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Mississippi Today, in partnership with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times, has won a National Edward R. Murrow Award for the podcast “Abuse of Power: Beyond the Goon Squad.”

The project features more than 70 interviews with former inmates and officers at the Rankin County jail. Reporters from Mississippi Today and The New York Times discovered a system in which guards ordered beatings, inmates who participated were rewarded, and those trying to raise an alarm about the system for more than a decade were ignored. 

The podcast allowed people who experienced abuses by the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department to tell their stories in their own voices. 

“Mukta Joshi, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield took their in-depth and impactful reporting about abuses at a Mississippi sheriff’s office to another platform, allowing listeners into the world they witnessed and wrote about,” said Debbie Skipper, Justice Team and Special Projects Editor at Mississippi Today. “Their podcast demonstrated the hurdles they had to overcome and their concern for protecting the people who dared to challenge a system stacked against them. It opened the eyes of a community to what was going on behind the walls of the sheriff’s office and jail and empowered residents to seek solutions.” 

The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) oversees the Edward R. Murrow Awards, which honors work in broadcast and digital journalism. Among the most prestigious in news, the Murrow Awards recognize local and national news stories that uphold the RTDNA Code of Ethics, demonstrate technical expertise and exemplify the importance and impact of journalism as a service to the community. 

The award will be presented at the Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala on Oct. 12 at Gotham Hall in New York City. 

Only one Mississippi baseball team in history has advanced to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and the Little League World Series, which turns 74 years old this month and saturates August ESPN programing.

The Hub City’s Pineview Little League All-Stars, an all-Black team, first won the 1977 Mississippi Little League championship at Biloxi. How that Hattiesburg team advanced from Biloxi, to the South Regional Championship in St. Petersburg, Florida, and finally to the Little League World Series is a fascinating story, one well worth telling 49 years later.

This will be mostly from first-hand perspective. I covered that Little League World Series for the Hattiesburg American, where I was the 24-year-old sports editor. I remember telling my bosses we should cover the Little League World Series and being somewhat shocked when they agreed. 

So off to Pittsburgh I flew, rented a car and drove to Williamsport. The Hattiesburg team, which included future Major Leaguer Charlie Hayes and future Southern Miss football great Andrew Mott, was already there, along with coaches Boot Walker and Kenny Fairley.

The truth is, I had already missed the biggest story, which was how Hattiesburg won the South Regional, defeating a Tampa team that featured a fearsome 12-year-old pitching phenom named Dwight Gooden. Yes, that Dwight Gooden, the future Dr. K, who seven years later would win National League Rookie of the Year, unanimously, winning 17 games and leading Major League Baseball with 276 strikeouts.

Hattiesburg and Tampa, on opposite sides of the bracket, cruised through the tournament until the championship. Both trounced everyone they played. Hayes, a future Major League third baseman, pitched a two-hit shutout in Hattiesburg’s opening victory over Louisiana. Gooden threw a no-hitter in Tampa’s opener. Each team won two more games to set up the championship showdown. To hear Hattiesburg players and coaches tell it, nobody, except them, expected Hattiesburg to win. Gooden, who was huge and muscled for 12, had overpowered everyone he faced in tournament competition. He hadn’t given up so much as a hit in tournament play. He was already a well-publicized cult hero in Tampa and had a huge following in St. Petersburg where a crowd of hundreds cheered the Tampa team.

Back then, Gooden threw strictly fast balls that few 12-year-olds could touch. Hayes was different. He didn’t throw as hard as Gooden, but had mastered a curve ball that made his fast ball seem all the faster.

“I threw mostly curves against Tampa,” Hayes would tell me years and years later. “It kept working and I kept throwing it.”

Hayes threw a one-hit shutout. Hattiesburg scratched across one run. The Hub City team, many of whom had never been out of state before, won 1-0 and were now headed for Williamsport. There’s a story there, too. When the team’s bus driver learned he wasn’t on the travel list for Williamsport, he headed back to Hattiesburg and took the team’s travel money with him.

So after beating Dwight Gooden, the team celebrated at the motel with baloney sandwiches and Kool-Aid. Motel vans carried them to the airport the next day, and it was on to Williamsport. Only two of the Hattiesburg players had ever been on a plane. Not many more had ever been out of state before that week.

But they were in Williamsport by the time I got there and already had been fitted for their new World Series uniforms – green jerseys, with yellow trim, which read “SOUTH” in huge capital letters on the front. The Hattiesburg boys wore them proudly. Understand, these kids were mostly from poor families. Says Hayes, now 61 and living in Houston, “Most were like me, and I was on public assistance, food stamps, all the time I was growing up.

“People asked me why I wore two pair of thick socks under my uniform socks at Williamsport,” Hayes says. “It was because my baseball cleats were hand-me-downs, a size and a half too big.”

Some of the Hattiesburg players used gloves borrowed from fathers or uncles that seemed far too big for their hands. But believe this: Those little kids could play ball and they could even more hit. In one state tournament game, all nine starters hit home runs in the first three innings of a mercy-rule victory. 

Mott, the team’s catcher, and Hayes were both home runs waiting to happen. Mott had homered in every tournament game until the championship game at Tampa. 

“But our best player wasn’t me or Mott,” Hayes said. “The best player on the team was Ernest Charles Walker, our centerfielder. Man, he could do everything.”

At Williamsport, Hattiesburg would need to win three straight games to get to the nationally televised championship game, which everyone assumed would be against perennial champion Taiwan. Hattiesburg faced the West champs from El Cajon, California, a San Diego suburb.

Hattiesburg ran into a buzzsaw named John Osborne, the El Cajon pitcher.

Hayes pitched well for Hattiesburg. Osborne, a tall, strapping 12-year-old who easily could have passed for 14, pitched better. He allowed only three hits and struck out 15 of a possible 18 batters.

Hattiesburg battled. Down 3-0 going into the last inning, Mott singled and later scored Hattiesburg’s only run. But with the bases loaded, Osborne struck out Hattiesburg’s last hope.

That dropped Hattiesburg into the consolation bracket, which they easily won with two straight lopsided victories over Spain and Ohio. In the consolation championship game, the Hattiesburg team pounded out 20 hits to win 9-2. The next day, they watched Taiwan, as expected, defeat California 7-2.

As it turned out, the Hattiesburg players hung out mostly with the Californians and Taiwanese in the Little League village, where each team had its own cabin. You may wonder about the language barrier. The Taiwan players did not speak English. The California and Hattiesburg players did not speak Mandarin Chinese.

“But baseball has a universal language and there were interpreters,” Mott says.

One encounter stands out in my memory. A player from Spain poked a player from Taiwan, and asked him, “Pitcher?”

The Taiwanese player shook his head. “Shortstop,” he said, then smiled. “Home run hitter!”

The Taiwan players hit lots of those. One of Mott’s favorite Williamsport memories was from a Hattiesburg practice, which was interrupted several times by balls landing in the infield, hit from another diamond across the way.

“Where are those balls coming from?” one of the Hattiesburg coaches asked.

“That’s Taiwan taking batting practice,” an outfielder told him.

Says Mott, “So Coach Fairley gets me and Hayes to take batting practice and hit balls over into the Taiwan practice field, which we did.”

The Hub City team’s Little League World Series experience didn’t end in Williamsport. No, they rode a bus to Washington D.C., where they toured the city and had breakfast with President Jimmy Carter. Later, the same day, they were on to Baltimore where they watched the Orioles play a night game against the Kansas City Royals.

Forty-nine years later, Hattiesburg players cherish all those memories. They didn’t get to play Taiwan. They didn’t get to play on national TV. Only one of them, Hayes, went on to play professional baseball. Hayes played 14 Major League seasons with 10 different teams, including the 1996 World Series champion New York Yankees. Indeed, Hayes caught Mark Lemke’s out when the Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves to win it all. Hayes hit .262 for his career with 144 home runs and 740 runs batted in. He is one of only 12 in history to play in both the Little League World Series and the Major League World Series.

Hayes, 61, lives in Tomball, Texas, a Houston suburb, where he operates a baseball academy and follows closely the career of his youngest son, Cincinnati Reds third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes.

Mott, who led the nation in punt return yardage at Southern Miss, still lives in Hattiesburg where he deals will injuries that required 21 surgeries from his football career that included a stint in the Canadian Football League after USM.

Hayes insists Mott would have been a Big League catcher had he decided to pursue baseball instead of football. “Mott could really catch,” Hayes said. “He had the pop time, could hit for power and he was fast.”

When told what Hayes had said, Mott said, “Maybe I wouldn’t be so beat up.”

Both Hayes and Mott say they still watch the Little League World Series every year when it comes around. “Brings back so many memories,” Mott says.

Could that Hattiesburg team of 1977 compete with the current World Series teams?

“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” Mott says. “We were fundamentally sound and, man, we had some athletes.”

State and national GOP strategist Henry Barbour runs through likely and confirmed candidates for Mississippi races this year and next, running down the ticket from U.S. Senate, stopping just shy of dog catcher.

Ed Blackmon Jr. was 16 years old, locked in a Canton jail cell with the roar of a poultry truck engine still fresh on his mind, when he decided to become a lawyer. 

The police had just jailed him and dozens of others on trumped-up charges of participating in a parade without a permit after orchestrating a mass protest in the middle of the Civil Rights era in support of voting rights for Black Mississippians. 

The demonstrators had only marched 30 yards from a local church when police put them in handcuffs, hauled them off in a poultry delivery truck that still had chicken dung in it, and threw them into the Madison County Jail to face the bogus charges.

While lying on the hot jail floor during the summer, the young protester encountered someone who would change his trajectory in life, arguably the course of Mississippi. Blackmon met Carsie Hall, a sharp-dressed NAACP attorney who defended protesters during Freedom Summer. 

“Carsie walked up to the cell, and he told us, ‘Don’t worry about it. On Monday, I’m getting y’all out of here.’ At that moment I said, ‘I want to be a lawyer.’” 

Hall followed through on his promise, and law enforcement released the protesters from jail. Blackmon graduated from law school in Washington, D.C., a few years later. 

Now 78, Blackmon has spent his life using the law to build Black political power in Mississippi: suing to dismantle at-large electoral districts, redrawing legislative maps to more than double Black representation in the Legislature and even engineering the state’s first majority-Black judicial subdistricts. 

But the U.S. Supreme Court has largely unwound the Voting Rights Act, which made much of Blackmon’s work possible, in its recent Callais decision. The landmark decision has cleared the way for Southern states such as Mississippi to dismantle majority-Black political districts. 

Both House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have created committees to explore redistricting over the summer and fall. Gov. Tate Reeves has indicated he will likely call a special legislative session before January for lawmakers to redraw the state’s legislative districts. 

The Canton attorney and former legislator of 40 years says he’s watched this movie play out before, and Blackmon knows how it ends: not well, but it’s not forever. 

“Mississippi is a good example for the rest of the country,” Blackmon told Mississippi Today in an interview at his law office. “The country right now is where Mississippi is, where Mississippi’s been for a long time.” 

When Blackmon first returned to his hometown after law school, very few Black officials were elected to local or state offices, including in Canton. A reason Black candidates faced steep odds of winning office is that local candidates had to run in at-large districts, a voting system in which officials represent an entire city or county rather than a specific slice of it, such as a ward or district. White politicians used this system to effectively prevent Black candidates from winning office. 

Blackmon filed a federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act to force the city of Canton to create proportional, single-member districts, which divide a city or county into distinct pieces, each electing its own candidate. This way, a concentrated minority population in one area of a city had a real chance to elect someone of their choice.

The litigation was successful, and he successfully replicated these lawsuits in cities across the state. But these lawsuits took precious time, money and effort to tackle bit by bit. 

By 1984, Blackmon was elected to the House himself, one of only a handful of Black legislators at the time. To his surprise, the speaker appointed him to the Apportionment and Elections Committee, which had jurisdiction over redistricting. 

During the 1992 redistricting cycle, Blackmon realized he had a golden opportunity to attempt to redraw the entire state at once by working from within the political system rather than using the courts to challenge the maps district by district. 

He fought to substantially redraw the 122 House districts and overhaul the map by creating more majority-Black districts.

But his plan got a cold reception, even with other Black legislators, because, like their white colleagues, they also wanted to protect their districts and not have to campaign in a new area.

“At the end of the day, we’re  selfish politicians just like everybody else,” Blackmon said. “You want to protect your district. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. You want to protect your district, and that’s it.”

Blackmon pressed ahead and took his own legislative map and traveled with Carroll Rhodes, his friend and fellow attorney, to the U.S. Department of Justice, which at the time still had to approve, or “preclear,” any changes to Mississippi’s election maps. 

The Justice Department was able to compare it to the Legislature’s map, which it rejected. This sent the fight back to a three-judge federal panel, which told lawmakers to either draw new maps themselves or have the courts do it for them. 

The panel’s threat coincided with an ongoing battle for House speaker, arguably the most powerful position in state government. With the House divided over who should be speaker, Blackmon suddenly found he could wield new power when Speaker Tim Ford needed to secure more votes to continue serving.   

He struck a deal with Ford: Blackmon could secure him nine votes for speaker, in exchange for control over redistricting, a Black speaker pro tempore, Black committee chairs and secretaries. 

Ford won the speakership. Blackmon got his maps. The next election, Black representation in the Legislature more than doubled, from 21 members to 47.

Looking back, Blackmon said one regret of his was not building enough flexibility into those maps to keep evolving them as Mississippi’s political landscape changed. 

LISTEN: Veteran lawmaker: ‘The most depressing legislative session I’ve ever seen’

He planned to gradually reduce the concentration of Black voters in some districts over time, spreading them into more districts to make them competitive rather than packing them into a smaller number of safe seats.

But when he attempted to “unpack” the majority-Black districts into more competitive ones, his own Black colleagues, who were by then protected incumbents, didn’t want their districts touched.

Now, the Legislature could be on the verge of reducing the number of majority-Black seats in the Capitol, erasing a lot of Blackmon’s work, though the longtime legislator said he thinks it would take a lot to fully eradicate the system he helped build.  

Blackmon said he isn’t counting the fight as over,  just paused. He points to his sons, state Sen. Bradford Blackmon and state Rep. Lawrence Blackmon, as evidence that the work continues, even if progress now comes in smaller increments than the sweeping changes of the 1990s.

The elder Blackmon said the next generation will have to continue this fight and learn from his successes. He believes when the pendulum swings back toward opportunity for Black candidates to make gains, they have to seize it. 

 “It may not even be in my lifetime, but I guarantee you it will swing,” Blackmon said. 

Joseph Cranney is a reporter with the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Learn more about the center’s work here. 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.

After two months of silence from law enforcement officials on the police killing in June of a 1-year-old boy in Senatobia, the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus is demanding “direct, timely and ongoing updates” on the state-run investigation meant to determine if any officers involved will face criminal charges.

Veronica Shanell, the grandmother of Kohen Wiley, the Black toddler shot and killed by Senatobia police in a Walmart parking lot, said nobody from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had contacted the family. That includes Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, who was holding him in her arms in the front seat of a car when he was shot.

“I am asking if anyone seen something please say something. If anyone know somebody that was there please have them to inbox me,” Shanell posted on Facebook Monday. “I just want answers that’s all!”

In an open letter published Monday, Rep. Kabir Karriem, chairman of the caucus, called the “lack of meaningful” communication by the authorities “unacceptable.”

“Kohen’s family should not have to fight the State of Mississippi for information about the investigation into their child’s death,” Karriem, a Columbus Democrat, wrote in the two-page letter. It was addressed to state Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees the MBI. 

Karriem’s letter demands that a liaison for information between the agency and the family “be established immediately.” Wiley, 20, has said that police fired three or four shots at the Ford Fusion driven by her friend, who was wounded in the shooting. The two of them were suspected of shoplifting a pack of diapers and baby clothes. Neither has been charged with any crime, Shanell said.

“Tell the family what can be shared, what cannot and what they should expect next,” Karriem wrote. ”But do not leave them in silence.”

In records, the MBI said it had erroneously released, the name of a Senatobia officer, Sgt. Hunter Foster, was listed as the subject of its investigation. The Senatobia City Council placed Foster on leave two days after the June 14 shooting, but no one involved has said whether Foster fired his weapon.

Foster, who is white, directed a racially offensive remark toward a co-worker two days before the shooting, according to an internal complaint Mississippi Today obtained last month.

At a previous department, Foster was accused of exaggerating the risks that a car posed to officers during their response to a suspicious vehicle call, an incident that resulted in a federal civil rights lawsuit against that police department. 

Foster claimed that the driver had almost run over another officer, though surveillance footage shows no evidence that the car nearly hit, or even drove toward, any of the officers.

Martin Zummach, a Southaven lawyer who has represented police accused of excessive force, said Monday that he had been retained to represent Foster following the Walmart shooting, but declined to discuss details of his actions.

“I am very convinced that Hunter will be cleared of any allegations of wrongdoing in this unfortunate event,” Zummach said.

 
In a statement released the day of the shooting, the MBI said that officers had attempted to stop the car, but that “the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.”

An MBI spokesperson declined to say anything else on Monday about the actions of the police or the status of their investigation. At least one key witness has yet to be interviewed by law enforcement agents.

Desirae Smith, an eyewitness, posted a video from the Walmart parking lot that showed officers scrambling on foot moments after the gunfire. The video was widely shared on social media along with her name and published by news outlets, including CNN, in late June. Smith said neither state investigators nor local law enforcement had contacted her.

“I just think they’re not bothered by it because ain’t nobody really bringing up the baby’s name anymore,” Smith said. “They’re just letting it fade away.”

The Senatobia Police Department and the MBI have declined multiple requests to release footage of the incident captured on police body-worn cameras, though Tindell told Senatobia aldermen that his agency had obtained that footage. Walmart declined to release its surveillance footage, saying that it had been turned over to the MBI.

Karriem said the case reveals “broader concerns” around Mississippi’s rules for releasing body-camera footage, a subject he pledged the Black Caucus would address during the next legislative session.

House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, whose committee enforces compliance of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, violated the insider trading and transparency law, a NOTUS review of congressional financial records indicates.

Guest, a four-term Republican from Mississippi, was more than six months late disclosing three stock sales made by a family trust fund owned by his wife, Haley, involving shares of the oil giant Chevron, the lodging platform Airbnb and the cosmetics company e.l.f. Beauty.

By law, members of Congress must publicly disclose individual stock trades within 45 days of a trade’s execution. These include trades made by or on behalf of themselves, their spouses and their dependent children.

Guest’s STOCK Act violation is the seventh such violation this month by members of Congress.

It also comes less than a month after the House passed a bill, the Stop Insider Trading Act, that would in part ban federal lawmakers from buying individual stocks altogether. Guest voted for the bill, which is now pending in the Senate.

In a message Friday to the clerk of the House of Representatives, Guest wrote that he didn’t learn until Thursday of the three stock sales made on Dec. 16.

“A compliance firm missed them, discovering the oversight while preparing my annual House disclosure,” Guest wrote, adding that he’s notified House Ethics Committee staff and has “initiated additional compliance review.”

Guest indicated that each late sale was worth between $1,001 and $15,000 — lawmakers are only required to disclose values in broad ranges — and that the stock sales were made “at a loss.”

In an email to NOTUS, Guest’s chief of staff, Jordan Downs, said the congressman “does not have any decision-making role” in the trust and “was not consulted on these, or any other, transactions made by the trust.”

This is the second time Guest had violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions. In 2021, he was more than eight months late disclosing sales of ExxonMobil and BP stock by a family trust benefiting his wife, Business Insider reported.

Guest’s committee is empowered to fine — and to waive fines — for STOCK Act scofflaws. The standard penalty for first-time violators is a $200 fine.

Guest “intends to pay” any late-filing fine and “doesn’t believe there will be any need to recuse” himself from the committee’s consideration of it, Downs said.

In the House, other STOCK Act violators during the past year include Reps. Michael Rulli (R-Ohio), Shri Thanedar (D-Michigan), Tracey Mann (R-Kansas), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), Linda Sánchez (D-California), Julia Letlow (R-Louisiana), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Lisa McClain (R-Michigan), Pat Ryan (D-New York), Sheri Biggs (R-South Carolina), Derek Tran (D-California), Donald Norcross (D-New Jersey), Tim Walberg (R-Michigan), Rich McCormick (R-Georgia), Ritchie Torres (D-New York), Troy Nehls (R-Texas), Dan Meuser (R-Pennsylvania), Jonathan Jackson (D-Illinois), George Whitesides (D-California), Val Hoyle (D-Oregon), Austin Scott (R-Georgia), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), Kelly Morrison (D-Minnesota), Christian Menefee (D-Texas), Daniel Webster (R-Florida), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), Laurel Lee (R-Florida) and Scott Franklin (R-Florida). Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Oklahoma) was also late, although his office denies it.

Senators who’ve violated the STOCK Act during the past year include Sens. Alan Armstrong (R-Oklahoma), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Katie Britt (R-Alabama), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado), Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) and John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania).

This story is provided by a partnership between Mississippi Today and the NOTUS Washington Bureau Initiative, which seeks to help readers in local communities understand what their elected representatives are doing in Congress.

Showing up to Black Men’s Wellness Day might have saved Joseph Holiday’s life, he said while attending the fifth annual event in Mississippi. 

Downtown Jackson was one stop on the national “Wellness Day Tour” hosted by the African American Male Wellness Agency, and local organizers said over 450 people joined this year’s celebration. Volunteers and vendors worked in the sweltering 90-degree heat, offering tests for blood glucose and cholesterol levels, eye exams and education about prostate and colon cancers. Holiday, a first-time attendee, took full advantage of the free health screenings, especially the one for kidney disease.

“I’ve discovered that I have high numbers for my kidneys,” he said, referring to elevated protein levels that can indicate kidney damage. Holiday said he plans to go see the doctor right away — a big shift for someone with a self-described phobia of medical providers.

“My grandmother died from medical malpractice,” he told Mississippi Today, which contributed to his distrust of the healthcare system. “I needed to come out here so I could get away from self-therapy alone and really just take a chance with letting professional people aid me in my health.”

By completing all the screenings, Holiday got a T-shirt promoting “Wellness for everybody,” and actionable information for his own. 

Organizers wanted the fair to reach people who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten checked out, said Allan Cole, a marketing executive and co-coordinator of the Jackson event along with Dr. Timothy Norris, a licensed professional counselor. Cole said the wellness day was held on a Saturday so people wouldn’t need to take off work to join, and to be a “family affair.” 

“The challenge with getting men to the doctor is that men don’t like to go to the doctor,” Cole said. “It’s usually a family member, a loved one that will encourage (them).” 

Justin Turner, an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi’s School of Medicine and a member of the planning committee, encouraged attendees to get checked out early, noting that Mississippi has the highest rate of preventable deaths in the country. The Mississippi State Department of Health reported in 2022 that Black Mississippians had a 14% higher rate of death due to heart-disease than white Mississippians, and the death rate for men in general was 63% higher than for women. 

Turner pointed to several reasons why men might not seek medical care, including lack of health insurance and distrust in the healthcare system. A 2022 report from the Pew Research Center found that 55% of Black Americans had faced negative experiences at the doctor, including having their pain dismissed. Research shows that medical mistrust leads to delays in getting healthcare.

There’s also a mental aspect, Turner added. 

“A lot of men feel like they want to be in control of their life,” he said. “So if they find out they have some type of health condition, now they feel vulnerable and they lose control.”

Turner said he spoke to one man whose screening showed a blood-sugar level above 600 mg/dL, over three times the healthy level, and explained why that was concerning even though the man said he “felt fine.”

“An event like this, in a community center, provides a safe space for men to let their guard down, let their pride down,” he said, over the sounds of a DJ playing upbeat music and a game of double dutch. He said the health fair was one tool to help reverse Mississippi’s status as having among the lowest life expectancies in the nation. 

“Mississippi does not have to be last in healthcare,” he said. Referring to national statistics, he added, “And our Black men in particular die five to seven years younger than white men.”

Friendship through a 5K race

In addition to the health screenings, a central component of each wellness day is the 5k walk or run. Dozens of participants took a twisting route through downtown streets to start and finish at the park, running the last blocks with Mississippi’s Old Capitol building at their back. 

That’s where Will McDowell and Nikitna Barnes each made a new friend in each other. Looking at them chatting, an observer might not guess they had met just hours before. They showed up in nearly matching outfits, with black rimmed glasses, white athletic gear and silver jewelry. 

McDowell, who is retired from his IT role with the City of Jackson, has run the 5k every year since Black Men’s Wellness Day came to Jackson. For Barnes, who works for the Mississippi Community College Board, it was her first time at the event and her first 5k after getting a double knee replacement surgery years ago. 

She was rounding the home stretch, near the Mississippi Museum of Art, when she saw McDowell alternating between a walk and a jog. Barnes told him, “I’m rolling with you,” and the two formed a team.

“I said, ‘Well, great.’ ‘Cause I was about to give up,” McDowell recounted. “And I said, ‘the Lord sent you to me.’”

He did several of the screenings after crossing the finish line, but much of it wasn’t a surprise. 

“I’m one of those guys that know his numbers,” McDowell said. “On top of my health, I have three sons, and I want to be around for my sons.”

Barnes said she’s seen men taking pride in not going to the doctor.

“Hate is a strong word,” she said. “But I hate that they take their health for granted. It’s okay to be tough and take care of yourself at the same time.”

“You’re right, man,” McDowell said, nodding beside her. “You’re right.”

This story was produced with support from the Sarah Yelena Haselhorst Fund for Health Journalism.

Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia and Notre Dame would be the top four seeds in the College Football Playoff based on the preseason AP Top 25 poll with Texas, Indiana, Miami and Texas A&M hosting first-round games.

One of the first-round matchups would feature No. 9 seed Mississippi at No. 8 Texas A&M. The winner would then meet No. 1 Ohio State.

The five highest-ranked conference champions — from the Power Four and one from the Group of Six — will qualify for the CFP. The other seven spots will be filled by the next highest-ranked teams. One of those at-large teams will be Notre Dame if the Irish are among the top 12 in the CFP’s final rankings.

The first poll-based bracket includes five teams from the Southeastern Conference, three from the Big Ten, one from Atlantic Coast Conference, one from the Big 12, one from the Pac-12 and one independent.

Teams seeded Nos. 5-12 by the CFP will play in the first round, with the higher seeds hosting the lower either on campus or at other sites designated by the higher-seeded school.

With the removal of historic tie-ins from the bowl assignment process beginning this season, the CFP Management Committee approved a format in which the top three seeds, in rank order, select their bowl path in the playoff.

First-round games are Dec. 18 and 19, quarterfinals Dec. 30 and Jan. 1, semifinals Jan. 14 and 15 and the championship game is Jan. 25 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.

Based on the AP rankings, the CFP would open like this:

— No. 9 seed Mississippi at No. 8 Texas A&M. Winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State.

— No. 12 seed Boise State at No. 5 Texas. Winner vs. No. 4 Notre Dame.

— No. 10 seed Oklahoma at No. 7 seed Miami. Winner vs. No. 2 Oregon.

— No. 11 seed Texas Tech at No. 6 Indiana. Winner vs. No. 3 Georgia.

The first three teams outside the bracket: LSU, Alabama and BYU.

The Tigers are ranked No. 11 by the AP but would get bumped by Texas Tech and Boise State. Texas Tech, at No. 12 in the AP poll, is the highest-ranked Big 12 team. Boise State of the revamped Pac-12 would be the automatically qualifying Group of Six champion. Boise State is not in the AP Top 25 but is the Group of Six team that received the most votes.

The AP will publish brackets based on the weekly Top 25 until the CFP selection committee unveils its initial rankings Nov. 3.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday appointed Amanda Jones Tollison, a private-practice attorney in Oxford, to a vacant seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court. 

Tollison is currently a partner with the law firm Butler Snow, where she has practiced since 2012. Before this, she served as legal counsel to former Gov. Haley Barbour from 2008 to 2012. In that role, she advised Barbour on legal, legislative, and policy matters, including judicial appointments, elections, budget issues, and disaster recovery efforts. 

“Amanda has distinguished herself throughout her career as an excellent attorney, respected leader in the Mississippi Bar, and dedicated public servant,” Reeves said in a statement. 

Tollison earned her law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law and an undergraduate degree from Mississippi State University. She has served as president of the Mississippi Bar, as a member of the Board of Bar Commissioners and as a trustee and fellow of the Mississippi Bar Foundation. 

“I am deeply grateful to Gov. Reeves for this appointment and humbled by his trust in me to fulfill the duties of a justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court,” Tollison said in a statement.

Tollison’s term will begin on Sept. 1, 2026, and continue until a special election fills the seat.

She replaces James Maxwell, also from Oxford, who left his seat on the state Supreme Court after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a federal judge in northern Mississippi. The appointment now fills all vacancies on the nine-member court.

When Tollison is sworn in, she will become the third woman on the court, serving alongside current justices Jenifer Branning from Philadelphia and Celeste Wilson of DeSoto County. This is the largest number of women who have served on the state’s highest court at the same time. 

She is also the wife of current 3rd Circuit Court Judge and former state Sen. Gray Tollison.

When a panel of state lawmakers convenes in Tupelo on Tuesday to hear from the public on how, or whether, the state should redraw Mississippi’s legislative, judicial and congressional districts, the hearings will be open to the public. 

State and local authorities plan to provide security for the hearings before a joint House and Senate committee on redistricting on what has become an intensely debated topic.

Alex Gibert, spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said no threats have been made against any legislator. Still, the Mississippi Highway Patrol will work alongside other divisions within the agency to “ensure the safety of legislators and civilians who are present.” 

Many civil rights leaders, Black lawmakers and voting rights advocates believe the hearings are a pretext for the Legislature moving to dismantle several majority-Black districts and weakening Black political power in the state.

Republican leaders believe that when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Callais decision on a Louisiana casae, it cleared the way for the Legislature to redraw political lines to make it easier for Republicans to get elected.

The committee is encouraging the public to participate. The public can offer comments at any of the eight public hearings, or submit a redistricting plan to the committee, according to the directions on the committee’s website. 

This is not the first time state police have protected board members during an impassioned policy debate.

In 2000, former Gov. William Winter led a 17-member advisory council on changing Mississippi’s former state flag that featured a Confederate battle emblem in the upper left canton that many Black citizens viewed as racist and white citizens viewed as part of the state’s history. 

The council conducted hearings across the state to gather input on how state officials should proceed after it was revealed that the state never actually adopted an official state flag. Some of the hearings grew heated and saw citizens argue with one another.

Below is the schedule of planned redistricting hearings. Each will start at 6 p.m. 

• Aug. 18 at Itawamba Community College in Tupelo 
• Aug. 27 at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia 
• Sept. 1 at Delta State University in Cleveland 
• Sept. 8 at Alcorn State University in Natchez 
• Sept.10 at Meridian Community College in Meridian 
• Sept. 17 at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg 
• Sept. 22 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport 
• Sept. 24 at the state Capitol in Jackson