Today’s show features wrap-ups of the CWS and U.S. Open, with veteran Mississippi soccer coach Dean Joseph joining the pod to discuss how the tournament is shaping up and the wizardry of Lionel Messi.
Stream all episodes here.
Parents, former educators and graduates are calling for leadership changes at the Mississippi Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.
They say the schools’ leadership isn’t well-versed in Deaf and blind culture, students don’t have access to American Sign Language and Braille resources and the schools lack experienced educators and staff.
As of Tuesday, a petition demanding for the resignation of Superintendent LaMarlon Wilson and various administrators at the schools has gotten 400 signatures since it was created a week ago by Victorica Monroe, a 2008 graduate.
“We believe that immediate leadership change is necessary to restore public trust, strengthen institutional accountability, improve educational outcomes, and ensure that the Mississippi Schools for the Deaf and the Blind once again reflects the excellence, bilingual philosophy, and student-centered mission that have defined its heritage for generations,” the petition reads.
Wilson said in an emailed statement that a “small group of stakeholders” are raising concerns. Administrators are properly experienced, he said, and the schools have increased interpreter positions, expanded professional learning opportunities related to deaf education and made significant efforts toward expanding American Sign Language access.
Alumni say the state’s only public schools for children who are deaf or blind are a far cry from the places they knew when they attended.
Monroe, an adjunct professor at Gallaudet University, said that when they were a student, they’d look forward to the end of summer because it meant they could go back to school.
“All of my friends were there,” Monroe said. “It always felt like home. I was always so excited to be back at school to be with my friends and the staff because I was able to converse 24/7. The only time you would stop was when we were sleeping.”
Monroe said they received more than a typical education at the school — their experience prepared them for life as a deafblind person.
“It was so valuable, so unique and so much different from a general education school,” Monroe said. “I still truly feel like that is my home.”
But when Monroe visited the schools last year, they became concerned after a conversation with Wilson about the importance of school staff understanding the American Sign Language and English Bilingual approach for teaching, which treats ASL as a child’s first language and English as a second language.
Bart Williams, another graduate, similarly grew worried after visiting his alma mater last year.
“My heart broke because I couldn’t believe what was happening,” said Williams, who is deaf. “Teachers weren’t paying attention to the kids. There were kids playing in the classroom but there was no signing. All of the teachers are speaking, and I was like, ‘Where are their hands?’”
Parents and former educators say students with visual impairments may also not be receiving all of the services to which they’re entitled under federal law.
Elise Corbin’s son, Landen Walden, graduated as valedictorian from the School for the Blind in May. Corbin said Walden’s lattice degeneration, the thinning of retinas in both eyes that causes tears and detachments, has rapidly worsened over the past two years because he’s on his computer for online classwork and tests for hours each day — something explicitly prohibited in his individualized education plan.
Corbin found out in March that her son needs to have his right eye removed.
“Every day he’d come home just defeated, broke down and exhausted,” she said. “It was a battle for him to go to school.”
Corbin said she has tried but been unable to talk to school administration for months because of the frequent staff turnover.
The Mississippi Schools for the Deaf and the Blind has had 10 superintendents since 2019, including Wilson, the current leader, said Jane Harty, a former teacher at the School for the Blind. There is frequent turnover among certified educators, too, Harty said.
State and district officials are committed to ensuring students at the schools “receive a high-quality education, communication skills, independence preparing for successful transitions to post secondary life and will continue to work collaboratively with families, staff, and community partners to support student success,” Wilson wrote in a statement.
The petition lists a number of requests, including the appointment of interim leadership experienced in Deaf and blind education, a review of the schools’ programs and practices, and collaboration with members of the Deaf and blind communities.
Harty said she and other former educators and parents have a meeting next month with State Superintendent of Education Lance Evans to discuss their issues.
Agency leaders have worked with officials at the Mississippi Schools for the Deaf and the Blind to “to ensure the unique needs of our students are met,” Shanderia Minor, a spokesperson for the education agency, said in an email. “MSDB will always be a top priority, and decisions will be made and concerns addressed in the best interests of our students.”
But Corbin disagreed that state education officials have treated the schools as a priority.
“I don’t think they have been listening,” she said. “And my phone call list from today can show a host of people who agree.”
Oklahoma’s baseball Sooners turned out to be the Oklahoma Laters and perhaps the best illustration ever of the old saying that late is far better than never.
After a pedestrian-at-best regular season – which included a losing record (14-16) in the Southeastern Conference – Oklahoma won college baseball’s national championship Monday night by trouncing North Carolina 13-2.
The achievement becomes all the more improbable when you consider Oklahoma finished in a tie for 11th place in the 16-team Southeastern Conference, behind both Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Furthermore, Oklahoma ended the regular season ranked 136th of 308 Division I teams in batting average,143rd in runs per game, 94th in home runs and 91st in earned run average.
On March 17, the same Oklahoma team that would win the national championship traveled to Hammond, Louisiana, to play Southeastern Louisiana in advance of a three-game weekend series with SEC rival LSU. The Southeastern Lions of the Southland Conference used five different pitchers to throw a four-hit shutout of the Sooners. The Southeastern victory over Oklahoma was sandwiched between Southeastern losses to Stephen F. Austin and McNeese State.
Perhaps the most incredible stat of all: Oklahoma was mercy-ruled on five different occasions during the regular season. Since when does an eventual national champion lose games by scores like 15-3, 14-0, 14-4, 13-2 and 12-2? Since now would be the correct answer.
This is just one more example of what makes baseball different than the NCAA’s other championship sports and what endears college baseball to so many of us. In baseball, on any given day, anybody really can beat anybody else. Football and basketball coaches say it; baseball coaches live it.
I mean, can you imagine an 11th place football or basketball team in the Big Ten or SEC winning a national championship? No, it just doesn’t happen.
We know all about unpredictability of baseball in Mississippi. When Ole Miss won the national championship in 2022, the Rebels finished with a 14-16 SEC record and were famously the last team to get in to the tournament. They then proceeded to do just what Oklahoma did this year, which is beat everybody up in the post-season. They won a Regional at Miami and a Super Regional at Hattiesburg and then beat Arkansas early in the College World Series to advance to the best-of-three championship series. Remember? Yes, well then you should also remember who Ole Miss beat 10-3 and 4-2 to win the 2022 Natty. That’s right: Oklahoma.
Mississippi State had a much more conventional run to its national championship the year before. In 2021, State finished 40-13 (20-10 in SEC) during the regular season. But the Bulldogs were anything but hot going into the NCAA Tournament, having gone two and out during the SEC Tournament, losing 13-1 to Florida and 12-2 to Tennessee in back-to-back stinkers.
That 12-2 loss to the Vols came on May 27. On June 30, State waxed Vanderbilt 9-0 to win the national championship.
Again, Oklahoma’s path to its third national championship was much more like Ole Miss’ in 2022. Four years ago, there was all kinds of squawking from all over the U.S. about the Rebels even getting into the tournament with a losing conference record. But the Rebels, collectively, got smoking hot.
That’s exactly what happened with Oklahoma this year to the surprise of nearly everyone, especially the oddsmakers. The Sooners were facing 66-to-1 odds, the same as Ole Miss, to win the tournament. Mississippi State had much better odds at 17-to-1. Southern Miss had odds of 50-to-1.
But Oklahoma went to Atlanta for a regional and knocked off No. 2 national seed Georgia Tech, trailing 7-3 in the championship game before rallying for victory. They then took two straight from Kansas to win at Super Regional. And you know what happened at Omaha. The Sooners – or Laters, as it were – outscored opponents by a collective 48-16 to win it all. They dominated.
College baseball rarely fails to surprise. How can you not love it?
The Wilkinson County Board of Supervisors has rejected a request to rename the road where a Black World War II veteran was gunned down in what is believed to be the first killing by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
In May, his family asked supervisors to change the road’s name from Poor House Road to Clifton Earl Walker Road.
On Monday, the board’s administrator, David Wilkerson, told the family that supervisors had turned down the request because the “vast majority of the residents on this road opposed the name change.”
Walker’s granddaughter, Rosabel Hall, told Mississippi Today that she’s disappointed in the decision. She said some who didn’t want their addresses changed told her they would support a memorial or historical sign to honor him.
She wrote a letter to supervisors, proposing alternate ways to honor Walker’s “life, military service and historical significance,” such as a historical sign.
“Our goal has always been to ensure that Clifton Earl Walker’s story is remembered and that his family receives the recognition that has been absent for more than 60 years,” she wrote. “We believe these alternatives would allow the county to honor his legacy while addressing concerns regarding residential address changes.”
Groups can purchase historical signs to commemorate the state’s history. They cost $2,800 each for a regular marker and $11,000 each for a Freedom Trail marker, which includes copyright purchases for photographs.
Other alternatives the Walker family suggested:
It was nearly midnight on Feb. 28, 1964, when the 37-year-old Walker turned his cream-colored 1961 Impala onto Poor House Road, six miles north of Woodville. He had just finished his shift at the integrated International Paper plant in Natchez and was headed home to his wife and five children.
Three hundred yards after he pulled onto the gravel road, a mob of white men, including Klansmen, stopped his car and opened fire with their shotguns. The pellets tore Walker’s face apart.
When he was found the next day, he was dead, all the windows had been shot out, and part of the steering wheel had been blown off.
FBI and congressional records show the Mississippi Highway Patrol wanted to arrest then-Wilkinson County Constable Gordon “Bud” Geter and Klansman Ed Fuller, but then-District Attorney Lennox Forman refused to charge them.
The killing of Walker was part of a series of attacks on Black men in southwest Mississippi. Mobs of white men wearing hoods or masks whipped, beat and robbed dozens of Black men. Some had to be hospitalized.
The FBI concluded the White Knights, the most violent white supremacist group in the nation at the time, carried out the attacks. The White Knights are believed to have killed at least 10 people in Mississippi.
In 2009, the FBI began to review the Walker case, thanks to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. After a rehash of the 1964 Highway Patrol investigation, the Justice Department closed the case again in 2013, saying all known suspects were dead.
Journalist Ben Greenberg, who investigated the case, said the FBI did not speak to anyone in the Walker family until an agent delivered a 2013 letter notifying them that the Department of Justice was closing the case.
Greenberg urged supervisors to “transform Poor House Road from being a forgotten crime scene to a memorial to one of the county’s citizens whose life was violently taken when he was just 37 years old,” he wrote. “They can give Clifton Walker’s family some closure where all else has failed him.”
Former NBA player and 2007-08 league champion Kendrick Perkins has agreed to become the general manager for the Jackson State men’s basketball team.
ESPN.com first reported the deal on Friday. Perkins has been working as an analyst for the network, which also reported Perkins intends to continue in his current television role and will have ties to the university’s broadcast and journalism program.
School officials have not yet made an announcement. Perkins will be working with new Jackson State coach Trey Johnson and athletic director Ashley Robinson. The Tigers went 12-21 last season and have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2007.
Perkins spent 14 seasons in the NBA, playing for the Boston Celtics, Oklahoma City Thunder, the New Orleans Pelicans and Cleveland Cavaliers. He won his title with the Celtics and joined ESPN in 2019.
At a Monday hearing on data centers, Jackson City Council members made it clear from the start that they were not passing any data center ordinances that night, but regulations are coming. A proposed six-month moratorium has been tabled, but no data centers will move forward until regulations are in place.
“The city is working on a regulatory structure to govern data centers in the city. No data center will be approved until the city finalizes those regulations,” said City Council President Brian Grizzell.
Grizzell said that council members are drafting proposed regulations and when those are ready they will hold additional public hearings. He said that the earliest a public hearing would take place is late July.
Over 80 people showed up for the Monday hearing, only half were able to squeeze into the council chamber. The rest stood outside in the foyer. Over 20 people spoke before the council, overwhelmingly in favor of regulations or outright opposed to a potential data center, especially a proposed project in northwest Jackson.
New Jersey-based developer, Saxum Investments, has applied to rezone 230 acres of mostly undeveloped residential and commercial land to industrial use in order to attract a data center to the city. The planning board hearing for rezoning of the property will not take place until city regulations are passed.
“I can stand at my front door and look at, if this zoning is passed, and see the top of the data center. Council, ladies and gents, we don’t want that center built in our area,” said Thomas Cheddum Jr. who lives in Ashley Acres, a neighborhood close to the site.
At the top of residents’ concerns are the impact of data centers on the environment and utilities, especially water. Multiple residents said they already have water and power issues and worry that a data center might worsen those problems.
“Jackson has already lived through a water crisis. Our community deserves to know what this means for our water supply before 230 acres of trees and land are cleared,”said Erin Shirley Orey.
Robert Ireland, an attorney with Watkins and Eager representing Saxum, said at the hearing that the city has an “opportunity” to adopt amendments such as requiring data centers to minimize noise and prove that they are not driving up utility costs.
“Jackson is not forced to choose between development and the health and welfare of its citizens,” Ireland said.
Jackson is one of a growing number of Mississippi cities to consider data center regulations. Clinton and Ridgeland recently passed requirements for data centers, such as how far a center can be from a residential area.
Within the Jackson Metropolitan Area, there are four large-scale data centers being built and a total of seven are being built statewide. Local leaders and economic development professionals have said these projects will generate billions of dollars in investment, bring in millions in taxes for schools and create jobs. But multiple speakers at Monday’s hearing questioned whether a large investment from a data center was worth the potential downside.
“I know that it’s bringing plenty of money, but money is not always good,” said Wade Brown, president of Presidential Hills Neighborhood Association in northwest Jackson.
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.
Children and educators in Mississippi are powering one of the biggest statistical anomalies in this year’s 2026 KIDS COUNT Data Book from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In this report, the most comprehensive annual 50-state overview of child well-being, Mississippi was a leader in education gains — but also ranked at the bottom nationally in categories such as child and teen deaths and children living in poverty.
The Data Book aggregates and reports on 16 measures of child well-being in every state in the areas of education, economic stability, health, and family and community, and ranks the states accordingly. This year’s Data Book adds a new feature: each state receives a score of 0-1,000 in addition to a ranking, both overall and in each of the 16 indicators measured from 2019 to 2024.
While Mississippi ranked 50th in the Data Book for overall child well-being, with a score of 271 out of 1,000, we ranked 16th in education, with a score of 448. More impressively, while 47 states’ education scores have declined since 2019, Mississippi’s has improved.
Mississippi has proven through our educational gains we can do better. We’ve shown that when we put our minds to it, we can become a national example for transforming education. We are not destined to remain at the bottom. Now we have the opportunity to do more to improve Mississippi children’s lives and ensure they have what they need not just to survive, but thrive.
Much has been written and said about the “Mississippi Miracle.” While this is a catchy moniker, the improved reading outcomes are the result of intentional legislation backed by resources and accountability, teachers using their instructional time focused on the science of teaching reading and people and communities all over the state working together for our kids’ futures. We can celebrate this win (and we should!), but we must continue to build on this momentum.
Lawmakers came together across party lines in 2013 on two pieces of legislation designed to work together and lay the foundation for reading success: The Early Learning Collaborative Act establishing Mississippi’s first state-funded pre-K program and the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, a multi-pronged plan to get children reading at grade level.
The first law expanded access to pre-K, giving 4-year-olds a strong foundation for kindergarten.
The second focused on state-approved literacy curricula grounded in phonics and comprehension, literacy coaches for teachers so they know how to best use those curricula in their classrooms, frequent screening for reading progress, approved interventions for students who need support and holding back students who do not meet benchmarks by the end of third grade.
Crucially, these laws didn’t leave it to school districts to figure out how to improve students’ reading. They equipped educators with the tools and resources they needed to reach and engage every student and provided experts – literacy coaches employed by the Mississippi Department of Education – to walk alongside teachers in areas with the greatest need as they applied the science of teaching reading. The “miraculous” results of these efforts make it clear: to support our children, we must first support our teachers.
The same goes for Mississippi communities, which have been quietly, behind the scenes, supporting children and families so that today’s kids can break the cycle of generations of unfulfilled educational potential.
For example, in Vicksburg, the United Way of West Central Mississippi recently received a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to expand its SOAR United Literacy Intervention Program from two counties to 21. SOAR — Serving Others by Accelerating Reading — supports students in kindergarten through fifth grade with tutoring grounded in the same evidence-based reading strategies mandated by the state, and giving children books to take home.
But SOAR, and other programs throughout the state, go beyond work with children. If we want our kids to succeed, we have to expand our focus on literacy to the adults in their lives – a multi-generation approach. Local groups are convening adult reading groups in churches and community centers, talking to parents and grandparents without judgment about the importance of reading to children and providing educational games and books for families to take home.
We have to meet families where they are, not where we think they should be.
Our work in education is far from done. Next up is proposed legislation to improve math skills among all students and continue the third-grade reading gains through eighth grade. We need to continue screening children for reading difficulties and provide appropriate interventions when they need support to progress — without stigma and without penalty.
And even as we expand our progress, we cannot ignore racial and ethnic gaps, as the Data Book shows us that our Black and Latino students need more support to meet statewide reading levels. We cannot settle for statistics that mask harsh disparities, but have to recommit so Mississippi’s education transformation touches all students, regardless of ZIP code, county, race or ethnicity.
We also have substantial work to do in the other areas of our kids’ lives. Mississippi is leading in education gains — but we also trail the nation in infant mortality, low birthweights and children living in poverty.
Just think about how much better our children’s outcomes would be if we applied the same laser focus we have on literacy to children’s health and economic stability. Then our education ranking would no longer be an anomaly, but one of many measures of Mississippi’s excellence.
For Mississippi to reach its full potential, we must make sure our state’s children reach theirs.
Ashley Parker Sheils is the chief executive officer of the Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, home to the Mississippi KIDS COUNT data center and a non-profit focused on improving the well-being of children in Mississippi by strengthening the systems, programs, and policies that impact communities, our young people and their families. With more than two decades in literacy education and programming, she has led students, teachers, research and statewide initiatives all toward the goal of improving reading.. In the past five years, Sheils has secured over $13 million in grant funding to support literacy-related work in Mississippi. Her most esteemed title is “Mom” to twin boys.
Senate Public Health Chairman Hob Bryan said the lack of transparency around the governor’s program to spend millions in federal rural health dollars in Mississippi is “almost the Saturday Night Live parody of secrecy.” Bryan and his House counterpart, Chairman Sam Creekmore, share their frustrations over lack of input from communities, and the Legislature, in how the state spends federal rural health care money.
Veronica Robeson remembers witnessing the birth of her first and only grandchild, Kohen Wiley, and seeing the bond grow between him and her daughter.
Robeson is now trying to support the 1-year-old’s mother Vellesiya Wiley, who is experiencing panic attacks, cries every night and doesn’t eat or sleep. On June 14, Wiley held the child in her arms and witnessed as officers in Senatobia fired into the car they were in, hitting him in the rib area and striking the woman driver in the arm and thigh.
“I watched my baby take his first breath, and I watched my baby take his last breath,” Vellesiya Wiley said at a Monday news conference at Gospel Temple Church in Senatobia.
Other relatives and their legal team, national civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Memphis civil rights attorney Van Turner, joined the mother to call for justice and answers.
An independent autopsy, footage from law enforcement body and dashboard cameras and Walmart surveillance video can help provide the family answers and peace, the attorneys said.
“Transparency plus accountability equals trust,” Crump said.
Kohen’s funeral is set for Saturday, and the family is expecting a preliminary autopsy report Wednesday.
READ MORE: ‘Can’t get him back’: Family and community mourn toddler killed in Senatobia
Last week, Senatobia police and Tate county sheriff’s deputies received a call about shoplifting from the Walmart on U.S. 51. Police said officers saw two adults and a juvenile get into a car and try to drive away. Then police said the car drove in the direction of officers, leading them to shoot. The family and attorneys dispute this claim and allegations of shoplifting. The women in the car have not been charged, according to the family’s attorneys.
Wiley said she raised her baby and tried to show officers he was in the car, according to a video shared by Crump’s office on social media.
At the news conference, Crump raised issues about the law enforcement response, including how it did not make sense for an officer to shoot into a moving vehicle and use force because of an alleged theft of a box of diapers and a bottle of water.
He led the crowd in chanting “Baby Kohen’s life mattered” and “Baby Kohen’s life mattered more than a box of diapers” as he held up a pack of diapers in one hand.
After the child was shot and killed, the Senatobia Board of Aldermen placed an unnamed officer on administrative leave. Marquell Bridges, an advocate working with the Wiley family who attended the meeting, previously told Mississippi Today the board did not vote to terminate the officer or release footage.
After the meeting, hundreds of demonstrators went from Senatobia’s city hall to the Walmart where law enforcement used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Family and community members have set up a memorial at the site.
On Friday, two Memphis television news stations reported the name of the Senatobia officer as Hunter Foster. Officials with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety said the name was inadvertently disclosed through a public records request. Crump said his office has not received any police background history about the officer, but he encourages people with experiences of excessive force to contact the office.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation took over the case and is expected to spend between six and nine months to complete an investigation, said DPS spokesperson Bailey Martin.
Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell acknowledged the tragic situation and said an independent investigation is underway with five agents assigned. He asked for patience during the process and said records will be made public once the investigation is complete.
“I want you to be assured that it will be a thorough investigation, and it will be one where transparency is there,” Tindell said last week during a news conference.
After MBI is finished, the case will be turned over to the attorney general’s office to review the officer’s use of force and present the case to a Tate County grand jury for any criminal charges.
To date, few Mississippi law enforcement officers have been criminally charged in police shootings. The attorney general’s office has also cleared a majority of officers for their use of force.
Senatobia community activists attended the Monday news conference, including Patrick Alexander, who said the police department has had other recent incidents of using force against residents.
Alexander asked some of those victims to stand, including a 10-year-old child taken into police custody for urinating outside a law firm parking lot in 2023. Another case he referenced was of a woman who said she was Tased and beaten in the same Walmart parking lot last year for alleged illegal use of a handicap parking spot.
Kohen’s paternal grandparents shared their loss and how they looked forward to sharing life moments with the child.
“They took away so much,” said Lasandra Williams, Kohen’s grandmother. “I was looking forward to graduation, the first day of school. So much they took away from us. That’s why we demand justice, because it’s not right.”
The date for the special election between David Archie and Anthony “Tony” Smith for the Hinds County District 2 supervisor seat is uncertain after a judge changed a recent ruling.
In an amendment filed Thursday, Special Judge Barry Ford said the election date — which was set for July 14 — was void and that Gov. Tate Reeves would have to set an election date under Mississippi law. The law says that the governor or lieutenant governor shall call a special election for the office or offices involved.
Ford said in the ruling he hopes the governor will keep the same date that had been set by the Hinds County Election Commission.
Archie, the incumbent who lost to Smith by nearly two to one in the 2023 Democratic primary, sued Smith and the Hinds County Democratic Party over allegations of fraud and election tampering. What ensued was a multi-year legal battle over the matter.
The amendment comes one day after Smith filed an appeal with the Mississippi Supreme Court about Ford’s initial ruling. His lawyer, Warren Martin, had said he was excited about the appeal, and believed it would be overturned by the Supreme Court.
In his original ruling on June 3, Ford ordered that a special election be held, stating that the will of Hinds County voters could not be determined due to various missing materials during Archie’s 2023 ballot box review.
Archie said Monday his team is ready for the special election. Smith said he “trusts the system.”
Reeves had not set a new date as of Monday.