American Sign Language will count as a foreign language credit in Mississippi high schools, under a law that goes into effect July 1.
The force behind Senate Bill 2339 is Pearl Rver County high school teacher Miranda Loveless. Loveless teaches art and ASL at Pearl River Central High School. She fell in love with ASL as a teenager, which led her to becoming a special education teacher.
“My hope for this new curriculum is not just for our students whether they are hearing, hard of hearing, or deaf. My hope is that we can grow as a community to accept everyone no matter their hearing abilities,” she said.
The new law calls for the state Board of Education to develop a curriculum related to the study of sign language and for any such class to count as an academic credit for a foreign language to meet high school graduation requirements.
Loveless got the idea for the bill after learning that there’d never been an effort in the Legislature to make ASL a foreign language in Mississippi schools. She reached out to state Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune, through the lawmaker’s grandson, who took one of Loveless’ sign language classes.
Hill said the law can incentivize hearing people to become translators. “The hope is that more young people will learn to communicate sign language and lead to potential careers in the field as translators for the hearing impaired,” she said in an email.
There is a larger problem of children with disabilities lacking sufficient accommodations in Mississippi schools. Chauncey Spears, whose daughter is deaf, says the new law will help deaf students who use ASL as their first language.
Chauncey Spears, right, with his daughter, Selasie Spears, who is deaf. He says Mississippi’s new law allowing American Sign Language to count as a foreign language credit will help deaf students who use ASL as their first language. Credit: Courtesy of Chauncey Spears
Spears says there is a lack of support for deaf students who use ASL as their first language. Many teachers lack proper training, making it easier for students to fall behind.
He said parents and leaders at the Mississippi School for the Deaf started a movement to allow the state to classify deaf and hard-of-hearing students as English language learners. ASL is not English, and there is no written ASL for students to access written content in courses required for graduation.
Deaf and hard-of-hearing students must learn written English, the language of most textbooks and other instructional materials.
Spears hopes this curriculum change will be the first step towards change.
“We are learning that there is untapped potential in these students and that their needs and potential can be better met with the proper investments and training and educational practices that can prove to be successful,” he said.
Two baseball greats: Shaw native Boo Ferriss, left, and Willie Mays. Credit: DSU | AP Photo/Harry Harris, File
So many wonderful stories have come back to life since the death of baseball great Willie Mays on June 18. Here’s one more involving, in my opinion, the greatest baseball man in Mississippi history.
This happened in May of 1952. Pitcher Boo Ferriss, a Shaw native who had won 46 games over his first two seasons (1945-46) in the Major Leagues, was still trying to pitch his way back after suffering a shoulder injury in 1947. In ’52, he pitched and coached pitchers for Class AA Louisville, still in the Boston Red Sox organization. Ferriss was 30 years young and should have been in his pitching prime, but he no longer had his fast ball. Today, journalists would say he had lost his velocity or velo. Back then, they said he had lost his “snap.” A Louisville sports columnist wrote that while Ferriss no longer had his fast ball, he retained “the heart of a warrior.”
Rick Cleveland
The Class AA Southern Association was really good baseball back then. It not only included many of the sport’s top young prospects, but also many former Big League stars, such as Ferriss, trying to extend their playing careers. At Louisville, Ferriss pitched against many of the same hitters as he had for the Red Sox.
But he also pitched against future Hall of Famers on their rise to the Big League stardom. The year before he had faced a 19-year-old switch-hitting Yankees prospect from Commerce, Oklahoma, named Mickey Mantle. “Struck him out on a slow curve,” Ferriss once told me. “That was the only time I ever had to face him and you can quote me on this. I was glad I never had to face him again. There was nothing on a baseball field that guy couldn’t do.”
In 1952, five years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line, Louisville was playing at Minneapolis, where the home team boasted a young, Black centerfielder nobody could get out. Willie Mays was 19.
“The kid was putting on an exhibition like I had never seen before,” Ferriss told me in 2007 when we were working together on a book. “He was hitting home runs, stealing bases and climbing the walls to make circus catches. You name it, he did it. And he was so confident. He was really digging in at the plate against our young pitchers.”
Ferriss decided that when he faced Mays, if he got the chance, he was going to “brush him back off the plate..That’s just what you did back then.”
Boo Ferriss won 46 games his first two seasons in the Major leagues. Credit: Boo Ferriss collection
Sure enough, Ferriss got his chance late in a game when he came on in relief. He wasted no time. His first pitch, what he had left of his fastball, sent Mays diving backwards into the dirt. Mays got back up, dusted himself off and dug his cleats into the batter’s box again. Ferriss’s second pitch, another fast ball, sent Mays diving back into the dirt again.
Remember, this was a 19-year-old facing a 30-year-old, who had been a Major League All-Star and who had pitched a World Series shutout against Stan Musial and the St. Louis Cardinals. The count reached three balls and two strikes. Ferriss figured that since Mays had already dived away from two pitches, he would throw him a side-armed fast ball. He did.
Mays lined the pitch into left field for a single. Rosy Ryan, the Minnesota general manager, sought Ferriss on the field before the next day’s game to thank him for knocking down his star player not once but twice. Ryan said the then-New York Giants had wanted to see how Mays would handle the brush-back pitches he would surely see in the Major leagues. Said Ferriss, who had played with Ted Williams and against such sluggers as Musial and Joe DiMaggio, “I believe you got you a good one.,”
Eight years later, Ferriss was the pitching coach of the Red Sox and Mays was an established star with the Giants when their paths crossed again in spring training. Mays smiled and pointed at his temple before they shook hands. “He thanked me for knocking him down,” Ferriss said. “He told me he had needed that.”
That was shortly before Ferriss left Boston to come back to the Mississippi Delta where he created a nationally prominent baseball program at Delta State. In 2007, when we were working on his biography, I set up an exam for Ferriss with Buddy Savoie, a noted surgeon who specialized in shoulder injuries. Ferriss had never known exactly what had happened to curtail one of the most promising pitching careers in baseball history. Only one Big League pitcher, Grover Cleveland Alexander, had ever won more games in his first two seasons than David “Boo” Ferriss.
Fifty-seven years after the injury occurred, Savoie found a slight tear in the labrum of Ferriss’s pitching shoulder. Savoie explained, “They called it dead arm back then. They didn’t know what it was and there was no way to tell. They just hoped it would repair itself, but the labrum doesn’t repair itself. Today, we’d punch a couple holes in his shoulder, go in there and sew it up and he’d have a 95 percent chance of total recovery. He’d be as good as new in six to nine months.”
After learning all that, Ferriss told me he had no regrets, that he was happy with the way his life had turned out. Listening in, Miriam Ferriss, his wife of 68 years, piped in, “Now wait a second, Boo, with the money they are paying pitchers these days, Buddy could sew you up and we could wheel you out there and you could pitch a few innings.”
Despite its statement to the contrary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s We the People party does not qualify for the ballot in Mississippi, at least not yet.
The party sent out a press release on June 17 claiming otherwise.
Shortly after that went out, the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office released a statement explaining that the We the People Party still had to finish submitting paperwork.
“Currently, the Secretary of State’s Office has not received the respective documents and fees necessary for any presidential candidate to appear on the general election ballot,” according to the June 20 statement.
The original press release claimed that “In January, Kennedy supporters filed the necessary paperwork to form the new political party in Mississippi.” The secretary of state’s office said that the party started filing in January but had yet to finish.
Last October, Kennedy left the Democratic Party and continued his presidential campaign as an independent. He founded the We the People Party to run in states where party candidates needed fewer signatures to get on the ballot.
According to the press release, Kennedy is officially on the ballot in at least eight states: Michigan, Utah, California, Delaware, Oklahoma, Texas, Hawaii, and South Carolina.
To get their names on the ballot, presidential candidates must follow requirements laid out in ballot access laws that vary by state.
In Mississippi, independent and party presidential candidates have to submit all required paperwork and fees by Sept. 6, 2024.
According to the secretary of state’s website, party candidates must submit a certificate of nomination, a $2,500 fee, and a list of six qualified electors. Independent candidates must submit all of that and a petition with 1,000 signatures.
Mississippi Today reached out to the Kennedy campaign’s press contact, Stephanie Spear. She responded in an email that“Your request for comment is under consideration and your deadline is noted. If the campaign has a response, we will let you know.”
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson broke ground Friday on a $20 million renovation of Medgar Evers Boulevard in Jackson.
The boulevard, named for civil rights leader Medgar Evers, is in a state of disrepair. The roadway, which connects north Jackson to Interstate 220, is a mass of potholes and patched pavement flanked by shuttered businesses, largely due to lapses in maintenance.
“This is a project that is so important to rebuilding and reconnecting Jackson, Mississippi,” Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons said during remarks. “If you look at our interstate system, you’ll see a lot of disconnect. But here, this project is going to be one of those projects that is going to reconnect Jackson and create opportunity.”
Carolyn Wells grew up in the neighborhood along Medgar Evers Boulevard, and was neighbors with the Medgar and Myrlie Evers family. While she is happy to celebrate Evers’ legacy, she feels the street is in desperate need of repairs.
“Our street is horrible to me,” she said.
Architect Hibbett Neel (second left) discusses a rendering of the future Medgar Evers Boulevard to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (left), Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons (center) and Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Friday, June 21, 2024 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Wells and other residents frequently call the city for problems like sinkholes and uneven roads. She hopes the new street can bring much-needed improvements. Local residents and officials hope the improvements will bring the corridor back to life and drive economic prosperity in the area.
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Jackson what Buttigieg called a ‘highly competitive’ $20 million grant to rebuild the boulevard. The money comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021.
Thompson, the Democratic 2nd District congressman and Republican Sen. Roger Wicker are the only members of Mississippi’s delegation to vote in favor of the legislation.
Other active projects in Mississippi include modernization of an air traffic control tower at Golden Triangle Regional airport in Columbus and restoration of rail service between the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Alabama and Louisiana that was disrupted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
On the 60th anniversary of the slayings of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia and just over 61 years after Medgar Evers was assassinated in his driveway, Thompson and Buttigieg connected the new roadway to the larger history of civil rights activism in Mississippi.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (second left) greets Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, at her former home, now the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument, Friday, June 21, 2024 in Jackson. Central District Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons (left) and Congressman Benny Thompson (center), also toured the Evers National Monument. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“As we bear the moral weight of our inheritance, it feels a little bit strange to be talking about street lights and ports and highway funding. And yet, part of why we’re doing this work is because we know that even the most superficial examination of the legacy of the civil rights movement reminds us of the relationship between transportation and equality…,” Buttigieg said. “Homer Plessy sat in the white car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Medgar Evers called for the boycott of gas stations that wouldn’t allow black customers to use their facilities. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, of course, to a white man on the Montgomery bus. Transportation is so elemental to all of our lives that disparities in access to transportation affect everything else.”
In addition to the ground-breaking ceremony at Myrlie’s Garden, named for Medgar Evers’ wife, Buttigieg and Thompson took a tour with Reena Evers, the couple’s daughter, of the Evers home.
In a press conference, Thompson called the new project a “down payment.” He said that these improvements were part of repairing the years of neglect and inequality that created the community’s current issues.
“We don’t plan to overburden the citizens who live on the street, but you’ve got to preserve that legacy,” Thompson told Mississippi Today. “As a person who felt Medgar Evers’ influence, I’d be heartbroken if we didn’t keep that legacy alive.”
The new roadway will reconnect the street with other parts of Jackson, along with several improvements. It will have more sidewalks and street lights, better sewer lines, and make travel in the area easier and safer. Officials were unable to provide an estimate for when the project would be complete.
“Good transportation can lead directly to economic opportunity. In the same way that lack of transportation can cut people off from opportunity,” Buttigieg told Mississippi Today. “We’re here to make sure that transportation connects. That it doesn’t divide.”
The visit marked Buttigieg’s first visit to Mississippi, and is part of a two-day tour of the state that included stops in places like Greenville, Rosedale and Jackson.
This was the summer of 1962. We were in Texas to visit grandparents and to see our first Major League baseball game. I was 9, and brother Bobby was 8. Willie Mays, the best baseball player on the planet, was 31 and in his prime.
This was before the Astrodome and the Astros. The brand new Houston expansion team, then called the Colt 45s, played their games at Colt Stadium, adjacent to where the Astrodome was being built. Our maternal grandfather – Papa we called him – worked on the heavy machinery used to build the Dome. I remember him laughing and telling us, “Boys, can you believe they really think they are going to grow grass inside that place?”
Rick Cleveland
Back then, we couldn’t believe they were going to play baseball inside. But the Astrodome opening was still three years away. We were much more excited to see the likes of Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal and our daddy’s pal, Jim Davenport, play in modest Colt Stadium. It was formerly a minor league facility, built on what was formerly a swamp, that held only about 25,000, but seemed like a baseball palace to us and like home to a million well-fed mosquitoes. We’ll get to that.
Dad and “Peanut” Davenport were friends from Davenport’s days at then-Mississippi Southern College. “Nuts,” as Dad called him, was from Siluria, Alabama, near Birmingham, but came to Southern when he wasn’t recruited by either Alabama or Auburn. At Southern, Davenport quarterbacked the football team to consecutive victories over Alabama and also to a victory over Georgia. For the Giants, he was a slick-fielding, clutch-hitting third baseman, who years later would be their manager. He and Mays, from the coal-mining community of Westfield, Alabama, also near Birmingham, had become close friends. They would remain so for life.
In retrospect, that summer trip to Houston also served as a study in race relations for us two young boys from then-strictly segregated Hattiesburg. Mays and Davenport were clearly close friends who ate together, played together and enjoyed one another’s company, something we did not see in our hometown back then. They made it seem as natural as it is.
Our experience began early that afternoon at the historic, old Rice Hotel in downtown Houston, where the Giants stayed. We got there just as most of the Giants were finishing lunch in the coffee shop. Dad re-introduced us to Davenport, who then introduced us to many of his teammates. The day is mostly a blissful blur, but some things I well remember from 62 years ago:
Shaking hands with Willie “Stretch” McCovey, the slugging first baseman, whose huge right hand swallowed not only my hand but also my arm nearly up to my elbow. McCovey was another Alabama guy, from Mobile. He could not have been nicer.
Meeting Mays, who was dwarfed by McCovey, and who told us, “Any friend of Nuts is a friend of mine.” He sat back down in his chair and lifted Bobby up on one knee and me on his other. “You fellas play ball?” he asked, and he seemed genuinely interested. We were dumbstruck. Mays told us he had played semi-pro ball in Hattiesburg and Laurel as a young teen.
Going to the ballpark that night where Davenport had set us up with tickets just behind the Giants dugout on the first base side. That’s not all. He had us down on the field for batting practice before the game. Mays and Cepeda took turns hitting balls deep into left field seats. I had never heard the crack of a bat sound so loud, so violent.
Going down into the visitors’ clubhouse before the game. Funny, what I remember most about that are the card games and the huge box of chewing tobacco that sat right by the door at the entrance to the dugout and the field.
The mosquitoes. I have never seen mosquitoes that big before or since. In the stands, attendants with bug spray marched up and down the aisles just as the soft drink and peanut vendors did.
The game itself. The score is long forgotten, but Houston led for most of the game until the Giants came from behind. In the ninth inning, the Giants trailed by a run but loaded the bases against a rookie relief pitcher. Cepeda, nicknamed The Baby Bull, came to the plate and the count went to three balls and a strike. This was back before ballplayers seriously lifted weights, but Cepeda, from Puerto Rico, was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested with chiseled arms. My daddy pointed to the bleachers beyond the left field fence and said, “No place to put him. Boys, you see those pink seats out there in left? That’s where this next pitch is gonna land.”
Yes, and on the day Willie Mays made us feel like a million dollars and Jim Davenport provided us a memory for life, Cepeda made our dad look like a genius.
For three rounds and 15 holes of the fourth round, Rory McIlroy made every single short putt he stood over. Then, he didn’t. And when McIlroy faltered, Bryson DeChambeau came through with one of the greatest sand saves in U.S. Open history. The Clevelands also discuss the SEC-dominated College World Series, the trials and tribulations of the Atlanta Braves and the NBA Champion Boston Celtics.
Australian Bruce Crampton surely would be a prime contender for the dubious title of greatest golfer to never have won one of the sport’s major championships. He won 45 professional tournaments around the world, including 14 on the PGA Tour.
Crampton twice won the Vardon Trophy for the lowest scoring average on the tour. He finished second in four of the majors, once at the Masters, once in the U.S. Open and twice in the PGA Championship. If Jack Nicklaus did not exist, Crampton would have won those four majors.
Rick Cleveland
Crampton, a cerebral golfer, understood the sport as few men have. And he summed it up, perhaps, better than anyone ever has.
“Golf,” said Crampton, “is a compromise between what your ego wants you to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.”
Rory McIlroy lost Sunday’s U.S. Open on all three levels: ego, experience and nerves. It was painful to watch.
This is to take nothing away from Bryson DeChambeau’s victory, his second U.S. Open championship. His par-4 on the 18th hole will be remembered as one of the greatest “up and downs” in golf history. Remarkable was all it was. When the tournament was on the line, McIlroy’s nerves failed him and DeChambeau’s were nerves of steel.
Hale Irwin, another golfer with steely nerve, won three U.S. Opens during his Hall of Fame career. He was at his best when it mattered most. He, as Crampton, understood golf at its essence. “Golf is the loneliest sport,” Irwin once said. “You are completely alone with every conceivable opportunity to defeat yourself. Golf brings out your assets and liabilities as a person. The longer you play, the more certain you are that a man’s performance is the outward manifestation of who, in his heart, he really thinks he is.”
You and I can only imagine how lonely McIlroy felt over the last three holes Sunday. We can only imagine all that was going through his mind. One of the most physically talented golfers in history of the sport, he had gone nearly a decade since winning a major. After winning four majors in four years, he has won none in nearly 10. It’s not like he hasn’t had his chances. Twenty-one times during the last decade, he has finished in the top 10 of a major.
All that had to be going through his mind. In the end, it was too much.
Bobby Jones, probably the most universally beloved of all golf champions, may have said it best. “Golf,” Jones said, “is a game that is played on a five-inch course — the distance between your ears.”
That’s where McIlroy lost the U.S. Open — between his ears. The two missed short putts were strictly a case of nerves. He had made every short putt he encountered over the first 69 holes of the tournament. He had been perfect from five feet and closer. Then he missed the two that mattered most.
But nerves weren’t all that failed him. Ego factored in. Why else would he choose to hit driver on the 18th hole? His game plan all week had been to play it safe and hit 3-wood off the tee. He had made three pars the first three rounds. Instead, he hooked a driver into the rough. His ball stopped just inches ahead of a big tuff of wire grass, which made it impossible for him to strike his second shot cleanly. And even that wasn’t his last mistake. After his second shot, which was well done under the circumstances, he was left with a 90-foot uphill pitch to the hole.
Had he been thinking clearly, he would never have hit that chip shot past the hole. Any weekend golfer knows the difference in degree of difficulty between a short downhill putt and an uphill putt from the same distance. What’s more, McIlroy faced a downhill, sidehill knee-knocker that broke sharply to the right. He missed badly.
A few minutes later, DeChambeau made an uphill putt from about the same distance to win the tournament.
McIlroy did not distinguish himself in a good way afterward. He left the premises without doing interviews and without shaking the hand of the man who beat him. It was not a good look and brought to mind the words of Percey Boomer, one of the great early teachers of golf, who said, “If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf.”
It also brought to mind the words of the great champion Raymond Floyd who told us, “They call it golf because all the other four-letter words were taken.”
