill that would restore Second Amendment rights to people previously convicted of nonviolent felony offenses. 

Senate Bill 2626 did not address voting rights, but it could serve as a barometer for how the Capitol’s upper chamber will address the House’s suffrage restoration proposal. 

Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, said he voted against the proposal because he didn’t know enough information about the legislation, but he was open to reconsidering his vote. 

“I’m sure even I have constituents who served their time … and would like to have this right restored,” England said. 

Senators held the bill on a procedural motion, meaning they could debate the issue again at a later time and change their minds. 

Senate Judiciary B Chairman Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, and Sen. Rod Hickman, D-Macon, told Mississippi Today that they plan on working with their colleagues to address their concerns and reiterate what the legislation aims to accomplish. 

“I think some people just didn’t understand what the bill was trying to actually do,” Fillingane said. “If you’ve completed the terms of your sentence, it was nonviolent, you haven’t committed another crime for five years, then what’s the problem?” 

READ MORE: Lawmakers consider restoring suffrage, gun rights to those convicted of some nonviolent crimes

The post With bipartisan majority, House passes bill to restore voting rights to people convicted of nonviolent crimes appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Today is inviting college juniors and seniors with a passion for journalism to apply for summer internships.

The Mississippi Today reporting internship provides aspiring journalists the opportunity to work in a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom, and learn a multitude of skills that will prepare them for a career in mission-driven, public service journalism.

We are looking for interns who can easily jump into daily news and enterprise coverage — including reporting on critical topic areas such as government, healthcare, education, justice and climate — alongside our seasoned reporting staff.

Ideal candidates will have experience reporting and writing on deadline and an interest in learning more about data analyzation, reader engagement and trust building.

“Internships serve a vital role in an aspiring journalist’s development,” said Debbie Skipper, Justice and Special Projects Editor at Mississippi Today. “While university and college journalism and mass communications programs offer a firm foundation, nothing prepares a student for a professional career like on-the-ground reporting and working in an atmosphere surrounded by experienced journalists. And, selfishly, we need to prepare the next generation of journalists to provide the reporting necessary to keep the public informed.”

Among past interns is Alex Rozier, who has been Mississippi Today’s data and environmental reporter since 2017.

“Mississippi Today’s internship threw me right into the mix of local reporting, something that was hard for me to find just coming out of college,” Rozier said. “At a lot of other journalism internships, you get stuck doing data entry or transcribing interviews. But here I was immediately getting assigned stories to do by myself. Even though I was new to the state and much greener than my colleagues, I felt treated like an actual reporter, and like I was actually needed to fill holes in our reporting.

The paid, 10-week internship runs June 3 through August 12. Interested candidates can apply here. Deadline to apply is Friday, April 5. Additional questions? Contact HR Director Dylan Penny at dpenny@deepsouthtoday.org.

The post Mississippi Today announces 2024 summer internships appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Lawmakers in Mississippi are moving to protect in vitro fertilization, but state Agriculture Commissioner, Baptist preacher and outspoken anti-abortion advocate Andy Gipson is calling it “the greatest assault on the cause of life that we’ve seen in Mississippi in a long time.”

Gipson, also an attorney and former longtime lawmaker, posted a video statement on social media Thursday morning, saying “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s IVF. IVF is already legal in Mississippi, perfectly legal.”

But IVF was “perfectly legal” in Alabama until an Alabama Supreme Court decision called it into question mid-February.

House Bill 1688, authored by Medicaid Chairwoman Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg, outlines reimbursement for community health workers. But after a Feb. 16 Alabama Supreme Court decision declaring frozen embryos are children threatened IVF and other procedures there, McGee was successful in adding an amendment to the bill that would protect the right to assisted reproductive technology in Mississippi. 

In Alabama, the IVF came under question when a couple pursued litigation after an unauthorized person got access to a storage room in a fertility clinic and accidentally dropped a dish of frozen embryos on the floor, destroying them. After weeks in limbo as fertility clinics shut their doors and paused treatment, Alabama has since passed legislation to protect the procedure that allows couples facing infertility to create families. 

The series of events caused enormous public outcry across the aisle. 

“There is nothing more pro-life than trying to conceive a child,” McGee said on social media and again in a recent committee meeting.

Gipson said in his statement the bill was modeled after a federal Democrats’ bill which, he said, created a precedent for “back door abortion and possible cloning and selling of ‘genetic materials of humans.’” But the bill does not mention either. 

In the committee meeting where she added the amendment, McGee said the amendment aims to protect families who are trying to have a baby, protects individual rights to their genetic material and protects the provider in performing or assisting in IVF. There is an enforcement section which states that an individual or a provider may sue the state if they have been prevented from receiving or providing the procedure. 

“The direction things have been going in the nation, especially with all that’s happening in Alabama has been a big concern to a lot of folks,” McGee said. “… there is really nothing more pro-life than a family trying to conceive a child that’s having difficulty in doing so and we want to protect those rights for our Mississippians who are going through that process.”

The measure passed unanimously with no debate in committee. It is expected to be brought to a full House vote before the March 14 deadline.

The post Mississippi Ag chief: IVF bill will lead to ‘back door abortion, cloning’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.