So many ways to look at the sad case of former Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava. Perhaps the best way is this: He is a walking, talking, five-star illustration of just how remarkably screwed up college football has become in this NIL, open transfer era. 

For those that don’t know, Iamaleava was the gifted, 20-year-old  starting quarterback for the Vols until last Friday when he failed to show up for practice before Tennessee’s annual spring football game. As a Class of 2023 recruit out of Long Beach, California, he was the nation’s second-rated quarterback behind only Arch Manning, who signed with Texas. While still in high school, Iamaleava signed a four-year $8 million deal with Tennessee.

Iamaleava then served as a backup most of his true freshman year in 2023 before starting and earning MVP honors in the Citrus Bowl. He became the Vols starter for 2024 and helped his team reach the NCAA’s first 12-team college football playoffs. Iamaleava then decided – or his advisers decided – to renegotiate his deal with Tennessee. He wanted more money. Tennessee said no. Now, he’s in the transfer portal.

I have several thoughts on this:

• People ask me: Could this happen to one of our Mississippi teams? It already has. There are several parallels with the Iamaleava case and that of former Ole Miss running back Quinshon Judkins, who wanted more money from Ole Miss after two productive seasons there and eventually left for Ohio State, where he helped win a national championship. The biggest similarity is that in both cases a parent was calling the shots. With Judkins, his mother was essentially his agent. With Iamaleava, his father reportedly directed the show. In both cases, the schools weighed their options and decided its football program would be better off letting the star player go. Would Ole Miss have made the playoffs with Judkins on the team? Perhaps. But what precedent would that have set and how would Judkins’ teammates have reacted? Said one Ole Miss staffer, “If you give in to that kind of demand, you’re going down a really slippery slope. No one player is bigger than the program.”
• In many ways, Tennessee is reaping what it sowed. Iamaleava signed a four-year, $8 million deal to play quarterback for the Vols while still in high school. That’s an incredible gamble to take on an 18-year-old kid. Tennessee did more than gamble Tennessee’s attorney general sued the NCAA to prevent the organization from investigating potential infractions by Tennessee in its initial recruitment of Iamaleava. The organization’s response was to stop investigating all third-party participation in NIL-related activity the NCAA crapped out. So did the Vols. 
• There were five five-star quarterbacks in the Class of 2023 in what was judged by many experts to be the most talented in recent memory. Of those five, Manning is the only quarterback who will play next season for the school he originally signed with. Iamaleava’s decision means that the other four will have transferred at least once. Think about that. That’s college football today in a nutshell.
• Was Iamaleava overrated? Statistically, you can certainly make that case. Iamaleava threw for 2,616 yards, 19 touchdowns and five interceptions in 2024. Those are good, not great, numbers. A closer look shows that much of Iamaleava’s excellence was achieved against the weaker teams on the Vols’ schedule. Ten of those 19 touchdowns came against Mississippi State, UTEP and Vanderbilt. Against the likes of Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Ohio State, he threw for a grand total of one touchdown. In the playoff game against Ohio State, Iamaleava completed 14 of 31 passes for 104 yards. He also rushed for 47 yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries. 
• How much more money can Iamaleava expect to earn in the portal? Hard to say, but. I would bet all of what I could afford that he won’t get the $4 million a year he was asking from Tennessee. I wouldn’t be totally shocked if gets less than the $2.25 million he was to make at Tennessee this year. My best guess is that it will be a case much like that of Judkins, who received similar money at Ohio State to what he had been making at Ole Miss. 

Back to my original point: The Iamaleava situation is a sad, sad commentary on college football today. It has become pro football without the rules – i.e., salary cap, collective bargaining, enforceable contracts – that make pro football work. I have spent nearly six decades covering – and mostly loving – college football. It is an understatement to say I have never loved it less.

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Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Balderdash!
What a wonderful, descriptive, albeit archaic, word to describe something that is nonsensical, stupid or dumb. One of the editorial writers at the Clarion Ledger, the late Leesha Faulkner, wrote it in an editorial one day to describe a statement by a public official that was, to say the least, nonsensical, stupid or dumb.

As her editor, I told her the word was too old fashioned. But on second thought, it was the perfect word. It made the point, made me think and made me even smile a little as I considered the important, serious issue about which she was writing. That is what good commentary writing does — it makes you think and engage in important issues.

You probably won’t see that word much in opinion writing. In fact, you may not see many words to express opinions on public policy or those who make it — nonsensical or not — simply because editorials and opinion pages are becoming fewer and far between these days.

While there has been an alarming tendency in journalism for some news organizations to let opinion slip into news (i.e. cable news networks), there has been just as alarming tendencies for media organizations to abandon the practice of providing responsible opinion writing as part of the mix of their media products.

I served as editorial director of the Clarion Ledger for almost 30 years, so I have an opinion about the importance of opinion writing. Media organizations should provide solid, fact-based, reasoned and responsible opinion pieces that provide information, thought-provoking points and leadership on the issues of the day.

The model of media with a staff of opinion writers — independent from news —has faded mostly out of financial pressures which have impacted all media. With limited staff, writing editorials and columns gets a lower priority. Sadly, the hyper polarization of today’s politics also contributes to the reluctance to publish opinions that might be controversial or may not follow the politically popular herd at the time.

Now, more than ever, we need strong opinion writing not only to help sort through complex issues, but also to provide voices of reason during a time when politics has so devolved into angry name-calling, misinformation and exercises in exploiting fear and prejudices to achieve political ends.

It is important for responsible commentary to focus on our local issues. Part of the problem with the decline in local newspapers is the decline of local commentary. That lack of local news and opinion pieces, according to studies, actually contributes to political polarization as people watch national news concentrating on the fight of the day with partisans screaming at each other. The lack of local commentary writing with strong engagement from readers is damaging to public policymaking.

Thankfully in Mississippi we still have strong local newspapers and media organizations with editors and publishers who know the importance of providing local commentary to provide leadership on community issues. Sadly, just not enough and not consistently. 

The 2025 legislative session just ended where a wide variety of important, even critical issues facing the state were discussed. With Mississippi’s Constitution, the Legislature is the most powerful policy setting entity. It is not to be ignored. What those 174 members at the Capitol do will affect your life. The legislative session is a time when the public not only needs to pay close attention, but also be engaged. 

The Legislature is a world unto itself during a session when lawmakers in the close quarters of the Capitol become their own sounding boards with information provided by special interest groups and business lobbyists. This is not to criticize legislators; most are just everyday folks trying to do their best with what they know. But they can tend to live in a bubble where priorities can easily become skewed by the latest political fad. (For example, the tax cut proposal that passed during the just completed session.)

Good policymaking must include thoughtful, fact-based examination that can be provided by independent observers who are not bound by any special interests and whose intentions are only the public good. Good policy making comes from public discussion from informed nonpartisan voices. However, too often today published and posted commentary on public policy comes from special interest groups with direct financial and political interests. That is not the same as an independent editorialist offering viewpoints with engagement by the public in addition to those interests. 

It is important to have independent, responsible informed commentary that is not afraid to oppose the politically popular waves. I kept a quote on my desk throughout the years to remind me of this. “What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular.” Independent editorialists and commentators are needed more than ever today as we see government actions where facts are ignored and dissent is punished.

At some point, you just need someone to call the BS — balderdash stuff — and talk about the complex issues we face based on facts —with reason, logic and good will — to help us find the best way forward.

David Hampton is former editorial director of the Clarion Ledger, who retired after a 36-year career with Mississippi newspapers. He is winner of several journalism awards for editorial and column writing and is a member of the Mississippi Press Association Hall of Fame. 

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Advocates and health care leaders joined lawmakers Monday morning at the Capitol to recognize Black Maternal Health Week, which started Friday.

The group was highlighting the racial disparities that persist in the delivery room, with Black women three times more likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause than white women.   

“The bond between a mother and her baby is worth protecting,” said Cassandra Welchlin, executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable. 

Rep. Timaka James-Jones, D-Belzoni, spoke about her niece Harmony, who suffered from preeclampsia and died on the side of the road in 2021 along with her unborn baby, three miles from the closest hospital in Yazoo City. 

“It’s utterly important that stories are shared – but realize these are not just stories. This is real life,” she said.

The tragedy inspired James-Jones to become a lawmaker. She says she is working on gaining support to appropriate the funds needed to build a standalone emergency room in Belzoni. 

But it isn’t just emergency medical care that’s lacking for some mothers. Mental health conditions are a leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, defined as deaths up to one year postpartum from associated causes. 

And more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths are deemed preventable – making the issue ripe for policy change, advocates said. 

“About 20 years ago, I was almost a statistic,” said Lauren Jones, a mother who founded Mom.Me, a nonprofit seeking to normalize the struggles of motherhood through community support. “I contemplated taking my life, I severely suffered from postpartum depression … None of my physicians told me that the head is connected to the body while pregnant.”

With studies showing “mounting disparities” in women’s health across the United States – and Mississippi scoring among the worst overall – more action is needed to halt and reverse the inequities, those at the press conference said.

The Mississippi Legislature passed four bills related to maternal health between 2018 and 2023, according to a study by researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“How many times are we going to have to come before committees like this to share the statistics before the statistics become a solution?” Jones asked.

A bill that would require health care providers to offer postpartum depression screenings to mothers is pending approval from the governor.

Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, the organizer of the press conference, commended the Legislature for passing presumptive eligibility for pregnant women this year. The policy will allow women to receive health care covered by Medicaid as soon as they find out they are pregnant – even if their Medicaid application is still pending. It was spearheaded by Rep. Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg. 

Summers also thanked Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, for pushing paid parental leave for state employees through the finish line this year. 

Speakers emphasized the importance of focusing Black Maternal Health Week not just on mitigating deaths but on celebrating one of life’s most vulnerable and meaningful events.

“Black Maternal Health Week is a celebration of life, since Black women don’t often get those opportunities to celebrate,” said Nakeitra Burse, executive director of Six Dimensions, a minority women-owned public health research agency. “We go into our labor and delivery and pregnancy with fear – of the unknown, fear of how we’ll be taken care of, and just overall uncertainty about the outcomes.”

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President Donald Trump can now appoint two new judges to the federal bench in the Northern District of Mississippi. 

U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock announced recently that she was taking senior status effective April 15. This means she will still hear cases as a judge but will have a reduced caseload. 

“I have been so fortunate during my entire legal career,” Aycock said in a statement. “As one of only a few women graduating in my law school class, I had the chance to break ground for the female practitioner.” 

A native of Itawamba County, Aycock graduated from Tremont High School and Mississippi State University. She received her law degree from Mississippi College, where she graduated second in her class. 

Throughout her legal career, she blazed many trails for women practicing law and female jurists.  She began her career as a judge when she was elected as a Mississippi Circuit Court judge in northeast Mississippi in 2002, the first woman ever elected to that judicial district. 

She held that position until President George W. Bush in 2007 appointed her to the federal bench. After the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed her, she became the first woman confirmed to the federal judiciary in Mississippi. 

This makes Aycock the second judge to take senior status in four years. U.S. District Judge Michael Mills announced in 2021 that he was taking senior status, but the U.S. Senate still has not confirmed someone to replace him. 

President Joe Biden appointed state prosecutor Scott Colom to fill Mills’ vacancy in 2023. U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker approved Colom’s appointment, but U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked his confirmation through a practice known as “blue slips,” where senators can block the confirmation of judicial appointees in their home state. 

This means President Trump will now have the opportunity to appoint two federal judges to lifetime appointments to the Northern District. U.S. District Judge Debra Brown will soon be the only active federal judge serving in the district. Aycock, Mills, and U.S. District Judge Glen Davidson will all be senior-status judges. 

Federal district judges provide crucial work to the federal courts through presiding over major criminal and civil trials and applying rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals in the local districts. 

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Mississippi Today won the inaugural Peter F. Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism for its coverage of the ongoing state welfare scandal investigation in the face of a lawsuit against the newsroom from former Gov. Phil Bryant.

The Collier Award, administered by New York University’s Ethics and Journalism Initiative and judged by esteemed national journalists, celebrates journalism that meets the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise. 

Mississippi Today was awarded the first place prize in the local category at a Thursday night ceremony at The Paley Center for Media in New York City. A team of journalists from The Washington Post won first place in the national category.

“Powerful people who are the subject of our reporting often try to intimidate our journalists or discredit their fair and truthful work,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief. “But those efforts consistently fall flat because of the rigorous ethical standards we follow — guiding principles that have shaped American journalism for generations. It’s an honor to receive national recognition for upholding those standards, especially at a time when public officials are increasingly dishonest with the public and scrutiny of the press is at an all-time high.”

Ganucheau continued: “This is a proud day for our newsroom, but knowing our reporters, I can’t say I’m surprised. I hope this award reminds our readers that we have a process behind everything we do, and that we take our ethical obligations seriously, every single day.”

Mississippi Today had previously been announced as one of three finalists for the local Collier Award prize. National finalists included The New Yorker, The Guardian/NBC News, and The Washington Post, which took home the national first place prize.

The award’s panel of judges was composed of journalism professionals drawn from across the news media landscape: Dean Baquet, executive editor of the local investigations fellowship at the New York Times; Sewell Chan, executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review; Gina Chua, executive editor of Semafor; Lynette Clemetson, director of the Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan; Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University; Lynn Novick, a documentary filmmaker whose works include Baseball (1994), The War (2007), and The Vietnam War (2017); Kerry Smith, vice president of ethics and standards at ABC News; Stephen D. Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; and Paul Steiger, ProPublica’s founder emeritus.

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The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is investigating the death of an inmate at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility earlier this year.

Prison officials reportedly told Mississippi authorities that inmate Melvin Cancer had suffered a heart attack, but a recent autopsy has since ruled his death a homicide.

“I’d like for it to be thoroughly investigated to see what did happen,” said Juan Barnett, chairman of the Senate Corrections Committee. “Even though people in prison have committed crimes, I still believe in humane treatment for everybody.”

After fellow inmates at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility repeatedly complained that Cancer would not bathe, prison officials reportedly dragged him into the shower, where he may have suffered fatal injuries. 

On Jan. 22, Cancer was declared dead at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The 53-year-old inmate had been serving eight years in prison after pleading guilty to a 2019 aggravated assault in Hinds County.

Jeremy St. Julian is the third person to serve as superintendent at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in less than a year. Some staff members have reportedly been placed on administrative leave.

“Either we’re hiring bad people, or we need to look at the people doing the hiring,” Barnett said. “There has to be some accountability somewhere.”

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said he could not comment on the matter. The Mississippi Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment.

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Hezekiah Watkins was 13 when he was arrested in 1961 for entering a white-only Greyhound bus station in Jackson, sent to state prison and housed on death row. 

Watkins said Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest reminded him of his own experience. 

Khalil, a Palestinian activist who was the lead negotiator between students and the Columbia University administration during protests last spring regarding the ongoing war in Gaza for divestment in companies with ties to Israel, was arrested by Department of Homeland Security officials last month. The conflict in Gaza reignited on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants in a surprise attack killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals and kidnapped 215, led to Israeli military response that has decimated Gaza and left more than 50,000 dead.

A green card-holding permanent resident of the United States, Khalil was moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana soon after. On Wednesday, a New York court gave the Trump administration a 24-hour deadline to justify his deportation. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has argued that while Khalil had not committed any crime, his presence in the United States would “undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States.” Rubio’s determination was the only justification provided by the Trump administration for Khalil’s deportation.

On Friday, a Louisiana judge ruled that Khalil could be deported. 

“No due process. And the student that you’re speaking of, there’s no due process there…that’s not right. That’s not the way America is built,” Watkins said. The summer he was arrested, no less than 327 others were arrested for “breach of peace” and sent to Parchman for being in segregated waiting areas of bus stations, just like him.  

Watkins wasn’t the only Mississippian for whom Khalil’s arrest and the escalating crackdown on immigrants, especially those who have been vocal about Palestine, felt close to home. 

Last month, Terron Weaver, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, along with more than a dozen Southerners gathered in front of the ICE detention center in Jena, Louisiana, where Khalil was being held. 

Since then, a Turkish Fulbright scholar, Rumeysa Ozturk, a graduate student at Tufts University, has also been held in the same detention center. Like Khalil, she was arrested near her home without notice. In March last year, Ozturk co-wrote an op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing the school’s response to a student government group’s call for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Khalil was brought to Louisiana from New Jersey because the authorities “feel there’s no movement here,” Weaver said, “But they’re incorrect.”

Weaver and others are working to actively build a progressive movement in the South to change the overwhelming perception that it is “very bigoted, very racist.” 

“It really started with immigrants…and now it’s being escalated to people who spoke out against the genocide. And it’s not going to stop there. The answer has to be with a mass people’s movement that is fighting back against everything that the Trump administration is trying to do,” he said.  

“What history shows repeatedly is that when the government continues to launch attacks on the working class,” he said, “we do fight back. We do not shrink away in fear.”

“Whether you’re a politician or just a regular layman, if something goes wrong, one needs to share their thoughts,” said Watkins. “Especially if you have a voice – your voice sometimes speaks louder and goes further than the next person.”

Palestinian Christians visit Mississippi

Last month, a delegation of Palestinian Christians visited the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum as part of a tour organized by Washington D.C.-based group Telos. Members of the delegation reflected on the similarities between the struggle for civil rights in the South and the struggle for a free Palestine, and also the significance of the timing of their visit – just four days after Khalil’s arrest. 

“Christians in North America and in the West in general have been somehow uncritically supporting a settler colonial regime which oppresses us. I’m grateful that there is an awakening among Christian leaders in the U.S. to learn more about our context as Palestinian Christians and as Palestinians in general,” said one member of the delegation. However, he said, it was “devastating” to see uncritical support for Israel from many Christian faith leaders. 

Another member of the Palestinian delegation, who asked to not be named, fearing retaliation, said their visit to Jackson gave her important reminders about the nature of struggles for freedom and equality. 

“It is interesting to visit Trump’s America and do this trip during this time,” she said. “To think that we are in this museum that shows the struggle, and celebrates the achievements, and the various steps of progress…but also to realize that it can always be pushed back; you can always regress,” she said. “We have to keep fighting for those small steps of progress and not just assume they’re always going to be there.” 

Afraid but undeterred 

A Palestinian American Mississippian who asked to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation, said the current crackdown on the movement for free Palestine reminded him of dictatorships around the world forcing citizens to adhere to a certain ideology. “If you are against the government, you can be imprisoned, you can be deported, and you can be harassed if you speak frankly…I really fear for where the United States is going.”

As Mississippi’s Legislature created its first “Israel caucus,” he said the support in the state for Israel confused him. “Many Mississippians were attracted to Trump’s message because he said, America first – we’re not going to be spending all these unnecessary wars… Yet he just sent $4 billion to Israel to continue this and the U.S. government started bombing Yemen. So where is this promise to the Mississippians and the American people?”

State Sens. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, and Juan Barnett, D-Heidelburg, co-chair the caucus.

“It’s basically just a friendly caucus with Israel being our our longest standing and strongest ally in the Middle East, and a good trade partner for the state of Mississippi. This is really just to foster and and build that bond between the state of Mississippi and the nation of Israel,” England said. “I really hate what’s going on over there. I think that’s a very unfortunate situation, but it’s also something that’s been going on for a very long time.”

Late last month, Mississippians held demonstrations at three separate locations across the state to show their support for Palestine and demand an arms embargo. Nearly two dozen participated in the protest in Jackson. The reaction from passers-by was mostly positive, a protestor said. 

But a Muslim Mississippian, who also asked not to be named, said she feels like the tension is rising. And while fear can cause the community to band together, she said, it can also force people to look out only for themselves and their own. “People’s behavior changes when they’re fearful,” she said. “And it can oftentimes cause division.”

Update 4/11/24: This story has been updated to include comments from Sen. Jeremy England with the Israel caucus.

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The day after Tim Henderson finished third in Jackson’s mayoral primary, garnering 3,499 votes, the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel was planning to pack up his office at the Jackson Medical Mall and be out by the end of the week. 

Henderson figured that’s what losing candidates do. Then he said his older brother gave him a different perspective: Henderson had just established a base of people who had rejected the city’s status quo, and he shouldn’t let them down.

“That’s what happens all the time,” Henderson said. “Candidates show up, they don’t win, the stuff they talked about doing, they walk away, and they leave the people hanging, which is partly, probably why people have lost faith in the process.”

As the 54-year-old space industry consultant spoke with friends, family and politicos last week, he began to look at those 3,499 votes differently. Instead of an outright loss, the numbers seemed to represent something remarkable: In a city where name recognition is king, it took less than a year for Henderson to go from a name few knew to finishing just 786 votes shy of the incumbent, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

He did it with a handful of volunteers and few connections to the city’s powerbrokers or politically connected church leaders or nonprofits. In fact, Henderson thinks his relatively little clout is precisely why he did so well.

“People insulate themselves inside of certain circles, and the problem a lot of people have with Henderson is I wasn’t connected or associated with any of those cliques,” he said. “People immediately started asking, who knows him?”

Now, Henderson is contemplating what he’s going to do next.

“I can be the mayor of the city hall, or I can be the mayor out here on the streets,” he said.

Beholden mainly to God and the truth, he said, he’s ready to talk – with little filter – about what Jackson needs to anyone who wants to listen. He described himself as “a loose neutron, or a loose electron, free radical.”

“Not radical in the sense of ‘radical’ but somebody that doesn’t have to be guarded in how I do things,” he said, adding, “Now I can say things other people can’t say and I can represent things the right way.” 

He’s not sure he’ll endorse anyone. Henderson said that in the past week, he’s met with the Lumumba campaign, as well as state Sen. John Horhn, whose 12,359 votes nearly preempted a runoff. To win the Democratic nomination outright, Horhn would have had to secure around 500 of the votes Henderson or 10 other candidates received.

Both asked what their campaigns needed to do to get Henderson’s support. He says he told them the same thing: Start an Office of Ethics and Accountability, one of his chief campaign goals. 

He wouldn’t say which candidate said what. But one told him they weren’t sure the city had the funding for it. He recalled the other asked if Henderson would work with them if they started an Office of Integrity, to which Henderson responded “only by my rules.” 

Through a spokesperson, Horhn said he wants to bring more accountability to the city’s procurement process and that his ongoing discussions with Henderson have been “productive.”

Horhn has been a senator representing parts of Jackson since the 1990s, and Lumumba is finishing his second term as mayor. If nothing has changed in the city in the last eight, or 32, years, Henderson reasons that’s because the people with power and connections, including those behind the scenes, don’t want change.

When Henderson moved back to the city two years ago, the Cleveland, Miss. native and Mississippi Valley State University graduate moved in with his brother, who lives in south Jackson. 

The retired military man had two goals in mind: Develop the vacant lots he owns near the Westside Community Center — a neighborhood called “the Sub” — and start a gourmet grocery store in downtown Jackson, hopefully on the first floor of the Lamar Life building owned by longtime downtown Jackson developer Andrew Mattiace. 

Henderson said he couldn’t find the funding – a common refrain in Jackson – or secure meetings with folks who might provide the funding. Still, his business endeavors bore political fruit as he met people he said encouraged him to run for mayor. That included Robert Gibbs, an attorney and developer who was working to convene a group of community and business leaders to secure a new city leader. The coalition assumed the name Rethink Jackson.

Last year, Gibbs invited Henderson to meet with Rethink Jackson members and others at the Capital Club, a highrise bar owned by Mattiace. The group was looking for a candidate to support, but Henderson recalled that Gibbs told him the meeting was not “an endorsement.” 

But when Henderson arrived, he says they kept him waiting in the lobby for 30 minutes before finally calling him up to meet with the dozen or so people in the room – mostly African American leaders – who were sitting at tables around the bar. 

Gibbs was there, so were Mattiace and Jeff Good, a local restauranteur. 

“Before we move forward, I want to make sure the air is clear: This is not an endorsement,” Henderson recalled telling the room. “And they’re like no, nope, it’s not an endorsement. I say well let me be clear you may not hear what you want to hear this evening. I’m only going to share what I’m comfortable sharing, because what I’m not going to do is have my information travel all across the city. Is that fair? That is fair, right? OK, so let’s talk.” 

When the group asked about economic development, Henderson said he brought up the Capitol Police, saying “I don’t care how much police security you put down here, you gotta put something in the parts of the city where people live,” meaning both safety and opportunity in west and south Jackson. 

“They can only rob other poor people so much,” Henderson said, to which he recalled the folks in the room “just looked at me.” 

Mattiace said he preferred not to comment on the election so he could remain neutral for the sake of his business. Good said he did not have a good memory of the meeting but added he thinks Henderson is a “good guy” and that’s why he did well at the polls.

Gibbs didn’t comment on the meeting but said he’s heavily involved in the Horhn campaign and doesn’t want to hurt it. He did speak to Rethink Jackson as a coalition, adding that the group also met with Horhn, Delano Funches, and Rodney DePriest, an independent, “to identify the person we felt would be the best person to lead the city of Jackson.” 

After meeting with him, Henderson said he told one of the folks that he wouldn’t be back – he had a campaign to run. He didn’t hear from the group again.

Rethink Jackson debated and took a vote on which candidates “could come in on day one and start doing the things we felt the city needed in order to turn around,” Gibbs said. 

“We had a vote, paper ballot voting, that we took so that people could not necessarily be influenced by someone who was in the room,” he added. 

Out of about 50 people, Gibbs said only one person was unsure of Horhn. The endorsement was a campaign score for the senator.

It wasn’t just the business community Henderson says did not ultimately align with his campaign. When he talks about the status quo he wants to undo, he means nonprofits, too.

On the campaign trail, Henderson committed to personally screening all nonprofits that receive city grant funds. He wanted to send out screening criteria, categorize all the buckets of grant funding the city was dispersing, and meet with each nonprofit. But if they didn’t show up, he said he would contact their other funders. 

He called this “a dogwhistle” –  a tell that he was on to them.

“You’re using my data,” he said. “As the mayor, it’s my data. And if you’re supposed to be working in this city, I want to know outcomes.” 

Jackson has an excess of nonprofits, Henderson said, that are all working to tackle similar social ills, from decreasing homelessness and youth violence to improving mental health. Some are doing good work and should be supported to leverage their resources. But for others, those missions are a “smokescreen,” Henderson said, and the problems remain. Coincidentally, this is a similar campaign pillar of conservative talk radio host and independent mayoral candidate Kim Wade.

“Here’s my concern: Things aren’t getting better because people don’t want them to get better,” Henderson said. “If you keep crime high, poverty high, you keep the education system where it is, you keep housing, the lack of affordable housing high, you keep jobs at the minimum wage – the only thing people have as an entry point, there’s no upward mobility. This city will never be what it can be. … Because if you wanted change, you’d work yourself out of a job.” 

Within city hall, Henderson said he wanted to “clear the slate” by rehiring every department head, putting out job descriptions, and hiring candidates with a blind application – no names, race or gender attached – to ensure that a person’s “connections” were not taken into account.

“Those connections over time is why we are the way we are,” he said. “Because the most qualified person is not who you’re hiring. You’re hiring someone connected to you.”

Make no mistake: Henderson made connections, too. He said two names include Shirlene Anderson, a former chief of police under Frank Melton, and Hank Anderson, a retired administrator for IBM who worked in former governor Ray Mabus’s administration. Anderson had approached Henderson after the February debate at Duling Hall and later advised him on how to keep his message straight. 

After that, Henderson made a point to answer questions as directly as he could during the candidate forums. He said he stressed: “public safety, cleaning it up, public safety, cleaning it up.”

“Everybody else is talking about economic development and all this other stuff,” he said. “I’m like, either you don’t know what you’re talking about, or you’re playing the people, or it’s both. I’m like no, you can’t get any economic development with crime the way it is.” 

But perhaps the most important connection Henderson made during his run for office was with Sherri Jones, the first person to join the campaign and the station manager at WMPR. 

The pair formed a kinship over their deep skepticism of the city’s elite — Black and white, activists and church leaders, and especially the politicians and the business owners who seem to be looking out for their bottom line and not for the entire community. 

“You got two things you gone have to be aware of,” Jones said. “One is racism. The other is classism. Now, when you deal with the classicism, it’s about a certain group of people and a lot of them are African American and then they are connected with white people and they don’t really care if there’s racism involved or not because they got a certain agenda and it’s gonna always come back and be tied to money.” 

From the perspective of the leaders at the Capital Club, the business community wants to help Jackson, so finding a mayor who works with them will result in economic advancement across the city. 

Jones saw it differently.  

“It’s about contracts, it’s about being in charge of the decision, what’s going to stay open, what’s going to close, how things move,” Jones said. 

Nothing will change in Jackson if economic development does not include the entire city, Henderson said. South and west, too. 

The primary “wasn’t just about low voter turnout,” he said. “It actually speaks to the psychological impact that the environment and the quality of life has had on people, where they totally felt dejected, rejected and disconnected.” 

What he wants most of all is to bring back people’s confidence in Jackson and knows it won’t happen overnight. 

“It’s about empowering the people in the city to be able to believe in it again,” Henderson said. 

How’s he going to do that? He might start a nonprofit. 

Editor’s note: Mississippi Today is moving this summer into the Lamar Life Building, operated by Andrew Mattiace, in downtown Jackson.

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