JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Gov. Tate Reeves said Wednesday that he is appointing a district attorney in northeast Mississippi to become a judge on the state Court of Appeals.
John Weddle of Saltillo will succeed former Judge Jim M. Greenlee of Oxford, who retired June 30.
Weddle will step down from his current job and begin serving on the 10-member court on Oct. 14.
Weddle has practiced law since 1995 and has been district attorney since 2015 in Alcorn, Itawamba, Lee, Monroe, Pontotoc, Prentiss and Tishomingo counties. He was previously an assistant district attorney for the seven counties.
Weddle also previously served as public defender in Lee County and municipal court judge in Tupelo.
“His years of legal experience and public service make him an excellent addition to the court,” Reeves said.
Weddle earned a bachelor’s degree from Mississippi State University and a law degree from the University of Mississippi.
Reeves will call a nonpartisan special election for Nov. 3, 2026, to fill the final half of the eight-year Court of Appeals term that expires at the end of 2030. Weddle can choose to run in that race.
Undefeated and fifth-ranked Ole Miss prepares for its SEC opener, as Mississippi State and Southern Miss suffer increasingly frustrating losses. Plus, the Saints crash back to earth and the Braves head into the biggest series of the season against those loathe some Mets.
Editor’s note: This press release was drafted and released by the National Press Club and is republished with permission.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Press Club is honoring Mississippi Today — a nonprofit, non-partisan newsroom based in Jackson, Mississippi — with its highest honor for press freedom, the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award.
Mississippi Today is currently involved in a legal case to protect privileged documents used in producing a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation and named in an ensuing defamation case brought by the state’s former governor. The case has wide-ranging implications for press freedom in the United States, including journalist-source protections.
“In a country that holds freedom of the press as one of its core rights, it is shocking that any court — let alone the highest one in a state — would require reporters to hand over their sources simply because the governor was upset to be caught red-handed misusing federal welfare funds,” said Emily Wilkins, president of the National Press Club. “Mississippi Today’s reporting shined light on a critical issue impacting thousands of Americans, and we hope this award both honors their work and draws attention and support for their case.”
Mississippi Today is an authoritative voice on politics and policy in the state of Mississippi and produces essential coverage on education, public health, justice, environment, equity, and more.
The outlet won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into a $77 million welfare scandal that revealed how the state’s former governor, Phil Bryant, used his office to benefit his friends and family.
Bryant then sued Mississippi Today and its CEO Mary Margaret White in July 2023, claiming that the series defamed him. Editor-in-chief Adam Ganucheau and reporter Anna Wolfe were added as defendants in May 2024, according to an editor’s note on the outlet’s website.
On June 6, 2024, Mississippi Today appealed a county judge’s order to turn over privileged documents in relation to the defamation lawsuit. The Mississippi Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the newsroom’s appeal.
“Ours may be a Mississippi case, but the ramifications absolutely could impact every American journalist who has long been granted constitutional protections to dutifully hold powerful leaders to account,” Ganucheau said. “But this fight is not just about protecting journalists and our sources. We’re also fighting to ensure every single American citizen never loses a fuller understanding of how leaders truly operate when their doors are closed and they think no one is watching. As we continue to stand up for press freedom everywhere, it’s truly humbling to be recognized by the National Press Club in this way.”
A team of attorneys is representing Mississippi Today in its case: Henry Laird at Wise Carter; and Ted Boutrous Jr., Lee Crain, Sasha Duddin, and Peter Jacobs at Gibson Dunn. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is also providing legal support.
The John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award is named for a former National Press Club president who fervently advocated for press freedom. By selecting Mississippi Today as the domestic honoree, the Club and the Institute are committing to monitor and support this precedent-setting case for the First Amendment protection of reporters’ privilege.
The National Press Club will confer the 2024 Aubuchon awards, along with the Neil and Susan Sheehan Award for Investigative Journalism during its annual Fourth Estate Award Gala honoring Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen on Nov. 21 in Washington, D.C.
The gala dinner is a fundraiser for the Club’s nonprofit affiliate, the National Press Club Journalism Institute, which produces training to equip journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire civic engagement. Tickets and more information for the event can be found here.
WASHINGTON — Minutes before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means held a hearing Tuesday on the topic of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the subject of a still unfolding scandal in Mississippi, Chairman Rep. Jason Smith huddled with his colleagues.
The other congressmen wanted to know why the chairman had invited former NFL quarterback Brett Favre — who is facing civil charges for his alleged role in diverting TANF funds to a volleyball stadium and a pharmaceutical startup — to testify.
Then, Smith revealed, one of the congressmen asked a question that underscored the larger problem: “What is TANF?”
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is a $16 billion-a-year federal block grant administered by states to address poverty. While it is known for providing cash assistance, known as the welfare check, to low-income families, states have been spending the vast majority of the money in other ways, “including some with tenuous connections to a TANF purpose,” the federal agency that oversees the funds recently concluded.
The unnamed lawmaker is about four years late to the game.
Favre said he learned what TANF was in 2020, when Mississippi State Auditor Shad White released an audit naming Favre as one of the improper recipients of an estimated $94 million in misused funds.
“Now I know, TANF is one of our country’s most important welfare programs to help people in need,” Favre told members of House Ways and Means, the budgeting committee responsible for revenue-related legislation within the nation’s social safety net programs. “Importantly, I have learned that nobody was — or is — watching how TANF funds are spent.”
Smith said he invited Favre to testify about rampant abuse in the program, which ensnared the athlete in a reputation-marring scandal, as part of a conversation about how to transform TANF to reach needy families and move people into work. Tuesday’s hearing, which lasted nearly four hours, followed a similar hearing of a House Ways and Means subcommittee held more than a year ago.
But four years after the original audit, Mississippians have more to learn about how the misspending occurred, who all was responsible and how the government plans to hold them accountable. A federal criminal investigation quietly drags on as seven people who pleaded guilty await prison sentencing; a slow-moving state civil lawsuit against Favre and three dozen others gags defendants and their attorneys from speaking publicly about the case; and the federal human service agency has yet to enact meaningful guardrails around the program.
A report that the committee requested last year, and was released Tuesday, found that accounting deficiencies within the TANF program occur in all 50 states and little is done to correct them.
The committee heard Tuesday from a beneficiary of Missouri’s TANF work program, Matt Underhile, a corrections officer and father of seven children.
Underhile was in his early 40s when he took action to turn his life around after nearly two decades of drug abuse and unstable employment. He learned about the state’s TANF-funded work program called the Missouri Excel Center on Facebook. Through it, he received transportation assistance to get to and from class and earned his high school diploma. He said the program offered to pay for things like steel-toe boots or scrubs to help people succeed at work.
He said the program taught him “that there is always a way to remove any barrier you may have; that there are people and programs out there that care and can help you.”
But Mississippi’s TANF program hardly works this way. In 2022, the cash assistance program — no more than $260 a month for a family of three — served just 291 adults. Of those, fewer than 1% were employed, according to federal data.
TANF is supposed to be a work program, but Mississippi imposes such strict eligibility requirements and such harsh sanctions — such as taking away a person’s food benefits — that low-income Mississippians are scared to apply, said Jarvis Dortch, director of the ACLU of Mississippi.
When the state has contracted with outside agencies to provide work training like Underhile described, it has not produced reports to say what the programs offered or who they served.
The largest subrecipients of non-assistance funds are not workforce training agencies, but organizations that work with children — the child abuse and neglect investigations department, the Boys & Girls Club, a children’s mental health organization and a global humanitarian nonprofit.
“Mississippi continues to spend little on direct cash assistance while continuing to provide TANF dollars to unaccountable third parties,” Dortch said in his testimony on Tuesday.
The federal government gathers little information about how states choose to use their TANF grants, except for periodic reporting of how they divvy up the money among several vague categories — basic assistance, child welfare services, work, education or training activities, work supports, child care out of wedlock pregnancy prevention, fatherhood and two-parent family formation and maintenance programs, etc.
Mississippi consistently spends a much greater share of its TANF grant on “work, education and training activities” than most states — 40% in 2022. With that statistic, Mississippi’s TANF program might seem as if it’s prioritizing solutions to generational poverty.
“Sounds good until you look under the hood,” Dortch said.
A closer look shows that roughly 80% of that spending is on a college scholarship program serving many middle-class families, Mississippi Today first reported in 2019.
Dortch offered an alternative: More child care funding for working parents. Mississippi is allowed to transfer up to 30% of its TANF funding to the existing Child Care Development Fund to provide vouchers to more families, though it hasn’t opted to do this in recent years. Dortch also pointed to the success of Magnolia Mother’s Trust universal basic income program created by Jackson-based Springboard to Opportunity.
“People that get cash assistance … they’re able to get the space to breathe to be able to do things like apply to go to school, look for other jobs, they aren’t so pressured in life by trying to make ends meet,” Dortch said.
In Mississippi, $5 million of the spending that it labeled work activities, work supports or fatherhood programs was actually the construction of a new volleyball stadium.
In 2017, Favre started lobbying for money from a nonprofit funded almost entirely by TANF funds to build a volleyball stadium at his alma mater, University of Southern Mississippi. The nonprofit founder, Nancy New, informed him that federal restrictions prevented her from using the money on construction projects. But, they thought, if they called the facility a “Wellness Center,” and included classrooms where the nonprofit could ostensibly hold classes for needy parents, the nonprofit could provide the funding through a $5 million upfront lease of the property.
Lawyers hired by the state welfare department in 2022 filed civil charges against the university’s athletic foundation and seven people they say are responsible for this sham, including Favre. New is awaiting sentencing on state charges for her role in the overarching scheme.
U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Nebraska, asked Favre on Tuesday how officials characterized the source of the funding he was seeking. Favre said it was his understanding that they were grants.
“Never was TANF or welfare funds mentioned in any conversations,” Favre said.
“Were public funds mentioned?” Adrian Smith asked, and Favre didn’t immediately respond. “Was it your understanding that it was private funds from a wealthy individual or some source?”
“I don’t recall. I just remember that grant money,” Favre said.
Favre and New also arranged an additional $1.1 million payment in exchange for Favre to record a radio ad promoting the welfare program, which aired the following year.
“If you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?” Favre once texted the nonprofit operator.
U.S. Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-California, enlarged and printed the text message on a display board that she brought to the hearing. Favre returned those funds to the state in 2020 and 2021.
After Favre secured the funds for the initial groundbreaking on the volleyball stadium, he returned to New for an additional investment in a startup pharmaceutical venture claiming it was going to produce a drug to treat concussions — an injury with which Favre was familiar. The project received over $2 million in welfare funds, but no drug was developed.
“Sadly, I also lost my investment in a company that I believed was developing a breakthrough concussion drug I thought would help others,” Favre said in his testimony. “As I’m sure you’ll understand, while it’s too late for me — I’ve recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s — this is also a cause dear to my heart.”
The founder of the company, Jake Vanlandingham, pleaded guilty within the ongoing federal probe in July. The revelation of Favre’s Parkinson’s diagnosis made national headlines before the TANF hearing concluded.
Testimony from Sam Adolphsen, policy director for the conservative think tank Foundation for Government Accountability, challenged whether states should be entirely to blame for TANF misspending.
When Adolphsen served as the chief operating officer of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, he said his agency exercised policy that allows states to transfer TANF funds to another federal program, the Social Services Block Grant, which involved home-based services for seniors and people with disabilities, domestic violence support centers, transportation, and other services.
This resulted in a similar comingling of funds that got Mississippi officials in trouble.
Adolphsen said in his written testimony that Maine officials sought guidance from the federal agency that administers the funds, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “with often unclear communications from the officials.” Maine auditors eventually raised concerns about some of this transfer spending and the state reversed the expenditures.
“More work can be done in federal law to provide states with more clarity on the flexibility of these transfers in advance of such expenditures,” Adolphsen said in his testimony.
Adolphsen’s organization, FGA, lauded Mississippi for policies it enacted during the scandal, including the HOPE Act — a law that imposed some of the strictest eligibility requirements in the nation, creating a maze of bureaucratic red tape that current Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson said burdens the department and should be repealed.
Last year, the House Ways and Means Committee requested that the Government Accountability Office conduct a nationwide review of non-cash TANF spending, which is where 78% of the funds go. The committee wanted to know, among other things, how states track the performance of their non-assistance programs, how they ensure they are submitting accurate financial reports, and what the federal government does with the annual TANF audit findings it receives.
The report, released in conjunction with the hearing, shows that from 2021-2023, all 50 states had unresolved audit findings in their TANF programs, 50 of which were “severe” and the majority of which were repeated findings from previous years.
Before the Mississippi welfare scandal became known, these audit deficiencies proved to be a warning sign of the larger program breakdown.
West Virginia has recorded an accounting deficiency for 15 years. Thirty-one of the 155 findings contained questioned costs, like the ones cited in Mississippi’s widely publicized 2019 audit. One state’s questioned costs involved over $107 million and repeated for two years.
As for how the federal government follows up on these unresolved findings, the Government Accountability Office didn’t have an answer, but said that it would examine this process in its ongoing work.
Movement in the civil case against Favre and roughly three dozen other people or companies — which attempts to claw back an implausible $80 million in misspending — picked up the day before Favre’s testimony.
On Monday, Favre’s lawyers fired off 10 new subpoenas requiring depositions from the state auditor’s office, deputy state auditor Stephanie Palmertree, the attorney general’s office, the lieutenant governor’s office, Gov. Tate Reeves, former Reeves chief of staff Brad White, former First Lady Deborah Bryant, and three individual Mississippi Department of Human Services employees.
At the hearing, Favre predictably threw shade at State Auditor Shad White, the state official who launched the initial investigation into welfare spending and has since written a book about the ordeal with Favre’s name in the subtitle. The athlete is currently suing White for defamation.
Favre called White “an ambitious public official who decided to tarnish my reputation to try to advance his own political career.”
White wrote a letter to the Ways and Means committee Monday evening in an effort to preempt any negative impression Favre may give of him. White included photos of Favre’s text messages to remind lawmakers of the athlete’s interest in keeping the payments confidential.
Favre also questioned the current leadership of the state welfare agency, which has paid Jones Walker law firm nearly $1.5 million in TANF funds to bring the ongoing civil action.
“Those same lawyers, before they sued me, came to my home town to try to convince me to retain them in this very dispute,” Favre said.
University of Southern Mississippi attempted to resolve the claims against it by setting up a scholarship program for TANF-eligible students, Favre said, but the plaintiff rejected the settlement, which “would have shut off the spigot of TANF funds to the lawyers.”
Back to the original question by Chairman Smith’s colleagues: What’s the purpose of inviting Favre to speak before Congress?
“If someone in Mississippi is accused of misspending $50 in SNAP benefits, that person’s life will be turned upside down. Mr. Favre’s right here and he’s accused of misspending a million dollars and he’s speaking before Congress,” Dortch told the committee. “Something is wrong.”
For years in Mississippi, state employees and politicians scrambled to please Favre when he reached out about funding for projects or requests for meetings. One of the state’s favorite and most notable sons was in their corner, and they often responded accordingly.
Similar behavior was on full display in the House committee hearing on Tuesday. When Favre entered the Longfellow Office Building hearing room, cameras clicked and attendees turned their heads to catch a glimpse of the NFL Hall of Famer.
U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, said it seemed Favre had become a victim of his own celebrity.
Sanchez, the California representative, delivered the most aggressive questions about Favre’s involvement in the welfare scandal, to which U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Georgia, responded, “Unlike my colleague, I’m not mad at you about much, but I am mad that you couldn’t stay with the Atlanta Falcons.”
Most everyone at House Speaker Jason White’s tax summit said they support cutting taxes – even eliminating the personal income tax — but there were concerns expressed by many on whether that goal could be accomplished without negatively impacting vital state services.
White’s chair of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, told the crowd gathered at a Flowood hotel Tuesday for the daylong summit that the upcoming 2025 legislative session is the time to begin the process of phasing out the income tax.
“I believe it is time to make really big transformative changes in our tax system,” Lamar said.
He said eliminating the income tax would make the state more competitive.
On the other hand, Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs, said he also supported tax cuts, but said “baby steps” might be needed to ensure funds are available to pay for state services.
Josh Harkins, R-Flowood, the chair of the Senate’s tax writing Finance Committee, cautioned that time might be needed to see the results of previous massive tax cuts passed in 2022 and in 2016 that are still being phased in. Plus, Harkins pointed out that the state and its citizens received about $33 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds that have artificially bolstered state revenue. He said time might be needed to look at the financial condition of the state’s after the impact of those COVID-19 funds had faded.
White, who organized the summit that had more than 500 people registered to attend, stressed that there were no preconceived notions on what the House leadership’s recommendations for tax changes would be during the upcoming session. White said he had the summit as part of an effort to discuss and build consensus on improving the state’s tax structure.
But both White and Lamar have voiced strong support for phasing out the personal income and also for at least reducing the state’s 7% tax on groceries which is the highest of its kind in the nation.
Gov. Tate Reves, who also spoke at the summit at the invitation of White, also spelled out his reasons for supporting the elimination of the income tax.
He said Mississippi “was in the best financial situation … in our state’s history. Because of that there has never been a better time to eliminate the income tax.”
Harkins said eliminating the income tax would take about $2.2 billion out of state coffers. The grocery tax would reduce state revenue by less than $500 million.
Harkins said the state has many needs ranging from transportation infrastructure to shoring up the state’s public pension program that has a deficit of $25 billion.
Beside eliminating the income tax, Lamar said the goals of House leaders in their plan to make “monumental” changes in tax policy are to ensure cities and counties have sufficient revenue and “to fix” the funding issues at the state Department of Transportation.
Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons, D-Cleveland, and Transportation Executive Director Brad White said the 18-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax and other revenue directed to the agency is not enough. They said the agency needs an additional $480 million a year for road maintenance.
In recent years, the Legislature had provided an additional $1.3 billion to the MDOT in addition to the designated sources of revenue. But they said the agency needed an additional recurring revenue stream instead of having to wait to the end of each session to find out how much extra money the Legislature was providing transportation.
Other speakers included legislative leaders from other states that have worked on tax policy and national tax-cut advocate Grover Norquist. John McKay, executive director of the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, and Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker said the most important issues for companies are work force development and site preparation.
At the end of the day-long summit, White unveiled poll results compiled by nationwide Republican pollster Cygnal. The poll found 64% of Mississippians supported phasing out the income tax over a five year period.
Attorneys for three men tortured by “Goon Squad” officers called for the censure and removal of Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey during a press conference Monday welcoming the Justice Department’s investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department.
Malik Shabazz and Trent Walker, counsels with Black Lawyers for Justice, said they expect the federal investigation will counter the department’s claim in Parker and Jenkins’ lawsuit that abuses were limited to a small cadre of officers and that Bailey was unaware of violent practices.
In January 2023, six law enforcement officers from Mississippi made national headlines when they tortured two Black men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, sexually assaulting them, even shooting Jenkins in the mouth. In March 2024, the officers – former Rankin County deputies Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield – were sentenced collectively to a total of 132 years in federal prison.
An investigation by the New York Times and Mississippi Today found that these incidents were just the tip of the iceberg, and part of a decades-long pattern of police brutality and abuses by law enforcement officials in Rankin County. Last week, the Justice Department announced that it was launching an investigation into the county’s policing practices.
The attorneys described excessive force as a “systemic problem” linked to Bailey’s lack of oversight.
Walker said Bailey ignored abuses and that for “too long, this has gone on with a wink and a nod and has not been seriously addressed.”
Shabazz said that while the officers’ sentencing and the federal investigation are welcome steps, “justice looks like Rankin County stepping up to censure Bryan Bailey.”
“There is no other sheriff’s department in America where such vicious criminals as the “Goon Squad” have been [sentenced] to 132 years in federal prison, and their supervisors remain on the job,” said Shabazz.
The attorney for the sheriff’s department, Jason Dare, declined to comment in response.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is in the process of collecting signatures on a petition demanding that the governor oust Sheriff Bryan Bailey. A successful campaign would require the signatures of 30% of registered voters in Rankin County. That would mean 29,671 signatures. Angela English, president of the Rankin County NAACP branch, said that they almost have enough.
The attorneys also mentioned that Mississippi’s three-year statute of limitations prevents them from prosecuting on behalf of some victims. Among those victims is Samuel Carter.
In 2016, Rankin County deputies raided Carter’s home in search of drugs. They dragged him into his bedroom, Carter and witnesses said, then beat him and shocked him repeatedly with a Taser. Department records show one of the deputies involved in the arrest triggered his Taser six times during the arrest. That deputy still works for the department.
Shabazz invited other victims of abuse, witnesses, officers and former officers from Rankin County law enforcement to come forward. But the sheriff’s office is “underinsured,” he added, and will need to pay more than its liability insurance covers to provide Parker and Jenkins “decent” compensation. The department’s policy is capped at $2.125 million, Shabazz said, with each payout decreasing the amount remaining for future claims.
“What they’re risking is a trial and a jury verdict that could cost Rankin County many millions – 50 million, 60 million,” said Shabazz. “And it’s an unnecessary risk as far as I’m concerned.”
Several lawyers told Carter he can no longer file a lawsuit against the department because the statute of limitations has expired, Carter said. But he hopes the Justice Department’s probe will unearth more cases like his and result in criminal charges for the deputies who have so far dodged accountability.
“The ones who didn’t deserve what the law did to them, I hope it will come out,” he said.
Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield with The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. contributed to this report
Hope Field, a baseball-softball complex in rural Jonestown, will soon serve the youth of Coahoma County,
Bennie Brown, 71 years young, grew up in poverty in Jonestown, 15 miles from Clarksdale in Coahoma County, one of the poorest counties in the poorest state in the nation.
Brown’s earliest memories are of sitting on the front porch with his father, listening on the family radio to St. Louis Cardinals games on KMOX out of St. Louis.
Rick Cleveland
“My dad was a baseball man, loved it,” Brown says. “He’d build a little fire out of leaves and twigs to keep the mosquitoes away and he’d listen to Harry Caray and Jack Buck just about every evening.”
Those St. Louis Cardinals included such remarkable Black ballplayers such as Bob Gibson, Bill White, and Curt Flood. Back then more than 15% of Major League Baseball players were African American, including many of the sport’s brightest stars. Today, only 6.7% of Major Leaguers are Black. The percentage has trended downward for decades.
The No. 1 reason is primarily one of economics. Youth baseball costs money, not only for the equipment. Young Bennie Brown loved the sport almost as much as his dad. When he and his buddies out in the country played ball, they used their caps for gloves, tree limbs for bats and a cheap rubber ball for a baseball. There was no money for gloves or bats. There were no little leagues. There were certainly no travel leagues.
It has remained that way out in Coahoma County in communities such as Jonestown, Lyon, Lula and Friars Point. But that’s about to change. In Jonestown, But God Ministries (BGM) has partnered with Major League Baseball Players Youth Development Foundation and Brasfield & Gorrie General Contractors to fund a $3 million state-of-the-art baseball/softball complex that will be known as Hope Field.
Bennie Brown
Coahoma County High School, which has never had a baseball field or softball field, will play their games there. So will organized youth leagues from T-ball on up. The land has been cleared and leveled. Baseball and softball diamonds have been carved. Bleachers, concession stands are under construction. Light poles are about to go up. Construction should be complete by December and ready for play next spring.
“I just can’t begin to tell you how much this is going to mean to our young people,” Brown said. “This has exceeded by wildest dreams.”
“Our boys and girls are going to have a place to play,” says Bennie Brown, who serves as associate community manager of But God Ministries.
The Hope Field baseball and softball facility will soon be a reality, and now But God Ministries is raising money to help fund the recreation leagues that will play games there. To that end, BGM has gathered several of Mississippi baseball’s most successful coaches to take part in a fund-raising dinner event on Thursday night (6 p.m.) at Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison. Longtime Mississippi State broadcaster Jim Ellis will moderate a baseball discussion with coaching legends Ron Polk, Scott Berry, Mike Bianco and Bob Braddy. Ballpark fare will be served. Admission is $30.
The baseball/softball project is the latest in a long line of BGM projects to improve the lives of poor folks in Coahoma County. BGM already has also spearheaded a medical clinic, a dental clinic, a law clinic, a community center, an economic development center and a Montessori school.
Stan Buckley
Said BGM executive director Stan Buckley, “One thing I love about this baseball project is that it is something that will affect thousands of children and their families for many years to come. I think of the baseball fields on which I played as a child in Natchez. Those fields are still there and are being used over 40 years after I played on them. There is no telling how many children have played on those fields over the decades. The same will be true of our fields in Jonestown. Many children over a significant period of time will be touched through this project.”
Hope Field really is a dream come true for Coahoma County High School baseball and softball coach Wesley Davis, whose teams have played its home games at dilapidated fields in Clarksdale.
“The field we have played on had bad lighting, a flat pitcher’s mound, holes all over it and flooded every time it rained,” Davis said. “Plus it was a long way from where most of our players live. Many of these families don’t have transportation. This new facility is going to mean the world to us. I can’t wait.”
Buckley gives much credit for the Hope Field project to Jim Gorrie, CEO of Brasfield and Gorrie, which built the Atlanta Braves’ Trust Park. This will make a long story really short: Gorrie and Buckley met while working on mission trips in Haiti. Buckley asked Gorrie to come see what BGM was working on in the Jonestown area. Gorrie came and was intrigued. When he asked what he could do to help, Bennie Brown mentioned a baseball field. So Gorrie contacted his friends in Major League Baseball, MLB became involved, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Hope Field will have artificial turf in the infield and a Bermuda grass outfield. It will be a regulation-sized field, but will be convertible to smaller T-ball and youth league fields.
It’s the T-Ball and youth leagues that most excite Davis, who believes those leagues will help develop players for his high school teams.
“We’ve got plenty of athletic talent,” Davis says. “They’ve just never had a place to play baseball.”
If Luke Easter were alive, he would surely be smiling. Luke Easter, you say? Easter was a Black baseball pioneer, born in Jonestown in 1915, whose family moved to St. Louis after his mother died when he was 7 years old. Easter grew up to become one of the great power hitters of the old Negro Baseball Leagues, playing for the Homestead Grays in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Easter called his home runs “Easter Eggs” and he hit many for both the Grays and later the Cleveland Indians after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball.
Had Easter’s mother not died and his family not moved away from Jonestown, Luke Easter most likely never would have played baseball. There was no place to play.
There will be now.
For tickets to Thursday night’s 6 p.m. program at Broadmoor Baptist Church www.butgodministries.com or call the BGM office at 601–983–1179.
BATON ROUGE, La. — Mayors from 10 states along the Mississippi River convened in Louisiana’s capital this week to announce a cooperative agreement between the working river’s ports.
In town for the annual Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative meeting, the mayors also called upon the next U.S. president to prioritize several federal policy changes to support the 105 cities represented by the initiative.
On Wednesday, mayors from the Midwestern Corn Belt joined mayors from Louisiana to sign the Mississippi River Ports Cooperative Endeavor Agreement. The agreement is the first to ensure cooperation between the inland ports in the heart of the corn belt and the coastal ports of Louisiana that export 60% of the nation’s agricultural products.
Vicksburg, Mississippi, Mayor George Flaggs praised the move in a statement on Friday, adding that he and the other mayors there were paying particular attention to environmental issues along the river such as the ongoing drought.
“This agreement ensures that ports from St. Louis to St. Paul will receive federal designation, a significant step that will bolster commerce and strengthen the economic impact of the entire Mississippi River region,” Flaggs said.
The inland ports between St. Louis and St. Paul were not federally recognized until 2022, said Robert Sinkler, executive coordinating director of the Corn Belt Ports. With the support of the Mississippi River cities initiative, the Corn Belt Ports initiative launched in 2019 to advocate for federal recognition of those ports.
Now, the corn belt and coastal ports will take on commerce-related policy actions together, for the first time in Mississippi River history, said Sinkler. The river moves nearly one trillion dollars in product through its ports annually, according to MRCTI. Maintaining the navigation capability on the river is a key part of the agreement.
Drought disrupts commerce and drinking water along the Mississippi River corridor
For the third year in a row, the Midwest is under extreme drought conditions, which have led to low water levels that threaten to disrupt barge transports carrying fuel and grain. The 16-month drought spanning from 2022 to 2023 cost the nation $26 billion. The drought of 2012 cost the Mississippi River corridor $35 billion.
Belinda Constant, mayor of Gretna, Louisiana, said that droughts often cost more than floods, but do not qualify as “major disasters” worthy of relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We still are not able to capture federal disaster declarations for drought or intense heat,” Constant said.
While drought is not considered a “major disaster” by FEMA, the president can declare one. President Joe Biden declared a federal emergency last September in Louisiana when the effects of drought caused salt water to intrude up the Mississippi River and threaten drinking water.
FEMA is not set up to provide relief for intense droughts or extreme heat, which are expected to become more extreme, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The federal government does offer support through other agencies, such as farm losses through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Constant asked the next U.S. president to update FEMA regulations to include droughts and extreme heat. Earlier this summer, dozens of labor and environmental groups filed a petition to push FEMA to declare extreme heat and wildfire smoke as “major disasters,” on par with other natural disasters such as floods and tornadoes.
Constant said the next administration should also create a mechanism to incentivize or compensate manufacturers and farmers who recycle water or reduce water usage during dry periods.
Louisiana is again dealing with drought. As of Sept. 13, 2024, the saltwater wedge had reached river mile 45, corroding drinking water infrastructure below Port Sulphur and inching toward Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana. Earlier this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on an underwater sill near Myrtle Grove to help slow the creep of saltwater intrusion for the third summer in a row.
But the drought impacts all communities along the Mississippi River, not just those in southern Louisiana. And 50 cities with a total population of 20 million people depend on the Mississippi River for their drinking water.
“Memphis depends on the health of the corridor to power our international port and fuel our multi-billion-dollar outdoor recreation and tourism industry,” said Paul Young, mayor of Memphis, Tennessee. The tournament fishing industry is worth billions in revenue.
“It is vital we work to safeguard the Mississippi River together,” he added.
Tugboats maneuver barges south along the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. Near record low water levels are affecting shipping and tourism. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Advocating for the Mississippi River corridor as a whole
The 105 cities represented by inititiuave also called on the next U.S. president to advocate for the corridor both at home and internationally. “We are asking the next president to please work with us to enact a federal Mississippi River program through which we can deploy infrastructure spending at a multi-state scale,” said Hollies J. Winston, mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
On the global stage, the initiative has advocated for the Mississippi River corridor at five United Nations climate meetings. Bob Gallagher, mayor of Bettendorf, Iowa, called on the next President to ensure that the nation remains a part of the Paris Agreement to sustain the corridor’s $500 billion in revenue.
“Serving as a past co-chair of MRCTI along with being from an agricultural state, I know firsthand that U.S. participation in the Paris Accord helps us compete and move our commodities and goods across the world to other markets,” said Gallagher.
Pulling out of the Paris Agreement could trigger tariffs for goods coming from a non-signatory nation. Leaving the international climate accord would place farmers and manufacturers at a potential disadvantage in the global market, said Gallagher.
In 2017, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. In 2021, on President Biden’s first day in office, the U.S. rejoined the international agreement to limit temperature increases.
“We can’t afford to make any policy decisions that will jeopardize the $164 billion in agricultural commodities the Mississippi River makes possible every year,” said Gallagher.
Mitch Reynolds, mayor of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the initiative’s co-chair, said that the advocacy work of the initiative is paramount to defending the health of the river and its communities.
The Mississippi River Ports Cooperative Endeavor Agreement unites the communities along the corridor in a shared commitment to protect, restore and manage the river’s resources sustainably, said Sharon Weston Broome, mayor of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and host of the initiative’s 13th annual meeting.
“We urge the next administration to increase its focus on the river, its impact on the national economy and its continued need for stewardship,” said Broome.
Editor’s note: Mississippi Today and the Mississippi Humanities Council cosponsored an event – “Reimagining Statuary Hall” – on Sept. 18 at The Station in Fondren. Several speakers suggested accomplished Mississippians to represent the state in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Currently, statues of staunch segregationists Jefferson Davis and J..Z. George represent Mississippi. What follows is Mississippi Today investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell’s pitch from the event.
Medgar Evers Credit: National Park Service
Medgar Evers dove onto the sand at Normandy. In the weeks following the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944. He joined a million soldiers fighting to expand the beachhead. The Luftwaffe strafed and bombed them, hoping to push them back into the sea.
He was also part of the Red Ball Express, which provided fuel, food and other critical supplies as Allied troops pushed back the German forces.
As Allied forces freed more of France from Nazi occupation, Evers enjoyed life without the color line. He could eat in any restaurant he desired. He even fell in love with a French girl.
After battling the Nazis, he returned to Mississippi and fought racism all over again in the form of Jim Crow, which barred Black Americans from restaurants, restrooms and voting booths. When he tried to vote in his hometown of Decatur, Mississippi, he and other Black war veterans were turned away by an armed white mob.
After graduating from Alcorn College, he worked for his mentor, Dr. T.R.M. Howard, and was involved in passing out bumper stickers across the Delta that read, “Don’t Buy Gas Where You Can’t Use the Restroom.”
In January 1954, he tried to enroll at the University of Mississippi School of Law — only to be turned away. NAACP officials considered taking up his case but were so impressed with him they decided instead to hire him as the first field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP.
He investigated violence against African Americans, including the 1955 assassinations of the Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith, who were killed because they helped Black Mississippians register to vote.
He worked with Dr. Howard on the lynching of Emmett Till and helped find new witnesses.
The economic threats and violence became so great that Dr. Howard and others left Mississippi, but Medgar Evers stayed.
He helped James Meredith enroll at Ole Miss, and he logged 40,000 miles a year traveling the roads, sometimes flooring it past 100 to escape those hell-bent on harming him.
His telephone rang at all hours with threats. Some were short and emphatic: “We’re going to kill you, N-word.” Others described how they planned to torture him.
Evers told a CBS reporter, “They say I’m going to be dead soon, that they’re going to blow up my house, that they’re going to blow my head off. If I die, it will be a good cause. I’m fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam.”
After the white mayor of Jackson chastised the civil rights movement in Mississippi in spring 1963, Evers won his FCC bid for “equal time” to respond. He talked on television about the mistreatment of Black Mississippians and in so doing he became even more of a target. The Evers’ home was firebombed.
Hours after President Kennedy told the nation that the grandchildren of those enslaved are “not yet freed from the bonds of injustice,” Evers was shot in the back as he stepped onto his own driveway in Jackson, Mississippi. His wife, Myrlie Evers, heard the shot, ran outside, saw the blood and screamed. When the children heard the scream, they ran outside and saw their father.
“Daddy, get up,” his 8-year-old daughter, Reena, said. “Daddy, get up.”
He never did.
On Evers’ birthday in 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act
Three decades later, his family finally saw his assassin convicted.
“All I want to say is, ‘Yay, Medgar, yay!’” Myrlie Evers declared as she wiped away tears. “My God, I don’t have to say accused assassin anymore. … what he failed to realize was that Medgar was still alive in spirit and through each and every one of us who wanted to see justice done.”
That justice inspired others. To date, 24 men have been convicted in civil rights cold cases.
A year after Evers’ killer went to prison, Myrlie Evers became chairman of the national NAACP and helped rescue the civil rights organization from the brink of bankruptcy.
She continues to break boundaries. She became the first lay person to deliver the inaugural invocation at Barack Obama’s second inauguration.
She cheered when Mississippi removed the Confederate emblem from the state flag, and she told me the reason we keep repeating its history is we don’t know our history.
Putting Medgar Evers in Statuary Hall would honor a fallen soldier in the war against hate and would help ensure that we know our history so that we don’t repeat it.
Jerry Mitchell on his Statuary Hall pick; Medgar Evers
