OurTupelo

It came as no surprise whatsoever Tuesday night when Ole Miss Rebel Trinidad Chambliss stepped to the podium to a standing ovation to receive the C Spire Conerly Trophy as Mississippi’s  most outstanding college football player.

No, the bigger surprise is that Chambliss, a dynamic quarterback largely responsible for the Rebels 11-1 season and coming NCAA playoffs berth, has for the most part been omitted from the lists of viable candidates for the Heisman Trophy, the one that goes to the best college football player in America. I can’t say for certain Chambliss is the best in the country, but I know he belongs in the first sentence of any 2025 Heisman discussion. I know he deserves to go to New York as one of the finalists for the ceremony on Dec. 13.

The Heisman Trophy Trust normally invites four finalists to the New York Downtown Athletic Club for the presentation. I haven’t seen a prediction yet that expects Chambliss to be there.

On3, the network of sports websites, recently published a poll of college football experts around the country that had Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia leading the list of likely Heisman winners, followed, in order, by Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, Ohio State quarterback Justin Sayin, Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love and Alabama quarterback Tyler Simpson. In sixth place, with far fewer votes than the top four, was Chambliss.

Pavia, the leader (and a great player), has completed 71% of his passes for 3,192 yards and run for 826 yards and nine touchdown. He has thrown 27 touchdowns and eight interceptions. Chambliss has completed 66% of his passes for 3,016 yards and run for 470 yards and six touchdowns. He has thrown for 18 touchdowns, only three interceptions. He seems at his best when it matters most. He makes plays when there doesn’t seem one there.

The individual stats are quite similar, especially when you consider Chambliss didn’t start the Rebels first two games and largely missed the opportunity to pad his stats against Georgia State and Kentucky. Chambliss’s numbers are as good or at least slightly better than those of the other three quarterbacks ahead of him.

Most Heisman voters are sports writers and sportscasters who presumably love a good story. There is no better story in college football than Chambliss, unless its Pavia (Vanderbilt? 10-2!). Last year, Chambliss led Division II Ferris State to the Division II National Championship and transferred to Ole Miss only after assistant coaches Joe Judge and Charlie Weiss Jr. saw some Ferris State tape on him last spring and couldn’t believe what they were watching.

Said Judge, who accompanied Chambliss to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum Tuesday night, “The more we watched, the more impressed we were. He was clearly a great athlete. You couldn’t tell from that tape whether he was an SEC-caliber quarterback, but we knew he was a guy with the ability to help us win as a slot receiver or a punt returner.”

Turns out, Chambliss was a quarterback deluxe. As Judge, the former New York Giants head coach, put it, “Trinidad has impacted our team both on and off the field. He’s great in the locker room. His teammates love him and believe in him. In my career, I have been around a lot of great football players and I can tell you with absolute certainty he is one. I don’t have a Heisman vote, obviously, but I can tell you Trinidad Chambliss is without question one of the best college football players in America.”

Patrick Kutas, the mammoth Ole Miss junior offensive tackle who Tuesday night took home the Kent Hull Trophy as the state’s most outstanding offensive lineman, says he didn’t know what to expect when learning that Ole Miss had signed a Division II quarterback in the transfer portal.

“The first thing you saw was the competitiveness in him,” Kutas said. “Trinidad is the ultimate competitor. He’s been fantastic all season long. He 100% deserves to be in the Heisman race.”

One strike against Chambliss – strange as it sounds – might be that he came to Ole Miss from Division II. The thinking: How can anybody who wasn’t even recruited by a DI school be the best player in America?

Said Chambliss Tuesday night, “There are great players at every level of college football.” 

Myriad examples exist, including a Super Bowl hero named Malcolm Butler, from Vicksburg, Hinds Community College and the University of West Alabama, and former Pro Bowler Fred McAfee, from Philadelphia (the one in Mississippi) and Mississippi College. For the record, 40 former Division II players currently play in the NFL.

Said Chambliss of his storybook season and the Conerly Trophy, “This is all a dream come true for me. I am blessed.”

Asked about the Heisman Trophy, Chambliss smiled and mentioned that not starting those first two games probably hurt his chances but that, “I really do feel like I am one of the best players in college football. I really do.”

•••

The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame instituted two new college football awards Tuesday night:

• Jackson State quarterback Jacobian Morgan won the SWAC Impact Award as the state’s top player in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
• Delta State linebacker William Carter IV won the DII DIII Excellence Award as the most outstanding player in Divisions II and III.

Dozens of defunct buildings line Terry Road in south Jackson. Business owners have been leaving the area for more than a decade. 

But one vacant bank may hold promise for the future. Come January, it will open as a different kind of bank – one where resources, referrals and health services are offered for free or low cost. 

Magnolia Medical Foundation, a network of five clinics and resource centers across the state that focus on providing holistic care to low-income Mississippians, is expanding to the most under-resourced part of Mississippi’s capital city. The bank will retain its layout: a drive-through where patients pick up prescriptions, a counter where tellers dole out supplies, such as diapers, and offices where patients meet with providers, social workers and other patient navigators. The bank will take walk-ins, as well as appointments.

“We all at some point in our life are able to make deposits, and sometimes, we’re just only able to make withdrawals,” said Dr. Erica Thompson, founder and executive director of the Magnolia Medical Foundation. “It’s important to have a space where you feel comfortable and you feel safe and you’re able to get the things you need.”

The expansion is made possible by a $200,000 donation from Molina Healthcare, a company based in Long Beach, California, that is a one of the entities that manages the care of Mississippi Medicaid beneficiaries. 

“We are grateful to be a part of the Magnolia Medical Foundation,” said Laurie Williams, assistant vice president of growth and member engagement at Molina Healthcare, during a press conference at the new space Monday. “Dr. Thompson, your vision has just always been epic from the very beginning … We’re not going to be last anymore.”

Mississippi ranked last in the nation for its rate of preterm births – and has failed every year for nearly two decades – a recent report card from March of Dimes showed. While the bank will serve everyone, regardless of insurance status, it will also have services focused on improving outcomes for women, such as pregnancy and birth support from doulas. 

Other patient navigators will include medical providers, mental health providers and social workers, who will help low-income people traverse the complex processes surrounding applications for benefit programs – or help them understand their rights in legal matters. Thompson hopes that businesses and community members will make “deposits” when they can by partnering with the bank, volunteering, making donations and adding to the services offered. 

“Just like a regular bank brings in their investment brokers and all that, we want to bring in other folks who are able to make an investment in south Jackson,” said Thompson. 

Providers at the Magnolia Medical Foundation Midtown clinic spend at least an hour with each patient, according to Belinda Mundora, the foundation’s project director. That’s more than triple the average amount of time family physicians spend with their patients. When providers spend more time with patients they strengthen patients’ trust in them and get a better sense of how circumstances such as unstable housing may influence physical and mental health. 

Kathryn Carroll Barham, a nurse practitioner currently working at the foundation’s Midtown clinic, said the work she does is more often social than medical. Carroll said she’s excited to continue that work in a place where the need for it is great. 

“That’s why I want to work in a place like this – that has something that’s so holistic, working with people who think about every part of the patient rather than just the physical aspect,” Carroll Barham said.  

The Midtown clinic also operates a food pantry Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thompson said she hopes to do food drops at least once a month at the new location. 

The foundation’s expansion couldn’t come at a more opportune time. Food Depot, the last remaining full-service grocery store in south Jackson, shuttered two weeks ago. Kroger and Piggly Wiggly of south Jackson closed in 2015. 

Living in a food desert means people either go without fresh meat and produce, or they travel to supermarkets where their tax dollars support cities other than their own. In these areas, local economies collapse and people tend to be sicker. 

Those effects are expected to be exacerbated by major changes to social safety net programs coming down the pipeline. Tens of millions of dollars previously covered by the federal government for programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid will shift to states, due to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill signed into law by President Donald Trump over the summer. Experts predict this will force states to limit benefits, cap enrollment or shut down services altogether. 

Thompson knows these changes will impact most of the patients she sees. Jackson’s median income is $43,000 – well below the state median income of $54,000. Mississippi is among the poorest states in the nation. To be eligible for SNAP, individuals must make less than about $20,000 annually. New work requirements from the federal budget bill are expected to make it harder for eligible people to remain enrolled. 

“I always think about the scripture, ‘for such a time as this,’” Thompson said. “This is the perfect place for the storm.”

Anyone interested in partnering with Magnolia Medical Foundation’s new south Jackson bank can contact Erica Thompson at ethompson@magmedfound.org. Volunteers can sign up online. 

Egg Bowl redux, Kiffin leaving, Golding elevated, SWAC Championship, state high school football championships, Southern Miss review, SEC Championship, FBS playoffs. 

Stream all episodes here.

There is no evidence that a driver tried to run former Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin off the road while he was on his way to the Oxford airport to accept a new head coaching gig at rival Louisiana State University, according to state and local law enforcement agencies.  

Kiffin announced last weekend that he was leaving Mississippi’s flagship university after helping it clinch a spot in the playoffs for the first time in the program’s history. He said in a Monday press conference in Baton Rouge that an angry Rebel fan tried to run him off the road while he was driving with his son Knox to the airport in Oxford.  

Bailey Holloway, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, told Mississippi Today that Kiffin had a safety escort from the Mississippi Highway Patrol when he traveled to the airport. The agency’s officers have no record of an automobile trying to push the football coach’s car off the roadway, Holloway added.

Sean Tindell, the DPS commissioner, weighed in on the situation by posting a satirical social media video Tuesday night, stating that there were no incidents involving Mississippi Highway Patrol officers trying to run the coach off the road. 

In the video, Tindell wore a visor, something Kiffin is known for wearing, and walked a dog on a leash. Tindell said that the pet was not even his dog, a reference to lingering questions about Juice Kiffin, a dog that has become an unofficial mascot of sorts at Ole Miss. 

“He had a safe trip, and he’s on his way,” Tindell said of Kiffin. “I’m sorry, this is not even my dog. Y’all be safe.” 

Tindell runs the state’s top law enforcement agency and was poking fun at the situation that has inflamed an already bitter rivalry between two SEC schools and caused a wave of internet memes. 

Still, attempting to run a car off a roadway is a criminal offense in Mississippi, and if someone attempted to harm the football coach, state and local police could launch an investigation. 

Breck Jones, the public information officer for the Oxford Police Department, also said that the local police department received no calls or complaints about the alleged incident, and they have not been asked by anyone to look into it. 

Communications officials with LSU athletics and the university did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

This is not the first time Kiffin, now persona non grata among the Ole Miss fan base, has made national headlines over situations that occurred around an airport. The University of Southern California famously fired him in 2013 on the tarmac at the Los Angeles International Airport after the team’s plane landed. 

As the sun set over Jackson late Tuesday afternoon, the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council members wanted to end their meeting.

They had finished making the final recommendations for how the state should spend tens of million dollars paid by companies that contributed to thousands of deadly Mississippi overdoses. Moderator Caleb Pracht offered his final remarks of the nearly three-hour meeting, wishing the committee safe travels home from the state capital. But one council member paused the concluding remarks to share some concerns. 

James Moore, a Hattiesburg recovery advocate and father of a son who died of an overdose, pointed out some of the ways in which the council had struggled with its role in distributing most of the hundreds of millions of lawsuit dollars the state is recouping to address the opioid epidemic.

Sitting at a desk away from most of the other members, Moore spoke about the inconsistent grading of the over 100 proposals the council received. Subcommittees, each made up of a few council members, initially reviewed and scored the applications. But the groups graded differently. The average score of the Public Health subcommittee was in the highest of five grading tiers, and the average score of applications reviewed by the Family subcommittee was in the second lowest tier.

He highlighted perceptions of conflicts of interests within the council, as many of the grants recommended for funding came from organizations with representatives on the committee.

“I don’t believe there was anything improper,” he told the other council members. “But obviously there was an appearance when we’re sitting across the table grading each others’ applications and multimillion dollar requests.” 

To address these and other issues, Moore asked the council if it would consider seeking help the next time it evaluated opioid settlement grants. Mississippi should be receiving the lawsuit money until at least 2040, and the review process is expected to happen yearly. 

He suggested to the council that outside groups, ones that have provided guidance to other states, could improve a process that many of the Mississippians who’ve been most impacted by addiction have raised concerns about since its first meeting. Moore said he had spoken to opioid settlement experts that day, and they said they would be happy to help the state. 

“It wouldn’t supplant us,” he said. “It would support us.”

For the prior two and a half hours, at what’s expected to be the council’s last meeting of the year, the members worked without that additional help. They decided which applications the committee would recommend state lawmakers fund in the 2026 regular legislative session. 

The council spent most of its time reviewing the dozens of applications the subcommittees had ranked in the highest two tiers and continued to make major adjustments to the process for distributing funds from the lawsuits. 

They significantly changed which organizations are eligible to receive opioid settlement funding. After Moore raised concerns about an applicant group that did not allow participants to use medication for opioid addiction and other psychiatric conditions, the council voted in favor of requiring that any group receiving money allows the people they serve to continue being on prescribed drugs. 

While medications like buprenorphine and methadone are considered the gold standard addiction treatments, many organizations across the country prohibit participants from using them. Wendy Bailey, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health executive director and co-vice chair of the council, said after the meeting that the council’s new rule could help change that for organizations serving Mississippians.

“We need to look to make sure there is more acceptance and understanding of it,” she said.

Andy Taggart, another council member, also successfully made a motion to remove all the applications from local first responder agencies from the list of opioid-related projects the committee will submit to the Legislature. Some of those first responder proposals did not appear to qualify as addressing addiction as defined by the lawsuit settlements.

Instead, the council chose to include them in a list of projects the Legislature could fund with opioid settlement money Attorney General and Council Chair Lynn Fitch has allowed lawmakers to use on non-addiction expenses.

A bill state lawmakers passed last spring, the one that created the council, says this portion of opioid settlement funds will be spent without any recommendations from the council. Taggart told the council members that the body should still make its suggestions.

“It strikes me that they would not be offended if we say, ‘Hey, here’s some non-abatement projects we recommended,’” he said. 

The council also tinkered with the priority and funding amounts they recommend for individual applicants. The biggest change was to adjust an application from Mississippi’s Administrative Office of Courts, a roughly $61 million request to improve the state’s drug court system — programs to divert people who use drugs away from the criminal justice system and toward treatment. 

Joseph Sclafani, a lawyer with Gov. Tate Reeves’ office, successfully proposed a motion to move the request to the highest-ranking tier and recommend that the Legislature reduce the funding to $12 million. 

The council also revived one application, a proposal from a company called Stercus Bioanalytics to create an opioid wastewater surveillance program, for recommendation. The application asked for roughly $9 million and was graded in the middle category, but the members passed Taggart’s motion to reduce the proposal to $2 million and include it in the second highest tier. 

Taggart told the council he thinks wastewater data could be an effective way for law enforcement and other state officials to figure out where there’s frequent opioid use. Recent MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who researches street drug supply, told Mississippi Today in November that while opioid wastewater surveillance can provide some surface-level information, it doesn’t do much to protect those most at risk of overdosing. 

“It’s big money for a small idea,” he said of Stercus’ unadjusted application.  

After the meeting ended, Michelle Williams, chief of staff for Fitch, said the Attorney General’s office would look into Moore’s idea of incorporating outside help next year, in addition to other process changes. 

Just before Pracht dismissed the council members, Williams told them she thought they did a great job of making recommendations for the money on a tight timeline. 

“But that’s my opinion.”

OXFORD — In the hours after a judge sentenced Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr. to 40 years in prison for the murder of Jimmie “Jay” Lee, many of Lee’s friends and family contemplated the parallels between the two men. 

Both came from religious families. Lee’s father was a pastor and Herrington’s grandfather the founder of a church in Grenada. 

Both were hard workers. Lee was known for organizing supply drives, and Herrington operated his own moving company. He would later use the company’s box truck to transport Lee’s body to a rural dumping ground near his parents’ home. 

Both were young Black men who had just graduated from the University of Mississippi. Some of Lee’s final Instagram posts before he went missing on July 8, 2022, were of photos taken at his graduation; same for Herrington weeks before his arrest.

But there was a crucial difference between the two men, said Braylyn Johnson, a friend of Lee’s who also knew Herrington from college: Before the murder, Lee lived authentically and proudly as a gay man and Herrington did not.

“Jay Lee and Tim were identical in their education, their achievements, their family, their church life,” she said. “They were a lot alike. … Jay Lee trusted Tim. He saw something in Tim. I’m not sure what it was, but he trusted him.” 

Herrington first went to trial for Lee’s murder in 2024, before detectives had located Lee’s remains. During that first trial, the state’s theory of the case was that Herrington killed Lee to preserve the secret of their sexual relationship. Lee had gone to Herrington’s apartment the night before he went missing, and they’d had a fight, prosecutors alleged. 

Only one living person knows exactly what happened in the apartment that night – Herrington. He pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder and tampering with evidence.

Aafram Sellers, a Jackson-area defense attorney who became counsel for Herrington after the first trial, said he had spoken with Herrington about taking responsibility and grieving the life that he, at 25 years old, might’ve otherwise had. 

Gwen Agho, a Hinds County prosecutor brought onto the case by Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore, also wanted people to know that Lee lived his life openly and Herrington did not. 

“What’s done in the darkness will always come to light,” she said. “All of this happened to cover something up and everyone found out anyway.” 

Indeed, Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen said one of the Carroll County deputies who found Lee’s remains earlier this year told him that it was as if the sun shined down on a gold nameplate necklace bearing Lee’s name – the first sign they had finally found him years after he went missing. 

“They were just digging and looking and a piece led to a piece led to a piece,” he said. “They didn’t stop.”

At a press conference after the sentencing, McCutchen said his force spared no resources and didn’t stop looking for Lee until officers found him. 

“This case highlights everything special about policing, and each one of you should feel like a hero today,” he said. 

Lee’s mother Stephanie Lee cried as she thanked the Oxford Police Department and the prosecutors for their work securing justice in the case and finding her son. She said McCutchen told her this was not an ordinary case for him. 

“OPD has been faithful from day one,” she said. 

A queer, young Black man, Lee falls into a demographic of people whom, when they become victims of violence, police have long been scrutinized for disregarding. 

But McCutchen said his force treated the case as if Lee was their own missing child. He choked up while recalling the moment when, one month into the search for Lee, a detective’s wife asked if he would take a break to get dinner. 

“The detective responded, ‘If that was our kid missing, would you want that detective to take a break and be with his family, or spend every moment trying to find our child?’” McCutchen said. “To which that wife responded, ‘Don’t you come home until you find him.’” 

McCutchen said the police fought for Lee’s phone records, they scoured for security camera footage across Lafayette and Grenada counties, and they worked with state and federal law enforcement to scope out Herrington’s cellphone – then searched every possible place they believed he might have dug a grave. 

“This was not just another homicide,” he said. “This case became our life.” 

But all the technology in the world did not find Lee. During Herrington’s first trial, the absence of a body proved a hiccup in the case, and was partly to blame for the hung jury, a TV news outlet reported.

Instead, detectives found Lee’s remains by chance in rural Carroll County, after a property owner whose land is used as a dumping ground reported he’d found a skull wrapped in duct tape and a blanket. 

“You cannot in a hundred years convince me otherwise that God did not have a hand in Carroll County when that property owner called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department and said, ‘I think I have human remains,’” Creekmore said. 

For as much effort as McCutchen says his force expended, the Oxford police faced community pressure, too: From a small but mighty group of Lee’s friends who used social media to organize a movement in Oxford called Justice for Jay Lee. 

Its members have come and gone from the transient college town, but two of Lee’s close friends powering the group saw the case to its end – Johnson and Jose Reyes, who performed drag alongside Lee as a fellow member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

“We’ve watched people transition these past three years, we’ve watched queer couples meet each other in Justice for Jay Lee and get married and graduate,” Johnson said. 

Johnson and Reyes kept the town’s and the media’s attention on their friend through colorful Instagram posts displaying a count of the days Lee had been missing. Their advocacy for Lee pushed the police to acknowledge the fear his disappearance had incited in Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community. 

Reyes summed up their role in the case in two words: “Accountability and awareness.” 

The two view Justice for Jay Lee’s role now as carrying on Lee’s legacy. Before his death, Lee was preparing to begin a graduate degree in social work. His friends have been trying to establish a scholarship at the University of Mississippi in Lee’s honor, because Johnson said that higher education was important to him. 

“Jay Lee was raised with love,” she said. “He didn’t go through the world thinking that people were going to do him wrong. Jay Lee went through the world very optimistic and with a loving outlook and part of me thinks he tried to share that with Tim.”

Special election runoffs held Tuesday determined who will represent parts of Jackson and the Delta in two state Senate seats as well as who will serve as Hinds County Coroner.

The runoffs Tuesday were necessitated when none of the candidates received at least 50% plus one vote in special elections in November. The special elections were held to fill vacancies due to officials leaving in the middle of their terms.

In the runoff for Senate District 26, a seat representing areas of north Jackson and rural Hinds and Madison Counties, Canton municipal judge Kamesha Mumford bested attorney Letitia Johnson in a race that saw more than a half-a-million dollars in campaign fundraising, WLBT reported. Mumford secured roughly 56% of the vote to Johnson’s 44% in the unofficial count Tuesday night, not including absentee ballots. The seat was left open when former longtime state senator John Horhn was elected mayor of Jackson in July.

Johnson, wife of NAACP President Derrick Johnson, had received an endorsement from Mississippi’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. But it didn’t appear to draw votes from Mumford, who received endorsements from the mayors of two Jackson suburbs, Mayor Will Purdie of Clinton and Mayor Gene McGee of Ridgeland, as well as former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy.

Mumford touted her 18 years of legal experience during the campaign.

“When I get to the Capitol, my focus is going to be on measures that improve the quality of life for our residents: strong infrastructure, good roads and bridges, a solid quality education for our children, and public safety so we have safe neighborhoods,” Mumford told Mississippi Today in an interview during the campaign.

In Senate District 24, an area encompassing parts of Leflore, Panola and Tallahatchie Counties, Justin Pope on Tuesday night appeared to defeat Curressia Brown.

Pope, a corporate deputy with Progressive Health Group, reported he received 1,944 votes, or 54%, while Brown, a retired college educator, received 1,659 votes.

The seat was vacated when longtime Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood retired earlier this year.

In the countywide runoff for Hinds County coroner, Jeramiah Howard appeared victorious over opponent Stephanie Meachum, head of the death division at the state Department of Health’s vital statistics office. Howard has been serving as interim Hinds County coroner since his predecessor, Sharon Grisham-Stewart, retired in 2024. He received about 58% of the unofficial vote to Meachum’s 42%. Turnout in the race hovered under 7% countywide.

Howard, who received Grisham-Stewart’s endorsement, had dominated in the November election with 41% of the vote out of six candidates after placing signs in most precincts across the county. He thanked his nearly thirty volunteers ahead of the Tuesday runoff.

“Running for office is a noble deed,” he said. “My fellow candidates ran good races and deserve credit for putting their name on the ballot and reaching people in the community.”

Homecoming remains an important enough tradition in the Mississippi Delta that the violence that happened in Leland and Rolling Fork in October didn’t diminish the crowds. Relatives still traveled home. Dozens still set up grills and canopies at games. Mississippi Today produced a collection of stories of homecoming events in the Delta, where traditions have evolved over time.

GREENWOOD — A foldable chair is a staple during homecoming season in the Mississippi Delta. It’s your front-row seat for all the homecoming parade offers: music, spectacle and pageantry.

Parade participants rent luxury cars and refashion the tailgates into chariots for rugrat royalty. Students as young as 8 wear crowns and royal get-ups to sit on the hood of a car in a sash.

The float with the Greenwood High School homecoming court is a glorious spectacle. Scarlet capes flutter behind the school’s newly crowned homecoming king Melton Adams and queen Kiyah Davis. Melton boasts a coat encrusted with opalescent jewels, and Kiyah dons a flowing gown with a hoop skirt underneath. Greenwood High School’s prince and princess share a Victorian sofa on a ledge lower. Two oversized strings of pearls trail each side of the float.

The homecoming court along with the less ornate floats and trucks pave the way for the main attraction: Greenwood’s music man and his teen marching band.

Less than 30 minutes before the Greenwood High School band was set to join the parade line, band director Olander Emmons was listening to an upset student who had left his instrument at home and couldn’t participate in the parade. Emmons directed the forlorn teen to the band room. The 17-year-old walked away to get a spare instrument.

Tired of singing the blues

Emmons, like many of his students, joined Greenwood’s band in sixth grade. He played the saxophone, but his first instruments were the drums and then the piano. He learned to play both at church.

Emmons was working as a staffer at the local unemployment office when he ran into his high school band director while grocery shopping at Walmart. She remembered his skill as a music reader. He was already working as an independent musician, playing receptions and churches around the Delta when she scouted him for the band director job. He saw it as an opportunity to develop as an artist and mentor a new generation at his high school alma mater.

He knows how to play most of the instruments in the band, particularly the brass ones. His goal coming into the role three years ago was to write new songs for the band to perform. 

“I wanted the fans to wait in the stands to hear the band,” Emmons said. “And not go to the concession stand.”

A longtime gospel fan, he began listening to more blues music despite his religious upbringing. He felt inspired to incorporate more music from the region into the band’s setlist. Emmons has also tried to develop a “show band” for Greenwood High, incorporating choreography from Lovely Anderson, the dance team coach. 

Emmons said his band has grown from 60 to 125 members since he took over. 

He holds open auditions for the middle and high schools each year, pairing students with instruments. Some instruments like the bassoon require students with longer fingers, while others, such as a trombone, require students with longer arms. He pairs students with instruments for reasons both personal and biological.

Channeling pain through the music

Greenwood High has a poverty rate of almost 82%, according to state data from the 2023-24 school year. Gun violence claims the lives of a disproportionate number of teenagers in the region, a statistic that comes up in conversations with students about transportation after practice as well as in class. Sometimes Emmons’ students share stories from their neighborhoods, and those experiences inspire their own compositions, including recent performances at jamborees across the region.

“Music allows them to be able to vent,” Emmons said.“I hear a lot of kids that go through it. They try to put all the pain into the instruments they play.” 

During the homecoming parade, a hot October sun beat down on the streets of Greenwood as music filled the humid air. Dancers in pink outfits and teenagers in gowns and capes crisscrossed Cotton Street. Teachers and parents walked across cracked roads to their ride to the game.

Editor’s note: This column includes excerpts from Jerry Mitchell’s book, “Race Against Time,” which details how some of the nation’s most notorious killings came to be punished decades later.

I figured I had the right place when I saw the bumper sticker for David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who nearly became Louisiana’s governor. I knew I had the right place when I saw a Confederate battle flag flapping in the breeze outside a white wooden-frame house.

As I stepped down the gravel driveway, a wiry 5-foot-8 man hailed me. I shook the hand of the 69-year-old, surprised by his steady grip. As I let go, I realized it was the same hand that squeezed the trigger of the .30-06 rifle that killed Medgar Evers in 1963.

Byron De La Beckwith waved me inside his home in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, and guided me into a back room, where he sat in a floral chair, holding court. An orphan by age 12, he had fought in the Pacific during World War II and returned to Mississippi with a Purple Heart. Eager to belong, he joined the Sons of the American Revolution, where he told me members began telling him “the horrible, insidiously evil things that went on in local, county, state, federal and worldwide government.”

Beckwith and his wife belonged to the far-right Liberty Lobby. Through its newspaper, The Spotlight, the organization claimed that fraud enabled “illegal aliens” to stay in the U.S. and that 6 million Jews didn’t die in the Holocaust because only 74,000 died at Auschwitz. (Historians put the actual Auschwitz figure at 1.1 million deaths, nearly all of them Jews.)

Spotlight, whose readership reached up to 1 million, pushed the agenda that secret sinister forces controlled the government, seeking to harm Americans through drinking water, prescription drugs and conventional medical treatment, including vaccines, despite the role vaccines have played in the global eradication of smallpox and the near eradication of polio. A recent study concluded that immunizations had saved more than 150 million lives.

Now, decades since my 1990 interview with Beckwith, what was once fringe thinking has become fashionable. Anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-immigrant and anti-federal government rhetoric have made their way into the mainstream.

In 1998, The Lancet published a landmark study by Andrew Wakefield and other scientists about a possible link between vaccines and autism.

Although the British medical journal later retracted this study, mistrust mushroomed. Celebrities from Jim Carrey to Robert De Niro questioned the safety of childhood vaccines. They found a supporter in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the nation’s Health and Human Services secretary. In the wake of parents refusing to vaccinate their children, measles — virtually eradicated in the 2000s — has roared back to about 1,800 cases so far this year, resulting in at least three deaths, two of them children.

After the pandemic hit in 2020, Kennedy said in a video that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. We don’t know if it was deliberately targeted or not.” He called the COVID vaccine — developed during President Donald Trump’s first administration and backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

On Aug. 8 this year, a man angry about the vaccine fired hundreds of rounds at the CDC headquarters, killing a police officer before he committed suicide.

Inside Beckwith’s home in 1990, his wife, Thelma, brought him a glass of an orange drink. I noticed it was bubbling like a mad scientist’s potion. I asked him about it, and he explained it was orange soda, combined with food-grade hydrogen peroxide.

This, he told me, was part of his chelation therapy, which he insisted had kept his arteries clear since renal surgery. Chelation — a dubious treatment that Spotlight championed — grabs poisons and expels them through the kidneys, Beckwith said. “Right-wing folks all over the country are drinking hydrogen peroxide,” he said.

While chelation is used to treat lead poisoning, the medical community has rejected broader use. But that hasn’t stopped Kennedy from touting chelation. Celebrity Jenny McCarthy claims chelation cured her son of autism, but at least one child has died from this treatment.

Beckwith’s wife poured me a glass of this orange concoction, and I pretended to sip it. He promised me it would remove the poisons that the government had been pumping into my body through fluoridated water. “Fluoridated water has been killing babies,” he said. “It’s being suppressed by the government and national TV.”

For decades, the CDC praised fluoridated water, saying studies show the treatment reduces cavities. Despite that, Utah and Florida recently banned fluoride in public water systems. At least 16 other states have introduced bills to do the same. Mississippi has, too, despite the fact that much of the state’s water supply contains no fluoride.

Since taking over as HHS secretary, Kennedy has called fluoride a “dangerous neurotoxin” that can cause bone fractures, bone cancer, arthritis, thyroid disorders and reduced IQ in children. The Environmental Protection Agency is now reviewing evidence on fluoride in drinking water.

Beckwith said the words that changed him most came from Judge Thomas P. Brady, who decried the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to desegregate public schools in an infamous speech known as “Black Monday.” He told a bizarre racist version of history in which he claimed whites built the pyramids in Egypt and that racial “mongrelization” had destroyed this society. This was nothing more than a desire by white supremacists to believe they were behind the world’s greatest achievements. In reality, these ancient civilizations were anything but white.

Brady said people of African descent should regard the day they arrived in America in 1619 as “Thanksgiving Day” because they were “brought from abject ignorance, primitive slavery and placed in a country that was Christian and civilized.” White Mississippi students read this speech in their classrooms along with textbooks that claimed the KKK had saved the South. These same textbooks failed to mention the savage massacres of Black Mississippians from Vicksburg to Meridian.

In recent years, attacks on “critical race theory” and diversity, equity and inclusion have led to revised textbooks. In Florida, new standards require textbooks to say “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Some textbooks now call slavery “black immigration,” and one book describes Reconstruction as a time when “great southern leaders and much of the old aristocracy were unable to vote or hold office. The result was that state legislatures were filled with illiterate or incompetent men. … In retaliation, many southerners formed secret organizations to protect themselves and their society from anarchy. Among these groups was the Ku Klux Klan.”

In March, Trump issued an executive order that instructed the National Park Service to remove materials that “inappropriately disparage Americans.” The Washington Post reported that the administration has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, including an 1863 photo used to expose slavery’s horrors — a Black man whose back was covered in scars.

After Brady gave his “Black Monday” speech, Beckwith sold copies of it and joined the white Citizens’ Council. He said the most powerful members of society — bank presidents, judges, lawyers, congressmen and other politicians — made up the council. “That was my first love,” he sighed, as if reminiscing about a high school sweetheart. “The Citizens’ Council was the first ray of light Dixie had seen since we fought through Reconstruction and captured the right to vote, the right of white people to run the South.”

He said there had been a “great awakening of council activity in St. Louis, but it’s under a little different name” — the Council of Conservative Citizens.

A quarter-century after Beckwith’s words, a young white man named Dylann Roof stumbled upon that group’s website in his Google search for “black on White crime.” After reading page after page of such violence, Roof took action.

On June 17, 2015, he walked inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in time for Wednesday night Bible study. While a dozen Black members closed their eyes in prayer, Roof fired 70 rounds from a Glock .45-caliber pistol, killing nine. When he recounted the slaughter to the FBI, he laughed.

Beckwith laughed, too, when he spoke about Medgar Evers. “I didn’t kill that n—, but he’s sho’ dead,” he chuckled. “He ain’t comin’ back.”

In 1964, two trials for Beckwith ended in mistrials. The all-white juries couldn’t agree on a verdict, despite the fact his rifle with his fingerprint had been left at the murder scene. But the Klansman failed to dodge conviction when he tried to bomb a Jewish leader’s home in New Orleans in 1975.

After spending two and a half years in prison, he joined the Liberty Lobby, which pushed for the deportation of all immigrants. Beckwith called those of Asian descent “the yellow plague” and said, “The Chinamen come over here and eat rice and dead rats, and all the money goes back to China.”

More than three decades later, these tropes persist. After a far-right outlet claimed Haitians, who migrated legally to Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, then-Sen. JD Vance shared it on social media. City officials denied the report, but Trump repeated the claim in a 2024 presidential debate. He vowed to deport millions of immigrants, starting in Springfield.

In 2025 so far, more than 2 million undocumented immigrants have left the U.S. through deportations or other means, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In September, Trump announced that the fees to hire skilled foreign workers would rise from nearly $1,000 to $100,000.

Beckwith’s beloved Liberty Lobby advocated “America First,” a slogan adopted by the KKK in the 1920s in their opposition to Catholics, Jews and immigrants. The white supremacist group skyrocketed to more than 6 million members, electing thousands to state and national offices. In Mississippi, Klansman Theodore G. Bilbo served as both governor (1916-20 and 1928-32) and U.S. senator (1935-47).

Trump has since revived the slogan “America First,” and new Labor Department posters feature 1940s-era workers and families, promising “high-skilled jobs to AMERICANS FIRST.” All the workers are white men.

In a recent interview with conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, host of the “America First” livestream, decried “organized Jewry” and declared, “We need to recognize that white people have a special heritage here as Americans. … We’re losing our civilization because of mass immigration.” Trump should crush anyone in the way of deporting the 10 million people here illegally, Fuentes said. “If you’re not on board with that, you’re going to jail.”

The Liberty Lobby denounced foreign aid. After taking office in 2025, the Trump administration halted this aid, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and asked Congress to rescind $8.3 billion in funding.

Beckwith told me to thank the KKK. If the group didn’t exist, “you’d be a damn mulatto, quadroon or octoroon instead of a white man, a Nordic man of blood and culture. You’d just be a damn mongrel,” he said. He told me that Evers, the civil rights leader he had shot in the back on that dark night in Jackson, was “nothing but a mongrel, and God hates mongrels.”

Beckwith told me that our ancestors were the true Israelites and that “anyone who calls Jesus a Jew is blaspheming.” His basement was already packed with an arsenal for the “holy war” that he said white Christians would win against Satan and the Jews. “We have more firepower,” he said.

In 2017, hundreds of white nationalists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” On Aug. 27 of this year, a mass shooter opened fire at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. He wrote on his guns, “Burn Israel,” “6 million wasn’t enough,” and “Kill Donald Trump,” a strong supporter of Israel who has survived two assassination attempts.

Back in the 1950s, the Liberty Lobby joined forces with the white Citizens’ Council, trying to get Black Americans shipped to Africa. Beckwith supported this. He said he believed that those of African descent were “mud people” who had no souls. “What is a n— but a heathen?” he told me. “He’s not a Christian. After you turn him into a literate Christian, he’s still a n—.”

I felt overwhelmed, stunned that such a person could exist, let alone that he could be celebrated — and worse — protected by those in power. Noticing the darkness outside, I told him it was time for me to go.

“Let me walk you to your car.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

He walked ahead of me, anyway, blocked my way to the car and spoke. “God will bless you if you write positive things about white Caucasian Christians. If you write negative things about white Caucasian Christians, God will punish you.”

He paused, then locked eyes. “If God does not punish you directly, several individuals will do it for him.”

He stepped aside, and I closed the door. I was glad to have something, even just a pane of glass, between him and me.

I couldn’t start the engine fast enough.

Four years after my interview, a Mississippi jury convicted Beckwith of murdering Evers, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison, where he died in 2001. Hardly anyone attended his funeral.

Thousands flocked to the funeral service of Evers, who was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Words from the prophet Micah reminded author Margaret Walker Alexander of Evers: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Mississippi needs more people like Medgar Evers.

OXFORD — A University of Mississippi graduate who pleaded guilty to killing fellow student Jimmie “Jay” Lee has been sentenced to serve 40 years in prison, the conclusion to a case beset by concerns that the criminal justice system would not work.

Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the son of a prominent family from Grenada, pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder and evidence tampering for hiding Lee’s body in a wooded gully in Carroll County near his parents’ home. 

Lafayette County Circuit Judge Kelly Luther accepted the prosecution’s recommendation for Herrington to receive a total sentence of 40 years to serve with an additional 10 years of post-release supervision.

Lee’s family, friends, Oxford police officers and even some university officials attended the sentencing hearing Tuesday. Herrington’s parents also sat in the audience, his side of the courtroom more populated than during the first trial.

Before Luther handed down the sentence, Lee’s father, Jimmie Lee Sr., addressed the court. Stephanie Lee stood behind him. The parents have rarely spoken publicly throughout the process. Jimmie Lee Sr. said he was a “broken father” and he reminded Herrington that Lee had trusted him.

“I’m here to give a message and just let Herrington know,” the father and pastor said. “Hell will put you in order. Heaven will put you out.”

Jimmie Lee reminded him of God’s redemptive plan: “You don’t have to go to hell.”

The father said he knew from the beginning that Herrington killed his son. He prayed for healing. He said his family has been living July 8, 2022 — the day Lee went missing — since that day.

“I had to witness my son’s skeletal remains. I touched his skull,” he said. “No father should have to go through that. No parent should have to go through that.”

When Judge Luther spoke, he praised the handling of the case.

“Mississippi got it right in this case. This case was investigated more thoroughly than any other case I have dealt with in my 35 years in this criminal justice system. It was defended … as well as any case I have dealt with in my 35 years. Everybody did their job,” he said.

Herrington did not speak at the hearing. His attorney, Aafram Sellers, said Herrington did not tell him why he killed Lee. The plea was ultimately Herrington’s decision, Sellers said, adding that redemption “starts with accepting responsibility.”

“We don’t see our lives going down these paths and that is what happened,” Sellers said. “… Both families have to go through that grieving process.”

The prosecution said it had not expected a plea deal. It came Monday as the court was selecting jurors in Madison County due to a concern that it would not be possible to seat an unbiased jury from Lafayette County. 

The first trial in 2024 ended in a mistrial. Action News 5 reported that one of the 12 jurors refused to convict Herrington because of the absence of Lee’s body. 

Earlier this year, Lee’s remains were found in a dumping ground in Carroll County. Prosecutors then indicted Herrington a second time.

Lee’s disappearance sparked a movement in Oxford called “Justice for Jay Lee.” His friends held protests outside the courthouse, tailgated at football games and ran a social media page.