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Baptist Memorial Health Care will take over the lease and operations of Merit Health Rankin this year, making it the third Merit Health facility in Mississippi to change hands in the past two years, officials said Tuesday.

Memphis-based Baptist Memorial, a nonprofit health system, plans to invest $70 million in the 134-bed Brandon hospital and to enhance its services. The organization will retain more than 175 employees of Merit Health Rankin, according to a press release.

“We believe we can deliver exceptional community-based health care that will connect this community to our network,” Baptist Memorial Health Care President and CEO Jason Little said in the release. “With our resources and best assets, which I believe are our people, we can fulfill our 114-year mission of providing quality health care that aligns with the three-fold ministry of Christ while ensuring continued access to sustainable, affordable health care for this community.”

In a statement to Mississippi Today, Merit Health spokesperson Alicia Carpenter said the hospital system will continue providing safe, quality care to the community.

“Baptist Memorial Health Care is a highly respected organization and equally committed to quality and service,” Carpenter said. “We look forward to working together in service to our patients.”

In 1969, the Brandon facility opened as Rankin General Hospital, a county-owned, short-term acute care hospital. The Rankin County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to transfer the lease from Merit to Baptist after it completes the transition and receives regulatory approval. 

Merit Health hospitals are owned by Community Health Systems, based in Franklin, Tennessee, one of the nation’s largest hospital operators. The company currently carries over $10 billion in long-term debt and has struggled financially in recent years, leading it to sell or transfer hospitals across its network. 

The system owned or leased 69 hospitals in 2025, a 32% decrease since 2019, according to financial reports. In 2014, the company owned or leased 203 hospitals. 

On Monday, the hospital system announced the sale of four Arkansas hospitals to a Missouri-based nonprofit healthcare network in a $110 million transaction.

The hospital systems’ string of divestitures includes several Mississippi facilities. 

In 2025, the University of Mississippi Medical Center became the sole owner of the 67-bed former Merit Health Madison. The Canton hospital is now called UMMC Madison. 

Earlier that year, Memorial Health System purchased Merit Health Biloxi, which became Biloxi Memorial Hospital. Seven months after the acquisition, the hospital announced it would discontinue labor and delivery services, directing patients to its Gulfport location. 

Community Health Systems owns or leases six other hospitals in Mississippi, all operating under the Merit Health name. They are located in Flowood, Hattiesburg, Jackson, Natchez and Vicksburg. 

“Community Health Systems has been proud to provide quality health services for the residents of Rankin County,” Merit Health Rankin Chief Executive Officer David Henry said in the press release. “…We look forward to facilitating a smooth transition of operations of this hospital to Baptist Memorial and to continuing to serve Central Mississippi through our other Merit Health hospitals and services in the area.”

Carpenter, a spokesperson for Merit Health, did not respond to Mississippi Today’s questions about whether the system is considering selling or transferring any other facilities. 

Baptist Memorial spokesperson Kimberly Alexander said the system currently has no plans to acquire other Merit facilities.

Baptist operates 14 other hospitals in Mississippi. Since 2016, Baptist Memorial has added nine hospitals to its Mississippi network.

James Meredith believes his 1966 March Against Fear was more important than what he is most known for — becoming the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.

Meredith, who no longer gives interviews, recently told Mississippi Today through his wife that he agrees with his granddaughter, Janae Knight, who said integrating the university she now attends was more personal. “It was necessary to wage his war against segregation,” Knight said.

But the March Against Fear was more important “because it included the masses gaining citizenship,” she said.

Friday marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the March Against Fear. A program commemorating that event is set for 2 p.m. Thursday at Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson. 

Two months after the march ended, “Meet the Press” interviewed the Civil Rights Movement’s top leaders: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney M. Young Jr. of the National Urban League, Floyd B. McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality and Meredith, the only one without an organization.

“He’s the last one of the massive figures of the Civil Rights Movement from that generation who is still around,” said Aram Goudsouzian, author of “Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear.” 

“He is at the heart of two of the biggest stories of the Civil Rights Movement, both driven by his individual actions,” he said. “And both of them spun beyond his control.”

A planned solo trek becomes a mass movement

Wearing a pith helmet, James Meredith started his March Against Fear on June 5, 1966. He designed his solo trek from Memphis, Tennessee, to Mississippi’s capital of Jackson to challenge white supremacy and to inspire other Black Mississippians to vote. 

His 220-mile journey began on a sidewalk outside the Peabody Hotel. 

On the second day of his walk near Hernando, Mississippi, reporters walked with Meredith on a stretch of highway lined with pine trees. A white man yelled out, “I only want Meredith.”

Meredith, a 32-year-old Air Force veteran who had survived the insurrection at Ole Miss when he enrolled there in 1962, spotted the man with the shotgun and ran. Three blasts struck him, and he collapsed on the gravel shoulder of U.S. 51.

Not long after a Memphis hospital admitted him, The Associated Press reported he was dead.The mistake occurred because an AP reporter thought he heard a reporter for the Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, say  “Meredith has been shot dead.” The words were actually, “Meredith has been shot in the back and the head.” 

AP photographer Jack Thornell, a Mississippi native, later won the Pulitzer Prize for his images of Meredith writhing in pain on the roadside that day.

Meredith survived, but while recovering, movement leaders, including King and Carmichael, flocked to Mississippi to continue the March Against Fear.

Black power movement emerges

One day, King and others detoured from the march and made their way to Neshoba County, where three civil rights workers had been killed two years earlier. King knelt in prayer at the jail where the trio had been held before a deputy released them into the hands of waiting Klansmen.

“In this county, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner were brutally murdered,” King told the crowd. “I believe in my heart that the murderers are somewhere around me at this moment.”

One white man yelled, “They’re right behind you.”

King responded, “We are not afraid. If they kill three of us, they will have to kill all of us.”

A melee followed, prompting King and the others to leave.

The last week of the march revealed the roots of a new polarization based on race in the South, Goudsouzian said. In Greenwood, Carmichael unveiled the phrase “Black power” to cheers, and the slogan’s popularity grew, foreshadowing the Black Panthers to come.

Meredith rejoined the march, which ended at the state Capitol with 15,000 gathered. King said the march would “go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom ever held in the state of Mississippi.”

It was the last great march of the Civil Rights Movement, Goudsouzian said, “the last time they would seek a shared goal, despite ideological differences.”

‘You really are a mad genius’

Meredith never stopped marching solo.

“He doesn’t fit in any box of those in the movement,” Goudsouzian said.

Meredith will celebrate his 93rd birthday on June 25, a day before the anniversary of the final day of his famous march.

Mississippi native Phil Noble has written a yet-to-be-published book on Meredith titled, “Mississippi Mystic: The Man who Integrated Ole Miss and Broke White Supremacy.”

He called Meredith “the most misunderstood person of the Civil Rights Movement for a whole bunch of reasons.”

At one point, he said he told Meredith, “You’re mad to think you could do what you tried to do, and you’re a genius because you did. You really are a mad genius.”

Meredith asked, “What’s the difference?”

There was a pause, and before Noble could answer, Meredith answered, “And I ain’t through yet.”

Mississippi State and Ole Miss will both face familiar rivals in NCAA Baseball Super Regionals; this weekend. State plays at Georgia. Ole Miss plays at Auburn. The two winners advance to the College World Series. The Clevelands also discuss what happened to Southern Miss, which is what happened to so many national seeds in NCAA Regionals last week. Today’s show also touches on the NBA championship series,, the College Softball World Series, the legacy of Vic Purvis, and Pearl River Community College’s national championships in both baseball and softball.

Stream all episodes here.

In 2022, Dyamone White, then in her late 20s, filed a lawsuit in federal court arguing that Black voters like her didn’t have a fair chance to elect justices to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Three years later, she won a significant victory. A federal judge ruled that Mississippi Supreme Court election districts violated the Voting Rights Act and that Black candidates who wanted to run for the state’s highest court were unlikely to succeed. U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock instructed lawmakers to draw a new map to give Black voters more power, with court-ordered special elections to follow, likely this fall.

“WE WON,” White wrote in a social media post that day in August 2025. “This isn’t just a personal victory — it’s a win for every Mississippian who has waited too long for fair representation. I became a plaintiff because I refused to accept that our state’s highest court could exclude the very people it serves. Today, that changes.”

But that change still hasn’t happened — and a recent seismic ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court means it may never happen.

In late April, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Louisiana v. Callais that dramatically weakened the Voting Rights Act, making it much harder for racial minorities to win voting discrimination lawsuits.

The decision further intensified a mid-decade redistricting war that’s been spreading across the country ahead of the congressional elections in the fall. But the decision affects politics beyond the federal level. The now-upended court battle about Mississippi’s judicial elections will serve as an early test of whether voting rights plaintiffs can still mount a convincing case in some circumstances.

In May, a federal appeals court vacated Aycock’s ruling from last year after the plaintiffs and defendants agreed that the Callais decision had dramatically changed the legal landscape.

That removed the state’s obligation to draw a new court map. It also eliminated the possibility that the state would hold special elections for its Supreme Court seats this fall, ending Black voters’ hope that 2026 may yield fairer representation at the top of the state’s judiciary. The case will now head back to Aycock’s court for new arguments under the higher standard created by the Callais decision.

The plaintiffs still see a path forward to win new maps. Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center argue on behalf of White and her fellow plaintiffs that they can still prevail under that new standard.

Looking to the court battles ahead, White is also looking back. She is from the tiny town of Edwards, a rural community near the state’s capital city region, and she recites its history of Black resistance to oppression, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond.

“It’s an area that is resilient,” White said. “The people I grew up around, they were all fighters.”

The Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, was a key tool in dismantling the Jim Crow regime of White supremacy that blocked Black residents from ballot box access in Mississippi and across the South.

Among other provisions, the law prohibited states from diluting the voting power of racial minorities and required that those voters have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choosing.

So, with Callais decided, what’s changed?

When plaintiffs filed suit over the Mississippi Supreme Court voting districts in 2022, they had to show a violation of the law only by pointing to discriminatory effects of the voting districts in use, regardless of what the original architects of those districts may have intended.

Those effects? Black people make up about 38% of Mississippi’s population, but the state has just one Black justice currently sitting on its nine-member Supreme Court. Only four Black justices have ever been on the court, all serving since 1985 and never more than one at a time. All four first reached the court through a gubernatorial appointment to fill a vacancy.

That has meant very little Black representation on a body that interprets state laws and the state constitution, hears appeals in criminal and civil cases and has some control over the operations of lower courts.

With no need to delve into the intention of the legislators who created the current districts in the late 1980s, Aycock, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Mississippi Supreme Court districts as drawn have the effect of diluting Black voting power, violating the Voting Rights Act.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in the Callais case, however, sets a higher standard. A Voting Rights Act violation may now be found “only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

Legal experts have said that proving intentional discrimination is challenging — made even more difficult by the Alito opinion’s endorsement of partisan gerrymandering as a legitimate purpose of redistricting. The conservative justice wrote that states can now defend themselves against race dilution claims by arguing that Black districts are being eliminated not because of racist motivations but partisan ones since Black voters have typically supported Democratic candidates.

States like Louisiana and Tennessee have moved to quickly eliminate Black-majority Congressional districts. They will likely defend their new maps as partisan gerrymanders, not racially motivated ones.

“It’s going to be just lightning-strike rare for a Voting Rights Act claim to work where partisanship is permitted,” said Justin Levitt, a former Department of Justice official and election law expert who teaches at Loyola Marymount University Law School.

However, Mississippi Supreme Court elections are nonpartisan, and that may make a meaningful difference in the current litigation, said Amir Badat, a civil rights lawyer who has argued a number of voting rights claims in the state.

Badat said that even under Callais, lawmakers may not be able to hide behind partisan intent to shield themselves from judicial scrutiny.

“In this kind of narrow circumstance, you still have viable Section 2 claims,” said Badat, referencing the section of the Voting Rights Act that bans discriminatory election practices.

Levitt agrees that voting rights cases in nonpartisan elections may still be possible to win under Callais, though he added that the overall impact of the decision likely makes even those cases quite difficult.

While the legal standard may have changed, White, the lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, says one thing has not: The reality faced by Black voters who want to see a fair state Supreme Court map.

“We laid out the facts of representation in the state. You can’t deny that, “ White said. “We can go back to court again, and the facts remain the same. Representation is not equal.”

This article was produced in collaboration with Bolts, a nonprofit publication that covers criminal justice and voting rights in local governments; sign up for their newsletter.

A topsy-turvy regional round in the NCAA baseball tournament has set up an intriguing set of eight super regionals featuring seven teams from the Southeastern Conference, just one from the Atlantic Coast Conference and four mid-major programs.

Nine of the 16 national seeds advanced to super regionals but conspicuously absent are the top two, UCLA and Georgia Tech. Two No. 4 regional seeds, Little Rock and St. John’s, reached the tournament’s second weekend for the first time.

Four of the best-of-three supers are Friday through Sunday: Cal Poly (39-22) at No. 16 national seed West Virginia (43-15); Little Rock (39-26) at Troy (36-30); Southern California (47-16) at No. 5 North Carolina (48-11-1); and Mississippi (39-21) at No. 4 Auburn (42-20).

The four series Saturday through Monday: Oklahoma (36-22) at No. 15 Kansas (45-16); St. John’s (36-24) at No. 7 Alabama (40-19); No. 11 Oregon (43-16) at No. 6 Texas (43-13); and No. 14 Mississippi State (43-17) at No. 3 Georgia (49-12).

The eight winners advance to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, starting June 12.

2025 CWS teams all gone

None of the 2025 CWS teams will be back in Omaha after Arkansas, Coastal Carolina, Oregon State and UCLA were eliminated in regionals. The other four CWS teams from last year — Arizona, Louisville, national champion LSU and Murray State — did not make the NCAA Tournament.

This marks the first time no teams from the previous year’s CWS reached super regionals. It will be the second straight CWS with no teams from the previous year after there had been at least one in every CWS from 1957-2024.

SEC bounces back

The SEC had seven of its 12 tournament teams get through regionals after having only four of 13 do so last year. College baseball’s most powerful conference has produced the last six national champions, 11 of the last 16 and have had a team in 15 of the last 16 CWS finals.

The SEC is assured of having two teams in the CWS and could have a record-tying four.

ACC flops

The ACC had the No. 2 conference RPI and had nine teams in regionals. Only one, North Carolina, made it through. Prior to this year, the ACC had never had fewer than two teams in super regionals. The Tar Heels went 3-0 in their regional and if they make it to Omaha, they’ll play for the ACC’s third national title in baseball and first since 2015.

First-timers in supers

Cal Poly, Kansas, Little Rock and Troy will be making their super regional debuts.

Big West Tournament champion Cal Poly was the No. 3 seed in the Los Angeles Regional and beat Virginia Tech once and St. Mary’s twice. Mustangs pitchers combined for a 1.33 ERA in the three games and Nick Bonn earned his nation-leading 16th and 17th saves. Casey Murray batted .583 (7 for 12).

It’s old home week for Kansas, which hosts former longtime conference mate Oklahoma after overcoming a five-run deficit to beat Arkansas 13-10 in the regional final. The Jayhawks’ 45 wins are tied with the program record set by the 1993 CWS team, and they’ve hit a school-record 110 homers.

Little Rock of the Ohio Valley and Troy of the Sun Belt are paired against each other for a battle of the Trojans. One surely will be adopted as the local fan favorite in Omaha (think 2025 Murray State, 2023 Oral Roberts, etc.)

Little Rock, which reached a regional final a year ago, broke through with three straight wins as the No. 4 regional seed in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Blake Simpson was regional MVP after going 8 for 14 with a double, triple, homer and four RBIs.

Troy, one of the last four teams to receive an at-large bid, went to Florida and outscored the Gators 26-13 over two games to advance. Regional MVP Jabe Boroff homered four times and drove in 12 runs over five games in Gainesville.

It’s been a while, Johnnies

Big East champion St. John’s heads to Alabama after one of the most surprising regional runs. The Red Storm went 3-0 in Tallahassee, Florida, to advance to supers for the first time since 2012. They’ll be playing for their first CWS berth since 1980.

St. John’s was the first team since 2023 to win three games in a regional when trailing by multiple runs. Adam Agresti’s two-out grand slam in the fifth inning Monday sent the Red Storm to a 5-4 win over Florida State, Agresti also homered in a 6-5 win over the Seminoles on Friday.

Year of the catcher

The deep pool of talent at catcher will be on display across the country.

SEC player of the year Daniel Jackson of Georgia is batting .396 and is fourth nationally with 29 homers and 83 RBIs. Then there’s Texas’ Carson Tinney (.333, 21 HRs, 56 RBIs); Auburn’s Chase Fralick (.321, 20 HRs, 60 RBIs); St. John’s Adam Agresti (19 HRs, 54 RBIs); Oklahoma’s Deiten Lachance (14 HRs, 58 RBIs); West Virginia’s Gavin Kelly (.381, 16 HRs, 56 RBIs); Cal Poly’s Ryan Tayman (.362, 18 HRs, 56 RBIs); and Troy’s Jimmy Janicki (.349, 23 doubles, 85 RBIs).

Two possible top-10 picks in the MLB amateur draft, Georgia Tech’s Vahn Lackey and Arkansas’ Ryan Helfrick, didn’t make super regionals.

Home field advantage

Since the tournament went to its current format in 1999, the team hosting a super regional on its home field has won 69.3% of the time. That’s 142 of 205 and does not include three series that were played at neutral sites.

CANTON — Lakiska Garrett wanted a different school for her granddaughter. She said her granddaughter cried each day she had  to go to the local public elementary school,  where she felt ignored and overwhelmed. Then a kindergartener, the girl would sometimes play sick or lie on the floor. 

Once, she fell to the ground and cried at the school drop-off because she didn’t want to enter her classroom, Garrett said.

When SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy, a charter school, opened in Canton in 2023, Garrett was excited. She enrolled her grandchild in the first grade at SR1 CPSA and saw her succeed. She was able to read with higher proficiency and make her way confidently through math worksheets.

“All my grandbaby needed was someone to be hands-on and take their time,” Garrett said. “I believe if I would have left her in public school that she’d probably have failing grades.”

Now the state may revoke the school’s charter because of numerous concerns with its leadership, including severe fiscal mismanagement.

In December, the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board began the process of shuttering SR1 CPSA after regulators found the school had one day’s cash on hand, turned in multiple late financial audits and had over-projected its enrollment for a third year. Regulators also said they have evidence of food safety issues in the cafeteria in violation of federal standards.

Regulators also expressed academic concerns about SR1 CPSA during a May hearing. Seven out of 11 Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs, were missing parent signatures, according to Dillon Pitts, charter school authorizer board attorney. These plans outline how school officials are accommodating a student’s disability. The board also claimed to not have received documentation for who supplied the school curriculum.

Amid the fight about the schools’ future, parents and some SR1 CPSA employees said they’re in the dark about what’s going on and why. 

Thursday, at an event that school officials organized to discuss the situation, some SR1 CPSA employees asked if they would still have jobs in the fall. Parents asked for suggestions of how they could advocate for the school. Some questioned why the authorizer board was moving to close the school. Parents, guardians and one employee said they’ve had minimal direct communication from state officials about the situation. One employee shared that school leaders have provided minimal communication about the charter revocation proceedings, too. 

They also expressed anxiety at losing one of the few alternatives to the local public school district. They said their kids enjoyed the more experiential approach to learning, which they say involves more projects and science experiments. School officials organized the event to dispel misconceptions about the charter revocation process, which still may culminate with the school’s closure.

Ozie Smith, whose daughters attend SR1 CPSA,  said she has felt ignored at charter authorizer board meetings about the school. She wishes state leaders and regulators would consider parent perspectives more. She recalled a cold reception from charter authorizer board members when she explained how impactful the more experimental curriculum had been for her daughters.

Authorizer board Executive Director Lisa Karmacharya told Mississippi Today that it’s school officials’ responsibility, and not the agency’s, to communicate with a charter school’s stakeholders before the board takes action. Charter schools are public, and public school boards are tasked with keeping the public informed on actions, spending and other updates as outlined in state law.

“Our responsibility and our contract is with the governing board who has the responsibility to oversee and communicate with the school until the charter board takes action to actually close the school, and then there would be responsibility on both ends,” Karmacharya said. 

The charter contract requires that governing authorities keep a record of all action taken by the school as well as all corporate affairs. In the case of SR1 CPSA, that would be the board of SR1 (Scientific Research), the Ridgeland-based nonprofit organization run by Tamu Green that operates the charter school. 

Some parents say embattled charter school was a ‘godsend’

After the recent event at SR1 CPSA, some parents and guardians lamented losing an alternative to the local public school district. Garrett said she would rather homeschool than send her granddaughter back to the local public schools. Three other SR1 CPSA parents said they have the same plan.

Smith said a representative from the Canton Public School District called her two months into the beginning of the 2023-24 school year to ask why her daughter hadn’t shown up for classes. Smith was shocked that the district just realized she was enrolled elswhere. She said she knew at that moment she had made the right choice for her kids.

SR1 CPSA is for parents that “want something different for their child,” Smith would tell other Canton parents with students enrolled in the local public schools. In the public schools, they were “only teaching the kids how to pass the state test.”

For Garrett and Smith, SR1 CPSA has been a “godsend.” Around 88% of the school’s roughly 19 third-graders passed their state reading tests this year. Garrett said her granddaughter has learned how to read faster than her own children did. 

Smith was one of the first parents to enroll her child in kindergarten at SR1 CPSA. She also went door-to-door to recruit local parents. She said she was met with much resistance because locals have a lot of pride for their hometown public schools. 

Canton Public School District elementary schools have improved their test scores in the last five years. Two elementary schools in the district received a B on the state accountability model last year, while one received an A. SR1 CPSA enrolls 98 students, while roughly 3,142 students attend district schools. 

Some parents sought out SR1 CPSA for its curriculum geared toward careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — or STEM.

Three parents and grandparents who left Canton public schools for SR1 CPSA said bullying is common in the district, and they accused district leaders of playing favorites when disciplining students. Canton public schools also reported 90 incidents of violence during the 2023-2024 school year, which is the most recent year with data available. Beverly Luckett, a spokesperson for Canton schools, declined to comment.

Smith told Mississippi Today her children had a different experience at SR1 CPSA. She said its teachers and administrators are largely not from Canton. She said they’ve exposed her daughters to new career pathways like engineering and got them thinking early about their futures.

“We needed things to make our kids think differently,” Smith said. “This is college prep. They’re thinking about college.”

Some SR1 CPSA parents said they want to help the school and be better advocates. 

Smith told Mississippi Today she wishes she was better informed about the figures and data on which the charter authorizer board based its decision to start the process of shuttering the school. The authorizer board cited late audits, over-projected enrollments, lack of adequate documentation for spending, incomplete recordkeeping and food safety issues as some grounds for closure.

“We don’t have as many options in Canton, and that’s the issue,” Smith said. “I really wish that they could see it from our eyes so they can let us know what we can do, if we can do anything to change their decision.”

Volunteers with the Zoo Area Progressive Partnership, a nonprofit led by west Jackson residents, were shocked when they pulled up to the Jackson Zoo to find families lined up at the ticket booth. 

It was 9:50 a.m. on Saturday. The zoo – and its renovated splash pad – wouldn’t open for another 10 minutes. 

“We’re excited that y’all are here,” said Heather Logan, a ZAPP board member, who took a video on her phone to remember the moment. 

A number of events on Saturday drew families from across the metro area to the Jackson Zoo – from Pocahontas to Pearl – including many who said they couldn’t remember the last time they’d visited. About 175 people went to the zoo last weekend, Logan said. 

The turnout encouraged volunteers, local leaders, city officials and zoo employees who’ve been working to revitalize the struggling west Jackson attraction. Earlier this year, Jackson Mayor John Horhn announced his Planning and Development department would seek developers for the Jackson Zoo and the adjoining Livingston Park, but the city has yet to open bids. 

Nonetheless, improvements are underway. After three years, kids can once again wade in the bright-blue splash pad, featuring a tiger-tongue slide and a pelican that dumps water from its orange bill. 

“I’m so excited about the splash pad that I don’t know what to do,” said Pamela D.C. Junior, director of the city’s Human and Cultural Services department. 

ZAPP volunteers also spruced up the entrance of the 100-year-old zoo. With the help of a $5,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Mississippi, they installed signs featuring some of the zoo’s prized animals, including Big Mike, the rare white rhino. 

“It’s a great day in Ward 5, a great day for west Jackson,” Ward 5 Council Member Vernon Hartley said. 

Two local artists painted colorful murals featuring birds, trees and a magnolia flower. Justin Ransburg, one of the two muralists, said he wanted to capture “how peaceful it is here.” 

Deanna Crews, a 35-year-old teacher, said she could tell ZAPP’s work had freshened up the historic property. Her son, 4-year-old Issan, loves animals and is “a young scientist in the making,” but the last time she brought him to the zoo was a year ago. 

As they walked past the gibbon exhibit, Crews and her friend remarked that the zoo seemed like it had more animals than it did last time. 

The zoo also has at least 10 prairie dog pups that were born within the past few weeks, said Dave Wetzel, the deputy director. 

The prairie dogs – which Wetzel said don’t have names, because there are so many – are the only animals the Jackson Zoo is currently breeding. Wetzel said the chimpanzees are partially related, so they take oral birth control. The black-necked swans are brother and sister. The ostriches are too old. And don’t get Wetzel started on those gibbons, Buster and Emma. 

“The gibbons, they do everything but breed,” he said. “They are allowed to, if they so choose to.” 

Instead, Buster and Emma prefer to groom each other and snuggle. Wetzel speculated their relationship has remained platonic because Buster was hand-raised. 

“He didn’t get to see those movies,” he said. 

 A 7-year-old boy named Keylon and his 9-year-old sister named Lyniah toured the zoo with their parents, who did not want the family’s last name published. With lips stained from a blue raspberry snow cone, Keylon hollered in excitement at the ostrich exhibit. The Gluckstadt boy loves to recite facts about animals that he learns from watching YouTube videos, and the large bird reminded him of his favorite type. 

“That’s a dinosaur,” he shouted.

Lyniah was more critical of her time at the zoo. Standing in front of a shady exhibit housing a kookaburra, she said she thought some of the animals looked sad and that the $5 snow cone was too expensive. 

“Me and my brother had to share,” she said. 

There might be a grain of truth to Lyniah’s observation. Wetzel said the animals are happier when lots of people visit the zoo – especially Mathan, the North American black bear that Wetzel affectionately calls “Buddy.” 

“He likes company,” he said. “He likes people to sit there and talk to him.”

Ray McCants, the president of ZAPP, said the zoo is holding another family friendly event this coming Saturday, the “Kidtrepreneur Youth Marketplace” where dozens of kids will set up vendor booths. 

“Hopefully we repeat the traffic again next week,” he said.

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.  

When I was a sophomore at a small rural high school in Mississippi, I took the ACT for the first time on a Tuesday morning in the school auditorium. There was no prep course, no college counselor explaining the score, let alone what to aim for.

My school had no advanced placement classes, and the number of foundational classes outweighed the number of honors classes. I never thought this was unusual. It was just how school works.

I have reflected on this memory more often as Mississippi officials and national education reporters have celebrated what they are calling the “Mississippi Miracle,” the dramatic climb from 49th in the nation in reading and language to genuinely competing with the national average – an extraordinary achievement by one of the poorest states in the country.

Early literacy policy, phonics instruction and high standards in primary school worked. That much is provable, and it deserves recognition.

But a phenomenon that ends in fourth-grade classrooms isn’t a miracle. It is a head start that we keep failing to build on.

The current media coverage continues to dismiss that by the time Mississippi high school students reach graduation, the numbers tell a very different story. Mississippi’s ACT composite average for the graduating class of 2023 was 17.6 out of a possible 36 points, compared to the national average of 19.5. The ACT’s college-readiness benchmarks – scores that indicate a reasonable chance of passing an introductory college course – require around a 22 in most subjects.

Out of 240 public high schools in Mississippi, only one school graduated a majority of seniors who indicated college readiness in all four tested subject areas. That school is the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS), a selective public academy. For everybody else, the picture remains far less miraculous.

The NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) is an excellent measure of what an 8- or 9-year-old has learned to do. It does not measure a 17-year-old’s ability to form a college essay, understand a loan document or pass a statistics course. When we continue to conflate a fourth-grade test score with educational prowess, we are reframing the beginning of an educational journey as the final destination.

The gap between these two things is exactly where I grew up.

My high school offered no AP courses. This wasn’t neglect from any of my teachers, many of whom I cherish. It was a problem of resources. It compounds in rural districts where there aren’t enough high-performing students to justify the addition of an AP chemistry course, not enough trained staff available to teach it and nowhere near the amount of funds to pursue it realistically.

I did not see this as a disadvantage until I arrived at college and found myself in introductory courses alongside students who had covered a semester of material a year, or even two, prior. Many of my former classmates never made it to these types of rooms at all.

The absence of college counseling compounds this further. The American School Counselor Association recommends a ratio of no more than 250 students per counselor — yet Mississippi’s average has consistently exceeded 400:1, far above that recommendation. When a single counselor is responsible for hundreds of students, college planning becomes an afterthought. Students cannot pursue opportunities they have never been told exist.

The gap in expectation and access is dire. Mississippi is one of only 13 states to mandate the ACT, yet it has no requirement or curriculum for ACT preparation. The result is a system that administers a college-readiness exam without committing to the students taking it. Access to preparatory materials varies greatly across the state, and the distinction falls predictably along lines of wealth and geography.

None of this negates the state’s accomplishments in early literacy. The Literacy-Based Promotion Act was a serious, evidence-based intervention, and its effects are tangible. When adjusting for student demographics, Mississippi fourth graders scored among the highest in the nation for reading and math.

But credit is not synonymous with completion. A state that has learned to teach children to read must still guide them on what to do with that skill. Access to advanced coursework, college counseling, ACT preparation and career pathways is not a luxury, but a necessity. Right now, this scaffolding is distributed unequally, and students in rural and underfunded districts are the ones left reaching for rungs that aren’t there.

Mississippi is a state where roughly 36% of its young people move out-of-state. Part of what drives that migration is the sense that opportunity lives elsewhere – and they’re typically correct.

The “miracle” narrative feels good because Mississippi has spent so long garnering negative attention. But the students who will leave this state, or continue to struggle within it, deserve more than a feel-good spin.

The real miracle is one that could follow them all the way to graduation – and beyond.

Abigail Presley attends Columbia University in the city of New York as a rising sophomore and John W. Kluge Scholar majoring in neuroscience and behavioral biology. She is a native of Grenada, Mississippi, and a 2025 graduate of Grenada High School. 

National NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson talks with Mississippi Today about GOP redistricting in Mississippi and across the South, and on his organization’s call for a boycott of major college athletic programs in states pushing to weaken Black voting power through gerrymandering.

A controversial, state-created water authority set to take over Jackson’s water and sewer systems is now limited by a partial federal injunction announced on Monday. By design, the Metro Jackson Water Authority would only take over after the end of an ongoing federal receivership.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate granted in part and denied in part a request from the city to enjoin the water authority from moving forward. State lawmakers created the authority, under House Bill 1677, this past legislative session. A nine-member board would run the new utility with appointees from state and local officials. Jackson leaders have protested the law for not giving the city a majority of appointees.

Under the injunction ordered Monday, the authority and its board cannot take any action other than appointing and seating board members.

“The Authority may not at this time, select a Board President, unless and until this court gives approval,” Wingate’s order said. “The Authority shall enact no regulatory measures, finalize no lease agreements, issue no bonds, and assume no managerial influence or deputy control over Jackson’s water and sewer systems unless and until this court explicitly alters this decree or determines to relinquish its ongoing authority over the systems.”

In its request for an injunction, the city argued HB 1677 interfered with the federal receivership Wingate initiated in 2022. In an order placing Jackson’s sewer system under the receivership, Wingate tasked receiver Ted Henifin with creating a transition plan by Oct. 5.

As things stand, the judge wrote, HB 1677 doesn’t interfere with his 2022 order because it only takes effect once the court allows Henifin and his company, JXN Water, to step down. Moreover, Wingate could reject the Metro Jackson Water Authority altogether.

“The state law, in this court’s eye, simply stands as an unexecuted contingency—a structure waiting in the wings,” Wingate wrote. “If this court decides to reject the Authority as a viable successor entity within the final transition framework, the Authority cannot assume control.”

Even so, the judge specified three ways the water authority law “attempts to encroach upon” his role overseeing Jackson’s utilities:

• First, by creating a specific governance model, the state law attempts to narrow the options for a succession plan available to the court.
• Second, the state law says the president of the water authority would serve as Henifin’s deputy, disrupting the “inner management” of JXN Water.
• And third, the state law requires the authority to immediately negotiate a lease of the water and sewer assets with the city, in addition to allowing the authority to issue bonds as soon as July 1. Such actions would “infringe upon” the court’s rule overseeing the utility systems’ finances.

“This court is persuaded that the potential insertion of a state-appointed official into the operational hierarchy of the (interim third party manager) risks creating an administrative dichotomy that could fracture the unified command necessary to rehabilitate Jackson’s infrastructure,” Wingate ruled.

Officials so far have named most of the nine board members. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann chose Jackson businessman Sandy Carter, the city of Ridgeland named its city engineer, Paul Forster, and the city of Byram chose WGK engineer Tramone Smith.

Jackson Mayor John Horhn selected Daniel Walker, a water treatment professional, as well as longtime politico Austin Barbour and Jackson businesswoman Shirley Tucker. The Jackson City Council, though, still has to confirm the mayor’s picks.

Gov. Tate Reeves last month declined to name his two selections, citing Wingate’s initial temporary injunction against the water authority. Reeves and Horhn have to consult over the ninth board appointee.