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Whether Mississippi can limit impromptu citizen protests around state-owned buildings rests with a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit challenging how a state-run police and court in Jackson operates.

Senate Bill 2343, passed in the 2023 legislative session, became law in July. It calls for prior written approval for public demonstrations on a street or sidewalk at the Capitol or state-owned buildings or one where a state agency operates by the public safety commissioner or the chief of the Capitol Police, which falls under his agency. 

At an Aug. 8 meeting, Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said the agency is considering the First Amendment as it drafts regulations, and it wants to balance a right to speech with public safety. An agency spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. 

Critics of SB 2343 say the law would limit the right to protest that is founded in the First Amendment, and it could have a chilling effect on speech because of potential consequences, such as arrest, conviction in the soon-to be operating Capitol Complex Improvement District court and possible time served for a misdemeanor at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility rather than a county jail. 

“It’s the law itself where the problem lies,” said Frank Rosenblatt, a Mississippi College School of Law associate professor who teaches classes about constitutional law and the First Amendment. 

In First Amendment law, speech regulations in a traditional public forum, such as sidewalks and public streets outside state-owned buildings, typically need to meet several requirements: They are content neutral, are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and leave open alternatives for speech. 

Rosenblatt doesn’t believe the court will be satisfied with the Department of Public Safety’s “blanket explanation” of public safety as a reason to restrict speech. 

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate granted a preliminary injunction of SB 2343 last year in an ongoing lawsuit that consolidated a challenge of the law with a suit challenging House Bill 1020, which established the CCID court and directed state officials to make judicial and prosecutor appointments to the court. 

Because a preliminary injunction of SB 2343 is still in effect, DPS currently cannot enforce any regulations it adopts stemming from the law. 

Under the Mississippi Administrative Procedures Act, a public meeting about any state agency’s proposed regulations can be held if at least 10 members of the public request one in writing. 

This threshold was met for the regulations DPS is drafting for SB 2343, leading to the Aug. 8 meeting at the Capitol. 

Rosenblatt and one of his law students, Ren Allen, spoke during the public comment section and said they were seeking clarity about how the agency is writing the regulations, including how it would consider the First Amendment, how it defines public safety and wellbeing. 

“I don’t have a lot of faith that this proceeding changed anyone’s mind at DPS about moving forward with the regulation implementation,” said Allen, who is in her final year of law school. “I hope I’m wrong and I hope that they heard the arguments and heard from their citizens.” 

Draft regulations posted on the state’s administrative bulletin refer to a number of types of demonstrations including parades, athletics, block parties, festivals and other special events where there is expected to be 25 or more people who could be reasonably expected to block entrance and exit from any state building. 

Requests for approval would need to be submitted at least 30 days before the event date, according to the draft regulations. 

Approval or denial of a request would take place no longer than 10 days after receipt for events with a pre-established route. Action on special events would be taken no longer than four days after a request for approval. Written notification would be provided of the request’s outcome, including reasons for conditional approval or denial, according to the draft regulations. 

In recent years, a number of demonstrations have taken place at the Capitol and other state buildings, including demonstrations about Jackson’s water system issues that passed by the Governor’s Mansion, protests of the U.S. Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade and gatherings by residents and public officials to speak out against legislation. 

A proposed 30-day minimum of notice can limit people’s ability to protest about current events, Rosenblatt said. 

“All of those things would be off limits for people to speak about,” he said. 

The post Does Mississippi’s new state law restrict citizens’ right to protest? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

This year, statewide proficiency scores in English increased for a third consecutive year since the pandemic. While there may be a miraculous quality to the progress being made, educators will tell you that there is nothing supernatural about the improvements. 

Here’s what educators and administrators in the state’s top districts for English proficiency say fuels improvements.

Emphasis on K-3 learning 

Mississippi has completed 10 school years with the “third grade gate” in place. The most recent third grade English Language Arts  proficiency results, released on Aug. 15 show 57.7% of students scoring proficient or advanced. In 2016, that number was 32.1%.

The work doesn’t start in third grade — the K-3 window has become a focal point for educators, a critical time when kids are expected to move from recognition of sounds and symbols to effective reading and comprehension.

In the Rankin County School District, emphasis on phonics has led to improvements. All K-3 teachers in the RCSD are trained in Phonics First.

“We found that our students’ ability to write and think had been hindered,” said Melissa McCray, director of elementary curriculum, instruction and professional development for the district. “We had to go back and clean up all of those foundational pieces. We’ve done that, and we’ve seen really good gains in our lower grade students, as well as in our upper grades.” 

For the past three school years, RCSD has exceeded pre-pandemic performance levels, with 87.8% of third graders in 2024 passing the third grade reading assessment.

Kelleigh Broussard is assistant superintendent and executive director of curriculum and instruction for Long Beach School District, where the same improvements can be observed. She emphasized the importance of helping students build a strong foundation early. 

“This all comes down to students being able to read, and read well,” she said. “And this is not an endeavor that unfolds in high school. I mean, ultimately, the end of course assessment in English II should be the culmination of 10 years of education in the public school setting.”

The Literacy Based Promotions Act, passed in 2013 and amended in 2016, set out guidelines meant to improve the way students were taught in grades K-3, grounded in the science of reading, through structured literacy — changes Broussard, a longtime educator, believes the entire state will benefit from in the long run. 

Retaining and Supporting Teachers 

The majority of school districts in Mississippi are facing critical teacher shortages — in Mississippi and across the country, teachers are hard to find and hard to keep. 

“The teacher shortage is real. We have many open positions, even now with school starting tomorrow,” Jenny Webber, instructional specialist and testing coordinator for Harrison County School District, said in a July 31 interview. “But in Harrison County, we support our teachers in everything we do.”

Support looks different from district to district, but all agree it is an essential part of attracting and retaining teachers. Many districts foster a symbiosis between new teachers and experienced ones, where experienced teachers, formally or otherwise, are invited to share their expertise with newer teachers.

Financial incentives also go a long way. Oxford School District, for example, pays teachers $3,000 for being National Board Certified, on top of the $6,000 the state offers teachers with those credentials. 

According to the Learning Policy Institute, teaching experience is, on average, positively associated with student achievement gains. 

“If I’m an experienced teacher, I’m better able to predict the rhythms of the school year and know how to navigate those a little better,” said Andy Scoggin, superintendent for the Clinton Public School District, which is consistently among the best schools in the state for ELA performance. “Not only have I had some experience with curriculum and instruction and assessment, but I’m also better able to predict the ups and downs.”

Though the contributing factors are nuanced, Mississippi’s best performing districts tend have a high percentage of experienced teachers. 

Data-Informed Decision Making

From the district level to the classroom level, there is a robust amount of student data available that educators use to track both student and institutional progress. 

“Our schools are taking the data of their incoming students and saying, ‘All right. This is where they are, here’s where we need them to be.  What are the things we’re going to put in place to make sure they’re successful?’” Schoggin said. 

According to Schoggin and Tamika Billings, the district’s first director of student assessment and student services, teachers in the district participate in professional learning communities outside of regular school hours, to review student data and collaboratively develop plans for improvement. As the data changes and the students progress, needs shift and so do the strategies. 

“Just like a doctor will give everyone a different prescription, you have to be able to prescribe your students differently because they learn differently. And a lot of our teachers do that. And that is the proof in the pudding,” Billings said. 

Calculated use of this data can go a long way in improving both instruction and student outcomes, according to educators. This information is also essential in helping districts identify and address inequities. 

Rankin County School District’s switch from balanced literacy to structured literacy was informed, in part, by data showing that not all students’ needs were being met. Though both are theories about how to teach kids to read, experts say balanced literacy works for some kids and structured literacy, while necessary for some students, works for all kids. 

“We did over 20 years of balanced literacy in our district and had success, but knew we were not really getting all of our students and not targeting all of their needs,” Angy Graham, RCSD executive director of academics. “If we looked at some of our subgroup data, we were missing some (kids) and that’s not right. That’s not what we’re in the business of doing. We need to educate all of our students.”

Redefining ready

What does it mean to be ready? 

One way that school districts are improving student outcomes is through re-evaluating what it means for kids to be prepared. In many cases, this looks like building a students’ world knowledge — giving them context that not only helps them on state tests, but in life. 

“Prior to this body of work, I thought I understood what that meant. But we’ve had to really dig in and understand what it means to bring world knowledge — we’ve got kids in our own communities who have never left McLaurin,” said Graham. 

Jessica Hodges, who is also on the RCSD curriculum staff, recalled taking a group of middle schoolers to a restaurant and teaching one student how to order. 

“That was eye opening to me, to see your child look at me and say, ‘I don’t know what to do. What do I do in a restaurant?’ I think that was a changing point for me,” Hodges said.

The Oxford School District has kicked this notion into high gear, developing its own accountability model, Redefining Ready: Pre-K to Professional, that educators in the district track from elementary school all the way to graduation. 

The model includes indicators, which if fulfilled, let elementary, middle and high school age students know they’re on the way to being academically ready, career ready and life ready. For example, high school students are encouraged to meet citizenship indicators like registering to vote and completing personal financial literacy coursework to progress toward being life ready. 

“As educators in school districts in Mississippi, if our end goal is to only get them across the stage and to graduate, or pass and be proficient on the state assessment, then our vision is short-sighted for our children in our state,” Roberson said.

Leveling the playing field

Even as overall proficiency rates improve, achievement gaps and inequities persist at all levels, across all districts. 

Research seems to suggest that addressing achievement gaps early can go a long way. A big part of the state’s work to address this issue is Early Learning Collaboratives, or programs that give students access to state-funded Pre-K. There are 37 ELCs statewide.

“Across demographic lines, students who come from any home in which there is not an exposure to robust vocabulary or reading at home are going to enter school with fewer words in their word bank. So, what we’re doing is honing in on early intervention,” said Long Beach’s Broussard.

The Long Beach School District works in conjunction with the local Head Start program to find and identify students who may benefit from starting school as early as possible. 

“A lot of kids don’t have access to Pre-K or daycare because of being impoverished. But when you have something such as an ELC or if you partner with Head Start, you’re making more and more seats available to students who would otherwise not be able to be in the Pre-K setting. As each year goes by, the goal is to expand that opportunity to more and more students,” Broussard said. 

In the Harrison County School District, teachers often find themselves going the extra mile — literally — to ensure that students are getting the support that they need. 

“Some of our campuses offer after-school tutoring. We have some students who live far away from the campuses, so their parents can’t get them there. So, we’ve had some campuses go to neighborhoods to provide after-school tutoring,” Webber said. “The teachers drive to community centers and provide tutoring there.”

In some cases, educators described addressing inequity in ways that go beyond the textbooks, like providing kids with clean clothes and meals.

“I had someone tell me many many years ago that public education, when implemented with fidelity, was the greatest of social equalizers. And I believe that wholeheartedly,” Broussard said. “That’s how we’re going to disrupt perpetuation of generational poverty. That’s how we change that — it’s through education. And we all need to get swimming in the same direction.”

The post Five ways Mississippi educators are fueling state’s English language arts gains appeared first on Mississippi Today.

JXN Water, the federally appointed manager of the capital city’s water system, is working to boost the revenue it collects through water bills. Its goal is to establish enough revenue so that the city won’t be reliant on federal funds, in addition to having the money the city needs to pay for sewer repairs.

Last year, JXN Water set up a new rate structure, which started showing up in residents’ bill this past February. The changes include an increased price for the average rate-payer, and a SNAP discount that has struggled to get traction due to a dispute over recipients’ privacy (a federal judge ordered the release of SNAP data in April, although the U.S. Department of Agriculture is appealing the decision). The utility is also in the process of replacing the city’s infamously unreliable water meters.

To get more people paying bills, JXN Water has also started to show its teeth, disconnecting service to customers who aren’t making payments. So far, manager Ted Henifin told Mississippi Today, the utility has prioritized disconnecting places that get water without accounts, as well as multi-family homes with large outstanding debts.

Given the history of Jackson’s water system, we want to know how residents are responding to the recent changes. How are residents handling the new prices? What are their experiences with being disconnected, especially when their landlord is the one responsible for making payments?

If you live in Jackson, please take a few minutes to fill out the survey below:

The post Tell us about paying your water bill in Jackson appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The company that operates a Hattiesburg poultry plant where a 16-year-old employee died last year while cleaning a machine has settled with the federal agency tasked with worker safety. 

Mar-Jac Poultry agreed to pay nearly $165,000 in fines and implement safety measures to protect employees from well-known machine hazards, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Wednesday. 

The night of July 14, 2023, Duvan Perez was cleaning a deboning machine at the plant when the machine turned on and pulled him in, Occupational Safety and Health Administration found in its investigation of the incident. 

“Tragically, a teenage boy died needlessly before Mar-Jac Poultry took required steps to protect its workers,” OSHA Regional Administrator Kurt Petermeyer said in a statement. “ …  Enhanced supervision and increased training can go a long way toward minimizing risks faced by workers in meat processing facilities.”

In addition to addressing the violations, the company must implement several enhancements relating to the use of lockout/tagout standards, which are procedures to shut down equipment before maintenance and other activities are performed. The enhancements include training, a risk and hazard assessment of current procedures and monthly audits for its use on the sanitation shift for a year. 

Earlier this year, OSHA cited Mar-Jac for 17 violations relating to Perez’s death, with 14 classified as serious and proposed over $212,000 in penalties. Records also show the company issued at least eight citations at the Hattiesburg plant between 2020 and 2021 – incidents that included deaths, amputations and other injuries. 

“Mar-Jac was aware of these safety problems for years and had been warned and fined by OSHA, yet did nothing. Hopefully, Mar-Jac will follow through this time so that no other worker is killed in such a senseless manner,” Biloxi attorney Jim Reeves, who represents Perez’s family,  said in a Friday statement. 

Perez’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Mar-Jac, agency Onin Staffing and others in February. As of Friday, that case is ongoing in the Forrest County Circuit Court. 

Federal child labor laws prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from working in meat processing plants because of the dangerous machinery. 

Mar-Jac and other defendants, such as the staffing agency that placed Perez at the plant, denied the allegations of the lawsuit. 

In a statement released shortly after the teenager’s death, Mar-Jac said staffing companies are responsible for verifying employee’s age and identification. Additionally, an attorney for Mar-Jac told NBC News last year that the teenager used identification of a 32-year-old man to get the job. 

Perez’s case was also highlighted in the NBC documentary about child labor in slaughterhouses. 

The post Mar-Jac settles with OSHA over teen worker’s death appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The University of Mississippi plans to shutter its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement following a yearlong internal review, the chancellor announced in a campus-wide email Friday.

In its place, the state’s flagship university will create a Division of Access, Opportunity and Community Engagement to redouble its efforts to help more students attend and graduate college amid the looming enrollment cliff facing Mississippi’s institutions of higher learning.

“We are steadfast in our commitment to the transformative power of higher education, and now is the time to prioritize our efforts to broaden access to higher education,” Chancellor Glenn Boyce wrote in the campus-wide email. “However, access alone is not enough. We must be committed to providing opportunities that cultivate academic attainment which leads to meaningful lives and careers.”

The changes come without a ban in Mississippi, as has occurred elsewhere, on state spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and just three years after the university announced an ambitious plan for diversity on campus called “Pathways to Equity.”

In higher education, DEI traditionally refers to a range of administrative efforts to comply with civil rights laws and foster a sense of on-campus belonging among those populations. But in Mississippi and across the country, some Republicans and influential conservative think tanks have argued that DEI is more nefarious.

In particular, State Auditor Shad White has repeatedly warned about what he sees as the dangers of DEI in speeches, interviews and on social media.

“We’re glad universities are responding to public pressure to end these controversial, racist programs,” White’s communications director, Jacob Walters, wrote in a text message. “But a university saying they’re doing this is like Mississippi Today saying they’re a legitimate news organization; just because you say it doesn’t mean it’s true. We’ll continue to keep Mississippi taxpayers informed on whether their money is spent on controversial programming.”

Boyce’s statement did not make reference to potential anti-DEI legislation in Mississippi. A bill that would have done so died in committee this past session.

Most universities across Mississippi have already implemented changes to their diversity offices, Mississippi Today reported earlier this month.

But unlike its counterparts, Ole Miss says it will submit its proposal to the governing board of all eight universities in Mississippi, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees.

Neither the University of Southern Mississippi nor Mississippi State University submitted the changes made to their diversity offices to IHL.

“We did not have to seek IHL for the change, as it was simply a change in the office name,” Nicole Ruhnke, USM’s chief communications officer, wrote in an email.

Mississippi State University did not request approval from IHL for its internal reorganization of the Division of Access, Opportunity and Success because it typically only submits name changes for academic units or the naming of colleges in honor of major donors, according to an email from the university’s vice president for strategic communications.

“That said, our leadership maintains a robust dialogue with IHL’s leadership on almost all matters,” Sid Salter wrote in an email.

At Ole Miss, the new division will oversee three areas, according to Boyce’s email and a press release that he linked to: “Access and Community Engagement,” “Access and Opportunity” and “Access and Compliance.”

Several university offices and functions will be brought under its aegis, including Equal Opportunity and Regulatory Compliance, Student Disability Services, Digital Accessibility, the Bonner Leaders Program and Ole Miss Opportunity, which is a last-dollar scholarship for low-income students from Mississippi.

“The mission for our division will enable us to better address the unique needs of our community and ensure that every individual has the support they need to thrive,” the division’s vice chancellor, Shawnboda Mead, said in the release. “This will enhance pathways for success, opportunity and achievement.”

The press release also mentioned the statewide Ascent to 55% initiative, which seeks to grow the number of Mississippians with a college degree or equivalent credential.

A major challenge for this initiative is the enrollment cliff facing Mississippi, a trend in which the state will have less high school graduates going to college. The press release notes that from the 2017 to 2022 school years, the number of Mississippians graduating from high school and attending college in-state dropped by nearly 7%.

This has partly fueled enrollment declines at universities across Mississippi, particularly at the regional institutions like Delta State University and Mississippi University for Women.

But not so much at Ole Miss. Though the university’s enrollment has stayed roughly the same since 2014, it has recently seen a record-sized freshmen class, largely due to increasing enrollment of mostly white, out-of-state students, according to IHL data.

In his email, Boyce thanked members of the campus community who contributed to a yearlong organizational and program review of the division. It’s not clear who he consulted.

“I appreciate the members of our campus community who provided invaluable feedback and guidance,” Boyce wrote.

The post Ole Miss to close diversity division appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Getting the Memo appeared first on Mississippi Today.

William Bradford Huie believed Carolyn Bryant lied when she testified that Emmett Till attacked her, but the author still published her fabrication, a long-secret memo reveals.

Huie’s reporting in his 1956 Look magazine article has been denounced for twisting and omitting critical facts, but this memo, for the first time, proves the writer purposely published falsehoods that became the official narrative for Till’s 1955 slaying for decades.

Wright Thompson, author of a new book about the Till case, “The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi,” called the memo “a smoking gun” that reveals “a long suspected but never quite proveable truth about Huie.”

While national debate rages over critical race theory, this memo shows “how hard it is to teach Black history, because part of white supremacy is lying about the past,” said Dave Tell, author of “Remembering Emmett Till.”

Thirty-three pages of “confidential” notes, labeled for destruction, show how Huie convinced Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his brother, J.W. Milam, to talk after an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted them. In return for telling how they murdered Till, the writer slipped them thousands in cash, refused to testify against them, repeated their lies and erased the Black witnesses who identified others in the lynch mob.

Keith Beauchamp, a producer for the 2022 “Till” film, whose 2005 documentary “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” helped reopen the Till case — said Huie was far more passionate about making a movie than he was about telling the truth.

“I am ‘hot’ in Hollywood right now,” Huie bragged to an editor. “This Mississippi story, with proper releases, is a good bet for $100,000,” the modern-day equivalent of more than $1.1 million.

Sharing a “secret 15%” with the killers is “a damn good way for Milam and Bryant to make crime pay,” he wrote.

The lies that Huie published enabled the killers to justify their torture and killing of a 14-year-old boy, said Davis Houck, Fannie Lou Hamer Professor of Rhetorical Studies at Florida State University, where the memo, along with letters, are part of a new donation to The Emmett Till Archives at Florida State University Libraries. “Huie did generational damage to Mississippi and the nation by making Emmett Till an avatar for hate.”

Carolyn Bryant’s testimony ‘fabricated,’ Huie writes

On July 25, 1955, Emmett Till turned 14. When he had spare time, he liked playing baseball, but most of all, he loved humor.

“He would pay people to tell him jokes,” said his cousin, Wheeler Parker. “He was strictly fun.”

Weeks later, Till’s great-uncle, Moses Wright, visited Chicago and invited Till and Parker to come vacation with him in Mississippi for a couple of weeks before school started.

Till’s mother, Mamie, gave him permission, and he fished, swam and picked cotton with his cousins in the Mississippi Delta.

On a Wednesday evening, Aug. 24, 1955, he and his cousins visited Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money. Parker bought an ice cream cone and went outside to finish it. Till stayed inside.

Roy Bryant told Huie that Till entered the store and said “yeah” instead of “yes.”

“The atmosphere in the store tensed,” Huie wrote in his memo. “Carolyn Bryant noted the ‘insult’ and became excited.”

When two other Black youths urged him to leave, Roy quoted Till as saying that he knew white women.

“Frightened, Carolyn Bryant hurried to get the pistol,” Huie wrote. “The Chicago youth ‘leered at her’ and whistled.”

Bryant’s getting the gun frightened the cousins, Parker said, and they sped away in Wright’s 1946 Ford. None of them, he said, had seen Till do anything inappropriate in the store.

After her husband’s arrest, Carolyn Bryant told defense lawyer Sidney Carlton that Till had bought bubble gum, grabbed her hand and asked for a date, according to Carlton’s notes, contained in Huie’s papers at Ohio State University Libraries.

When she pulled her hand away, she said Till asked, “What’s the matter, baby, can’t you take it?”

She said he also said goodbye and whistled at her, according to the lawyer’s notes.

Days before jury selection began in the September 1955 trial, Carlton announced to the press a much different story: Till had “mauled” her. The story ran in Mississippi newspapers and spread to those who wound up serving as jurors, according to interviews with them.

Carolyn Bryant claimed Till had “mauled” her, and she echoed that claim in her testimony. She depicted Till as a predator, grabbing her by the waist and refusing to let go. She claimed he told her that she didn’t need to be afraid because he had “f—ed” white women.

Huie wrote in his memo, “There appears no doubt that much of Mrs. Bryant’s testimony regarding physical contact with the Negro youth or alleged ‘obscene remarks’ was fabricated — probably at the suggestion of one of the lawyers.”

A day later, the killers changed their story, claiming Till attacked her and used obscene language. Huie published it without question.

Parker said he has spent a lifetime defending his cousin from Huie’s slander and many others who read his article and believed that Till had done something wrong.

“They had us ashamed to talk about it, he was denigrated so badly,” Parker said. “Like his mother said, people swallowed it [Huie’s article] hook, line and sinker.”

He continues to combat those lies, he said. “When I tell the story, they say it’s alleged. Not much credence is given to those involved.”

The Look article’s lies about her son wounded Mamie Till-Mobley, said Christopher Benson, co-author of her memoir, “Death of Innocence.”

Huie’s article turned Till into a “Black brute” and Milam into a decorated war hero, duty bound to punish this “uppity intruder,” he said. 

The article so upset Till-Mobley that she sued Huie and the magazine. 

The lawsuit failed in the end, Benson said, because the person who had been defamed, Emmett Till, was dead.

‘God, just let me live’

On Saturday evening, Aug. 27, 1955, Till joined his cousins on a trip to town, and on the way back, Parker said the driver accidentally ran over a dog.

“Emmett started crying,” he said. “That was the kind of person he was.”

They arrived home close to midnight, and after 2 a.m., the two half-brothers appeared at Moses “Preacher” Wright’s home, where Till was staying.

Roy Bryant pounded on the door and called out, “Preacher, it’s Mr. Bryant. Let me in.”

When Wright opened the door, the white men dashed in.

Parker, who was 16, woke to angry voices. A man with a pistol and flashlight came down the hall, and Parker readied for his life to end. He closed his eyes and prayed, “God, just let me live.”

The men walked by, and he heard them say they wanted “the fat boy from Chicago who did the talking,” he recalled.

Houck said the killers’ choice of words makes it obvious that Till never “mauled” Carolyn Bryant, or they would have said that.

Milam told Huie that he yanked the covers off Till and “ordered him to get the hell up and get his clothes on.”

When Wright’s wife, Elizabeth, objected, Milam said he replied, “Get your ass back there in bed and shut up — and I mean get in the goddamn bed!”

Huie wrote that she told him there was a third white man there that night. She identified him as Milam’s brother-in-law from Minter City. That was Melvin Campbell, whom the FBI concluded was part of the lynch mob, said Dale Killinger, the FBI agent who investigated the Till case in 2006.

But when Huie wrote the piece, he erased Campbell.

Before the killers left his home, Moses Wright testified that Milam told him, “If this is not the right boy, then we are going to bring him back.”

“Did Mr. Bryant or Mr. Milam ever bring him back?” the prosecutor asked.

“No, sir,” Wright replied.

Milam asked him how old he was.

“Sixty-four,” Wright replied.

Milam warned him that if he identified them, “you will never live to get to be 65.”

Wright said he heard one of the men ask someone inside the truck “if this was the boy” and that he heard that someone reply, “Yes.”

Huie erased the preacher’s testimony, too.

At the murder trial, Leflore County Sheriff George Smith testified that Roy Bryant said he and Milam abducted Till, but turned the youth loose after they brought him to Bryant’s Grocery and found out “he wasn’t the right one.”

But when the killers talked to Huie, they changed their story.

“Are you the Chicago sonofabitch that whistled at that white woman?” Milam said he asked Till.

“Yeah,” Till was quoted as replying, “what’re you gonna do about it? I’m as good as you are.”

The brothers told Huie that if Till had denied it, they would have taken Till back to Carolyn Bryant. “Hell, he didn’t deny it,” Milam told Huie. “We had the right n—-. He admitted it, so we didn’t need to go by the store.”

The memo shows Huie never questioned them about this change, which concealed the role that Carolyn Bryant played.

Dale Killinger, the FBI agent who investigated the Till case in 2006, said he has long believed that she did identify Till, who was then tortured and killed.

In her original statement to defense lawyers, “Carolyn Bryant stated that Emmett was brought to her,” he said. “This is the same information that, in 2005, she admitted to, saying that Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam and Elmer Kimbell brought Emmett to her at the store in Money in the middle of the night.”

Huie erased Carolyn Bryant from the story.

Till’s unafraid demeanor ‘nothing more than a myth’

Even Huie recognized the ridiculousness in the next part of the killers’ story. 

“Here is the most incredible portion of the story,” Huie wrote in his memo. “Milam and [Roy] Bryant insist — and apparently they are truthful — that no one else was with them; that the two of them sat in the cab; that they did not tie the youth; that they did nothing more than menace him with their pistols; yet he remained ‘impudent’ and ‘full of fight’ all during the subsequent five-hour ordeal of driving around and whipping — and he never once tried to run!”

The killers told Huie they drove around in the dark, looking for a cliff 80 miles away where they hoped to “scare” Till. They listed the multitude of Delta towns they traveled through before abandoning their search.

Huie never questioned them, and he never retraced their trip. If he had, he would have concluded, like the FBI did, that covering such a distance was impossible. (Later, Roy Bryant admitted to a relative that this was all a lie.)

The killers insisted that Till stayed the entire time in the back of the pickup, despite no one holding him there. “He wasn’t afraid of them!” Huie wrote in Look. “He was tough as they were. He didn’t think they had the guts to kill him.”

Tell said Huie had to concoct an “unafraid Till” to get the magazine to publish his article. “Had Till been scared, Huie’s narrative would have required extra men to guard him in the back of the truck,” he said. “But with the extra men, Look would not publish the story.”

Huie’s claim “absolved Huie of the need to secure signatures he could not obtain and cleared the way for Look to publish the story,” Tell said.

Huie had evidence that Till had fears. Huie wrote that Moses Wright’s wife, Elizabeth, told him that Till “was scared when they drove away from the store [on Aug. 24]. He wanted to go home.”

Tell said the “stoic, unafraid Till” is nothing but a myth created by the white establishment to write the guilty men out of the story and foster the false impression that Mississippi tried everyone responsible.

The truth is that a mob of killers brutalized this kidnapped youth inside a dark barn before shooting him, Tell said. “He was terrified.” 

Huie downplayed the terror that the 14-year-old endured, he said. “Till’s unafraid demeanor is nothing more than a myth, a political creation designed to sanitize our memory of the night Till was killed.”

Erasing witnesses

Not long after the sun rose the next morning, Willie Reed was walking across a plantation near Drew. He testified at trial that he saw four white men in the cab of a 1955 Chevy pickup with three Black men holding “a black boy” in the back of the truck.

Reed also testified that he heard “a whole lot of licks” in the barn and someone hollering, “Oh.” He also saw Milam emerge from the barn and get a drink of water.

Mary Bradley saw a truck with four white men, and Reed’s grandfather, Add, identified Milam’s brother, Leslie, with the men.

None of that testimony appeared in the Look article, and Huie moved the beating of Till from a Drew plantation that Milam’s brother ran to Milam’s shed in Glendora, more than a half hour away.

“Huie can’t write the story he wants to write,” Houck said, “unless he eliminates Willie Reed and the other Black witnesses from the story.”

Blood money

Huie first heard about the Till trial while he was sitting on the set of a Hollywood film adapting another one of his books.

Less than two weeks after the killers’ acquittal, Huie sat in the law office of Breland & Whitten in Sumner, talking to the defense lawyers about a magazine article, a book and a possible film based on the Till case, the memo shows.

“From the moment he strode in with his proposal,” said Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement”, “personal gain was all he really cared about.”

Huie promised to protect the killers by refusing to testify against them if a grand jury indicted them for kidnapping, and he vowed to keep secret “any others who might have been involved in the abduction-and-slaying.”

In return for their story, Huie offered the killers a percentage of the net profits he would realize. They would get 15% (later raised to 20%), and the attorneys would get 10%. (Huie would later pay the killers $3,150 and the lawyers $1,260.)

In an interview with the “Eyes on the Prize” documentary, Huie quoted himself as explaining that killers “must tell me the truth, they must give me ways so that in the daytime I can go out and verify that they’re telling me the truth. And if I find them telling me a lie, I won’t pay them a damn thing.”

Huie paid them, and he published their falsehoods, Houck said. “Without their carefully concocted lies, which we now know were embellished by Huie, he had no ‘shocking’ story — and the white South did not have a villain in Emmett Till. Without those two things, no money-making journalism and books would be published, and no blockbuster films would be made.”

Huie’s  ‘primary motive’ was money

While many sang hymns at nearby churches in Sumner on Sunday morning, Oct. 23, 1955, Huie listened to the two brothers describe how they kidnapped and killed Till, used barbed wire to tie a heavy fan around his neck and dumped his body into a river. Milam even pulled out his Colt .45 and demonstrated how he pistol-whipped Till before shooting him.

Days before the meeting, Huie told his editor at Look, “There are four men in the abduction-torture-and-murder party. I know all four of them.”

But the two brothers — whose relatives also participated in the killing, according to the FBI — told Huie they did it all by themselves.

When the writer mentioned the Black witnesses identifying additional members of the lynch mob, Milam replied, “Them crazy n—–s didn’t know what they were talking about.”

Roy Bryant objected to his wife signing a release, according to the memo.

Huie responded that she was a part of the story and that the “‘insult’ to her was the motive for the killing.”

“You gonna picture her as some slut?” Roy asked.

Huie vowed to tell the truth.

And that was just the start of the lies the killers told Huie, said Dale Killinger, the FBI agent who reinvestigated the Till case in 2006.

They lied about where they drove Till after abducting him, where they tortured him, where they shot him, where they got the gin fan and where they dumped his body, he said.

These falsehoods, knowingly promoted by Huie, kept the focus on Bryant and Milam as the killers, concealed the others involved and concealed the fact they brought Till to Carolyn Bryant, Killinger said. As a result, he said, many Americans question what happened to Till, “even questioning the fact he was murdered, despite the killers’ admissions.”

Milam claimed Till told him, “He was [as] good as I was, that he had f—– white women, and that his grandmother was a white woman.”

Parker, who grew up with Till, said the killers’ claim that his cousin had sex was ridiculous. “He was barely 14,” he said.

Anderson said Till’s grandmother wasn’t white.

Instead of calling out the killers for justifying their murder of a 14-year-old, the writer paid them and published their lies as truth, Anderson said. “This all goes to show that Huie’s primary motive was to make money off of this story.”

An inventory of lies

Shortly before his Look article appeared in January 1956, Huie began to wonder if he had been bamboozled by the killers.

After traveling to Chicago and hearing Willie Reed’s story about hearing Till’s beating in the barn, Huie began to doubt himself. 

“I began doubting myself and one night I was {at} the point of coming back to Mississippi and ‘pistol-whipping’ Milam for telling me a fabric of lies,” he wrote defense lawyer John Whitten Jr. “Lord help me if Milam lied to me!”

Huie’s secret memo and his letters to Whitten were contained in an envelope that Whitten marked first with “M&B” for Milam and Bryant and then “Destroy.”

They never were, and now Whitten’s family has donated them to Florida State’s Emmett Till Archives.

“It seems it was more important to him to preserve it than destroy it,” said Whitten’s granddaughter, Ellen. “That is why we preserved it, and that is why we donated it.”

Despite criticism from Till’s mother and others, the Look article went largely unchallenged in the mainstream press until Killinger investigated for the FBI in 2006 and determined that most of Huie’s “facts” were actually fabrications.

But Huie’s article “has proved almost impossible to kill,” said Thompson, whose new book centers on the barn where Till was brutally beaten and shot. “Even today, when Washington D.C., politicians and staffers come to learn about Till, they are often still told details from the Look magazine article — details that Huie simply invented or was too gullible to see for what they were.”

He pointed to organizations such as the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley Institute as among those seeking to tell the truth about what happened.

Katie McCormick, Florida State’s associate dean of libraries for Special Collections & Archives, said Mamie Till-Mobley’s story was “rejected by publisher after publisher” at the same time that Huie’s story became “the defining framework for decades.”

In the end, “Huie and the killers stole the story of Emmett Till from his mother and family,” she said.

This latest donation documents “the fabrication of lies,” she said. “We hope the archival collections can contribute to the preservation of truth and support educational efforts in the spirit of Mamie Till-Mobley.”

The post The writer and killers ‘stole the story of Emmett Till from his mother and family’ appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Delta State University’s governing board approved more budget cuts at its regular meeting Thursday — this time, at the administrative level. 

The regional university in the Mississippi Delta now has three colleges instead of four as part of its quest for financial sustainability under the current president, Daniel Ennis. 

This has resulted in the loss of four chairs and two less deans, the administrators that lead the colleges. A dean of graduate education was also eliminated even though that position did not oversee a college. The changes also led to two fewer positions at the vice presidential level, but Ennis created a new one to oversee enrollment management — something the university in Cleveland has struggled for years to fix.

“It didn’t make sense to stick with the same administrative structure” after the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees approved the university’s programs cuts earlier this summer, Ennis said. “What we did today was implicit in their approval of the cuts … but still you have to go through the steps and get the final approval.”

It’s all in an effort to reduce $750,000 a year in administrative level spending as part of Ennis’ master plan for the university’s budget that he unveiled at a town hall in May.

In an email, a university spokesperson did not answer how much in savings the university netted with these administrative cuts but it is expected to align with Ennis’ goal.

“The administrative changes approved by the IHL Board of Trustees represent a key step toward better fiscal health for the University,” Christy Riddle wrote, “and we anticipate we will see a reduction in overall administrative costs that aligns with our stated goal.”

The move brings the university one step closer to finalizing faculty layoffs. Before that can happen, Ennis said, faculty will have to sign off on the new degree programs, and IHL will approve them.

“I could probably figure out the number of faculty (to be laid off) now if everything we pose to the faculty passes,” Ennis said, “but I don’t want to get that far because they have a right to modify, they have a right to say no, they have a right to do all kinds of things.”

Ennis expects the university’s proposal to pass the faculty, but until then, he said the administration won’t know which classes it needs faculty to teach. This is further complicated by the steady drip of faculty layoffs ahead of the fall semester.

“If a faculty member resigns and they take another job and it was likely they were gonna be laid off,” Ennis said, “then that doesn’t change things. But sometimes faculty leave who we didn’t expect to leave and then you look and go okay, does that change out needs? Does that affect what we were gonna do?”

A visual aid of the changes was presented in an infographic to IHL trustees. The College of Arts and Sciences is now the College of Education Arts and Humanities.

UPDATE 8/16/24: This story has been updated to correct what the infographic presented to IHL trustees showed.

The post IHL approves administrative cuts at Delta State, clearing another budget hurdle appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Bonnie Griffith of Clinton missed four doctor appointments in June and July because of problems with the transportation company that contracts with the Mississippi Division of Medicaid. 

Griffith, who has a chronic nerve damage condition that requires her to use an electric mobility scooter, relies on Medicaid’s non-emergency medical transportation program to see her health care providers. 

But on two occasions, she said drivers refused to transport her because they did not feel comfortable securing her scooter in the vehicle. Electric scooters qualify as wheelchairs under the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

A third time, she said Modivcare told her there were no drivers available with the capacity to transport a wheelchair. And another time, the driver never showed up to the location she specified. 

In July, she ran out of her medication. 

“I have no way to get to any medical doctor at all,” said Griffith, who has severe peripheral neuropathy. 

There’s no way to know if Griffith’s issues are unique or widespread. Denver-based for-profit Modivcare’s three-year, $96.5 million contract with the Division of Medicaid mandates it submit “monthly reports” containing information about the percent of scheduled trips that are late or missed each day or exceed 45 minutes longer than the average travel time. 

The company assumed the state’s non-emergency medical services contract on June 8 of this year. 

But two weeks after Mississippi Today submitted a public records request for the reports, the agency told the outlet they have no such reports. Spokesperson Matt Westerfield said the reports are not yet due, though he did note that historically, non-emergency medical transportation contractors have struggled to meet the contractual ceiling of 2% late or missed trips each day. 

He did not respond to an inquiry about when the monthly reports are due by the time the story was published.

The federally-required service helps Medicaid beneficiaries with no other means of getting to the doctor make it to their appointments. But some beneficiaries and advocates question whether it properly serves people who use wheelchairs and mobility devices.

People with disabilities – not all of whom use wheelchairs – are some of the most frequent users of the service. 

Griffith made it to her first doctor’s appointment since the contract began on July 18. 

“I feel so much better today just having gotten to where I was supposed to be,” she told Mississippi Today. 

Experts question whether Modivcare’s policy complies with law

Modivcare’s website states that it is the “largest and most experienced broker of non-emergency medical transportation” in the nation. The company provides transportation services in 48 states and reported $118.3 million in profits during the first half of 2024 for non-emergency transportation services alone. 

Modivcare contracts with local transportation companies, which give beneficiaries rides to their doctor’s appointments and take them home afterwards. 

Advocates argue that the program yields cost savings for states and the federal government by heightening access to preventative medicine and routine health care that helps beneficiaries manage their medical conditions and avoid costly trips to the emergency room. 

Griffith said she has relied on non-emergency medical transportation services in Mississippi for over 10 years. 

Modivcare spokesperson Melody Lai told Mississippi Today in an email that while the service can transport people who use power carts or mobility scooters, they “will have to either transfer to a wheelchair or ambulate into the seat of the vehicle,” citing concerns about safety while transporting people seated on their mobility device.

Griffith, however, can not walk to a vehicle or push a non-motorized wheelchair by herself. 

Her home health aide can accompany her to appointments to push the wheelchair, but Griffith must then give up time with the aide intended to support her personal care needs.

Hunter Robertson, the civil rights team supervising attorney at Disability Rights Mississippi, said he believes Modivcare’s policy is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

He said drivers can recommend that wheelchair users transfer to a vehicle seat, but can not require them to transfer, according to the latest guidance from the Federal Transit Authority. 

“The final decision on whether to transfer is up to the passenger,” reads the agency’s circular. 

Robertson said that if a wheelchair fits inside the vehicle and on the lift and can be secured, even if it is not constrained to the comfort of the company, a driver can not refuse to transport a rider.

Scott Crawford, an advocate for people with disabilities and a board member of the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities, disagreed. He said that he believes requiring people using mobility devices to transfer to a seat is an acceptable policy, given concerns that they might tip during hard turns. 

However, transportation providers are still required to transport people and their mobility devices, even if the person must transfer to a seat, he said. 

“It is vital that transportation providers allow people to bring their ‘legs’ (mobility device) with them when they are transported, assuming they will fit,” he said. “There are plenty of ways of securing a scooter or walker so that they won’t move.”

Robertson said non-emergency medical transportation services are a critical service for people who use wheelchairs. 

“There is a limited amount of public transportation or transportation that is accessible when you are a wheelchair user or a power cart user,” he said. “The non-emergency transport is one of the few ways to safely get to doctor’s appointments on time … while using your mobility aid.”

Matt Westerfield, spokesperson for the Mississippi Division of Medicaid, said that Modivcare provided wheelchair securement training to 451 drivers prior to Modivcare’s contract beginning on June 8. He noted that from then to the end of June, there were 4,984 trips completed using wheelchair accessible vehicles. 

Modivcare’s contract with the Division of Medicaid specifies that each wheelchair vehicle must have a wheelchair securement device that meets Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines. 

In response to questions about the company’s adherence to the Americans with Disabilities Act, Lai wrote in an email, “Modivcare complies with all applicable laws, quality is very important to us and we provide training as may be required by law.”

Modivcare did not respond to specific questions about the contractor’s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and declined Mississippi Today’s request for an interview. 

Problems with transportation are not new for Medicaid beneficiaries

Griffith said the challenges she has faced with Medicaid transportation are not specific to Modivcare. She remembered unreliable transportation during the period another company contracted with the state for the service.

On several occasions, her driver did not pick her up from her appointment. 

“I was offered a ride … by someone who had seen me still waiting there,” she said. 

A 2021 report on non-emergency medical transportation by the federal Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission cited nationwide concerns about limited supplies of wheelchair vans, late pickups, ill-equipped vehicles and long call center wait times.

Some states have sought to heighten regulation of the companies that provide such services.  In 2023, a bill in the New Jersey Legislature to establish performance and reporting standards for Medicaid transportation brokers died in committee. The legislation came after the New Jersey Department of Human Services fined Modivcare $1.7 million between 2017 and 2022 for failing to meet contract requirements, including missing scheduled pickups, according to the Bergen Record.

In Georgia, Modivcare and Southeasttrans, another non-emergency medical transportation company, were fined over $1 million from 2018 to 2020 for picking up patients late, reported KFF. 

Over 450 complaints have been lodged against Modivcare in the past three years, according to the Better Business Bureau.

In July, Griffith’s nurse practitioner detected atrial fibrillation, or an irregular heartbeat, during an examination. 

She worries about being able to get to visit her cardiologist given the unreliability of Mississippi’s non-emergency medical transportation.

“What am I going to do?” she asked. 

The post ‘What am I going to do?’: Wheelchair user says Medicaid transportation caused her to miss medical visits appeared first on Mississippi Today.

To quote Councilman Kenneth Stokes, the boo boo has hit the fan.

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