Award-winning actor James Earl Jones with photos from two of his signature voice roles – Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and Mufasa in Disney’s “The Lion King.” Credit: Wikipedia
Born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, James Earl Jones moved to his grandparents’ farm in Michigan at age 5.
He had a stutter so severe, he hardly spoke. An English teacher realized his gift for writing poetry and had him recite poetry in front of the class, overcoming his stuttering.
At the University of Michigan, he was majoring in pre-med when he discovered drama. After training troops in the Korean War, he starred in “Othello” at the Ramsdell Theatre in Michigan. In 1967, he starred opposite actress Jane Alexander in “The Great White Hope,” loosely based on heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and society’s demand for a white boxer that would defeat Johnson. The play began at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., before moving to Broadway, where the play, Jones and Alexander all won Tonys. In the film adaptation, Jones won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.
He went on to play Shakespeare on Broadway and win another Tony, three Emmys and an honorary Oscar in 2011. The first celebrity guest on Sesame Street, he may be best known for providing the voice for Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies and for Mufasa in Disney’s “The Lion King.”
He sees the two biggest challenges to society as health and sanity. “I won’t say racism,” he said. “I say sanity because racism is a form of insanity.”
As Medicaid expansion remains a top political issue in Mississippi — and sure to be debated this legislative session — one group will be advocating for the policy on the front lines.
Care4Mississippi is a coalition of 36 partner organizations, and growing, focused on getting Medicaid expanded in Mississippi.
Co-chair Kimberly Hughes, who’s also the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network’s government relations director, says this is the first time the coalition will be “active” during the legislative session, but the work on this issue began years ago.
Many of the coalition’s current partners were part of the Yes on 76 campaign, which was a statewide effort to get expansion of Medicaid on the 2022 ballot through the state’s ballot-initiative process.
However, the campaign was suspended in May 2021 after the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that the state’s initiative process was invalid. Since then, efforts to reinstate it have failed.
There is currently no ballot initiative process in Mississippi, which is meant to allow citizens to circumvent politicians and place an issue on a statewide ballot for voter consideration.
Yes on 76 stakeholders took a few months off, Hughes said, before convening to create Care4Mississippi in 2022.
“We’ve tried to keep the issue alive and keep partners engaged, especially after we had to change our plans to more of a legislative campaign,” Hughes said.
The organization was less active in 2023 because it was an election year, she said, and focused its efforts on recruiting partners. It appeared many people were waiting to see who won the gubernatorial election, in which incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves bested his pro-expansion Democratic opponent Brandon Presley, before deciding to get involved with the coalition, Hughes said.
Since the coalition spent the past year preparing for this legislative session, it’s coming armed with a trove of information on Medicaid expansion.
“We want to be that clearinghouse for information,” she said. “There’s momentum around this issue, in the public and the press and with some of our lawmakers, so we’ve been trying to get ready for that.”
Kimberly Hughes, a Care4Mississippi coalition member, looks at the county health and economic data map on the Care4MS’s website as she and other members discuss the organization and its mission on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, at the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program office in Jackson, Miss. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
The coalition’s website already features resources for people who want to learn more, including national and state research that underlines the policy’s benefits for Mississippi, as well as a data map created by the coalition that shows how Medicaid expansion would impact every county in Mississippi.
Researchers estimate somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 Mississippians currently fall in Medicaid’s coverage gap — they make too much to qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford insurance on their own — and would be insured if the policy was expanded to the working poor as most other states have done.
Coalition leaders say information is essential to dispelling myths about expansion perpetuated by state officials and empowering Mississippians to advocate for the policy.
Reeves remains a staunch opponent and has referred to expanding Medicaid health coverage as adding more people to the state’s welfare rolls.
“We want to be a credible center voice on the issue of creating a solution or covering those who have no affordable option for health insurance,” said Blair Ewing, the coalition’s program coordinator and lobbyist. “We want to challenge our leaders to work together to find solutions, stop hospital closures and create access to care for Mississippi families.”
Moving forward, Ewing said the coalition’s strategy will revolve around recruiting more partners and getting the word out as much as possible, which will include hosting a “Capitol Day” on Feb. 22. The coalition will have a table in the State Capitol’s rotunda to educate passersby about expansion and host a press event on the Capitol steps.
Hughes is hopeful about movement on expansion in Mississippi during this year’s legislative session, especially since new Speaker of the House Jason White says the House will at least consider the policy. His predecessor, Phillip Gunn, was an outspoken opponent and prevented the full House from voting on it during his tenure.
Ewing said that getting the policy passed starts with arming people with the information they need and stressed that anyone, organization or individual, can join on the coalition’s website. Some of its current members include the heavily involved Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, as well as the Mississippi Center for Justice, Mississippi Hospital Association, American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, Center for Mississippi Health Policy and American Heart Association.
“I think if constituents knew more, if there was more information out there and they actually started going to their congressman about it, then things would change,” she said. “There’s an unbelievable amount of support in the state for closing that Medicaid coverage gap — we know people want our legislators to do something about it.”
Gov. Tate Reeves will call a Thursday special session to ask lawmakers to appropriate $350 million in state funds to close an economic development deal that would bring an electric vehicle battery facility to north Mississippi.
The multibillion dollar project, if approved, is slated to be constructed at the Chickasaw Trails Industrial Park in Marshall County near the Mississippi-Tennessee state line. State officials recently invested around $1.1 million in the industrial park.
Reeves on Tuesday declined to name the companies involved in the proposed deal, but the Daily Memphian reported that the project is a joint venture between Daimler Truck Holdings, PACCAR and Cummins Truck Holdings. The three manufacturers announced plans last year to jointly invest $2 billion to $3 billion in a battery production facility.
“Economic development is a team sport,” Reeves said. “It’s not partisan. It doesn’t matter what part of the state it is. This is going to change lives for thousands and thousands of people in north Mississippi, in Marshall County and beyond.”
The project will include a $1.9 billion corporate capital investment, create 2,000 jobs and pay workers an average salary of $66,000, according to the governor, who is asking lawmakers to appropriate around $350 million in taxpayer funds to contribute to the project.
About half the money the Legislature spends on the economic deal would go toward infrastructure around the facility, and the other half would go toward the business itself, Reeves said.
The governor also said he was “highly confident” the business leaders would offer a generous benefit package, including health insurance, to the employees at the new facility.
The special session will begin on Thursday and both House Speaker Jason White, R-West, and Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said they anticipate legislation approving the deal will clear the House and Senate quickly.
Rep. John Faulkner, D-Holly Springs, and Rep. Bill Kinkade, R-Byhalia, told Mississippi Today that the Marshall County Board of Supervisors and the local economic development leaders have worked with state officials for months on the project and believe it will improve the overall area.
“It’s exciting for us,” Faulkner said of the economic project. “I’m glad we have an opportunity to land this project in Marshall County. I think it’s going to be a game changer and change lives. It’s going to mean a tremendous amount of growth for our community.”
If lawmakers approve the economic development project, it will be the second type of deal since Reeves became governor where lawmakers have appropriated state tax dollars. Reeves signed legislation into law in November 2022 for money and tax incentives to benefit Steel Dynamics expanding in Columbus.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Denise Lafferty, Chief Strategy and Operations Officer, and Dr. Kim Tarver, Director of Clinical Services, from UMMC’s MIND Center.
The MIND Center, founded in 2010, was created to crack the code in Alzheimer’s, a devastating and growing form of dementia. One in 10 baby boomers will be diagnosed with the disease. To help combat dementia, the MIND Center has a three-prong mission: Research, Health Care and Education.
Lafferty and Tarver both talk about the research, ways to reduce your chances of getting the disease and ways you can take care of your brain.
Douglas Wilder, former governor of Richmond, Va. Credit: Courtesy of the National Park Service
Douglas Wilder, who became the first Black American elected governor since Reconstruction, took office in Richmond, Virginia.
Named after both abolitionist Frederick Douglass and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, he worked his way through Virginia Union University before being drafted into the Korean War. During the Battle of Pork Chop, he and two fellow soldiers were cut off from their unit. When they ran into 19 Chinese soldiers, they bluffed them into surrendering. Wilder was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for his bravery.
Back in the U.S., he became a lawyer, and in 1969 won a seat in the Virginia State Senate, becoming the first African American elected to the body since Reconstruction. In 1985, he was elected lieutenant governor, and four years later won as governor. The winning margin? Less than one-half percent.
The mother of an 11-year-old Indianola boy shot in the chest by a police officer is trying for the second time to hold the officer accountable in a criminal court.
On Friday, Nakala Murry filed a criminal affidavit against Sgt. Greg Capers for misdemeanor simple assault stemming from the May 20, 2023, shooting of her son Aderrien. Misdemeanors don’t require a grand jury indictment and would be heard by a judge in a bench trial, which is without a jury.
“This action underscores Ms. Murry’s unwavering commitment to seeking accountability for the harm inflicted upon her son and her family,” Carlos Moore, Murry’s attorney, said in a Friday statement. “It’s a crucial step in the ongoing effort to hold responsible parties accountable for their actions.”
Last month, a Sunflower County grand jury declined to indict Capers for any felony charges based on evidence presented by the Attorney General’s Office and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which handles all investigations for law enforcement shootings.
In the Friday affidavit, Murry accuses Capers of “recklessly shooting” her son Aderrien in the chest when he responded to the Murry home for a domestic disturbance, according to a copy of the affidavit. Aderrien had used his mother’s phone to call for help.
Aderrien Murry
The shooting left the boy with a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver, and he has been recovering with the help of family and the community.
Murry previously filed a criminal affidavit against Capers for felony aggravated assault in Sunflower County.
Following the grand jury decision, Capers was reinstated with the Indianola Police Department after being on unpaid administrative leave for several months.
Murry is still pursuing a $5 million federal lawsuit against Capers, the Indianola police chief and city relating to her son’s shooting.
This month, MBI released a nearly two-minute long video clip taken from Capers’s body camera. Prior to the release, Murry and her attorney had been calling for the city of Indianola to release it because they had been barred from sharing the video or talking about it.
Footage shows Capers and a colleague approach the Murry home, bang on the front door and ask for permission from the 911 dispatcher to kick it open. Nakala Murry opens the door and Capers shouts twice: “Let me see your hands,” which she raises.
Sgt. Greg Capers of the Indianola Police Department. Credit: Photo courtesy of Carlos Moore
Capers asks twice where Murry’s former partner is, and she nods her head toward the inside of the home. When asked, Murry steps outside.
From the doorway, Capers asks the man to come out, saying “don’t make us come in.” As he steps into the living room, Aderrien walks into view of the body camera with his hands over his head. Capers immediately opens fire.
He shoots the boy in the chest and says “Oh, my god.” The boy starts to scream and runs out of the front door and yells for his mother. At the same time, Capers calls for an ambulance on his dispatch radio.
“‘Why did he shoot me? What did I do?’” Nakala Murry recalled her son saying after the shooting.
The Mississippi State Department of Health first issued the notice Thursday morning after reporting E.coli was in two samples submitted from JXN Water, Jackson’s third-party water manager. The notice was concurrent with a boil water notice MSDH issued for Flowood, which, the agency said, also had E.coli in its water samples.
Just hours later, JXN Water’s Ted Henifin held a press conference disputing the results, arguing that it was highly unlikely for both Jackson and Flowood to have traces of E.coli in the same testing period, and that the results were likely false positives. Henifin also criticized the Health Department for not validating the results before issuing the boil water notice, something allowed under federal guidelines through the Environmental Protection Agency.
MSDH pushed back, saying in a press release that the agency reviewed its protocol and was “confident in (the test results’) validity.”
The agency’s quick lifting of the boil water notice for Jackson — Flowood’s remains active as of this publishing — is a shift from its usual procedure. MSDH usually requires two consecutive days of clean samples, as well as roughly a day to analyze the results, before it lifts a boil water notice.
In a news release announcing the lifting of the boil water notice, state health officialsdid said they were doing so “in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Revised Total Coliform Rule.”
But they went on to say that they continue to stand behind the initial test results: “Upon review, all evidence supports that these test results were true positives. Since 2003, there have been 29 instances of E. coli detected in the City of Jackson’s water system. During the same time period, the City of Flowood has had three instances of E. coli in their water system.”
While the citywide notice was lifted, two separate notices due to loss of pressure are still active in Jackson, affecting 351 customers. Visit MSDH’s boil water notice listing to see which areas are affected.
JXN Water preps for cold weather
Throughout the last year, JXN Water has upgraded the city’s largely exposed and vulnerable water treatment facilities to better sustain cold weather. Temperatures in Jackson could reach as low as 15 degrees on Monday, according to the National Weather Service, with a chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain.
The main upgrades, Henifin explained Friday, were covering and insulating the city’s water treatment facilities, hoping to prevent a repeat of the 2021 water shutdown in Jackson when equipment left exposed to the cold prevented the city from putting out enough pressure into the system.
Ted Henifin, interim water manager, for JXN Water, the water system for the city of Jackson, Miss., used his agency’s sink to demonstrate how to run faucet water like a “thin line of spaghetti with intermittent breaks” in order to deal with expected below freezing weather, at a news conference in Jackson, Miss., Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. During the news conference, Henifin also questioned the Mississippi Department of Health’s recent results regarding the quality of the city’s water. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Henifin also said the city is more well equipped now to handle water line ruptures. In the past, such as on Christmas in 2022, the cold weather has frequently led to line breaks and subsequent boil water notices. JXN Water, Henifin said, now has 14 crews that will work around the clock to repair any breaks, versus the two crews that the city had a year ago.
Jackson officials are asking residents to let their faucets drip during freezing weather to prevent pipes from freezing, as well as to open their cabinets under the sink to allow heat inside.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s office cautioned residents to stay home in the event of snow, sleet, or freezing rain, because of possibly dangerous driving conditions and the city’s limited capacity to clear snow and ice from the roads.
The city will also open a temporary shelter on Monday at 11 A.M. with food and cots, at 1355 Hattiesburg Street in Jackson.
UPDATE 1/12/23: This story has been updated to include the state Health Department’s position.
Speaker Jason White on Friday appointed new people to lead the two House committees with jurisdiction over health policy, signaling a desire to shift the focus of health care debate in a state plagued by dire health outcomes.
“The selections for chairs and vice chairs directly reflect our desire and drive to elevate Mississippi,” White said in a statement. “I am enthusiastic to work with these Republican, Democrat, and independent chairs and vice chairs as we address our state’s challenges and opportunities through a conservative lens to build a better, brighter Mississippi.”
The new speaker appointed Sam Creekmore IV, a Republican from New Albany, to chair the Public Health and Human Services Committee and Missy McGee, a Republican of Hattiesburg, to chair the Medicaid Committee, a notable shift from more conservative respective chairs of the previous four-year term.
Both Creekmore and McGee come from the more moderate wing of the state GOP and have been involved in previous efforts to reform aspects of health care. Both have told Mississippi Today they support Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Creekmore, only a second-term lawmaker, successfully passed legislation last year to provide more mental health services while McGee, a third-term legislator, has been a vocal advocate for increasing postpartum Medicaid benefits for new mothers.
“I was very much surprised,” Creekmore told Mississippi Today of the committee chair assignment. “I was thinking that if I got a chair it would not be Public Health, though that would have been my first choice. I have been passionate about it. I did not ask for it. I wasn’t expecting anything major like Public Health.”
When asked about possible priorities as chair of Public Health, Creekmore said he wanted to put Medicaid expansion “on the table.”
“Let’s have a conversation,” he said. “I know that is what the speaker wants to do, too. We have not discussed it other than just in passing. But whatever we do has to be what is best for the hospitals, the people and the state.”
Similarly, McGee also said she plans to examine ways to help the number of uninsured working people because “Medicaid can be a tool in helping people and families.”
“With regard to the direction of the committee, I think the sheer number of uninsured working poor is a real concern,” McGee said. “Addressing this issue is a stated priority for the Speaker, and it will be a priority for the Medicaid Committee.”
White had said earlier he wanted to conduct a serious study of expanding Medicaid to provide health care for primarily to working poor as 40 other states have done. In the past, the Republican leadership of the Legislature has refused to even consider Medicaid expansion, which is still opposed by Gov. Tate Reeves.
White also appointed four Democrats to chair less visible committees. During the past term, then-Speaker Philip Gunn, who chose not to run for reelection, did not appoint any Democrats as committee chairs. The four Democratic chairs are Carl Mickens over Housing; Cedric Burnett over Interstate Cooperation; Karl Gibbs on State Library and Otis Anthony over Youth and Family Affairs.
Even though there were four Democrats selected as chairs and 21 as vice chairs, Robert Johnson III of Natchez, the House Democratic leader, said there were few Democrats placed in positions to have major impacts.
“I was hoping for more given the statements the speaker had made,” Johnson said. He added he is still hopeful of cooperation given the conversations he has had with White and new House Pro-Tem Manly Barton.
Johnson also praised White’s appointments of Creekmore as Public Health chair and McGee as Medicaid chair.
While Johnson said he would liked to have seen a Democrat in one of those posts, both Creekmore and McGee have “shown the willingness to work across the aisle to do what is best for the state. I am encouraged by their appointments.”
White opted to keep Republican John Read of Gautier as Appropriations Committee chair and Republican Trey Lamar of Senatobia as Ways and Means chair, the two committees responsible for tax policy and crafting the state budget.
The speaker appointed only four Democrats to lead committees, but those committees, in reality, are not powerful and a majority of Republicans will still make up the majority of the members on those committees.
The speaker will soon begin referring bills to committees for consideration. The deadline for leaders to pass bills out of their committees is March 5.
