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Charles and Cheryl Penson shuffled up the steps of a bus in Tupelo at 4 a.m. on Tuesday to begin a long day’s trek to the state Capitol. 

The reason the Pensons, both of whom are ministers, traveled over three hours to the seat of Mississippi’s government is they know several people in rural northeast Mississippi, including one of their own daughters, who could benefit from expanded Medicaid coverage. 

Their daughter is a businesswoman and a single mother, they said, who works hard at her job, but she could use assistance with health care costs, especially to help her young child who has experienced health issues recently. 

“I am here because I want to see what is morally right done for the people of Mississippi,” Cheryl Penson said as her husband nodded in agreement. “If you have a heart, you have to have a heart for all people.”

The husband and wife weren’t alone. 

The two joined hundreds of doctors, clergy and other Mississippians from over 35 communities across the Magnolia State who shared stories of their own at a “Full Expansion Day” rally at the Capitol. They urged legislators to expand Medicaid coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act.

Christine Dunaway of Jackson told Mississippi Today she attended the rally because she spent 20 years as an advocate for people living with disabilities as the former director of Living Independence for Everyone of Mississippi.

“I worked with so many people over the years who would have benefited from Medicaid expansion — working poor people trying to go to work, who didn’t have insurance, couldn’t afford it, didn’t have access to it,” Dunaway said. ” … I was born missing three limbs. My parents would have been considered middle class, but they couldn’t afford prosthetics back then.”

As personal stories meshed with religious sermons the concrete steps on the front of the Capitol became like church pews when faith leaders from different religions and Christian denominations pleaded with legislators to give poor Mississippians access to health insurance.  

“As a state that is proud of its pro-life stance, it is only fitting that this Legislature now leans into the opportunity to make it possible for all Mississippians across this state to have full access to health care,” said the Rev. Reginald Buckley, pastor of Jackson’s Cade Chapel M.B. Church.

But just hours earlier, some of those same ministers and participants appeared to take James’ epistle of “faith without works is dead” to heart by beginning their day of advocacy in actual pews at the historic sanctuary of Mt. Helm Baptist Church in downtown Jackson. 

The morning service in one of the oldest Black churches in Jackson started with songs, prayers, scripture centered on civilly pressuring the 174 state lawmakers in Jackson to pass expansion.

“We thank you for collective power, but surely Lord we know that apart from your power, we can do nothing,” the Rev. Dr. C.J. Rhodes, the pastor of the church, prayed. “For it’s not by power nor by might, but by your spirit, says the Lord of hosts. So breathe upon us, give us your spirit, oh God, and give us your blessings so that we can do what seems to be impossible even today.” 

The prayers of accomplishing the insurmountable, though, quickly turned into advocacy chants, the new sanctuary became the 2nd floor rotunda of the Capitol and the hymns morphed into telephone calls that flooded the voicemails of holdout legislators. 

After the morning of worship, the interdenominational group assembled signs, slapped supportive stickers on their shirts, reviewed phone-banking scripts and tweaked message to their local legislators over expansion.   

“Jesus is the reason that I’m here,” said Brittany Caldwell, a coordinator of community engagement for Great Rivers Fellowship and Natchez resident, said. “To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a disciple in both word and action.”

The rally comes in the middle of House and Senate leaders attempting to negotiate a compromise on Medicaid expansion legislation after the two chambers passed drastically different plans earlier in the session. 

The House’s expansion plan aims to expand health care coverage to upwards of 200,000 Mississippians, and accept $1 billion a year in federal money to cover it, as most other states have done.

The Senate, on the other hand, wants a more restrictive program, to expand Medicaid to cover around 40,000 people, turn down the federal money, and require proof that recipients are working at least 30 hours a week. 

Those at the rally made clear they support “Full expansion now,” which they frequently chanted, and not the Senate proposal, which its drafters have referred to as “expansion lite.”

Representatives of the two chambers, called conferees, have not yet met in public to haggle over a final expansion plan, and as of Tuesday evening, the Legislature’s website did not list a scheduled meeting to take place later this week. 

A natural compromise is for the two chambers to agree on a  “MarketPlus Hybrid Plan,” which health policy experts with the Center for Mississippi Health Policy and the Hilltop Institute at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County estimate could save the state money in the long-term. 

The hybrid plan would offer expanded Medicaid coverage through the state’s managed care program for those making under 100% of the federal poverty level. For those making 100% to 138% (up to $20,000 for an individual) of poverty level, the plan would use federal money to provide assistance for them to buy private insurance plans through Mississippi’s marketplace exchange.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has privately vowed to lawmakers that he will veto any Medicaid expansion bill that reaches his desk, putting the future of expansion in the hands of the Legislature, who can override the veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers.

House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, previously told Mississippi Today in an interview that he believes he can hold a bipartisan group of more than 90 House members, a veto-proof majority, together in support of a compromise expansion package. 

But the coalition of support in the 52-member Senate is more fragile. The Capitol’s upper chamber only passed its austere expansion plan by 36 votes, one vote shy of the two-thirds threshold needed to override a governor’s veto. 

One reason the expansion debate has caused some Republican senators to oppose the proposal is it’s become mired in partisan politics because of the governor’s messaging and hardline conservatives derisively labeling it “Obamacare expansion.” 

But clergy at the Capitol on Tuesday said the issue rises above partisan politics. 

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Parker, senior pastor at Southside Baptist Church in Jackson, is a self-described “Southern Baptist Republican,” who believes in the Gospel of Matthew, where it says “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” should move Christians to support expansion.

Parker recounted a conversation he had with a friend shortly before the rally who warned him he would be branded as a liberal if he spoke too forcefully in favor of the Medicaid expansion. 

“I looked at him, and I finally said this: ‘Are we reading the same Bible?’” Parker said. “I would challenge every church in the state of Mississippi, regardless of your denominational tag, to take a long, hard look at the book of Matthew.” 

Mississippi Today reporters Bobby Harrision and Geoff Pender contributed to this report.

The post ‘A matter of life and death:’ Hundreds rally at Capitol for full Medicaid expansion  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Steve Sloan, who died April 14 at the age of 79, spent five autumns (1978-82), mostly unsuccessful, as the head football coach at Ole Miss. I covered those last two seasons as the Ole Miss beat reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Covering losing football teams is often a thankless chore. Sloan made those two seasons bearable.

My lasting memory of Sloan: He was, without question, the nicest football coach I ever encountered and one of the nicest, most decent human beings, period. Many knowledgeable football folks would tell you Steve was too nice to be a successful football coach in the dog-eat-dog Southeastern Conference, and I honestly can’t write that I disagree.

His record over five seasons in Oxford: 20 victories, 34 defeats, one tie. His 1980 team led the SEC in total offense, yet won only three games. His last two Rebel teams won a total of one SEC game, the 1981 Egg Bowl.

And there’s a story there. I approached Steve the Monday before the game with an idea for a story that would need his cooperation. Honestly, I didn’t think he would do it. I’m not sure I’ve ever covered another college football coach who would have. My proposal was that he would tell me his Egg Bowl game plan, which I would not divulge in print or otherwise until after the game. My plan was to write about the game plan – and whether it worked or not – in our Egg Bowl special section afterward.

Much to my surprise, Steve said he didn’t see any harm in it. Perhaps, he just didn’t see where he had anything to lose. And, on Tuesday of Egg Bowl week, he gave me a detailed game plan. He did so while chewing Vitamin C tablets the way some folks chew bubble gum, trying to fight a bad cold that had bothered him for weeks. I remember telling him he looked like death warmed over, and I remember him chuckling and telling me, “Well, buddy, you don’t look so good yourself.”

Defensively, he said Ole Miss would play an eight-man front throughout the game. “We’ll look like we’re in a goal line defense when we’re at midfield,” he said. “Our only chance is to stop the run.”

“Offensively, we know we can’t run the ball on them, but we have to run it some just to keep them honest, or we’ll never have time to throw,” he said. “Up front, we will double team Glen Collins (State’s splendid defensive tackle). We’ll use a guard and a center and if that’s not enough we’ll use a back in pass protection. He’s that good.”

I asked him about trick plays. “We’ve got one pass play we got off TV the other night,” he said, describing a pass play using two running backs out of the backfield in a crossing pattern, hoping to take advantage of linebackers in pass coverage.

Everything worked. State passed only 12 times, despite the eight-man front. Ole Miss ran the ball 35 times for a meager 74 yards, but that helped quarterback John Fourcade have the time to complete 22 of 29 passes. The great Collins, double- and triple-teamed, was not in on a sack. The trick play worked to perfection for a touchdown on the Rebels’ first possession.

Ole Miss, a 15-point underdog, won, 21-17. Rebel players awarded Sloan the game ball, and this was one time he earned it.

That didn’t happen nearly often enough for Sloan at Ole Miss. A year later, he left for Duke, and not many Ole Miss folks were all that sad to see him go. 

Mississippi football fans of that era will well remember the enthusiasm that accompanied Sloan’s arrival at Ole Miss. At the time, he was considered the best bet to be Bear Bryant’s successor at Alabama, where he had been Bryant’s quarterback and team captain.

He was, without question, the hottest young head coach in the business. He had won at Vanderbilt, for goodness sakes. That’s right. He took the Vandy head coaching job at age 28 and in his second year he guided the Commodores to a 7-3-1 record and a Peach Bowl berth. Then it was on to Texas Tech, where he took the Red Raiders to two bowl games in three seasons, including a 10-1 record and a share of the Southwest Conference championship in only his second season at Lubbock.

Then came Ole Miss, where he was then-athletic director Johnny Vaught’s hand-picked choice to revive the Rebels slumping football program. The word was Bear Bryant had advised Sloan not to take the Ole Miss job, to remain in Texas until he decided to step down at Alabama. If that was indeed the case, Sloan bucked his former coach and headed to Oxford, where he was greeted as a football savior. The early returns were good. His first recruiting classes were rated among the nation’s best. That recruiting success never translated into victories.

What happened? Nearly half a century later, this might be an oversimplification, but here goes: Both at Vandy and at Texas Tech, Sloan’s defenses were headed by a future coaching legend, a guy named Bill Parcells. Yes, that Bill Parcells, a two-time Super Bowl champion coach. And Parcells was slated to come with Sloan to become the Rebels’ defensive coordinator. Never happened. The head coaching job at Air Force came open, and Parcells took it.

So Sloan came to Ole Miss without Parcells, who was not only a defensive whiz but also the “bad cop” to Sloan’s “good cop” at both Vandy and Texas Tech. In retrospect, Sloan’s Ole Miss teams lacked the defensive grit, discipline and overall toughness of his Vanderbilt and Texas Tech teams. Even Sloan’s worse Ole Miss teams could move the ball and score; they just could not stop anybody.

Had Parcells come to Ole Miss, things surely would have been different. We’ll never know, but I believe had Sloan, after losing Parcells, retained Jim Carmody from Ken Cooper’s Ole Miss staff, he would have won more games.

That’s all conjecture at this point, but this is not: If the worst thing anybody can say about you is that you were too nice, that not all bad. In fact, that’s not bad at all.

The post About Steve Sloan, the worst you could say is he was too nice a guy appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The House and Senate can now begin negotiating ways to enact a law to expand Medicaid coverage to poor Mississippians after legislative leaders named the six people to hammer out a final plan.

House Speaker Jason White, R-West, recently appointed Republican Reps. Missy McGee of Hattiesburg, Sam Creekmore IV of New Albany and Joey Hood of Ackerman to be the House negotiators. 

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann last week named Republican Sens. Kevin Blackwell of Southaven, Nicole Boyd of Oxford and Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula to represent the Senate in the deliberations.

The six conferees are all white Republicans, despite Senate Minority Leader Derrick Simmons, a Democrat from Greenville, recently calling on Hosemann to appoint a Democrat as a conferee. Two of the six conferees are women, but no Black lawmaker will have a seat at the negotiating table.  

The six members, called conferees, will attempt to forge an agreement over the different versions of the expansion plan that have passed the House and Senate. 

The House’s expansion plan aims to expand health care coverage to upwards of 200,000 Mississippians, and accept $1 billion a year in federal money to cover it, as most other states have done.

The Senate, on the other hand, wants a more restrictive program, to expand Medicaid to cover around 40,000 people, turn down the federal money, and require proof that recipients are working at least 30 hours a week. 

White previously told Mississippi Today in an interview that he is willing to compromise on a plan that fully covers people up to 138% of the federal poverty level, but he does not intend to agree to a plan that forgoes the full 90% matching rate from the federal government. 

“Look, at this point, if it makes sense, and when I say conservative, I mean from a dollars and cents standpoint,” White said of expansion. “I’m convinced, and health care professionals have convinced me, that this population, this is the way to cover these individuals.”

If the House and Senate conferees agree on a compromise, the final bill will go back before the two chambers for consideration. If lawmakers sign off on the plan, it will then go to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves who has privately threatened to veto any type of expansion bill. 

Here are the three House negotiators and three Senate negotiations who will soon begin meeting on a final Medicaid expansion bill.  

House conferees: 

Rep. Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg: 

McGee is the chairwoman of the House Medicaid Committee and has been a champion of reforming the state’s Medicaid laws to provide more services to current Medicaid recipients and expanding coverage to more people. 

Earlier this year, she spearheaded legislation to allow pregnant women whose net family income is 194% or less of the federal poverty level to be presumed eligible for Medicaid and receive care before their Medicaid application is officially approved by the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. 

Even before White appointed her to lead the Medicaid committee, she successfully shepherded legislation through the Capitol that extended benefits for pregnant people on Medicaid that increased their timeline for receiving benefits from 60 days for a full year. 

Rep. Sam Creekmore IV, R-New Albany:

Creekmore is the chairman of the influential House Public Health Committee. While Creekmore’s committee does not necessarily have jurisdiction over Medicaid policy, his stance on the issue holds enormous sway over House colleagues and the state’s medical community. 

The son of a physician in rural northeast Mississippi, Creekmore has also been an early voice calling for lawmakers to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. He’s also advanced legislation to provide more mental health services to Mississippians. 

Rep. Joey Hood, R- Ackerman: 

Hood may be a somewhat unusual conferee because he is currently the chairman of the House Judiciary A Committee, a committee with jurisdiction over the state’s civil code. 

Hood, however, is a close ally of Speaker White’s and previously led the House Medicaid Committee during the last four-year term. Hood somewhat became the face of Medicaid policy stagnation during the last term because he called relatively few committee meetings and let numerous expansion bills die at his hands.

Hood last year, though, did allow McGee’s postpartum Medicaid bill to come up for a full vote on the House floor. Ironically, Hood will now have a hand in shaping the finalized Medicaid expansion bill that his House colleagues consider passing into law.  

Senate Conferees: 

Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven: 

Blackwell is the chairman of the Senate Medicaid Committee, who has advocated for a more strict Medicaid expansion plan. He has previously been opposed to Medicaid expansion, but has come around to adopting a hybrid model, similar to Arkansas’ expansion plan.

Blackwell has advocated for strict work requirements for Medicaid expansion recipients and advocated for a plan that only extends Medicaid coverage for 99% of the federal poverty level. 

The DeSoto County legislator has indicated the Senate may be unwilling to deviate from many of its hardline positions on expansion, so his voice during the conference process will be critical.  

Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford:  

Boyd is the vice chairman of the Senate Medicaid Committee. Though she’s only in her second term as a lawmaker, she has quickly cemented herself as a legislator who can usher substantive policies through the Capitol and broker deals with the House. 

She has previously led the debate on Medicaid reform bills in the Senate and could be crucial in navigating a potential impasse with House leadership over the ongoing Medicaid expansion legislation. 

Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula:   

Wiggins is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary A Committee, the committee that deals with the state’s civil statutes. A member of the Public Health Committee, the Jackson County lawmaker has been supportive of postpartum Medicaid extension and presumptive eligibility. 

During the debate over its expansion plan, Wiggins spoke out in favor of passing the Senate’s expansion plan and has pushed back on Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ opposition to the legislation. 

The post Meet the six people negotiating a final Medicaid expansion bill at the Capitol  appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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“We need to talk.” 

When uttered, these four words have the power to instill fear in the hearts of spouses, children, and employees alike. They aptly describe the situation we face as a nation today. 

The problem? Toxic polarization – the way we demonize each other across differences. Most of us have few or no friends who have different political preferences. We think “other people in America” pose the biggest threat to our way of life. We are finding it more and more difficult to say what we believe without the conversation devolving into utter chaos. Unsurprisingly, we shut down. We don’t talk. It’s a problem we can all hear, loud and clear.

The good news is that most of us want to talk. Most of us believe it is crucial for everyday Americans to be involved in finding solutions to the problems facing their communities. In a time marked by deep-seated divisions along ideological, political, and social lines, the need for constructive dialogue has never been more pressing. 

Since last August, 19 graduate students seeking a degree in Integrated Marketing Communications at the University of Mississippi have been planning and preparing for the seventh annual National Week of Conversation (NWoC). They are helping provide real opportunities for people across the country to build bridges of understanding and empathy. Each of them committed to the course because they understand that beneath our differences lie shared humanity and common aspirations. They’ve been learning and applying concepts from Collective Impact and Reflective Structured Dialogue and are both inspiring and encouraging to work with. 

At its core, NWoC embodies the principles of empathy, respect, and openness – values that are essential for a thriving democracy. When people take the time to really listen to others, they learn. They learn that we really aren’t that different, that we share many of the same values and aspirations, something reinforced by findings of several studies. They learn that others, like them, desire to make positive change in our communities. They learn, as Brene Brown has written, that “people are hard to hate close up.” 

These students are being courageous enough to put aside their own agendas and listen to the experiences of others. They are finding that this desire to listen across our differences is shared by the majority of their peers. And they are standing up opportunities to work together despite forces working to tear us apart. 

But don’t take their word for it. Experience it yourself. Find an event to attend, here, and be with the nearly 80% of Americans who believe in creating more opportunities for people to talk across their differences. And who knows, maybe you’ll learn its not as scary as it sounds after all.  

Graham Bodie is Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Media and Communication in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi. When asked what he does for a living he responds, “I teach people to listen.” More importantly, he has been able to work with a group of dedicated students for several years to plan and execute the National Week of Conversation, a yearly campaign launched by Listen First Project in 2018 that seeks to provide opportunities for people to #ListenFirst across their differences. This year, those students have put together an amazing set of promotional toolkits and events for the Better Together Film Festival that features film screenings across the country including Tupelo and Oxford. Several of them contributed to the writing of this piece.

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Note: This editorial anchored Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive access to legislative analysis and up-to-date information about what’s happening under the Capitol dome.

Happy Tax Day, when millions of us Mississippians will send our hard-earned money to 40 other states that are providing health care coverage to millions of poor, working people.

But here in Mississippi, hundreds of thousands of poor, working people are not afforded that same benefit of our taxes. This is the intentional result of political ideologues who have blocked the implementation of Medicaid expansion, the proven federal policy those 40 other states have passed.

Today, while all those other states reap the economic benefits of our money, so many of our fellow Mississippians are sick and cannot afford trips to the doctor; dozens of our state’s hospitals remain on the verge of financial collapse because they must cover emergency care to so many of those uninsured people; and our state is missing out on a pot of billions in federal dollars that we are paying into every single day.

If these facts surprise you, know that you’ve been duped. As Mississippi lawmakers seriously consider Medicaid expansion for the first time since it was implemented in 2013, opponents of the policy have worked to deliberately message an outright lie in order to rile you up. What they want you to hear and react to is that hardworking Mississippi taxpayers like you shouldn’t be on the hook for expansion.

But they don’t want you to consider the cold, hard truth of the matter: You already are on the hook for expansion — only the federal taxes you’re paying today are flowing to the 40 other states that have chosen to expand. Your own state, meanwhile, because of the cold shoulder of a few politicians, has left more than $10 billion on the table over the last decade.

Today, our neighbors across the Mississippi River in Arkansas and Louisiana are grateful for our money considering we’re helping save their residents’ lives and their hospitals. Across the nation, 20 Republican-controlled states and 20 Democrat-controlled states appreciate our red state’s contribution to their economies that are growing faster than ours.

But here in Mississippi, people are dying, our hospitals are cutting services or closing doors for good, and our economy is not keeping up with our neighbors.

Your tax dollars could benefit your own state — not just the many people who need health care, but the state as a whole and even your own personal bottom line. If lawmakers expanded Medicaid, the state would receive $1.5 billion in additional federal money in year one, which would free up hundreds of millions of dollars our leaders could spend on other major needs besides just health care. The Medicaid expansion dollars would provide a lifeline for the many rural hospitals that are the heart of so many of our struggling small towns. Expansion would create 11,000 jobs in five years, grow the state’s coffers as much as $44 million annually, increase the state’s gross domestic product and even modestly grow the state’s population.

Without Medicaid expansion in place, you’re paying more for health care even if you currently have your own private insurance. Your out-of-pocket health care and insurance premium costs today are higher, experts say, because your providers are charging you more to help offset their costs of having to pay for uninsured patients.

You don’t have to take my word for it.

Republican Speaker of the House Jason White, whose traditional expansion proposal is being considered at the Capitol: “We’re sending our dollars to the federal government. And it’s going to 40 other states to fund an expansion population of low-income workers.”

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, the most recent state leader to usher through expansion: “We were in the same situation in North Carolina for a long time, but Mississippians should know they’re propping up North Carolina’s and other states’ programs.”

Dr. Joe Thompson, the Arkansas surgeon general under Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee and Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe: “It’s important to note that the residents of Mississippi and the other holdout states have not been spared from paying for Medicaid expansion. They have been helping to fund it for over a decade through their federal tax dollars, but the money has been flowing into states like Arkansas and Louisiana instead of benefiting the working poor, hospitals, and economies of their home states.”

Today could be the final Tax Day that Mississippians are forced to burn their own cash without getting the return that we need and deserve. All it takes is the will to be honest about the situation and a couple votes from the Legislature.

The post Thank you, Mississippi taxpayers, for funding Medicaid expansion in 40 other states appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jerry Mitchell, a senior investigative reporter with Mississippi Today, is the winner of the 2024 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence in recognition of his body of work and lifelong commitment to investigative journalism.

The medal, administered by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, honors the life of investigative journalist I.F. Stone and is presented to a journalist or journalists whose work captures the spirit of journalistic independence, integrity and courage that characterized I.F. Stone’s Weekly, published from 1953 to 1971.

“I believe journalism is one of the world’s most noble professions, and I feel so honored and humbled to receive this award. God has truly blessed me, far beyond what I deserve,” Mitchell said.

In 2019, Mitchell co-founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which became part of Mississippi Today in 2023.

Over four decades, his stories have exposed injustices, corruption and abuse of power in the American South. His work has prompted prosecutions, important reforms of state agencies and firings of state board officials and helped lead to a woman being freed from Death Row.

His cold case investigations helped lead to convictions of Ku Klux Klansmen some of the nation’s notorious civil rights-era crimes. Those attacks include the 1963 assassination of Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers, the 1963 bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four girls and the 1964 slayings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner.

Despite death threats and the objections of readers opposed to his investigations, Mitchell has persevered in his reporting.

His work also led to the 2016 conviction of Felix Vail, the longest delayed conviction in a serial killer case in U.S. history. Vail, who authorities believe killed at least three women, was prosecuted nearly 54 years after he murdered his first wife.

In 2023, Mitchell and his colleagues produced “Unfettered Power: Mississippi Sheriffs,” a series co-reported by The New York Times and the MCIR at Mississippi Today. That reporting including the torture and sexual abuse of two Black men and a third white man by six now former Rankin County law enforcement officers, leading to their recent sentencings in state and federal court. A bill may soon arrive on the governor’s desk that would would expand oversight over the state’s law enforcement, allowing the state board that certifies officers to investigate and revoke the licenses of officers accused of misconduct, regardless of whether they are criminally charged.

In addition, MCIR’s prison project, produced in partnership with the ProPublica Local Reporting Network, led to a Justice Department investigation of serious problems inside Mississippi prisons, which is continuing.

“In every sense imaginable, Jerry has blazed a path for journalists to follow.,” said Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau. “He’s set the gold standard for society-changing, powerful local investigative journalism. I’m among the countless journalists who strive every day to have the impact he’s had on the world around him, and I’m fortunate to work with him and learn from him. This award is so very deserving.”

I.F. Stone Medal jury member Bernice Yeung said the work Mitchell and his colleagues produced on “Mississippi’s lawless and abusive law enforcement agencies is a powerful demonstration of how Jerry Mitchell’s hard-charging yet collaborative approach can help our industry find a way forward.”

Mitchell “has elevated and provided opportunities to the next generation of investigative reporters,” Yeung said.

Michael Riley, another selection committee juror, added, “I think the continued work coming from MCIR – and its collaboration with Mississippi Today – really does show the profound and ongoing influence Mitchell has had in Mississippi and nationally.”

Juror Jasimine Brown noted how MCIR has helped to “bolster local coverage and struggling newsrooms” by providing its work free to news outlets across the state, also a hallmark of Mississippi Today. 

“They have also established the MCIR Immersion Program, which works to train and inspire the next generation of investigative reporters,” Brown said.

Mitchell began his career in 1983 at the Sentinel-Record in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1986, he joined The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, and worked there as an investigative reporter for 32 years before co-founding the MCIR.

“Through his dogged and thoughtful reporting, Jerry Mitchell has not only brought accountability and change but inspired a new generation of reporters to pick up the mantle of investigative journalism, said Mitchell’s longtime editor Debbie Skipper, who has worked with him on his reporting projects since the 1990s and joined the Mississippi Today in October 2022 as the justice and special projects editor.

A Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006 and longtime member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, Mitchell has won dozens of the nation’s top journalism awards and received a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2009. In 1998, he was among four journalists honored at the Kennedy Center in Washington.

His memoir about his pursuit of civil rights cold cases, “Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era,” was published in 2020.

Mitchell will receive his medal during a ceremony at the Nieman Foundation in May. 

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April 14, 1952

Ralph Ellison’s only novel, “Invisible Man,” confronted many issues facing Black Americans and became the first by a Black author to win the National Book Award. 

Ellison told The Paris Review that Black history “is the most intimate part of American history. Through the very process of slavery came the building of the United States.” 

Born in Oklahoma City in 1914, Ellison’s father, who loved literature, died two years after he was born. Feeling they would have a better life in the North, the family moved to Gary, Indiana. 

Ellison applied twice to the Tuskegee Institute and was finally admitted when the orchestra lacked a trumpet player. While he studied music there, he wound up spending free time in the library, where he read James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” 

Before graduating, he moved to Harlem, hoping to study sculpture. Instead, he met author Richard Wright and wrote a book review for him. Wright encouraged him to write fiction, and he did, first with a story inspired by hopping trains to get to Tuskegee. He went on to write what Time magazine and others called one of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. 

The book begins: “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” 

A number of characters and dialogue in “Invisible Man” came from or were inspired by oral interviews he did for the Federal Writers’ Project during the Depression, including the line, “I’m in New York, but New York ain’t in me, understand what I mean?” 

Before “Invisible Man,” many books by Black authors aimed at protest, but Ellison aimed at broader themes and ideas. 

“Why is it,” he wrote in an essay, “that so many of those who would tell us the meaning of Negro life never bother to learn how varied it really is?” The novel inspired a memorial in Harlem

The post On this day in 1952 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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The Mississippi House’s proud proclamation earlier this session that they had voted to spend the most money in the history of the state on public education is no longer true.

Now the state Senate can make that boast — by a smidgen.

The Kindergarten through 12th grade appropriations bill approved last week by the Senate provides about $6 million more for local schools than the House proposed earlier this session. The Senate is proposing about $256 million more than the $3.08 billion being spent in state funds for the current year.

In the coming weeks, the House and Senate will have to reach an agreement on a budget for public education for the upcoming fiscal year that begins on July 1.

The escalation in spending on public education is being spurred, at least in part, by the ongoing dispute between the two chambers on whether to rewrite the long-standing Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides state funds for the basic operation of schools.

House leaders, some of whom historically have opposed MAEP because they said it provided too much money for public education, are trying desperately this session to replace it.

The Senate, on the other hand, has proposed tweaks to the MAEP and has agreed to study the issue of the funding formula after the 2024 session ends in May with the intent of replacing or making changes to MAEP in the 2025 session.

House Speaker Jason White, R-West, does not want to wait until next year. In an effort to entice support for his plan this session, the House proposed and touted record K-12 spending if legislators would agree to eliminate MAEP.

Instead, the Senate chose to place even more money into public education but place the money in the current MAEP funding formula. The Senate proposal also includes $50 million for a teacher pay raise ($1,000 per teacher) that is incorporated into MAEP.

On the surface, the oneupmanship on education spending is good for the schools, teachers and students. After all, it could lead to more funds for education.

But supporters of the House plan to rewrite the MAEP say the only way they will agree to that record spending is to replace the MAEP.

White seems to be saying education will not get any additional money unless MAEP is rewritten.

“I have clearly communicated with Senate leadership the House position that we have funded MAEP for the last time,” White said in a statement.

Of course, even though the House leadership does not like the MAEP funding formula, it is still the law of the land and the primary vehicle to send state funds to school districts. The bulk of funds local school districts receive and have received since at least 2003 comes through the MAEP funding formula.

Theoretically, the Legislature could send all the funds to the local school districts outside of the MAEP formula. The funds could be sent to the schools based on some version of their enrollment.

Of course, under that scenario, wealthy districts would benefit greatly. MAEP sends more state funds to poor districts that have less funds to contribute toward their schools.

The House has contended that the intent of their funding formulas is to provide even more funds than MAEP to poor school districts.

There is legitimate debate on whether the House plan accomplishes that goal. But assuming it does, it is still not the law.

So, if House leaders insisted on sending the funds to the local school districts outside of the MAEP formula, they would be doing what they say they oppose — providing even more money to wealthy school districts at the expense of poor districts.

And, of course, if they do not appropriate any funds for education, well, that can’t be very good for school children.

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