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Quilt work embarks on a journey of discovery in the art of Coulter Fussell and returns a changed art form with deeper ties, greater resonance and more stories than traditional patterns can hold. 

“Coulter Fussell: The Proving Ground,” on view through June 14 at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, assembles five bodies of work produced by the Water Valley artist since 2020 in the first museum survey of her textile art. Works in her Escape Quilts, War Quilts, River Quilts, Pillow Talk and Video-Chiffons share a remarkable range.

The exhibition runs concurrently with “L.V. Hull: Love Is a Sensation,” bolstering the museum’s draw with two one-woman shows focusing on Mississippi artists. They represent different small towns, different generations and different races, but the strong community connections in their art and practices are a parallel thread.

A proving ground is a site of experimentation, to test a new theory or technology. “The Proving Ground” exhibition focuses on Fussell’s continuing artistic evolution, as her works become increasingly sculptural and wrap in upholstery techniques, mixed media, photography and digital projection.

Textiles dropped off by friends and strangers to her storefront studio become the raw materials for Fussell’s works of art.

“Everything, really, that she uses in her works has been given to her. It’s a really beautiful story of community,” said Betsy Bradley, Laurie Hearin McRee Director of the Mississippi Museum of Art. Some materials are inherited or shared by family members.

Fussell’s career is gaining more national attention, Bradley noted. This year, Fussell was the Mississippi artist selected as a Creative Capital inaugural State of the Art Prize Artist; the national program awards one artist in each state for artistic innovation.

Prizes and grants at national, regional and state level, and eight solo exhibitions since 2020 at art institutions around the South have helped Fussell’s development and growing recognition.

This exhibition, Fussell said, “is by far the pinnacle, up to this point.” She credited the Mississippi Museum of Art’s support and encouragement as key in her journey. She singled out her selection for the Jane Crater Hiatt Fellowship (Mississippi Invitational 2021) as particularly instrumental, allowing her to “wait tables less and sew more,” she said.

Quilting’s familiar format, and Fussell’s source material of entirely donated fabrics and more from her community, will likely resonate most with viewers, MMA Associate Curator of Exhibitions Kaegan Sparks said. 

“A lot of times, someone in the gallery will recognize a particular scrap of fabric as similar to something that they owned at one time,” Sparks said. “It’s happened to both of us, talking about the show with people. The way that people identify with the different materials that she’s using is something special about this show.”

That material connection can be a fast-track way to identify with the works. “To me, that is a very important part of it,” Sparks said, “but it wouldn’t be what it is, if Coulter didn’t transform that raw material into these really vibrant and … formally complex works.

“She’s really pushing different frameworks,” the curator said, employing strategies of reversal, inversion, layering and more in her compositions.

Works reference terrain both actual and internal, and the materials, often well-used before they are discarded and donated, bring their own history and cultural markers.

War imagery was prevalent during Fussell’s growing up years in a military town — Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia — and crops up often in her pieces, Fussell said, indicating a sweep of artworks in the exhibit’s war quilts series. In “Hawks,” two birds of prey fly at each other in a work that appears to defy gravity.

In “Country Captain,” the 3-D effect  (“attic windows” in quilt lingo) calls to mind a shelf where mementos and the memories they hold are stashed. The title refers to a popular dish, often saved for company and special occasions in Columbus, Georgia, that came directly through the military and Fort Benning, Fussell said. 

“Country Captain is fried chicken over this sort of rice curry. It was the only dish I ever had growing up that had a curry flavor to it,” she said.

This piece harks to the cross-cultural exchange in the military and textile industries, in its mix of a chenille bedspread manufactured in Dawson, Georgia, and an Indian kantha quilt. It wraps in globalism and war with souvenir pillow scraps, lenticular postcards of ships on the ocean and a heron in an Asian-inspired design from an 1880s houserobe. Crumpled cigarette packs (“Those were found in a front pocket of an old shirt somebody gave in a donation,” she explained with a laugh) fold in with the Army base theme.

Works in her Pillow Talk series play with jokes, dreams, double images and double meanings in a collection of whimsical headboards.

“The other series are my observations about life and environment — what I feel is beautiful or what I feel is interesting about the world around me. This series is what it feels like to be me,” Fussell said. 

In one, a pastel knit baby blanket, a bright strip of sky printed on fleece, net from a kids’ backpack, stretch neon lace and a pair of plump lips from a shower curtain are layered like a cake. In another, cat tails curl like scrolls on the upper end of a headboard bookended by feline hindquarters. Its head comes down the center in an arrangement both amusing and surreal.

Fussell slowly began adding photography to her works. When she got to the point of printing on fleece, she then wanted to bend, sew and stuff photos like she does fabric. Cotton and fleece didn’t work for the layering she wanted — ”too static,” she said — but chiffon did. Her ongoing Video-Chiffon series uses the translucent fabric, custom-printed with a repeated photograph or video still.

Her teenage sons’ cellphone videos, capturing the beauty of their Yalobusha County landscape and shared via Snapchat, also caught her eye.

“The nature of Snapchat, those things go away in, like, a day, so I was seeing this abundance of beautiful, discarded photography and video,” she said. “At the same time, I walk into a studio every day of beautiful, discarded fabrics. So, it all became the same material, really.”  

Photographs from her dad and her brother, and videos by her sons, are woven into the installation “Hill Country,” where a massive braid arcs into a hill, forming a frame or a stage of sorts. There, videos are back-projected onto a stretched, gingham-printed fabric. From wild roadside blackberries on the braid to pickup truck fun at Sardis Lake on the screen, “Hill Country” combines warm familiarity and fresh innovation for a captivating portrait of home.

Visit msmususem.org for details on admission, hours and related events.

To the surprise of perhaps nobody, the Mississippi Supreme Court on Friday denied the NCAA’s petition to appeal Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss’ injunction against the governing body of college athletics.

That means the final hurdle likely has been cleared for Chambliss, one of the nation’s most exciting and productive players, to play for the Rebels this fall. Chambliss will enter the season as one of the top candidates for the Heisman Trophy.

“We find that the petition should be denied,” Presiding Justice Josiah Dennis Coleman wrote in the one-page Supreme Court order turning down the NCAA’s appeal.

Chambliss led Ole Miss to a school record 13 victories and the national semifinals in 2025. Ole Miss ended the season with a No. 3 ranking, its highest since 1962.

Chambliss’ legal saga began when he petitioned the NCAA for a medical waiver that would give him another year of eligibility. Chambliss believed respiratory problems caused him to miss the 2022 season at Michigan’s Division II Ferris State and that he should receive a medical redshirt.

The NCAA denied his petition. Chambliss then sued the NCAA in Lafayette County Chancery Court. Judge Robert Whitwell ruled against the NCAA on Feb. 12 after a day-long hearing in Pittsboro, granting the temporary restraining order that Chambliss requested against the association.

Whitwell ruled that the NCAA “acted in bad faith” when it denied Chambliss’ appeal for another season of eligibility. The NCAA appealed, and a panel of three Supreme Court justices blocked that appeal Friday.

The chancery and Supreme Court decisions were quite predictable.

Chambliss threw for an SEC-best 3,937 yards in 2025, throwing for 22 touchdowns compared to only three interceptions. A fantastic runner as well, Chambliss ran the football for 527 yards and another eight touchdowns.

Chambliss and Texas quarterback Arch Manning are generally considered the top two candidates for the 2026 Heisman.

Chambliss transferred to Ole Miss in the spring of 2025 after leading Ferris State University to the Division II national championship in the 2024 season.

The NCAA argued that Chambliss, who spent four years at Ferriss and then one at Ole Miss, had used up his allowed five years of eligibility to play a maximum of four seasons.

But Chambliss didn’t play at all his first two seasons at Ferris. He red-shirted as a freshman in 2021 and then was plagued by severe upper respiratory illness as a sophomore. He testified that he was told the 2022 season would count as a medical redshirt season. The NCAA argued otherwise.

Landlords who collect utility payments from tenants but fail to submit the money to utility providers could face prison time, fines or both, under a new law signed by Gov. Tate Reeves.

The change comes months after tenants in some Jackson apartments were forced to move out of their homes because water was shut off after their landlords accrued thousands of dollars in unpaid bills.

Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent from Jackson, authored House Bill 1404.

“We have apartment complexes and other landlords across the state who are apparently charging for utilities as part of the tenants’ rent, they are collecting this from the tenant and they are failing to remit payment for those utilities,” Yates said during a House discussion of the bill in February. “These tenants are then being faced with having their utilities turned off despite the fact they have paid for their utilities as part of their rent.”

Louisiana enacted a similar law last year to address issues there, Yates said.

Mississippi’s new law took effect as soon as the Republican governor signed it Wednesday.

A person who collects and then fails to remit over $25,000 in utility payments from tenants’ rent can face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000, if convicted under Mississippi’s new law. If the amount is less than that but at least $5,000, the person can face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The law also includes smaller penalties for smaller misappropriations. Additionally, offenders will have to pay restitution to anyone who suffered a financial loss as a result.

The law specifies that it doesn’t apply to delays resulting from a tenant’s late payments or from errors on the utility’s side.

Last July, JXN Water, the capital city’s third-party water and sewer system operator, shut off water to Blossom Apartments after the landlord ran up more than $400,000 in unpaid bills. Shortly after, tenants there were forced to move after the Mississippi Home Corporation labeled the property unfit to live in.

The utility also shut off water to the Chapel Ridge apartment complex around the same time. JXN Water estimated last year that the city’s multi-family complexes were collectively behind over $7.5 million on their water bills.

The owner of Blossom Apartments, Tony Little, and JXN Water later sued each other after Little disputed the amount he owed. Those lawsuits are continuing. Recently, a bank that loaned money to the complex asked a Hinds County judge to appoint a receiver to run the property, WLBT reported.

The Senate amended an earlier version of the bill to say that the misuse of utility payments must be done “knowingly, willingly and unlawfully.” The bill then passed in the House by a vote of 100-14, after passing in the Senate without opposition.

Legislative negotiators on Friday said they have agreed, after months of back-and-forth and considering larger amounts, that Mississippi teachers will get a $2,000 pay raise. 

It’s an anticlimactic result to a teacher pay raise debate that, at one point weeks ago, saw dueling offers from the Senate and House that reached $6,000. The state’s educators, the lowest paid on average in the country, who have helped rocket Mississippi students to academic achievement that’s been nationally recognized say they’re disappointed. 

“We’re certainly grateful for any type of raise, but everyone involved in this process knows this does not meet the standard of what educators both have earned and desperately need,” said Jason Reid, a longtime teacher in the DeSoto County School District. Reid drives a school bus before and after work to supplement his income. 

Mississippi teachers last received a meaningful pay raise in 2022, but they say it was quickly eaten up by rising health insurance costs and inflation. Since then, educators told Mississippi Today that they’ve had to take second jobs and make tough financial decisions to scrape by. And educators largely attribute the ongoing and worsening teacher shortage to low pay.

The teacher pay debate has been a top issue of the 2026 legislative session. The Senate and the House passed their respective plans early in the year  — first $2,000 from the Senate, with a promise of trying to raise the number later in the process, and $5,000 from the House. But as the weeks wound on, both chambers proceeded to kill each other’s bills. 

Before the teacher pay bill went to negotiations, the Senate had landed on a $6,000 raise, spaced out in $2,000 increments over three years, while the House stuck with its one-time $5,000 raise. 

However, after negotiations, it appears that Mississippi teachers are likely to only get a $2,000 raise — the Senate’s early proposal that the House said it wouldn’t agree to because it was too low. Special education teachers would get an extra $2,000 salary supplement — a total of $4,000. 

Neal McCarty, a high school teacher in Union, said he’s experienced a rollercoaster of emotions from the teacher pay raise debate, but had feared all along that lawmakers had promised too much early in the session.

“It’s kind of like a slap in the face,” he said. “I just think for all of the thousands of teachers across the state to hear those numbers, you get your hopes up.”

House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville and one of the negotiators on the compromise plan, said he shares educators’ disappointment.

“I had some pretty grand ideas as to what we could do this year,” he said. “It is substantially less … it is what it is. You’re not able to do what you want to do.”

Roberson said the $5,000 House proposal came before budget talks. He said legislators were aware of hefty state retirement system costs, but were surprised by the state Medicaid agency’s request, which was $390 million more than the current year.

“They rolled in with a huge number,” he said. “We expected a decent size, but nobody expected the monster it ended up being. You have to fill in the blanks … this is unfortunately where we’ve landed.”

Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar, a Republican from Leakesville and another one of the negotiators, also chalked the lower amount up to concerns about state spending.

“We had been pushing for a multi-year raise, but we also have to be fiscally responsible, and when we were talking with the House, we all had to consider Medicaid, PERS and all our other responsibilities,” DeBar said. “When we got into negotiations, we all agreed to budget only a one-time infusion for teacher pay.”

The plan also includes a $2,000 raise for assistant teachers, school psychologists and occupational therapists, DeBar said. He said school attendance officers would get $5,000 raises, and that the agreement would add 9 new SAOs, “so we will have one for every 4,000 students.”

The lower raise amount is likely to draw fire from educators and advocates, who have watched state lawmakers credit the state’s academic gains to Republican policy and leadership over the past several months. 

“It’s very disappointing,” said Nancy Loome, leader of The Parents’ Campaign, a public school advocacy organization. “Our teachers have done such tremendous work to move Mississippi forward. Our state has gotten so much positive national recognition for their work, and they are struggling to make ends meet.”

Lawmakers are expecting to vote on negotiated final budget bills on Sunday. Both the House and Senate would have to pass the pay raise plan, and there is a potential it could be sent for further negotiation. 

“We can always address it again next year,” DeBar said. “Nothing says we can’t come back and revisit (a teacher raise) next year.”

Officials from the Mississippi State Department of Health on Friday reported the state’s first confirmed pediatric flu death of the 2025-2026 flu season. 

This is one of 28 pediatric flu deaths that have occurred in the state since officials began reporting these deaths during the 2008-2009 flu season. Flu season in Mississippi usually peaks between January and March, and the vaccine can take up to two weeks to provide immunity. 

The Health Department did not provide any further details about the circumstances of the death, citing privacy and respect for the family. Health officials continue to recommend annual immunization, and the department did not say whether the child who died had been immunized.

“A vaccination won’t necessarily keep you from getting the flu, although it can reduce your risk of infection and is the best protection to keep you from a severe outcome,” State Epidemiologist Dr. Renia Dotson said in a press release. “We recommend everyone six months of age and older to get an updated flu vaccination.”

For those 18 and under, flu shots are covered by insurance, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Some children may be eligible for free vaccination under the Vaccines for Children Program at qualifying locations. 

Uninsured and underinsured adults who meet certain high-risk criteria qualify for an adult influenza vaccination at county health department clinics. The vaccine is available for insured adults through pharmacies, retailers and private physicians throughout the state.

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.

“The President is the symbol of who the people of the United States are. He is the person who stands for us in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our children.”

William Bennett, “The Death of Outrage,” 1998

There was a time, not that long ago, when American conservatives were obsessed with the public virtues of private character.

Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan titled her biography of Reagan, “When Character Was King.”

“In a president,” Noonan wrote, “character is everything. A president doesn’t just deal with the problems of the day; he sets the tone and spirit of the nation.”

James Q. Wilson, a longtime Harvard professor, wrote “The Moral Self” in 1993, a key text in the conservative case that character was the cornerstone of public and private life: “Human beings are endowed with a moral sense — an intuitive capacity to judge actions as fair or unfair, right or wrong.”

When I was working in the George W. Bush campaign, his single most powerful message was “Restoring honor and dignity to the White House.” Of all the ads we made, the one with then-Gov. Bush delivering that line straight to the camera moved the numbers more than any other.

While there is much on the policy front that Republicans got wrong in the 1980s and 1990s — remember the Laffer Curve that was the cornerstone of Republican tax policy — they got the importance of character right

“The presidency is not merely an office of power; it is an office of example,” George Will wrote in 1998.

Watching Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend launching a war with the Persian Empire and chortling over killing Iranians — “We might do it again for fun” — I’m struck by what the Donald Trump era has done to our national sense of self. A president who treats war like a snuff film he would have enjoyed with Ghislaine Maxwell — “I just wish her well,” Trump said when the pedophile was arrested — is a cancer on the nation’s soul.

It’s no surprise that we keep hearing about groups of youngish Republicans who praise Hitler in chatrooms. It has been 2007 since they knew a Republican president who was a decent human being.

Why does JD Vance defend the Nazi-humpers in his party? Because he knows that the way to advance in the Republican Party is to be the most transgressive. Donald Trump launched his campaign in 2015 by calling Mexicans rapists.

Now that a masked death squad is chasing brown people across the country, there’s no political juice in a mere verbal assault against Hispanics. So, Vance decides to up the ante and defend those in his party who cosplay as Nazis. Let’s see you top that, Marco Rubio.

It is the deepest sort of denial to assert that a country led by broken, sick men does not impact the definition of what it means to be an American.

Compare this moral collapse to Ukraine. Since the Russians launched their full-scale war of genocide, Ukrainians look to their country and leaders with great pride and respect. The Russians thought that Ukrainians would fold like a cardboard box left in a long rain. Not since Hitler invaded Russia has there been such a miscalculation in a European war

 Now in the fifth year of the largest European land war since World War II, the character of the Ukrainian people has been tested under the most brutal conditions. For generations, the quiet heroism and courage of Ukrainians and their leaders will be celebrated.

To grow up in America today is to look at our national leaders with a sense of disgust and alienation. Who in their right mind would want to be Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend who talks in public about dating his own daughter? Who would want to be a man so void of any basic humanity that the death of millions after the killing of USAID is gleefully cited as shrewd budget management?

The conservatives who once lectured the country about character did not lose the argument. They abandoned it. When it became inconvenient — when their voters chose a man who embodies everything they once claimed to oppose — they folded. Not gradually, not reluctantly, but enthusiastically.

The same movement that once insisted a president must be a moral exemplar for the nation’s children now explains away a man who paid hush money to a porn star, who mocks the disabled and who celebrates cruelty as strength. They did not change their theory of character. They simply decided that winning was worth more than the theory.

That is the real American crisis. Not just that we have a president of broken character, but that an entire political movement chose him knowingly, repeatedly and joyfully.

William Bennett was right in 1998. He just didn’t anticipate that the people who agreed with him most loudly would be the ones who burned it all down.

Stuart Stevens, a Jackson native, is  a veteran political consultant, working on multiple high-profile Republican campaigns, including presidential and senatorial campaigns. In more recent years, he has been affiliated with the Lincoln Project, comprised mainly of longtime Republicans who oppose Donald Trump. Stevens has spoken out on what he views as the country’s shift toward authoritarianism and is the author of multiple books, including the 2020, “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump.”

On March 27, 1961, Joseph Jackson Jr. was alone in a jail cell in Jackson and afraid for his life. 

“The silence got to me, because here I am in Mississippi, where Negroes could just disappear without any investigation or without any recourse as to prosecuting whoever the white perpetrator would be,” said Jackson, now 88.

Jackson was a member of the Tougaloo Nine. He, along with Meredith Anding Jr., James “Sammy” Bradford, Alfred Lee Cook, Geraldine Edwards-Hollis, Janice Jackson Vails, Albert Lassiter, Ameenah E. P. Omar (born Evelyn Pierce) and Ethel Sawyer Adolphe staged a sit-in at the whites-only Jackson Municipal Library, near the state Capitol, to challenge racial segregation.

Jackson and Lassiter reflected on their experiences on that historic day with Mississippi Today ahead of the 65th anniversary of the Tougaloo Nine’s sit-in protest.

The group is named for their alma mater, Tougaloo Southern Christian College, now known as Tougaloo College. They were all members of the North Jackson Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s field secretary for Mississippi, was key to organizing the sit-in. Evers secured them bail money and legal representation. The group spent weeks preparing, doing simulations to mentally prepare themselves to get attacked by a white mob without striking back.

Jackson said the mock demonstrations prepared them mentally and spiritually for what they were going to face.

“We had to go within, and get in touch with the spirit,” Jackson said.

On the day of, the nine made their first stop at the George Washington Carver Library, the branch for Black people, and asked for books they knew the library didn’t carry.

When that branch didn’t have them, they went to the whites-only library and began reading quietly and browsing the card catalog. The librarians there told them to leave. They refused, and the librarians called the police.

Lassiter, now 84, explained his thought process, saying, “I was a more visible target, tall and slim. I said, ‘Well, let me get over here into the card catalog so I’ll have a notice if a policeman comes around to whack me.’”

When officers arrived and the students still refused to leave, they were arrested for breaching the peace. The plan was for the students from the historically Black college to be bailed out the same day, but Sheriff J.R. Gilfoy, the only person who could accept their bail money, he left town.

They remained in jail for 32 hours.

“We really didn’t know what was going to happen or what they were going to do,” Lassiter said.

“So we just had to be tough and pray.”

While they sat in jail, support for them grew on the outside. After they were arrested, students at Jackson College for Negro Teachers, now Jackson State University, held a prayer vigil for them. The college’s president, Jacob Reddix, and the police broke up the gathering. Reddix, according to Clarion-Ledger reports at the time, assaulted two students, and three students were expelled.

The next morning, Jackson State students boycotted class and held a rally on campus in support of the Tougaloo Nine. Some of them marched toward the jail where the Tougaloo students were arraigned, but never got that far, because it was the same day as celebrations of the centennial of Mississippi’s secession from the Union.

The day after that, the Tougaloo Nine arrived to the courthouse. When a group of supporters gathered nearby and cheered for them, police attacked them with clubs, dogs and tear gas. Among those assaulted were Evers, several women, two children and an 81 year-old man.

The Tougaloo Nine were charged with breaching the peace, and each was sentenced to a $100 fine and 30 days in jail. The jail sentence was suspended on the condition that they never participate in another demonstration.

Though not the first sit-in, this demonstration is cited as a catalyst in the growth of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Activists across the state staged their own sit-ins, challenging racial segregation in public spaces. Two of the Jackson State students who were expelled after the prayer vigil were sisters Joyce and Dorie Ladner, who became local activists.

Barred from demonstrating, the Tougaloo Nine went back to their lives. Lassiter said they became “like family,” even as they spread out across the country.

“One or two students in class made a comment, ‘You guys crazy?’” said Lassiter.

“No, we just did what we wanted to do to make a change, make things better.”

Jackson was originally from Memphis, Tennessee. His early life was marked by poverty and the oppression of Jim Crow. He claimed that when he was 11 years-old, a Greyhound bus driver struck his mother in the face. He said “the most humiliating experience” was knowing they had to board the bus and walk all the way back to the “colored” section, and when they got there looking at the other Black people and knowing they had no way to get recourse. It inspired him to get involved in activism in college.

“We had no one to speak on our behalf, and I never forgot that,” he said.

He began attending Tougaloo College on choral and ministerial scholarships in 1960. He was president of Tougaloo’s chapter of the NAACP Youth Council. Before Tougaloo, he spent his freshman year at Arkansas AM&N College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, prior to getting married and working as a pastor among other jobs.

Jackson had to drop out of Tougaloo to support his family, but graduated in 1972 from California State College at Fullerton, now California State University, Fullerton. He went on to remarry and have another child.

He became a Los Angeles County deputy probation officer and juvenile investigator, which he said, “became a ministry to me.” He retired in 2002. Tougaloo College awarded him an honorary doctorate in humane letters in 2021.

Lassiter was born and raised in Vicksburg. His father was a bricklayer and later a pastor, while his mother stayed home to care for him and his eight siblings. He said he had scholarships and worked four jobs to pay for school.

Lassiter recalled how, when 14-year-old  Emmett Till was murdered in the Mississippi Delta by white men in 1955, his eighth grade teacher pulled all the boys into a group to tell them how to avoid meeting Till’s fate.

“Colored folks, or Black folks, were put down in every way,” he said. “So we just had to scrap and work whichever way you could to take care of your family and to take care of yourself.”

After graduating from Tougaloo, Lassiter joined the military in 1964. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Air Force 1990, retiring in 1995. He is married with two children. He believes the country has made a lot of progress.

“We’ve come a long way because there are many individuals who were elevated to positions of leadership in all arenas … who would not be there if we hadn’t made that kind of progress,” Lassiter said.

In 1962, the NAACP filed a class-action lawsuit against the whites-only library branch, and a federal court ruled that the library had to integrate.

A Freedom Trail marker commemorating the sit-in was erected in 2017 where the library used to stand on State Street.

Most of the Tougaloo Nine shared their stories with writer and independent researcher Michael J. O’Brien’s for his book “The Tougaloo Nine: The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights.” Published in 2025, it chronicles their protest and the event’s local and national impact.

Jackson believes the struggle for freedom is ongoing, and young people need to learn about their history and “get into the fight.”

Paraphrasing a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he said: “If you think that full equal rights are going to be granted to us, mainly as Black people, coming riding in on the wheels of inevitability without us really rolling up our sleeves and maintaining our history, it will never happen.”

Power generator replacements for homes where Mississippians with intellectual disabilities live. A major repair for a state hospital that’s likely to be cited in its next inspection without it. Financial support for the community mental health centers required to treat people regardless of their ability to pay.

These are some of the looming financial issues Department of Mental Health Executive Director Wendy Bailey highlighted to state lawmakers in her agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. It asks for just over $765 million — about $33 million more in general fund appropriations than lawmakers allocated last year. 

State agencies rarely receive all the money they request. The mental health department’s plan for some of the additional tens of millions of dollars is to expand services and to address one-time needs, Bailey said at a January Senate appropriations meeting. Some of the money also would help to keep up with rising expenses across health care. 

“Just like you’ve seen an increase in your cost for your living expenses at your home, it’s the same at a 24/7 health care situation, too,” Bailey said at the meeting. 

But as the legislative session approaches its March 30 deadline to decide the mental health department’s next budget, the House and Senate haven’t included funding for much of these expenses in their proposals. Neither plan will likely match the final appropriation, but they can indicate how each chamber is considering the agency’s next budget.

The Senate’s version of the bill reduced funding for the agency compared to last year by about $4 million. The House’s amendment added about $14 million more than the Senate’s plan in general funds to Mississippi’s mental health department, mostly specified for partial funding of some of the department’s requests. But it does not include additional funding for the state hospital capital improvements or the community mental health center operational costs. 

Bailey at the March 19 Department of Mental health board meeting said her agency is extremely appreciative of the House’s amendment, but she didn’t speak to the board members about how her department would address the costs she previously outlined if the request isn’t fulfilled.

“It would be wonderful, and I know several of you did, reach out to your House of Representative members in your area and thank them for the work they’ve done so far on our appropriations bills,” she told the board members. 

Adam Moore, spokesperson for the department, told Mississippi Today after the meeting that the Legislature could also address some of the agency’s capital improvement needs through a different funding bill. 

He said the agency will continue to monitor the budget process until the Legislature finalizes the department’s funding for the next fiscal year, which starts on July 1. 

“We work through it, make do with what we have, and we’ll have to prioritize with what we get,” Moore said.

Can Mississippi’s community mental health centers survive more budget cuts?

Others who work with Mississippi’s public mental health system expressed concern about the gap between the department’s request and what legislators have proposed. 

Phaedre Cole, president of the Mississippi Association of Community Mental Health Centers and executive director of Life Help in the Mississippi Delta, said the $4.2 million increase the agency asked for hers and others’ organizations would help offset the cost of providing services to vulnerable Mississippians. The state’s 12 centers are expected to treat people’s mental health conditions regardless of their insurance or ability to pay.

However, it doesn’t fully cover the centers’ actual operational cost needs, Cole said. She estimated that number to be about $14.4 million.

Neither the House or Senate proposals would add any additional line-item funding for the centers next fiscal year. Cole said she knows legislators are supportive of the mental health centers in their regions, and she said she and the other executive directors have been calling to remind their local lawmakers of that.

But she is aware Mississippi Medicaid Director Cindy Bradshaw has warned that the agency could lower its provider payments up to 11%. If the additional funding request for community mental health centers is unfulfilled and Medicaid payment rates drop for services they provide, Cole said the financial impact on the organizations would be “catastrophic.”

“I don’t know how we would survive that,” she said.

Matt Westerfield, a spokesperson for Mississippi Medicaid, didn’t respond to a phone call and email asking about this scenario. Angela Ladner, executive director of the Mississippi Psychiatric Association, said the current system of funding for community mental health centers often asks more of the organizations than what they can afford. 

State lawmakers told Mississippi Medicaid and the mental health department to apply for a federal program that would make community mental health service funding more sustainable, but the state was not selected the last time it applied. Without changing the model or adding more funding, Ladner said mental health services for Mississippians who most need it could be in jeopardy.

“Saying ‘We’re going to just give them the same thing that we’ve always given them’ is not necessarily going to get us where we need to go,” she said.

Forgoing building improvements to the state hospitals may prevent the facilities from serving the public as well, according to the Department of Mental Health. Bailey, the department’s executive director, told state senators at the January appropriations meeting that inspectors will cite North Mississippi State Hospital’s current generator if it is not replaced soon. 

She also said the department would use capital improvement funding for community homes run by North Mississippi Regional Center, where some Mississippians with intellectual and developmental disabilities live. The homes, Bailey said, need six new backup power generators — which some homes relied on during January’s severe winter storm. 

Executive directors for both mental health centers referred Mississippi Today’s interview requests to Moore, who did not elaborate further on their buildings’ needs. 

Ladner said in the long term, the state could improve how it goes about contracting capital improvement contracts for government buildings, including looking to fund joint projects with local governments. But in the short term, she said the state’s mental health department needs to find the money to replace the old generators.

“Obviously, that needs to be addressed,” she said. 

‘I want to get the real number’

Two lawmakers tasked with negotiating the mental health department’s next budget said negotiations over the state’s Medicaid budget bill will have bearings over DMH’s appropriations. 

House Republican Public Health and Human Services Committee Chair Sam Creekmore said he would like to finalize that budget before moving on to mental health.

He said making sure the department can fund mental health services and replace out-of-date generators is a major priority. But Creekmore said state agencies can inflate their financial needs in initial budget requests, and he wants to talk with Bailey more before the negotiations. 

“I want to get the real number if I can find it,” he said.

Sen. Angela Hill, the Republican chair of the appropriations subcommittee that oversees the mental health department’s budget, said she is concerned about public mental health funding in Mississippi. She’s heard from the community mental health center that serves her hometown of Picayune, and she knows they are struggling to finance their services. 

She said while she has some input in this budget bill, leaders in both the House and the Senate will make the final decisions about the agency’s next budget. Hill said in her role, she does her best to prioritize what she believes is important — such as the community centers. 

“It’s my goal to do as much as we can for them,” she said.

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.

The Adams County Correctional Center, one of more than 200 ICE detention facilities in the U.S., is located near the city of Natchez on a sprawling 14-acre site in southwestern Mississippi.

The facility, which holds more than 2,000 people, is a significant economic driver in a county of fewer than 30,000 residents. CoreCivic employs approximately 400 people there, making it one of the largest employers in Adams County. Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson said CoreCivic is the county’s single largest taxpayer.

The federal government sets strict limits on who can visit Immigration and Custom Enforcement detention centers. And nearly all of them are run by for-profit companies, making the details of their operation private and difficult to monitor. 

So far, this is what we know.

Who owns it?

The Adams facility is privately owned and operated by CoreCivic Inc., a publicly traded company based in Tennessee. 

One of the largest private prison companies in the country, it disclosed in its most recent financial filings that it owns or controls about 57% of all privately owned prison beds in the U.S. 

The company, which reported $2.2 billion in revenue last year, has benefited financially from the Trump administration’s push to arrest immigrants. From 2024 to 2025, revenue increased by nearly $200 million thanks largely to an increase in ICE detentions, according to the company’s latest annual report.

Over the past few years, CoreCivic, its employees and PACs have poured millions of dollars into political donations and lobbying. In the 2024 election cycle, 84% of these donations went to Republican candidates. In the same cycle, CoreCivic spent more than $1.7 million lobbying, according to OpenSecrets. The previous year, it spent more than $1.6 million.

The Adams County facility is one of two ICE facilities operated by CoreCivic in the state. A second CoreCivic facility in Tutwiler, in northern Mississippi, was authorized last year to start housing ICE detainees.

What kinds of people are detained there? 

The Adams facility is a men’s facility. Most of its detainees are not from Mississippi. They were picked up by ICE agents somewhere else and are being held here until they decide to leave the country, or until an immigration judge deports them or sets them free.

Being in the U.S. without proper documentation is a civil infraction, like a speeding ticket – not a criminal violation. This fact has contributed to controversy about prison-like conditions that people detained by ICE are experiencing.

Only 9% of people in the Adams center have any sort of criminal conviction. But even those with criminal records are being held for civil immigration infractions, not as punishment. 

In addition to men, the facility currently houses a small number of transgender women. Following President Trump’s 2025 executive order, transgender people are required to be incarcerated in facilities that align with their gender assigned at birth, regardless of their legal status.

How long are detainees held?

In early 2025, then-warden Jason Streeval was quoted by the Natchez Democrat as saying that the average stay in the facility was about 60 days but had been getting longer. He told the newspaper that some detainees had been there for as long as seven months. 

Has the facility ever been the subject of controversy? 

The Adams facility made headlines in 2012, when an inmate protest against poor conditions snowballed into a riot that resulted in the killing of a guard. The FBI opened an investigation, leading to a number of inmates being charged and ultimately sentenced for participating in the riot. In the wake of the riot, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson called for an investigation into CoreCivic, then operating as Corrections Corporation of America.

One section of the facility, known as the “Zulu” unit, contains solitary confinement cells, where detainees are housed as punishment. In 2020, two nonprofit groups submitted a written complaint to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security alleging that immigrants from Cameroon had been tortured by ICE officers in that ward and forced to sign deportation documents. A year later, the complaint was still unresolved, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. A representative for ICE did not respond to an inquiry about the current status of the complaint.

In 2021, an inspection by DHS found that Adams generally had provided sufficient medical care but identified one case in which the medical unit examined a sick detainee but did not send the person to the hospital. The detainee died. 

DHS also found that Adams didn’t meet other federal standards. Among the cited failures: It did not respond to grievances in a timely manner, it inadequately implemented COVID-19 safety protocols and it failed to assist vulnerable detainees. The ACLU called for the facility to be shut down.

What’s life like inside? 

The facility is divided into units, each holding about 140 people who share eight toilets and 15 showers, according to detainees interviewed by Mississippi Today. While inside, detainees can work if they choose, helping to clean, run the kitchen or do laundry. Several people held at the center said they were paid about $3.50 per day for their work.

Detainees are generally restricted to their own unit, where they can move about freely. One detainee said he was allowed to visit a secure outdoor area once every four or five days.

Several detainees described harsh conditions, but said that they had spent time in other facilities that were far dirtier and more restrictive. 

We don’t know much beyond that, especially about what the detention center looks like inside. A detainee who can afford the fees can send messages and make video calls from inside. They can’t send photos or attachments. And the communication app blurs their background and obscures the video completely if the camera is aimed away from the detainee’s face during a call.

How much does it cost to run? 

The contract to run this facility, like most other ICE detention centers, is an “Intragovernmental Service Agreement” between ICE, CoreCivic and Adams County. The 2019 agreement shows that ICE had agreed to pay a $3.9 million monthly flat rate for the facility, an amount set to increase every year. There have since been changes to this contract, but they were not immediately accessible. 

When we requested an interview with the warden and assistant warden, a spokesperson for CoreCivic redirected us to the company’s public affairs office and requested us to send our questions in writing. 

Over the next few months, we plan to publish weekly dispatches about the facility and about ICE detention in Mississippi and do our best to address these unanswered questions. You’ll be able to find my reporting on the Mississippi Today website, on our social media channels and in our Friday newsletter. And you can follow me on X @mukta_jo.

In the meantime, please fill out our survey. If you know something about the detention center, if you know someone who works there or is detained there, or want me to find out something about it for readers, please get in touch.

Clarification 3/27/26: This story has been updated to clarify the types of detainees held in the Adams County Correctional Center.

Mississippi lawmakers removed a provision from an opioid settlement reform bill Thursday that would have guaranteed tens of millions of dollars from drug company lawsuits would be used to address addiction. 

Six negotiators unanimously agreed to a proposal that would change how the Legislature spends national opioid settlement money. The plan goes to the full House and Senate for consideration in the next few days.

Since 2022, the state has received over $130 million from lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that contributed to over 10,000 Mississippi overdose deaths since 1999. The state is expected to receive about $421 million by 2040. 

Every state is receiving opioid settlement money, and every state besides Mississippi had spent at least $3 million of it to prevent more overdose deaths by last fall. The Legislature controls 85% of Mississippi’s settlements. So far, it has only spent its share on legal fees. 

Across the state, 147 towns, cities and counties control the other 15% of Mississippi’s money. Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote a contract and a letter that said they could use the money on any public purpose without reporting their spending. Many did. 

Of the at least $15.5 million the local governments had received by last summer, Mississippi Today found that over $4 million went to general expenses, and less than $1 million was used to prevent overdoses. 

Soon after the newsroom’s investigation, House Public Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, said he would like to pass a law that encouraged local governments to spend money addressing addiction. Earlier this month, he and the House proposed amending the state’s opioid settlement laws to require all local money to be spent on public health overdose prevention measures.

But Thursday’s agreement between the three senators and three representatives, including Creekmore, removed any mention of how local governments should spend the money. Creekmore said he couldn’t get agreement from the other lawmakers, and the bill would’ve gone away if he didn’t continue moving it forward. 

If the bill passes without the local government restrictions, cities and counties can continue spending money paid out by the drug companies on non-addiction purposes. The local governments are expected to receive over $40 million more by the time all the money is distributed.

While Creekmore said he would’ve liked to include guidance to encourage cities and counties on how to spend the lawsuit funds, he and the other negotiators worked hard on other parts of the bill. 

“I’ll stand with them on it,” he said. “Did I want to? No. But at the end of the day, I thought the bill is as good as we can get.”

Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford, is lead sponsor of the bill and also helped negotiate the latest provisions. She said the lawmakers sought advice about what they could and couldn’t do with reforming the local settlement provisions from their legal council in Fitch’s office. 

MaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for the office, didn’t immediately answer a call or respond to a voicemail asking about the legal provisions the office suggested.

Boyd echoed statements the attorney general’s office has provided to Mississippi Today in the past — the money going to local governments was intended to compensate them for addiction expenses over the past two decades. While the national opioid settlements allow for a portion to not be spent on addressing addiction, the lawyers who negotiated the agreement discouraged states from doing that.

“The money that went back to them, that went to the cities and the counties, was for money they had already spent,” Boyd said. “It’s not abatement, it’s reimbursement.”

She said she’s more focused on the larger portion of opioid settlement money the Legislature controls — expected to be over $350 million by the time Mississippi receives all its payments. Most of that money is overseen by an advisory council and must be spent on addiction, but Fitch and the Legislature allow for about $63 million to be spent for general purposes. 

The current version of Boyd’s bill gives the Legislature more power to adjust the advisory council’s recommendations, strengthens ethics rules to prevent potential conflicts of interest among council members and instructs the council to contract with a third-party group to improve Missisisppi’s opioid settlement distribution and evaluation. It instructs Fitch’s office to use some of the $63 million for the third-party contract.

Boyd said she hopes these changes will lead to Mississippi’s opioid settlement money preventing more overdose deaths. 

“What we’re trying to see is how do we have a big impact for the people and how do you make a difference,” she said.

James Moore, a Hattiesburg recovery advocate who lost his son to an overdose, is a member of the advisory council with Boyd and Creekmore. During the council’s last meeting, he called for many of the reforms that are still in the bill. He  said he’s happy to see them moving closer to possibly becoming law. 

But he said he’s disappointed that lawmakers are insisting local money can be spent for anything other than what Mississippi argued it should be in its lawsuits against opioid companies, what Fitch’s office first said it would be used for — addressing the public health epidemic that killed his son.

If the lawmakers negotiated this deal at a public meeting, Moore said he thinks they wouldn’t have removed that provision. Too many families torn apart by the crisis, like his, would have shown up to encourage them to preserve that requirement. 

“I can’t imagine anybody in the room that’d be willing to look at survivors and families and parents and say, ‘We still ought to be able to do what we want to with this, even if it’s fix a pothole.’”