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For the fifth straight year, lawmakers will debate restoring Mississippi’s ballot initiative when they convene at the Capitol in January. 

House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, and Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, a Republican from Vancleave, told Mississippi Today that they will likely file bills to give Mississippians a way to circumvent the Legislature and place issues on a statewide ballot. 

“It’s important,” England said. “It’s important for the people to feel like ‘If our Legislature is not reacting to things we want, then we want to have this process available to us.’”

Mississippians had the constitutional right to a ballot initiative starting in 1914, but the state Supreme Court threw it out in 1922. The initiative went dormant until the Legislature and voters restored the right by passing a measure in 1992, allowing voters to amend the state constitution. But the Supreme Court again nullified it on technical grounds in 2021 in a ruling on a lawsuit over voters passing a medical marijuana initiative.

Ever since the Mississippi Supreme Court invalidated the ballot initiative then, legislators have been unable to reach a consensus on how to restore the right to voters. 

Since the court’s ruling, some lawmakers have questioned whether Mississippi needs an initiative and raised concerns that uber-wealthy out-of-state special interests can manipulate voters through ballot initiatives. 

To assuage these concerns, Senate leaders have proposed a new initiative process that requires petitioners to collect a larger number of voters’ signatures to have something placed on a ballot than in the previous process. 

“The process should be difficult because it goes around and goes outside our constitutional republic system of government,” England said. 

House leaders, on the other hand, have pushed for an initiative process similar to the previous one. Last year,  Rep. Wallace advocated for a process that required petitioners to gather around 140,000 signatures before it could be considered on the ballot. 

But the Simpson County Republican said he hopes lawmakers could work constructively this year to find some common ground on how to restore the process. 

“We’re all going to work on something,” Wallace said. 

Both House and Senate leaders agree that a new initiative process should only allow voters to make changes to state law, not the Constitution, and not allow voters to propose initiatives related to abortion and the public pension system. 

During the 30 years that the state had an initiative, only seven proposals made it to a statewide ballot: two initiatives for term limits, eminent domain reform, voter ID, a personhood amendment, medical marijuana, and a measure requiring lawmakers to fully fund public education.

Of those seven, only eminent domain, voter ID and medical marijuana were approved by voters. The rest were rejected.

NEW ORLEANS — If 76-year-old Archie Manning was listed on the College Football Playoffs injury report for the Sugar Bowl it would say: Ole Miss quarterback Manning (lower back) extremely doubtful.

“My back has just been giving me fits lately. I can hardly get around,” Manning said Tuesday from the St. Charles Avenue condo where he and wife Olivia live. “I could get on the elevator to a suite in the Superdome. It’s just getting to the elevator that’s the problem. But I’ll be watching. You better believe I’ll be watching.”

Fifty-six years ago, on New Year’s Day, 1970, Manning, then 20, was most definitely ready to go. Legendary Clarion Ledger sports columnist Carl Walters described it this way in the next day’s paper: “The Ole Miss Rebels became the winningest team in Sugar Bowl history this bright but cold New Year’s Day, holding off the battling, third-ranked Arkansas Razorbacks for a 27-22 victory in a thrilling contest that will be ranked with the best ever played in post-season competition.”

Manning passed for 273 yards and a touchdown, ran for another touchdown and totaled 318 yards of total offense to win the Miller-Digby Trophy as the game’s Most Valuable Player. As was the case every time Manning took the field, the numbers don’t tell the entire story. It was the competitive flair with which he played – the zigging and zagging all over the field – that stole the Sugar Bowl show.

Says Skipper Jernigan, an outstanding Ole Miss guard back then and Manning’s long-time pal, “I just remember chasing his red-headed ass all over Tulane Stadium trying to block for him. Every time I’d go to block somebody, Archie would turn and go the other direction. He was all over the place and none of the rest of us were fast enough to keep up with him.”

And this will tell you something about Ole Miss’s rich Sugar Bowl history: Manning is one of six Rebel quarterbacks to have won the Sugar Bowl’s MVP trophy. Count them, six: Raymond Brown (1958), Bobby Ray Franklin (1960), Jake Gibbs (1961), Glynn Griffing (1963), Manning (1970) and Chad Kelly (2016).

“Seemed like when I was growing up, Coach Vaught had Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl about every other year,” Manning said. “We had a great Sugar Bowl experience. I’ll never forget it. We lost three games that season, but at the end of the year we were playing as well or better than anybody in the country.”

Jernigan put it another way: “When No. 18 was clicking, we were hard to handle.”

Tulane Stadium, packed with more than 80,000 fans, was what Manning remembers most.

“God, I loved that place,” Manning said. “It still had real grass back then, and there were hedges around the field. And, man, so many people were there. I had never seen that many people in one place before. I’ll tell you this much, I enjoyed playing in Tulane Stadium that day a whole lot more than I did my first four years with the Saints.”

Arkansas and Ole Miss chewed up the field so badly the field was still a mess 10 days later when the Kansas City Chiefs trounced the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV. In fact, the NFL required the Saints to install artificial turf before the league would award the city another Super Bowl. The sad truth is that rock-hard Astroturf at Tulane Stadium and later in the Superdome might have something to do with Manning’s back issues today.

That Ole Miss made the Sugar Bowl that year was a story in itself. The Rebels suffered one-point losses early in the season to Kentucky and Alabama and was solidly defeated by Houston in the Astrodome at mid-season.

Then came November and upset victories over No. 8 LSU (26-23) and No. 3 Tennessee (38-0).

“Coach Vaught told us before the Tennessee game that if we somehow beat them, he guaranteed us he would get us in the Sugar Bowl,” Manning said. “And he did.”

But first, Ole Miss had to beat Mississippi State, no easy task at the time. “State had Tommy Pharr throwing and Sammy Milner and David Smith catching,” Manning said. “We had tied them in Oxford the year before and we had to play ‘em in Starkville that year and, man, they could really throw the football and put up some points.”

Ole Miss, with Manning leading the way, prevailed 48-22, and true to his word, Vaught lobbied the Rebels into the Sugar Bowl. There, they were to face the loser of the Dec. 6, Arkansas-Texas “Game of the Century,” a game so big even President Richard Nixon attended and declared the Dec. 6 game was for the national championship.

“We all thought Arkansas was the better team,” Manning said. “So did Coach Vaught. Arkansas had beaten Georgia in the Sugar Bowl the year before. We thought we would be playing Texas, not Arkansas”

Instead, Texas rallied from a 14-0 fourth quarter deficit to beat the Razorbacks 15-14.

“We really thought we were playing the best team in the country in Arkansas, but we knew we could play with them,” Manning said.

Fullback Bo Bowen got the Rebels off to a fantastic start, busting through a wide hole cleared by Jernigan and Worthy McClure for a 69-yard touchdown run. 

“Bo was just a great back,” Manning said. “He was really a tailback playing out of position at fullback but he really hit his stride the last half of that season.”

After that, Manning pretty much took control of the game, running and throwing the Rebels to a 24-6 first half lead. The Rebels got a lot more conservative offensively in the second half but hung on to win.

Fifty-six years later, Manning has vivid memories and not just of Tulane Stadium and the team headquarters, the old Fountainbleu Hotel, both long since gone. Among them:

• Of a Sugar Bowl party the week of the game, during which a magician called up Rebel wide receiver Vernon Studdard to the stage to be part of his act. The joke was on the magician, because when Studdard returned to his seat, he had the magician’s watch.
• Of how good that Arkansas team was. “They were coached by Frank Broyles, a Hall of Famer who was Coach Vaught’s good friend,” Manning said. “They had a great wide receiver Chuck Dicus, who had been the Sugar Bowl MVP the year before, and a great quarterback Bill Montgomery. Both those guys became great friends. So did Coach Broyles, who never did beat Coach Vaught. I ran into Broyles years and years later at Augusta National and he was still talking about Bo Bowen’s run.”
• Of Arkansas All American middle linebacker Cliff Powell. “Man, that guy would ever more hit you,” Manning said.

Years and years later, Archie and Olivia Manning decided to watch a replay of that 1970 Sugar Bowl with ABC legends Chris Shenkel and Bud Wilkinson doing the call.

“About midway through the second half, Olivia said it looked like my good friend Jim Poole (a fantastic Rebel tight end) had his jersey on backwards,” Manning said. “Sure enough, I looked closely and the big numbers were on the front of Jim’s jersey. The little numbers, which were supposed to be on the front, were on the back.”

Turns out, Poole had suffered a first half neck injury, and Ole Miss trainer Doc Knight had taken his jersey and shoulder pads off to massage the neck at halftime. When they put Poole’s jersey back on, it was on backwards.

Turns out, Poole played that second half with fractured vertebrae in his neck. Back then, you just took a few aspirin and went back in – until they carried you off. So what will they be saying about this New Year’s Day Sugar Bowl in 56 years? That will be 2082.

After more than five years in office, Gov. Tate Reeves first exercised his power to grant executive clemency earlier this month when he ordered the release of Marcus Taylor, who had been wrongly sentenced to five years longer than the maximum sentence for his charge.

Now, he has exercised that constitutional authority again, this time to free Taylor’s twin brother Maurice. 

On Dec. 31, Reeves signed Executive Order 1591, directing the Mississippi Department of Corrections to release Maurice Taylor within five days. 

“A couple of weeks ago, my office was contacted for the first time by Maurice Taylor’s post-conviction counsel and provided a copy of Mr. Taylor’s indictment, plea petition, sentencing order, transcript of the sentencing hearing and other documents from the Circuit Court file,” Reeves posted on his X account Wednesday. “These documents confirm that, like his brother, Maurice Taylor received a sentence more than three times longer than allowed under Mississippi law.” 

In February 2015, Maurice Taylor pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to sell a controlled substance, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of five years. However, the Choctaw County Circuit Court in its judgment sentenced him to 20 years in MDOC custody with five suspended, a sentence 10 years longer than the maximum for his offense. 

According to court papers, the sentencing judgment misidentified the offense as business burglary and imposed an illegal sentence. In 2016, the trial court entered a corrected judgment identifying the proper offense but failed to correct the sentence.

Reeves’ executive order notes that Taylor began serving his sentence on March 6, 2014, meaning that he has, to date, served more than 11 years for an offense that carried a maximum sentence of five, thus constituting a “miscarriage of justice.”

“When justice is denied to even one Mississippian, it is denied to us all,” Reeves said.

Similarly, Marcus Taylor, who was indicted with his brother, was convicted in 2015 for a drug sale charge that was meant to have a five-year maximum sentence. Instead, he received 15 years. 

But unlike his brother, the Mississippi Court of Appeals voted 8-2 to release him. The attorney general’s office asked the court to vacate its decision after Reeves’ granted the 43-year-old clemency. It refused. The attorney general’s office is appealing that decision to the Mississippi Supreme Court. 

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has purchased a new building in Southaven to boost its computing power. 

This is the tech company’s latest expansion into Mississippi. The property at 2400 Stateline Road is a short drive from xAI’s natural gas power plant that the company bought in July 2025. The former Duke Power plant will power xAI’s two data centers across the state line in Memphis. 

According to property records, MZX Tech, an LLC associated with xAI, purchased the property on Dec. 23.

“xAI has bought a third building called MACROHADRR,” Elon Musk wrote on Tuesday in a tweet on X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk added that the building would expand the company’s computing power to almost 2 gigawatts. 

The company has not said what it plans for the warehouse. However, The Information, a tech publication, reported that the building will be used as a data center.

If true, this would bring the total number of data center projects in Mississippi to five. 

xAI’s power plant already faces community pushback. Residents of Southaven have raised concerns about noise levels and environmental concerns. A petition by a local group, Safe and Sound Coalition, calls for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the city to end all xAI operations. It has over 700 signatures. The group plans to speak at the next Southaven Board of Aldermen meeting on Jan. 6.  

For the next year, Mississippi will take part in America250, a variety of projects, initiatives and programming aimed at unifying Americans while venerating the country’s history, culture and ideas in celebration of the country’s upcoming 250th birthday.

Nancy Carpenter, America250 Mississippi’s development director, said that these celebrations are open to every American, regardless of their background or beliefs. 

“I know that right now everybody does not love each other, everybody does not get along, and my hope and prayer is that things can change and will change for the betterment of our state and our country,” she said.

The Mississippi Legislature established the America250 Mississippi Commission in 2023, and celebrations began in July of 2025. The commission is co-chaired by Elee Reeves, wife of Gov. Tate Reves; Lynn Hosemann, wife of Lt. Gov Delbert Hosemann; and Jolynn White, wife of House Speaker Jason White. The commission is working with state agencies such as Visit Mississippi, the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

There are local and national events and initiatives in celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Mississippi has been part of past and ongoing national events, including America250’s Our American Story airstream, the Great American State Fair contest and Flag Sojourn 250. 

Sarah Campbell, director of the state’s Archives and History  programs and communication division, said there will be programming highlighting the state’s contributions to America, including its roles in Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement.

“When we talk about a nation founded on the principles of liberty and justice, Mississippi has been part of defining what that means, so that’s the part of the story that we’re telling,” Campbell said.

Mississippi began its America250 celebrations in July with a nationalization ceremony at the Two Mississippi Museums. An exhibit called “Mississippi Made,” which will showcase artifacts that tell of Mississippi’s contributions across various fields, will debut at the museums in 2026.

Archives and History also received a grant for the First Oval Office Project, to install a replica of George Washington’s tent from the Revolutionary War at the Old Capitol Museum. This project is in partnership with the Museum of the American Revolution.

Vendors and communities are encouraged to submit their events to be featured on the America250 Mississippi Commission’s website.

The America250 Mississippi Grant Program, funded by the Mississippi Legislature, gives communities the opportunity to join the festivities. The commission wants to ensure every corner of the state is included.

There are three types of grants depending on the scale of the project: mini grants, program grants and legacy grants. The Mississippi Humanities Council administers the grant program. 

Carol Andersen, assistant director of the Humanities Council, said the response to the request for proposals has been “robust.”

Andersen said, “They (grant proposals) have come from across the state. They have come from the tiniest organizations up to the largest nonprofit entities functioning in our state.”

Information about requirements and deadlines is on the Mississippi Humanities Council’s website.

The Mississippi Arts Commission, as part of the celebration, also is offering a public art grant. 

Robert Luckett is a history professor and director of the Margaret Walker Center and Civil Rights Education Center at Jackson State University. The Margaret Walker Center is planning to commemorate the holiday with a 60th anniversary celebration of Margaret Walker’s novel, “Jubilee.”  The historical novel tells the story of a biracial slave during the Civil War. Luckett also said the Margaret Walker Center is applying for an America250 program grant.

Luckett believes that it’s important to tell the full story of Mississippi’s history.

“We have stories to tell. We have powerful, wonderful stories to tell, to lift up, to celebrate, of people who risked and gave everything in the name of this nation and in the name of what has been built up over the last 250 years,” he said.

“And that is something we should be very proud of, but we also cannot tell those stories without talking about what they were up against.”

You might be interested in what were Mississippi Today’s 10 most-read sports stories of 2025. I was. Some were surprises, some not.

From the considerable feedback received, the most surprising column that didn’t make the top 10 was the one I wrote about Jake Mangum just prior to the Major League season.

Read my most-read stories of 2025 below and sign up for my monthly newsletter Crooked Letter Sports.

Will Warren’s story: From 10th grade bench warmer to NY Yankees starter

Mississippi native and New York Yankees pitcher Will Warren’s incredible story is one of waiting your turn and never giving up.

Egg Bowl week begins as Kiffin’s run at Ole Miss appears to be at end

“I have no clue what will happen Friday in Starkville and then Saturday in Oxford when Lane Kiffin’s decision is supposed to come, but clearly Kiffin already has worn out his welcome with a huge segment of Ole Miss faithful,” wrote Rick Cleveland.

Ty Grisham, the author’s son, discusses Brian O’Connor’s move to Mississippi State

Ty Grisham, the author John Grisham’s son, played baseball for Brian O’Connor, the new Mississippi State baseball coach, at University of Virginia. Here’s what he says about State’s hire.

D.D. Lewis: He was a football hero, but he was much more than that

D.D. Lewis, one of Mississippi State’s best ever players and a Dallas Cowboys legend, died at age 79. Cleveland recounts his close friendship with Lewis.

For Rebels’ new boss Pete Golding, the coaching bug first bit at Delta State

The new head football coach at Ole Miss, Pete Golding, is known as a strong recruiter who builds bonds with high school coaches and prospective players.

Chris Lemonis fired, national search underway for Mississippi State baseball

Not quite four years after guiding Mississippi State to a baseball national championship, head coach Chis Lemonis was fired.

Jearld Baylis, dead at 62, was a nightmare for USM opponents

Jearld Baylis, who died at the age of 62, played nose tackle at Southern Miss in the 1980s — with the emphasis very much on the word “tackle.”

Ready or not, Mississippi State and Southern Miss will tee it up Saturday at the Rock

“This is an intriguing way to start the football season,” wrote Cleveland. “We’ve got two in-state rivals who used to play every season but now get together much less frequently. We’ve got two teams with totally revamped rosters. Even the most diehard of Bulldog and Golden Eagle fans will need a program to know who is who.”

Funny, smart and so very athletic, Bobby Ray Franklin was a winner

Clarksdale native and Ole Miss great Bobby Ray Franklin died at age 88 in Senatobia. Cleveland describes him as a “gentleman and a winner.”

Opinion: Chris Lemonis had at least earned the right to finish season

Mississippi State University baseball coach Chris Lemonis won the first national championship in State history four years ago. That championship should have earned Lemonis the right finish the season, Cleveland said.

NEW ORLEANS – The similarities of these two Sugar Bowl head coaches are many. Georgia football coach Kirby Smart’s dad was a high school football coach. So is Ole Miss coach Pete Golding’s daddy.

Smart played defensive back, safety to be exact. So did Golding.

When both Smart and Golding finished their playing days, they hired on as graduate assistant coaches at their alma maters.

Following those apprenticeships both Smart and Golding cut their coaching teeth in the Division II Gulf South Conference, Kirby at Valdosta State and Pete at his alma mater, Delta State.

Smart worked as a defensive coordinator for Nick “He of Seven National Championships” Saban at Alabama. So did Golding.

In this age of high powered, spread-the-field offenses when most head coaches worked first as assistant coaches on that side of the ball, both Smart and Golding rose through the coaching ranks on the defensive side. 

Both Smart, 50, and Golding, 41, are sons of the South and speak with decidedly Southern accents. Both tend to become very animated when they talk.

And that’s where similarities pretty much end. Smart has won 117 games and two national championships. Golding has won one game, period.

The Ole Miss hope – some would say, the Ole Miss dream – is that Golding can produce anywhere near similar success in Oxford, Mississippi, as Smart has in Athens, Georgia. And, yes, those similar backgrounds are part of what Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter had in mind when he  promoted Golding to head coach on Nov. 30 after Lane Kiffin flew the Ole Miss coop.

“Similar backgrounds, similar pedigree, no doubt about it,” Carter said. “Their journey has been very similar. Man, we’d love to have some of that same success Georgia has had.”

Of course, they would. That would mean four SEC Championships and two national titles over the next decade.

But Carter had far more than that in mind when he elevated Golding, as he explained Tuesday: “I just think Pete is uniquely fit for Ole Miss. I think that’s what I have learned over the last three years. Man, Pete Golding loves Ole Miss. His family loves this place. … When you see him in that building and you hear him around the players and the respect they have for him, all those things are great. The fact that he wants to build something really special here at Ole Miss. That makes a ton of difference, too.”

That his career path mirrors that of Smart is far from lost on Golding. Where Smart is concerned, Golding has been a long-time fan, going back to Golding’s first year as a graduate coach at Delta State. Smart was then Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama helping win national championships.

“I remember studying their tape, trying to figure out what they were doing and how we could increase our package and do it better,” Golding said. “I was coaching in DII in the Gulf South Conference, and I appreciated that Coach Smart had been at Valdosta State. It was a respect factor based on where he had come from and how he did it. And then, obviously, I worked with a lot of guys who worked with him, so that I felt I knew him better than I really did.”

That respect, Smart said Tuesday, is mutual.

“Pete worked his way up through the ranks, very similar to how I did,” Smart said. “He’s coached under sone really good coaches, been part of of some really good defensive staffs. … I don’t know Pete that well, I just know him through other people. I’m happy for him. I’m happy when someone that works as hard as he did and worked his way up and dedicated himself to being a position coach, a coordinator and then a head coach. That’s the way it is supposed to be. That’s the way it is supposed to go if you’re able to do it. He’s done it.”

Listen to Smart and Golding and you get a sense that, regardless of how little they know one another, they are part of a fraternity of defense-minded coaches. They clearly take great pride in having built their careers on that side of the ball. They are from the school of football thought that while offense sells tickets, defense wins championships. Golding says its only natural that defensive coaches pull for each other. He remembers thinking earlier in his career that all the head coaching jobs were going to the latest hot-shot offensive coordinators.

“I think any time you are a defensive coach and you see a defensive coach get a head job, you pull for him,” Golding said. “You want him to have success and create more opportunities for defensive guys to become head coaches. I don’t know about a fraternity but I do think we kind of pull for each other.”

While the mutual admiration society will take about a four-hour break on the first night of 2026, the guess here is that the shared respect will extend far beyond. 

READ ALSO: Sugar Bowl notes: Kewan Lacy says he and his shoulder ‘ready to go’

NEW ORLEANS – Notes and quotes from the Sugar Bowl:

The biggest news of Sugar Bowl Media Day Tuesday was splendid news for Ole Miss football fans.

All American running back Kewan Lacy pronounced himself “ready to go” for Thursday’s Sugar Bowl match with Georgia, and his coach, Pete Golding, confirmed Lacy’s status, saying, “I couldn’t agree with him more!”

“I am excited to watch (Lacy) got out and play and play really well,” Golding said.

Lacy has been one of the nation’s top rushers all season long for the 12-1 Rebels, running for 1,366 yards and 21 touchdowns on 273 carries. He suffered a shoulder injury in the Rebels’ first-round playoff victory over Tulane, which he called “just a little stinger in my AC joint.”

Georgia held Lacy to a season low 31 yards on 12 carries in the Bulldogs’ 43-35 victory at Athens, Georgia, on Oct. 18. Lacy did score two touchdowns, but Georgia, which never punted, came from behind in the fourth quarter to hand the Rebels their only regular season defeat.

Asked to compare Georgia’s defense with others he has faced, Lacy said, “Yeah. I’ll just say, they have more, bigger people.”

“But it’s football at the end of the day and it’s not about size,” Lacy said. “It’s about doing our job. I just feel like if we just go out and do our job, it’s going to be a great outcome.”

***

Meanwhile, Georgia’s injury report was mixed. The Bulldogs will be without starting defensive end Gabe Harris, who suffers from a painful turf toe injury. But Georgia will welcome the return of wide receiver Colbie Young, who hasn’t played since suffering a broken leg in the previous Ole Miss game. Young caught one 36-yard pass against the Rebels before the injury. He had caught 23 passes for 336 yards over the first seven games.

•••

During the Georgia portion of the Sugar Bowl Media Day, all the Georgia defensive linemen were gathered at two tables. Even when they were sitting, they were huge. They made big tables look small. During the Ole Miss portion of the two press conferences, Georgia’s physical size and strength came up over and over.

“Yeah, it’s Georgia,” Trinidad Chambliss said. “They’re going to have huge guys. They’re going to have five stars; they’re going to have four stars that are hungry. Their defensive line is always stacked with dudes that can be in the NFL any given day.”

Asked about Georgia’s defensive size, Golding smiled. “First of all, they’re big human beings,” he said. “They’re really strong, really powerful. … They got a very good pressure package to create some one-on-ones for those big guys. I think you really see their explosion and power come up when they get the one-on-one matchups. … They’ve always been very talented up front and well-coached and they do a good job with their plans. It will be tough for us.”

•••

The Trinidad Chambliss story – from Division II Ferris State to the Sugar Bowl – has become a national story, but there’s another poignant DII story on the Ole Miss team. Safety Wydette Williams began his college career at Delta State. Three years ago, he was more concerned with Gulf States Conference rival Valdosta State. Now he’s going against the Georgia Bulldogs in the Division I playoff quarterfinals and the Sugar Bowl.

Asked if he ever dreamed of playing in a game this big when he was at Delta State, Williams answered, “Yes, I always thought of it, at Delta State and even when I was a little kid. At Delta State, my biggest thing was to stay where my feet were, get better at what I was doing and keep grinding.”

Williams shares that Delta State background with his new head coach. Of Pete Golding, Williams said, “He knows where he comes from and I know where I come from. We’re connected like that.”

EAD ALSO: Smart vs, Golding: More similarities than differences

DENVER — Young gymnasts and their parents started raising red flags about a coach as far back as 2017 — the same year a watchdog agency was created in the wake of the Larry Nassar sexual-abuse scandal that nearly eviscerated USA Gymnastics and damaged the country’s entire Olympic movement.

But it took until 2022 for Sean Gardner to face any sanction from the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the independent agency created by Congress to investigate misconduct in Olympic sports. And it wasn’t until an Associated Press investigation this year that details emerged about the coach, whose arrest on child pornography charges in August was a turning point in a case one person involved called “Nassar 2.0.”

Now, a new AP investigation has found that months before Gardner’s arrest on allegations of installing cameras in a girls gym bathroom in Purvis, Mississippi, he was willing to accept a lifetime ban from coaching gymnastics as part of a deal where he would admit to the abuse, according to three people involved with SafeSport and its handling of the case.

A tangle of internal politics that included allegations of retaliation against employees inside SafeSport kept it from levying its harshest sanction, the people — who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by SafeSport — told the AP.

With multiple alleged victims, new witnesses coming forward and Gardner’s history at three gyms in different states, the case became one of the most troubling of the 8-year-old agency’s investigations.

“It was like, ’Well, this is ‘Nassar 2.0,’ so let’s figure out what we can figure out and wrap it up,” one person said.

That person said there was never a clear reason given for why the center did not finalize the permanent ban.

Meanwhile, Gardner has pleaded not guilty to federal child pornography charges and remains jailed pending trial, set for March 2.

Experts point out key differences between temporary and lifetime bans

SafeSport’s inability to lock down a permanent ban is seen by critics as a fundamental failure that undermines one of its key missions — securing permanent sanctions against the most dangerous abusers.

Asked why SafeSport didn’t follow through, center spokesperson Hilary Nemchik said in a statement that she could not comment about those details.

But, she said, SafeSport “took swift action to protect athletes from harm upon receiving the first allegations of sexual misconduct. The restrictions in place during a temporary suspension and a permanent ban are the same.”

Regarding SafeSport’s handling of cases in general, the statement said, “even if a respondent agrees to a significant sanction, center staff are still required to ensure the respondent receives a fair process.”

While not specifically addressing the Gardner case, Nemchik added that the center is careful not to close cases “with inaccuracies or make findings that a respondent was not properly noticed on, because it could jeopardize the case and require the matter to be reopened.”

Gardner’s temporary suspension in July 2022 was put on SafeSport’s disciplinary database — a searchable list of those banned by the center, which updates the list but does not announce new or notable sanctions. The database requires users to know the name of a person they want to check on.

The permanent ban Gardner indicated he was ready to sign in early 2025 would have changed his status on the database and closed the investigation, the people familiar with the case told the AP.

It would have limited his ability to do more damage in a number of ways, experts familiar with SafeSport told AP. These include:

— Eliminating the possibility of the case going to arbitration and any need to reinterview and potentially retraumatize athletes.

— Removing the risk of any ban on Gardner being lifted if he were acquitted in his criminal case.

Just as importantly, it would have sent a clear message to parents, people in sports and possible employers, said attorney Michelle Simpson Tuegel, who represented gymnasts in the Nassar case.

“It communicates something that’s a final determination,” she said. “That means something. It’s not like it’s something that’s being adjudicated and maybe this guy is falsely accused.”

Gardner admitting potentially illegal activity to the SafeSport Center in early 2025 could also have provided law enforcement with more information in a case that didn’t result in his arrest until August, said attorney Steve Silvey, a longtime critic of the center.

“Did he abuse any people in the months that SafeSport was sitting on that information?” Silvey said. “And where did that fit into what the FBI knew” before it arrested him?

Despite being under temporary suspension from coaching gymnastics for two years, Gardner was able to land a job in May 2024 at MercyOne West Des Moines Medical Center as a surgical technologist, responsible for positioning patients on the operating room table and assisting with procedures and post-surgery care. A hospital spokesperson did not respond to a voicemail and email from the AP seeking comment.

Gardner’s attorney, Omodare Jupiter, also did not respond to an email and phone message from the AP asking questions about SafeSport’s handling of his client’s case.

A web of office politics and staffers fearful of retaliation

The people familiar with Gardner’s case told AP it got stuck in a web of internal SafeSport politics that led to HR complaints alleging retaliation and other concerns — and eventually to no lifetime ban being imposed.

They described a dysfunctional culture in which employees were afraid to speak up to their bosses about problems they encountered, including frustration over the center’s failure to close out the Gardner case.

They said SafeSport took a survey of employees earlier this year that produced troubling results. A slideshow presentation to employees, shared with the AP, cited: “Significant concerns about retaliation, perceived favoritism and unqualified promotions” within the center’s investigation and legal departments.

“If I say something, I may get punished without being told why,” read a quote from an employee.

Nemchik did not respond to a question from AP about what SafeSport did in reaction to the survey, which came shortly after CEO Ju’Riese Colon’s ouster in April, but acknowledged “short-term cultural challenges” that came after Colon’s departure.

Nemchik said in a statement that the center expects a new CEO to focus on “organizational excellence as the center evolves under new leadership to best fulfill our mission.”

Some allegations went under the radar for years

Since his arrest, Gardner’s sanction on SafeSport’s disciplinary database has been upgraded from “temporary suspension” to “ineligible” due to “criminal disposition involving a minor” and “sexual misconduct.”

A conviction would change Gardner’s sanction to permanently ineligible to coach gymnastics. That’s the status Gardner had agreed to in early 2025, according to notes on the case file from April, one person told the AP.

“People know what Larry Nassar did and how it happened, and you let it happen again?” said John Manly, an attorney for gymnasts in the Nassar and Gardner cases, when asked to compare the two. “This center’s one job is to protect child athletes from predators. And they are failing.”

Meanwhile, SafeSport, USA Gymnastics and coaches at the Iowa gym where Gardner worked are named as defendants in civil lawsuits filed by two gymnasts who say they didn’t do enough to protect them.

The lawsuits say that in December 2017, USA Gymnastics and SafeSport were notified by one girl’s parents of Gardner’s inappropriate behavior while coaching at Jump’In Gymnastics in Purvis, Mississippi.

Among the lawsuits’ allegations:

— “Gardner requiring minor gymnasts to hug him after every practice, including long, front-facing, two-armed hugs.”

— “Gardner disciplining and intimidating a minor gymnast by taking her into his office for a 25-minute closed-door meeting without parental consent, verbally abusing her, and then hugging and kissing her without consent.”

Both SafeSport and USA Gymnastics declined to comment on the litigation.

The criminal complaint that led to Gardner’s arrest says the FBI found files of videos on his computer that Gardner made with a hidden camera in a girls lavatory as young gymnasts undressed and went to the bathroom at the Mississippi gym. The videos date to at least December 2017 through mid-2018.

The SafeSport center has said USA Gymnastics notified it in January 2018 that one of its affiliated gyms had resolved a report involving Gardner. But, the center said, it didn’t investigate further because the report was not related to sexual misconduct and it did not receive detailed information.

Meanwhile, Gardner was able to land a job at Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in West Des Moines, Iowa, in 2018 — a gym owned by renowned coach Liang “Chow” Qiao that produced Olympians, including gold medalist Shawn Johnson.

Not until 2022, when new allegations of abuse were reported to SafeSport, did the Iowa gym fire Gardner and the center place him on temporary suspension. The gym and Qiao, which are both named in the lawsuits, did not return phone and email messages left by the AP.

It took another three years and an investigation by the AP to expose the depths of the allegations against Gardner — and the shortcomings of the watchdog agency created to protect athletes in the wake of the Nassar case.

Simpson Tuegel said it’s no surprise this case is being compared to Nassar’s.

“You look at the timeline and how many people knew and failed to protect children and allowed this person to keep having contact,” she said.

“And there really is a point that you see, in some of these cases, where it absolutely could have been stopped and it wasn’t.”

Associated Press reporter Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.

This article is republished from Verite News, one of Mississippi Today’s partner publications in Deep South Today.

Sally was 14 years old when she was put on a ship leaving Port Pontchartrain in Milneburg, now part of New Orleans, presumably to continue a life of forced labor and other untold horror in Alabama. She stood 4 feet 8 inches tall. 

That’s all I know about her, a single line from a January 1844 slave manifest for the ship Fashion, written for its trip to Mobile. 

I found out about Sally earlier this month as I stood on the lowest level of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C. There, the tattered manifest, containing everything I’m ever likely to know about the girl,  was displayed behind glass, inspiring a flood of questions.

Who was Sally ripped away from? What was her life like before she was shipped away to Mobile?

Where did she end up — was Mobile the last place she would see, or was that just a transfer point?

How did she cope with the uncertainty of the devil she didn’t know?

A few paces away from the ship manifest, there was a poster advertising the sale of Isam, George, Betsy and Mary Jane, among others, at a slave auction at City Hotel on Common Street, in what’s now the New Orleans Central Business District. Isam had done enough in his roughly 40 years on Earth to warrant being described as “superior engineer and blacksmith … well known for character and qualification throughout the Parish of St. James.”

But the rest of them had much shorter CVs. There was a “house and confidential servant,” a “house girl,” a “field hand.” I wondered about them — these people whose entire lives were reduced to the roles that had been imposed on them — just as I had wondered about Sally. 

That ship manifest and slave auction poster are just two of the more than 150 artifacts of the centuries of dehumanization African-descended people endured at the hands of European settlers that are on view at the museum. These artifacts are proof of the immense suffering caused by the people who colonized the Americas, evidence of the exploitation used to birth the United States, watermarks that show exactly how much oppression a people can overcome.

And if it were up to President Donald Trump and his administration, I wouldn’t be able to see this history on display here. 

Since the early months of his second term, Trump has repeatedly criticized some of the ways that American history has been portrayed in the Smithsonian’s museums, demanding changes that reflect what he says is a more positive vision of this country’s story. Or, as critics see it, a whitewashing of that story. 

In Trump’s March executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” he wrote that the Smithsonian has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” Then, in August, his administration sent a letter to Lonnie Bunch, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and founding director of NMAAHC, stating that he was going to start an internal review of select Smithsonian museums ahead of July 4, 2026 — the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been,” Trump wrote that month on his social media platform, Truth Social. 

In the letter to Bunch, Trump’s aides outlined a timeline that the administration wants the Smithsonian to follow to ready its museums, including NMAAHC, the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of American History, to be seen by tourists visiting Washington, D.C. for the 250th anniversary celebration.

By Dec. 10, the museums were supposed to “begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions.”

It’s not yet clear what will become of the exhibits now on display in the museum. The Smithsonian Institution did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did White House officials.

All of this was alarming to me, a descendant of slaves whose roots in the Washington, D.C., region run deeper than the founding of the U.S., for a number of reasons. First, the Smithsonian museums — like the Hirshhorn Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian — are some of my favorite places to visit. To see their collections come under threat was worrying. Second, as a journalist, I value truth and accuracy not only in the first draft of history, but in all of its subsequent versions.

The third reason was the hardest to admit: I had never been to NMAAHC, and these threats to force revisions of museum materials meant that I may never be able to see the space as intended by the people who created it.

‘I took it for granted’

Black America was abuzz over the opening of the NMAAHC, or the “Blacksonian” as it came to be affectionately known, in 2016.  The museum was established in 2003 by an act introduced by Civil Rights icon John Lewis and signed into law by President George W. Bush. I learned more about all of the effort and energy that went into making the physical space a reality, including Bunch’s fight to have the museum located on prime real estate on the National Mall.

People I knew were excited that there was going to be a physical site that would contain a history long ignored by the mainstream in the U.S., one that was only fully taught in historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Black studies departments, and in Black families. 

I was excited that it would be there, too, for others but I was less enthusiastic about going there myself. I was raised in a Black family that taught us about our community’s history (more on that later) and I went to an HBCU, so I knew a lot more about the history that would likely be contained in the museum than the average person.

And by the time the museum was going to open, I had grown tired of the focus on the symbolic advancement of Black people that became the norm during the Obama years. 

Right or wrong, I felt like there was more of an emphasis on the importance of representation  than on improving the material conditions of Black people in this country. The hype surrounding the opening of the museum — at first, tickets were so hard to come by they were treated almost as status symbols  — felt like more of the same.

Because of all of that, I ended up doing something that many people who grew up in the D.C. area do with the many attractions, historical sites and halls of powers that line the National Mall: I took the museum for granted.

It has the same sense of permanence that I think of when I think of the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument (which I also hadn’t been inside of). The museum was something that I would visit eventually, but there was no rush.

All of that changed when I first read about the Trump administration’s demands of the Smithsonian Institution. I felt a mix of shame, guilt, stupidity and frustration. I felt like I had betrayed some duty to bear witness to the museum and the history it contained. I felt dumb for assuming that anything in this universe is permanent, let alone a monument to the history of a country that is itself only a few hundred years old. 

And I was annoyed that Trump and his operatives had even jeopardized my ability to act like a punky brat about visiting the museum.

I could no longer take it for granted.  So Dec. 10, I caught a plane from New Orleans to Washington, where I grew up, to get my first, and possibly last, look at what the Smithsonian describes as an attempt to present the “unvarnished truth of African American history and culture.”

‘It’s really heart-wrenching’

It was easy enough to find fans of the museum who had opinions about the Trump administration’s threats.

It was much more challenging, though, to find people who work or worked there who were willing to talk about how the museum is responding. For months, I sought out current or former employees of NMAAHC, and received minimal responses. The museum’s media team also didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. I also contacted people in leadership at organizations that helped get the Blacksonian off the ground as founding donors, but they didn’t want to talk either.

Finally, I was connected with Jordan Blanchard, who was an intern at the museum from 2017 to 2018, during the early years after the opening of the brick-and-mortar building. (The Smithsonian first launched a website for the museum in 2007, nine years before the grand opening of the physical space.)

Jordan’s internship at the NMAAHC was one of her first jobs. She grew up in New Orleans like her father, jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard. But she spent breaks from school in Washington, D.C. — where her mother, Robin Burgess, is from — and visited Smithsonian museums while staying in town. (Terence Blanchard serves on Verite News’ board of advisers.)

“It was really always my comfort space to be in a building surrounded by old stuff,” she told me. So, when she took a gap year before college, she applied to the Smithsonian’s internship program, and her top choice was to work at the African-American museum.

The day of her job interview marked the first time she set foot in the building. As she walked in, she was distracted by a disagreement she’d had with her mother over what she should wear, she told me. But her focus quickly shifted once she began to explore the building.

Even though she was well-educated in Black history and the African diaspora, she was still blown away by the care put into telling the stories that made up the exhibits and designing the spaces where they were kept. She began at the lowest level of the building, where museum volunteers and regulars tell first-time visitors they should start. That floor contains artifacts and information about the Transatlantic Slave Trade and chattel slavery in America.

“It just gets so devastating from there, and then there’s a whole emotional roller coaster that you go on to sort of mimic the highs and lows of our broader journey as a population,” she said. “It’s really, honestly wild for anyone who’s never been there before.”

Blanchard’s year at the museum was formative. She was a public relations and marketing intern, so she had to study the museum’s exhibits to be able to communicate about them with visitors and the press. When family and friends came into town, she gave them tours and directed them to specific exhibits connected to their family and community histories. Working around so many Black women with advanced degrees gave her confidence, she said, that she carried with her as she earned master’s and doctoral degrees.

So it’s been frustrating for her to see the Trump administration raise issues with how the museum portrays Black history.

“I don’t think that there is much positivity at all in asking us to hide the injustices that our community has faced, specifically at the hands of white America,” she said. “And I’m very firm in not censoring that part of our history whatsoever, especially coming from the South, especially coming from a place like New Orleans.”

Everyone else I spoke with about the administration’s moves in relation to the Smithsonian shared Blanchard’s frustration. A scholar who has conducted research at the museum spoke with me on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation for speaking out against the Trump administration. She said that working at the Blacksonian was “an experience of a lifetime” and that the pressure placed on the museum by the administration is “horrific.”

“It’s really heart-wrenching because … it took so much energy and effort to finally get off the ground, and it is not even a decade old and it’s already being undone in some ways or sidetracked from its vision,” she said.

Divisive and dangerous

Avatara Smith-Carrington, associate counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said that the letter to Bunch is part of an “ongoing attack” on teaching Black history and culture by not just the Trump administration, but conservative legislators across the U.S., including in K-12 and post-secondary institutions. In 2020, during his first term, Trump signed an executive order meant to discourage the teaching of what his administration called “divisive concepts” about racism and sexism in federal agencies, civil service, and the military.

Between then and late last year, state legislatures passed 51 laws restricting race education, according to reporting from The Washington Post. Some of these, like Florida’s 2022 Stop WOKE Act and similar laws passed in Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, effectively prohibit public K-12 schools from teaching about the role of race in shaping America. The Smithsonian, Smith-Carrington said, is just a new theater in the war over public education.

“It is an escalation,” they said, “We’re talking about historical sites across the country that are being impacted by the administration’s efforts to essentially write their own version of what is American history that not only excludes Black people, Black culture and Black history, but also minimizes the ways in which Black people have persevered.”

Recent efforts to censor Black history are “just plain dangerous,” Chandra Manning, a historian who teaches about slavery, the Civil War and emancipation at Georgetown University, told me. We spoke at the onset of the 43-day shutdown of the federal government this fall, which came just after I initially booked my trip to go see the Blacksonian for the first time.

At the time, given the shutdown, which temporarily closed the museum, I told her I was worried I might not see it before alterations were made to exhibits.

She couldn’t offer any reassurances.

Instead, she shared her worries with me about the push to revise American history to exclude the struggles historically marginalized groups have had to overcome in order to survive.

“This looks like a concerted effort to edit out periods of conflict, and in particular, to edit out anything to do with anybody who’s not white,” she said. “And that is dangerous.”

That’s because, she said, that the erasure of a group or groups from the past can serve to make erasing them now and in the future seem more legit.

I reached out to Smith-Carrington and Manning both because they work with groups who, in one form or another, are doing something to preserve Black history.

About a month after Trump name-checked the Smithsonian leadership in his “Restoring Sanity” executive order, a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the National Urban League and African American Policy Forum, vowed to defend Black history from censorship A few days later, leaders of some of those organizations, including former New Orleans mayor and Urban League President Marc Morial, led a march of hundreds of people on the National Mall to the NMAAHC (Morial serves on Verite News’ board of advisers).

The Legal Defense Fund has litigated on behalf of the NAACP to challenge legislation meant to curb the teaching of Black history in public K-12 schools, most recently in a lawsuit against the state of South Carolina over a new law restricting how public schools can teach about the history of racial inequality.  

When I asked Smith-Carrington if the LDF would sue to stop the push to review and potentially alter material in the Smithsonian museums, they said the LDF is “committed to exploring all avenues in terms of supporting efforts that will allow for Black history and culture to continue to be shown,” but said that support could take the form of policy development, organizing or communications, not just litigation.

And just days after the Trump administration published its August letter to Bunch, Manning co-founded Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian with fellow historian James Millward and technologist Jessica Dickinson Goodman. The project is an effort to digitally preserve the exhibits of the Smithsonian museums, the National Zoo and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Over the course of seven weeks beginning in August, more than 1,500 volunteers took nearly 50,000 photos and videos of exhibits at these institutions and documented 100 percent of Smithsonian exhibits, according to the group’s website.

“We certainly aren’t capturing the full story of the Smithsonian by a long shot, but we are capturing one little thing, and that is a snapshot of” what the exhibits looked like in 2025, before any changes were made, Manning told me.

That was reassuring, actually. Still, I needed to see the Blacksonian for myself.

‘What we create’

I was on the second floor from the bottom at the museum when an eerie familiarity set in — the warble of an organ playing gospel music: I realized I was walking into a recreation of a funeral. I walked down a narrow hallway that opened up into a small room with pictures and information on some of the walls and a couple rows of pews. Most of the room was dimly-lit, except for a bright set of lights shining on the casket of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at and grabbing a white woman (the woman in question later said her testimony as to what happened was a fabrication).

A deluge of sadness, anger and desperation — the kind of desperation to reverse a tragedy that can’t be undone — engulfed me as I walked up to his casket. It was the boy’s real casket, which was donated to the museum in 2009. After a few moments standing in front of the casket, I became overwhelmed and had to sit down in a pew. 

A burgeoning of tears that accumulated during my tour through dozens of exhibits about slavery and Jim Crow crested and crashed, and I began crying.

There was a placard in front of the stage where his casket lay that reminded me that we share the same birthday. He was born two years before my dad, and his middle name, Louis, was my dad’s first. My first name is the same as the city where he was lynched: Drew, Mississippi. I remembered the three Black men — my father, my brother, Damon, and my childhood friend, Alex — whose funerals and memorials I attended over the last six years.

Immersive experiences like the one I had at the Emmett Till memorial are important to conveying the suffering that Black people experienced throughout American history, and one of the specialties of the Blacksonian. 

It was clear to me that there was a lot of attention paid to dimension and atmosphere, especially in the museum’s lower levels. A dark, cramped room toward the beginning of the “Slavery and Freedom” section of the museum gives a sense of the space Africans were forced into on slave ships on the Middle Passage.

At one point, as I walked through that section, I heard a young man declare, “This is crazy,” as he got the attention of his family and ushered them over to what he was looking at. He showed them a paragraph describing how slaves were stripped of their religion. The rest of his family were just as surprised as he was.

And, I think, this is at least one reason why all of the people who spoke with me about the threats to teaching about the horrors of America’s past at the Smithsonian — and public education in general — are worried. People aren’t even fully aware of all of the suffering and struggle that so many endured in order to create this country. So the push to censor public education, whether it be in schools or museums, is part of an attempt to halt and reverse the material gains made by historically marginalized groups.

To try to water down the parts of the museum that the Trump administration might consider “divisive,” as it described in its letter, would also lessen the effectiveness of the design of the museum. As someone who loves museums in general and appreciates the art of educational design in particular, the Blacksonian was far and above other museums in terms of its thoughtfulness about how to present concepts and immerse visitors in their learning.

The Interactive Lunch Counter exhibit on the same level of the museum as the Emmett Till Memorial places visitors in the shoes of those who participated in the sit-in movement through a choose-your-own-adventure game. A few floors up from that, there’s an area where people can start to research their family histories. A genealogist is there on Tuesdays and Thursdays to guide people through that process. Bars, bunks and a toilet, all made of metal, that used to furnish a cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola are on display.

And in the museum’s Musical Crossroads section, the Mothership from Parliament-Funkadelic’s stage show is hanging from the ceiling, there is a pretend record shop where people can learn about music from across the African diaspora, and there is an interactive exhibit where visitors can create compositions using samples of music from a variety of Black music genres. I can’t believe I slept on this museum for so long.

One of the things that I noticed about the museum’s lower levels — where slavery, segregation and white supremacy are heavily discussed — is that many of the displays and exhibits can’t easily be scrubbed away. Quotes about the horrors of anti-Black racism are painted onto the walls. The names of Black people who were lynched during the Jim Crow era are etched into glass. The truth about the centuries of slavery and segregation Black people experienced in the U.S. is inextricably linked to the building, as it is with the history of the country. 

When I went home to visit the museum, I spoke with one of my older cousins, Nadia Conyers. She was an NMAAHC Ambassador in its early years, meaning she donated to the museum and promoted it in the community. In return, she was able to do cool stuff like attend the museum’s opening night in 2016, bringing my little cousin DJ, when he was still in elementary school.

We talked in the living room of the home that she and her husband bought from my godmother, on either side of a coffee table with a glass top that had pictures of multiple generations of our family underneath. She said that the Blacksonian tells a more complete history not just of Black Americans, but also of white Americans. And it tells the story of all of the ways a people can overcome such ubiquitous oppression over the course of time.

“I think that the museum speaks directly to when we’re put in those situations, what we create and what happens as a result,” she said. “And that is terrifying to people in an administration like that, and to have that symbol in your backyard, of, even if you do this to us, this is what we can do. He doesn’t want that. That’s too much.”

Nadia and I are both the grandchildren of Phyllis Costley, a woman who, along with other parents in Arlington, Virginia, successfully fought to desegregate schools in the state in the face of massive resistance. We’re both descended from a family of educators. So we both know the importance of knowing Black history and passing the word down.

And, well, she’s my big cousin.

So I wasn’t surprised at her reaction when I told her that I hadn’t gone to the museum until a couple of days before we spoke. But the reason for her response surprised me.

“I’m astonished, because coming from where we come from, we take the Smithsonian for granted, because we live here, right?” she said. “But to hear that you didn’t go to the African American museum is wild to me because as the grandchild who is the storyteller of all of us, I’m like, how is it that you didn’t go to the museum? You being the child of your father, who was someone who was a history buff. It’s like one plus one equals two.”

I assumed that there would be some relatively broad reasoning for her astonishment that I hadn’t visited before, like “all Black people have a duty to go,” or something like that. But when she said that I have a role within our family as a storyteller and a love for history that I got from my father, my prior negligence carried new depth and weight. It reminded me of a concept that I learned in my young adulthood that has stuck with me over the years: sankofa.

Sankofa, a word that comes from the Akan language of Ghana, has evolved in the Black community over time to mean that we can learn from the past to build the future. The two literal translations I found online are “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot” and “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” I was taught that it’s imperative to learn from the past in order to inform the future and that you are sent off into the world to acquire skills and knowledge that you then use to help your village. This isn’t only a quaint piece of wisdom passed down through generations — it is a matter of survival.

I’m grateful that I finally made my pilgrimage to the NMAAHC and got to it before the Trump administration could. When I first walked in, I felt a settling in my shoulders and chest, a release of tension, like sitting on the couch at home after a long journey. Walking through the museum for the first time was like engaging with a work of art that is exhilarating as a complete piece but promises individual delightful layers.

I hope that the haven that I found remains in the hands of those who so carefully crafted it. And I hope that we can all learn from the story they are telling.