OurTupelo

JXN Water confirmed Friday afternoon that it stopped a sanitary sewer overflow into the Pearl River it discovered nine days prior. However, an expanded state water contact advisory for the river from elevated bacteria levels, issued on Thursday, remains in effect.

The new warning extends an already-existing advisory for the Pearl River — which since 2019 has ranged from the northern tip of Hinds County to Byram — to the Na Sandifer Memorial Highway Bridge just north of Monticello, in total stretching over 60 miles. The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality cautions against contact with the river — such as swimming, wading and fishing — in the affected areas until further notice.

“This expansion of the advisory is based on test results showing the potential for human health risk well beyond the original advisory zone,” said MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells in a Thursday press release. “We continue monitoring the situation and conducting additional testing to determine the full extent of the impact.”

MDEQ told Mississippi Today on Friday that, based on JXN Water’s information, between 10 millionto 20 million gallons of untreated sewage entered the Pearl River per day during the malfunction. Over nine days, that would equal 90 millionto 180 million gallons total. For reference, there were 41 sanitary sewer overflows (or SSOs) at the West Bank Interceptor between the start of the year and March 31, according to JXN Water’s quarterly report, totaling around 5 million gallons.

“While this is one of the most extensive water contact advisories we’ve issued in recent years, we do not anticipate that the expanded advisory will remain in place long-term,” said MDEQ Communications Director Jan Schaefer. “The release has been stopped, and we expect bacteria levels to begin to normalize through natural biological processes and dilution.”

According to JXN Water, the city’s third-party utility in charge of its sewer and drinking water infrastructure, its contractors discovered a “catastrophic failure” at the West Bank Interceptor where it crosses Hanging Moss Creek on May 28. The city has long struggled with that facility, which is the main transmission line to the Savanna Street Wastewater Treatment Plant, dating back at least to its 2012 consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency. JXN Water also attributed the recent issue in part to “severe and rapid erosion” along the river’s banks near the interceptor because of heavy rain this spring.

As a temporary fix, the utility’s contracted crews put in four bypass pumps to redirect wastewater through nearly 4,000 feet of piping. JXN Water said the long term fix requires repairs to two damaged interceptors, estimating a cost of over $7.5 million. The cost of the temporary measures, including diesel for the pumps and rental equipment, will be around $300,000 a month, the utility said.

JXN Water spokesperson Aisha Carson said the utility will use its operations budget to pay those costs, as the large infusion of federal funding it received is largely reserved for drinking water repairs. The utility is working with the EPA to secure emergency funding, Carson added.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate placed control of the sewer system under JXN Water in 2023. One of the priority projects included in the order is to rehabilitate the West Bank Interceptor. JXN Water’s last quarterly report projects “substantial completion” by Aug. 30, 2026.

Jackson State University alums are blowing up Mississippi lawmakers and the state’s college board inboxes with one clear message: Give us a fair and transparent president search. 

Thee 1877 Project launched an email campaign “For a Better JSU” this week asking faculty, students and supporters of the historically Black university to send e-letters to hold the Institutions of Higher Learning board responsible for the school’s last three picks for president and what it calls its failure to create an open and inclusive search for school leadership. The group is not affiliated with the JSU National Alumni Association. 

The effort comes after the announcement of former president Marcus Thompson’s resignation with no explanation. The news was a disappointment to many state lawmakers and alumni last month who felt whiplash from his departure, a familiar situation experienced with his predecessor, Thomas Hudson, who also resigned without explanation. Thompson’s resignation marked the university’s third leadership turnover in less than a decade. Hudson’s predecessor, William Bynum, also resigned following his arrest on a prostitution solicitation charge.

“For too long the leadership selection process at JSU has failed the institution and its stakeholders. It has bred instability, eroded public trust, damaged our university’s reputation and squandered taxpayer dollars,” the campaign’s website states. “These are not minor missteps— they are systemic failures. The process has lacked transparency, inclusivity and consistency that any respected academic institution should demand.” 

In a personalized email sent to IHL Commissioner Al Rankins and board members, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and several state House and Senate lawmakers including Chris Bell, Greg Holloway, Sollie Norwood, Grace Butler Washington, Rob Roberson and Dennis DeBar, the group urges the following:  

• A public acknowledgement and statement from board members addressing its failures of previous president search processes and lessons they have learned before the next national search 
• A national search of the university leadership of the “highest caliber” 
• A transparent president search and process that includes input from students, faculty, alumni and community members 

The group said its goal is to get 1,000 individuals to participate in the campaign before IHL’s next board meeting, June 19. As of Friday, 500 emails have been sent according to Mark Dawson, a spokesperson for the group. He said the group plans to expand its campaign in the coming weeks to include additional emails to officials such as State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. 

“We need to let them know this process they have in place is not good,” Dawson said. 

The campaign is also filling a void for alumni who are frustrated by JSUNAA’s silence and inaction. Many have begun to question the association’s role and its leadership when it comes to advocating for the university’s future. 

Last month, JSUNAA President Patrease Edwards, shared a statement asking alumni to refrain from public comment and speak positively about the university after Thompson’s departure. 

When rumors circulated that IHL had selected a new president and Edwards was asked to send a letter to alumni on the selection and reasons the board did not open up a candidate search this week, Edwards responded to those claims on social media. Her response was the first time alumni had heard from since her statement. She subsequently deleted her comment.

“Processes and procedures can be challenging for JSUNAA right now. It is not for us,” Dawson said. “We don’t want to brush things under the rug, you can’t fix anything that way. Now is the time to raise our voice, organize and partner with IHL to have an open dialogue so we can get this right.” 

Edwards told Mississippi Today the role of JSUNAA is to support the university and its students. She said she does not speak on personnel issues because that is beyond the association’s purview. 

When asked if the association had considered expanding its mission to acknowledge the questions alumni have posed of her leadership and inaction, Edwards said the association does advocate but alumni should join the national group as a way to support the university. By joining the association, it shows a true representation of the school’s alumni base “and speaks more volume than anything.” 

“We can be vocal on social media all we want but if we are not showing our financial support of our university through active membership in the National Alumni Association through ongoing consistent gifts to the university and to students and student programs, we will never be able to have a voice,” Edwards said. 

Despite what he described as the “aggressive silence and inaction” from the national association, Dawson said the group doesn’t see itself as overstepping. Rather it’s providing a true account to the history of the university and a platform for alumni and supporters’ demands. 

“[Jackson State] was founded twelve years after bondage. We have weathered through a long and troubled history of people trying to knock us down and we have survived despite the odds ,” he said. “Being quiet is not in our DNA. We’re rising  up yet again.” 

By the final day of “100 Days of Peace” in Jackson Friday, the city once called America’s deadliest had recorded a marked decline in violent offenses — 35% fewer homicides and nearly half of shootings — compared to last year. 

But amid instability at the city’s fledgling violence prevention office, the exact reason for the recent respite eludes city leaders. 

The reduction in violence was one goal of 100 Days of Peace, also known as 100 Days of Action, an initiative launched earlier this year by the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery. 

From Feb. 27 to Friday, the office planned to host events to raise awareness and loosely create an atmosphere of peace in Jackson. It also announced $150,000 in grants, which began in January, to three community violence intervention organizations, Strong Arms of Mississippi, Living With Purpose and Operation Good.

The plan was to collect data to document how their work reduced violence outside of police involvement or incarceration. It was a fitting opportunity for the office, which was only launched in 2022 with a $700,000 grant from the National League of Cities, to justify why the city should allocate its own resources to these efforts, instead of simply increasing the police budget.

But before that could happen, the city fired Keisha Coleman, the director of the office who was spearheading these data collection efforts. 

“We didn’t make it there,” Coleman said. “And I would like to get that information because I still can look at it from a violence standpoint. We know homicides are down, but we can’t say with 100% accuracy what’s contributing to that.” 

In other words, Coleman said she’d hoped to “prove that because of the 100 Days of Action and the initiatives that came from the office, it was a critical piece to keeping peace in the city.” 

To do that, Coleman said she had asked the three organizations to submit reports to her describing the number of people served, including their age and city zip code, what service they received, and how long they had been in each organization’s program. 

With Coleman gone, it’s unclear if the city of Jackson is hip to what data has been collected or if it plans to analyze it to determine what programs are most effective moving forward. When the city fulfilled Mississippi Today’s requests for data analysis after Coleman was fired, it only provided one report that Living With Purpose completed in February, before 100 Days of Peace began. 

But the city should have possession of more data than that. Benny Ivey, a co-lead of Strong Arms, told Mississippi Today his organization had submitted reports to Coleman detailing the work they were doing. 

“We’re constantly in the community working with kids,” he said. “We’ve got a bunch of parents that reach out to us weekly wanting to get their boys enrolled in their program. We pick them up, they play ball, we have group sessions.” 

Ivey did not seem to know that data analysis had been a goal of 100 Days of Peace. 

“100 Days of Peace was something that Keisha and the Office of Violence Prevention came up with just to bring awareness,” he said. “But events and barbecues and cookouts and waterslides, all that’s fun, but we’re out there on the ground with our boots trying to make real change.” 

Fredrick Womack, executive director of Operation Good, said his organization is working to make Jackson safer whether or not the city is able to collect data.

“We work every day to have peace,” Womack said. “We want 365 days of peace.” 

In some cities, the impact of solutions to violence that do not involve police has been straightforward to qualify: The mayor meets with rival gang members, and they agree to a ceasefire, in exchange for job training. 

But in Jackson, a variety of organizations are working to reduce violence outside of the police, and they employ different methods. In general, it can be difficult to show through crime data reported by the police how these organizations are impacting violence in the city — precisely because their work is intended to prevent people from becoming a statistic. 

Operation Good uses a variety of models, including an approach called “it takes a village,” to prevent interpersonal conflicts from turning violent and reduce the social conditions that lead to such conflicts. Strong Arms and Living With Purpose primarily work with credible messengers, folks in the community who have been involved in the criminal justice system, to encourage youth to take a less violent path in life.  

When the city launched the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery more than two years ago, the goal was to help these organizations grow by offering support through additional grant funding and technical assistance, such as how to collect data.

Coleman said, when she showed Ivey the data she intended to collect earlier this year, he was ecstatic because he had not yet figured out how to do that. 

“Their passion exceeds their administrative duties,” she said. “They were doing the work, but they just hadn’t conditioned themselves to record it.”

The first monthly deadline to submit data came and went with nothing submitted, she said. As part of the memorandum of understanding with the city, these three organizations were supposed to be submitting data to Coleman.

Strong Arms ended up submitting a quarterly report, Coleman said. She also met with Womack at Operation Good’s office to talk to him about the data she was needing, leading Womack to show her that he collected more data than she was asking for. 

“When she saw our spreadsheet and saw that it was more detailed and so forth, she just said that would be sufficient,” Womack said. 

When Mississippi Today requested this information, the city only provided one report from Living With Purpose. Titled “OVPTR performance management meeting report,” the form shows that between Jan. 1, 2025, and Feb. 28, 2025 — the start of 100 Days of Peace — the organization reported 11 individuals had received a “ceasefire communication” outside of custody. 

The organization also conducted 19 mediations. While this term is not defined in the document, the spreadsheet notes that 80% were conflict mediations, with “two sides,” as opposed to “conflict intervention conversations,” which only had “one side.” (In Womack’s case, a mediation occurs after an Operation Good staff member intervenes in a potentially violent situation and helps the people involved leave with mutual understanding.) 

The form does not include location data, so it is not clear in which areas of the city these mediations took place in.

Multiple statistics show that violence and crime have fallen in Jackson. The Jackson Police Department recorded 17 homicides from Feb. 27 to June 6, compared with 26 in the same time frame last year. 

The Gun Violence Archive, a national nonprofit, documented 33 shootings in Jackson, compared to 61 last year. 

But JPD was not an official arm of 100 Days of Peace, and the department has its own explanation for why the city’s violent crime rate plummeted this year.

“Well, crime is down because a lot of people are still in jail,” Deputy Chief Sequerna Banks said. 

That’s because many people are receiving high bonds they cannot pay, preventing them from returning to the community.

“We’ve had some low bonds, something we’re not happy with, but that’s out of our control as far as setting bonds,” Banks said. “But most definitely the high bonds play a part. People are in jail on high bonds and not having to worry about them getting out and that plays a very high part in crime being down.” 

Ask Operation Good, Living With Purpose or Strong Arms why crime is down, they will say it’s because they are working to prevent people from committing crimes. 

For instance, Womack noted that Operation Good has actually intercepted more violent incidents this year compared to last, because Operation Good’s area has grown beyond south Jackson, and Womack has been able to hire more mediators. 

To support Womack’s point, Coleman said she had envisioned creating a series of heat maps of Jackson. She wanted to look at crimes committed in previous years and compare that to the past 100 days in Jackson to see if there was a reduction in the areas of the city served by the three organizations. 

“I explained that was going to be the role of the Office of Violence Prevention, that once they collected their information or recorded their data, we would take it and synthesize it collectively, and we would create the stories and the narratives that go along with the data to show how the credible messengers and violence interruption organizations are real drivers of crime reduction in Jackson,” she said. 

Coleman never got that far, and confusion persists among city officials about what data can actually be provided to the public. 

“I don’t know if your public records request would account for all of their work,” outgoing Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said Tuesday after the city council meeting, when asked if the city had any data on 100 Days of Peace. “It wouldn’t account for everything that they – you would only have access to the public information of us giving to them.” 

“I’m talking about communicating with them and understanding where they were engaged and what their engagements yielded,” he continued. “None of that would be recovered by a public records request, which is the meat of that type of work. The meat of actual violence interruption, you don’t go talk to gang members and say, ‘OK, I need you to sign this document.’ It is actually about the connections, so that would never be connected by a public records request.” 

Safiya Omari, the mayor’s chief of staff, said a number of offices around the country have been working to prove the efficacy of non-police approaches to violence. 

“There’s a lot of information that we collect,” she said. “What we have is a disconnect between data and actual work and now we are trying to bridge that disconnect.” 

Omari noted one example of data the city has obtained to support the office’s work. 

“For example, we know the six zip codes that have the highest amount of gun violence in the city,” she said. “The work is supposed to center around programmatically addressing what’s happening in the community. Events are good in terms of raising awareness, but you actually have to have some boots on the ground kind of work taking place.” 

A document analyzing those six zip codes was never provided in response to Mississippi Today’s records request for data. 

Other details are missing. Coleman said she distributed gun safety locks at the Westside Community Center as part of 100 Days of Peace, but that handout was not documented in the records provided to Mississippi Today. The public records request instead yielded flyers for two events — a grief art party and a sexual assault awareness demonstration called Denim Day — but no information on participants was included. 

Coleman described several planned events, such as a sneaker ball to cap off the initiative, that never took place. 

If done right, Womack said events like the ones associated with 100 Days of Peace can improve community dynamics, but it was not clear to him if that was the main thrust of the city’s recent initiative. 

“If the 100 Days of Peace was about events, then that’s the data,” he said. “Events.” 

College baseball legend Ron Polk has told us again and again through the years: “There is no such thing as an upset in baseball.”

Polk is right, of course. Baseball contains so many variables: bad hops, sore arms, sudden wind gusts, line drives that find gloves, weakly hit ground balls that find holes, capricious umpiring, etc.  All that contributes to the fact that anything can happen on any given day in baseball. But if we don’t call them upsets, then what to call what we have seen happen again and again in the NCAA Baseball Tournament that continues today at sites other than Mississippi?

Keep in mind, we are watching college baseball in a new era when the richer schools in the elite power conferences can simply buy the best players from the smaller schools in lesser leagues. You would think the pay-for-play and the transfer portal would make it doubly hard for the Murray States, the UTSAs and the Wright States of the college baseball world to compete with the SEC and other power conferences.

But, yet, here we are. Samples:

• Closest to home, Murray State, a 4-seed from the Missouri Valley Conference, comes to Oxford, knocks off Ole Miss twice and wins a regional, probably playing in front of more fans in two games than they played before in their entire regular season. Get this: The Murray State head coach Dan Skirka reportedly makes $68,000 a year. Many power conference players make that much and more. Mississippi State just signed Brian O’Connor to a contract that will pay him $2.9 million a year. Nevertheless, the Murray State Racers came off the bus in Oxford hitting line drives and never quit. They will play a Super Regional at Duke beginning Saturday. I would not bet against them.
• No. 1 seed Vanderbilt was eliminated by Wright State of the Horizon League. Wright State eliminated the Commodores before eventually losing to Louisville in the championship game. For those who don’t know, Wright State is located in Dayton, Ohio. The Horizon League includes such name brands as Youngstown State, Robert Morris and Northern Kentucky. Vandy probably spends more money on one player than Wright State has in its entire NIL budget. Yet, here we are.
• UTSA of the American Athletic Conference stunned mighty Texas, the No. 2 seed overall, beating the Longhorns not once, but twice, in the Austin Regional. Want to know the beauty of this? UTSA lost its best pitcher and its best everyday player to the portal last year. The shortstop went to Arizona State. The pitcher went to – you guessed it – Texas. UTSA coach Pat Hallmark, asked about the players who left said this: “We’re not here if those players are still here. We’re here because they left. … If they want to get in the portal, get in the portal. We’ll go after the next guy.”
• A record 13 SEC teams made the tournament. Only four advanced. And one of those, LSU, had to rally from behind to beat Little Rock in the championship game after losing to Little Rock the day before. Little Rock of the Ohio Valley Conference entered the tournament with a losing record and an RPI of 243.

The guess here is that legions of college baseball fans, disgusted with what the transfer portal and NIL have done to college athletics, will find themselves pulling for teams such as Murray State and UTSA as the tournament continues. 

More than likely the eventual champion will come from the Big Boy leagues. Such powers as Arkansas, LSU, Tennessee and Florida State still remain. They all host Super Regionals. They have all the advantages.

Murray State? 

Wouldn’t that be something?

After nearly a year closed, Thalia Mara Hall has been cleared for reopening after a follow-up inspection from the State Fire Marshal’s Office on June 3. 

Thalia Mara Hall was closed last August due to mold remediation, to replace the heating and cooling systems and perform updates to the fire system. The building had previously failed an inspection in late January.

State Fire Marshal and Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney issued the following statement on June 6: 

“The State Fire Marshals Office (SFMO) conducted a follow-up inspection of Thalia Mara Hall on Tuesday, June 3, 2025, and determined that the building met standards to reopen. A Certificate of Occupancy will be issued to the City of Jackson (COJ). A hydrostatic test was conducted on Monday, June 2, 2025, to determine the integrity of pipes and valves in the building. The test was successful. The building elevators and escalators remain out of service pending repair and inspection. The COJ has scheduled a new fire curtain to be installed in July.

A condition of the reopening is that a third-party fire watch must be in place until the fire curtain is installed and passes inspection. A fire watch involves having someone monitor the building during events for fire hazards and to alert occupants and emergency services if a fire breaks out.

My office remains committed to working with Jackson officials to protect the health and safety of the public and important cultural structures like Thalia Mara Hall.”

Thalia Mara Hall’s closure brought with it a slew of scheduling issues for performing arts groups such as Ballet Mississippi and Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, who had to move performances to Madison Central High School Auditorium and Jackson Academy Performing Arts Center.

The city has spent nearly $3 million in repairs, with the bulk of the funding going to Guarantee Restoration Services, which was in charge of mold remediation, encapsulation and HVAC cleaning.

The city of Jackson was unable to provide a comment on when Thalia Mara Hall will reopen. 

State Sen. David Parker, a Republican from Olive Branch, announced on Thursday that he will not run in an upcoming special election, creating an open Senate seat in DeSoto County and making him the second incumbent to forgo the special election. 

Parker, who has served 13 years in the Legislature, wrote on social media that the recent death of his childhood friend and the founding surgeon in Parker’s eye-care practice weighed heavily on his decision to leave public office. 

“Their loss has served as a powerful reminder of how precious our time is, and it reaffirmed my desire to devote more intentional time to my family and to the next chapter of life,” Parker said. 

Even though Parker was elected to a new four-year term in 2023, a federal three-judge panel ruled last year that the state’s current legislative maps didn’t comply with federal voting laws and diluted Black voting power.  

The federal panel then approved a new state legislative map that redrew five House districts and nine Senate districts, one of which was Parker’s. 

Parker did not cite this as a reason for his retirement, but state officials also changed his district to a slightly majority-Black district. If the DeSoto County lawmaker drew an opponent, he likely would have spent this year facing a competitive election cycle.

Sen. John Polk, a Republican from Hattiesburg, also announced earlier this year that he will not run in the special election because of health reasons. The redistricting plan placed Polk in the same Senate district as state Sen. Chris Johnson, a fellow Hattiesburg Republican. 

The two departures come at a time when Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the Senate’s presiding officer, has clashed politically with House Speaker Jason White and, at times, with Gov. Tate Reeves. The Republicans have battled over Medicaid expansion, the state’s public pension system, school choice legislation and crafting a state budget.  

Polk and Parker were two of Hosemann’s most loyal lieutenants in the 52-member chamber, so the two departures could create more political challenges for the lieutenant governor as he faces pressure from his fellow state leaders.

The last day candidates can qualify for the redistricting special elections is Monday, June 9. Party primaries will take place on August 5 and the general election is on November 4. 

Three more special elections in the Legislature will also take place soon, though they will happen on a different timeline, set by the governor, than the 14 special elections to account for redistricting: 

• Sen. John Horhn, a Democrat from Jackson, will soon resign after he was elected the new mayor of Jackson 
• Rep. Orlando Paden, a Democrat from Clarksdale, will soon resign because he was elected as the new mayor of Clarksdale. 
• Sen. David Jordan, a Democrat from Greenwood, recently announced he was retiring from the Legislature. 

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

With graduation season upon us, I can’t help but be proud of the next generation of leaders. Each cap and gown represents not just an achievement, but a hope for the future and for a better Mississippi.

But graduation season has been overshadowed when I read about the freeze of $137 million in federal funds promised to Mississippi schools. My mind drifts to the death of Harvey Montrell Johnson Jr. It may not be easy to see the connection between the shooting of a 15-year-old and a school budget cut, but for me — as a district attorney for nearly a decade — the consequences are painfully personal.

A cut in school funding isn’t just a line in a report. It means fewer resources, fewer safeguards and more young lives at risk.  Lives like Harvey’s.

Harvey was caught in a battle between the streets and the schools—and the streets won. One Sunday afternoon in Columbus in 2022, he found himself with a man nearly 15 years older than him, Tommy Flowers Jr. They were drinking and using drugs together until Tommy decided to settle a score. He took Harvey along, handed him a Taurus 9mm and had him fire round after round at a house where he had a beef with the occupants.

What Tommy failed to prepare Harvey for was that the young men in that house were armed too — “Second Amendment ready,” as people like to say. One of them had an AR-style rifle and returned fire so quickly and heavily that it didn’t take long before Harvey was hit and killed.

During the trial, my focus was on holding Mr. Flowers accountable for leading Harvey to his death. The idea that a nearly 30-year-old man would get a teenager drunk and high, arm him with a gun and take him to attack a home he knew was likely to respond with bullets so enraged me that it was difficult to think about anything else. The jury agreed. I moved on to the next case. In my work, there is no finish line.

But when I read about the freeze in federal education funding, the Harvey case came rushing back–not just the facts, but the warning it carries.

What $137 million can do for Mississippi’s schools is not hypothetical. It’s real support: school counselors who notice when a student starts slipping; after-school programs that keep kids safe until their parents are home; mentors, mental health staff and trained resource officers who de-escalate conflict instead of inflaming it. It’s guidance and structure that can help a 15-year-old imagine a future that doesn’t involve a gun.

According to Mississippi Today, about 70 school districts across the state are set to lose these desperately needed funds. The Jackson Public Schools District alone stands to lose $4.5 million. Of that, $3.62 million was set aside for urgently needed construction, and nearly $1 million was planned for instructional support. Other districts had allocated their money toward literacy programs, math tutoring, mental health services and classroom technology. That money was already budgeted—already spoken for.

The shooting that ended Harvey’s life happened on a Sunday. But the choices that led to it happened every day before that — in classrooms without enough adults to care, in neighborhoods without safe places to gather, in homes stretched too thin to fill the gaps.

If we care about liberty, if we care about life, we must care about what our schools can actually provide.

This funding freeze isn’t just a bureaucratic decision. It’s a threat to the only institutions standing between some of our most vulnerable kids and a world full of people like Tommy Flowers who see them as disposable. We may never know exactly what could have saved Harvey, but we know what didn’t: indifference, underfunding and too many missed chances.

As we celebrate graduation achievements, we must remember that the next generation deserves the opportunity to succeed. The next Harvey is already out there. We still have time to save him — but only if we give our schools what they need to reach him first. We owe that to him.  We owe it to our next generation of leaders.

Scott Colom is the district attorney of the 16th Circuit Court of Mississippi, representing Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties. First elected in 2015, his office has achieved over a 90% conviction rate.

CHOCTAW, Miss. (AP) — It’s a small part in a big movie, but for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, their scene in “Sinners” is a huge deal.

The horror movie blockbuster, starring Michael B. Jordan as a gangster turned vampire slayer, paints a brief but impactful portrait of the tribe using Choctaw actors and cultural experts. For some, it’s the first time they’ve seen the Choctaw way of life accurately portrayed on the big screen.

In the scene, a posse of Choctaw, riding on horseback and in an old truck, arrives at a small farmhouse to warn the couple that lives there of coming danger. When the couple refuses their help, a Choctaw man wishes them luck in his native language before riding off.

“I’ve not seen another movie that has our language, like, spoken correctly,” said Cynthia Massey, a cultural consultant for “Sinners.”

Massey runs the tribe’s Chahta Immi Cultural Center alongside Sherrill Nickey and department director Jay Wesley. All three were hired as cultural consultants to ensure a genuine depiction of the tribe in the film. Together, they sifted through archives, researching how their ancestors would have dressed, spoken and acted in the 1930s, when “Sinners” takes place.

“I was honored and humbled by the fact that they wanted a true representation,” said Wesley, who also acted in the movie.

Wesley connected the filmmakers to Choctaw actors and artifacts like the beaded sashes the Choctaw characters wear in the movie. Those sashes are now part of a “Sinners” display at the cultural center.

The movie’s introduction also features a short snippet of a Choctaw war chant, performed by Wesley’s daughter, Jaeden Wesley, who is a student at the University of California, Los Angeles. While recording, Jaeden Wesley said the filmmakers told her they wanted the Choctaw people to hear their music in the movie.

“We were catering to our own people, even in that short little second,” Jaeden Wesley said.

Shining a spotlight on often overlooked cultures and topics, like the Choctaw people, is part of the mission at Proximity Media, which produced “Sinners.” The company was founded by “Sinners” director Ryan Coogler, his wife and film producer, Zinzi Coogler, and producer Sev Ohanian.

“It was never a question for us that if we were going to portray the Mississippi Choctaw, we got to have the right people who can tell us, who can tell Ryan, what we’re not knowing, what we’re not thinking,” Ohanian said. “It was all because we’re trying to serve Ryan’s story of like putting truth on screen.”

Ohanian and his co-founders didn’t stop with Choctaw consultants; they enlisted a small army of experts who advised on the confluence of cultures mingling in the Mississippi Delta, where the film is set. The resulting cinematic world was so well received, community organizers penned an open letter, inviting Coogler and his fellow filmmakers to visit the Delta. Last week, the Cooglers, Ohanian and others took up the offer, attending a “Sinners” screening in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Clarksdale is where the film’s events unfold.

“I hope this encourages other filmmakers to find opportunities to be authentic in their storytelling and to look at this rich tapestry of culture that’s right here in America,” Ohanian said, noting the film industry has historically misrepresented nonwhite groups.

For Wesley and his fellow consultants, the hope is the film will cultivate curiosity in audiences, encourage them to learn more about Choctaw culture and visit the Chahta Immi Cultural Center.

“It’s important to be connected to this culture because this was here before the public was here,” Massey said. “Probably three-quarters of Mississippi was Choctaw land, and now we only have 350,000 acres.”

They say Choctaw participation in the film has cultivated a sense of pride among tribe members. Nickey hopes it will encourage a sort of cultural renaissance at a time when she says fewer and fewer Choctaw speak their native language.

“I know for a fact that there are a lot of kids out there that don’t even know how to speak our language. They only speak English,” Nickey said. “I hope they know it’s okay to speak our language.”

Local officials and community leaders posed to cameras Thursday morning on Farish Street as they dug their ceremonial shovels into the symbolic dirt pile in front of them. The symbolism, they hope, is the continued momentum around rebuilding the historic but largely abandoned downtown Jackson neighborhood.

Nonprofits 2C Mississippi, Farish Street Community of Shalom, and the city’s urban renewal group, Jackson Redevelopment Authority, held the groundbreaking for a new green space between Amite Street and James Meredith Drive. Organizers see the project as both a communal gathering place as well as a shelter and heat sponge.

“This is a historic moment on Farish Street,” said Dorothy Davis, executive director of the Farish Street Community of Shalom.

The groups first announced the green space project last year, building off a 2020 study they did identifying Jackson’s “heat islands,” or urban areas that are much hotter because they lack tree coverage and bodies of water. The study found that parts of downtown Jackson got up to 10 degrees hotter than outer parts of the city during the summer.

Davis said the project’s next phase will be tearing down brick walls and planting new grass and trees, which she said they’ll start in the next couple of weeks. Volunteers will continue to monitor temperatures over the next five years. Davis added they’ll hope to have a new stage built by early next year and then begin work on an amphitheater.

The groups are funding the project with a $1.5 million grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

The ceremony followed another groundbreaking in April for the Leonard Court project, which will rebuild 67 old homes into new affordable housing in the Farish Street Historical District. That project is set to finish by summer 2026.

Christopher Pike, executive director of JRA, which owns and will continue to manage the space, said they’ll use the park to host events such as the neighborhood’s annual Juneteenth celebration.

“It’ll just be a park for people to come and hang out,” Pike said. “We’ve been talking to people about maybe doing yoga, that type of stuff. So it’ll be an activated space.

“Obviously there’s an environmental component, which is (tackling the) heat island, but there’s also the quality of life component because most communities you see that are really vibrant have these very activated green spaces.”

Pike teased other new projects in the works along Farish Street: in “eight to 12 months” Pike hopes to have another groundbreaking for the Soul City Market, which includes plans for a food hall, stand-alone restaurants, a Farish Street history museum, and loft apartments on the buildings’ second floors. Pike said the projects would together cost around $30 million, which JRA hopes to fund through both tax credits and rebates as well as private sources.