OurTupelo

Most Mississippians who read this column regularly know no other state produces more – or more high-quality – professional football players per capita than the Magnolia State.

Seems like every year a new study comes out that ranks Mississippi either No. 1 or No. 2 in the nation in the number of football players who make NFL rosters. Over the course of the entire history of the NFL, Mississippi ranks No. 1.

A new study – this one published by The Sports Geek, covering the last two decades – finds that Mississippi, per capita, has produced the highest number of male professional athletes of any state. Mississippi was No. 1, followed by Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Said Ryan Metevier, who conducted much of the research: “At first glance, Mississippi’s being a top producer of professional athletes came as a surprise to me, considering it’s not home to any professional teams in major leagues, and isn’t one of the richer states in the country.”

Metevier went on: “However, Mississippi ranks about the middle of the pack in number of Division I college football and basketball teams. A passionate culture of high school sports and favorable training weather make up for other shortcomings.”

Surely, Mississippi’s high participation level in football, basketball and baseball also factors in. For instance, Mississippi annually ranks highest among all states in the percentage of high school students who play those three sports.

Another factor for Mississippi’s No. 1 ranking in football and basketball should not be ignored. The Magnolia State also has the highest percentage of Black residents of any state. Mississippi, at 38%, ranks ahead of Louisiana at 33% and Georgia at 32%. Approximately 54% of NFL players and about 75% of NBA players are Black.

The Sports Geek study covers seven sports: football, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis and soccer. As you might guess, Mississippi does not rank high at all in producing hockey pros. We more than make up for it in football, basketball and baseball.

Obviously, I wasn’t surprised about the NFL, where Mississippi ranked No. 1.

I was surprised that the state also ranked No. 1 in producing professional basketball players and No. 4 in producing baseball players who make it to the highest level of their sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.).

Those high rankings more than made up for relatively low rankings in the other four sports: 28th in golf, 30th in tennis, 38th in hockey and 46th in soccer. 

Actually, I was surprised to learn Mississippi ranked as highly as 38th of 50 in producing hockey pros. Fun fact: Mississippi has produced a grand total of one NHL player. He is seven-year NHL veteran Mathieu Olivier, who was born in Biloxi in February 1997. And, yes, there’s a story there. Olivier’s dad, Canadian Simon Olivier, played for the minor league Mississippi Sea Wolves back then. Mathieu Olivier, who plays for the NHL Columbus Blue Jackets, lived on the Gulf Coast only briefly before his dad moved the family back to Quebec. 

Several states, including Tennessee, which has its own NHL franchise, have never produced a single NHL player. Of 714,495 male births in Mississippi over 20 years, Mathieu Olivier is one of one. So, if you don’t learn anything else today, you learned that.

Let’s see what else we can learn. Another fun fact: The study shows that one in every 2,813 males born in Mississippi over the past 20 years has become an NFL player. That’s a lot. Furthermore, one in every 15,533 males born in the state since 2006 has become an NBA player. That ranks No. 1 in the U.S., too. Why so many more football players than basketball players? Simple: Because there are 32 NFL teams with 53-man rosters and 30 NBA teams with 15-man rosters. Statistically, it’s simply harder to make the NBA than the NFL. Plus, in basketball, as we all know, you almost have to be tall.

I have no statistics to prove it, but I would guess that Mississippi’s No. 4 ranking in producing pro baseball players has risen sharply in the 21st century. Seems as if more Mississippians get drafted by MLB teams – and in higher rounds – every year. Only Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Ohio produce more MLB players per capita than we do.

Louisiana, not surprisingly, was second to Mississippi in both football and basketball. Kentucky, a basketball state if there ever was one, was third in hoops. Ohio, definitely a football state, was third in that sport.

Mississippians surely would prefer to rank No. 1 in per capita income (we are last in the nation) or in overall health (we are 48th). But at least we can play ball. And our ball players, at least, are healthy and make millions.

With legislative adjustments and new outside help, Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council will return to Jackson on Tuesday to begin its second cycle of grant recommendations. 

Council members will meet downtown at 1 p.m., on the first floor of the Mississippi Supreme Court Building. An email from the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch, the council’s chairwoman, to members said there will be a virtual video option but didn’t provide a link. 

This year, the council has contracted with the Denver-based health consulting firm Steadman Group to assist with its review process. The company has previously contracted other states to help with their opioid settlement management.

Dr. J.K. Costello, Steadman’s behavioral health and consulting director and someone in long-term addiction recovery himself, said the firm has been meeting weekly with Fitch’s office since early July. So far, he said, the firm has been reviewing the opioid settlement grants already awarded by the Mississippi Legislature and identifying what’s most needed for addiction response efforts of different parts of the state.

The council, established by state lawmakers in 2025, oversees how Mississippi spends hundreds of millions of dollars the state receives from the National Opioids Settlements — lawsuit agreements with companies that contributed to the country’s opioid epidemic. Every state and the District of Columbia accused over a dozen companies of using business practices that catalyzed hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths. 

Of the roughly $430 million the state expects from the lawsuits through 2040, the advisory council is tasked with recommending how to spend about $300 million of that. The settlements say the council funds must be spent to address addiction. Mississippi was the only state in the country that hadn’t started spending this chunk of money by 2024, according to a KFF Health News investigation. Mississippi also didn’t spend any of it in 2025. 

Last year, at the instruction of Mississippi’s Legislature, the council created an application process for the funds, reviewed and graded over 100 project proposals and recommended which ones state lawmakers should fund. 

The council members had five months to accomplish those tasks, which some members said made it difficult to effectively determine which efforts would best address the state’s opioid epidemic. After its first 2025 meeting in July, the committee delayed launching the application a month after members identified missing material. Applicants then had six weeks to apply, a deadline some Mississippi organizations also struggled to meet. 

Other issues arose later in the fall. Small groups of members initially graded the proposals, and the average application score varied significantly from group to group. Many of the applications that scored highly were authored by organizations affiliated with the council members, and members could advocate for applications they were tied to at meetings. The committee also didn’t review multiple applications that were turned in properly.

After receiving the council’s final 2025 recommendations, legislators didn’t strictly follow them. With the funds the council oversees, they chose to fund around $51 million for applications during the 2026 regular legislative session. Lawmakers left out several applications most recommended by the council and chose to fund some projects the council graded poorly, in addition to sending money to state agencies for purposes unattached to any advisory council application. Lawmakers identified two applications the council forgot to assess and tried to fund those proposals as well, but Gov. Tate Reeves line-item vetoed those applicants’ funds. 

In addition, the Legislature adjusted many of the council’s recommended application funding amounts through power lawmakers gave themselves in a bill they passed in the spring. The new law also strengthened the council’s conflicts of interest laws, added new reporting requirements for state opioid funds and required the committee to contract with an outside consulting group that could assist members in their review process — a contract that ultimately was awarded to Steadman.

Organizations the Legislature awarded opioid settlement funds started receiving money after June 30, when Mississippi’s 2027 fiscal year started. 

Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, told Mississippi Today in May the two applications vetoed by Reeves were the only ones she knew of that the council didn’t review because of committee administrative errors. To the news outlet and other reporters, she has described the Attorney General’s handling of the council as building a system while also implementing it. 

“The process may not be what we would have loved it to have been, but we’ve got a process now,” she said. “And we are going to do everything we can through this office to make it move.”

The House is expected on Thursday to take up a measure to overhaul the state’s youth court system, after the Senate passed it late Wednesday night in a special session of the Mississippi Legislature called by Gov. Tate Reeves.

The legislation would add more full-time judges and open youth court proceedings to the public, and lawmakers are also proposing to provide $29.5 million in new spending for the system.

The 52-member Senate passed the youth court overhaul 25-10 after much debate, with several members absent or not voting. The House is expected to take it up on Thursday. 

Despite lawmakers only having hours to review the nearly 200-page proposal, Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, told senators to approve the bill to improve the lives of kids who appear in youth court. 

“We were sent here by our districts to do what’s best for the interests of the state and our state’s children,” Wiggins said. 

READ MORE: Reeves: Special session will overhaul Mississippi’s ‘fragmented’ youth court system. Here’s how

READ MORE: Youth court special session has lawmakers meeting at new, and old, capitol buildings. See photos

Lawmakers don’t normally meet during the summer, but Reeves called them into a special legislative session to consider youth court changes and to keep the system running after enabling and funding legislation had sunsetted and lawmakers failed to address it in their regular session early this year. 

The governor caught legislators off guard by quickly announcing the special session on Tuesday afternoon, giving them only 24 hours to come to Jackson. 

The hurried nature of the session drew bipartisan rebuke from lawmakers who said they didn’t have an opportunity to read the far-reaching bill before the session convened at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. 

Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, supported the intent of the bill, but he criticized the process and described the Senate’s actions as rubber stamping the governor’s request instead of deliberating as a separate branch of government. 

“I don’t know what the rest of you said when you ran for public office but I didn’t run on a platform of ‘I’ll do what I’m told,’” Bryan said. 

The goal of the bill is to scrap Mississippi’s current disjointed youth court system. Only 24 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have a full-time judge handling youth court cases. In most of these instances, county court judges handle youth court matters. But not every county has a county court. 

In the remaining counties, these matters are handled by “part-time referees,” which is a part of chancery court. The proposal passed by the Senate would do away with referees and replace them with full-time chancery court judges. 

The governor will appoint the new chancery court judges, but they will later have to run for election. 

Youth court proceedings were thrown into confusion when lawmakers during their regular 2026 session mistakenly let state laws that outline how confidential youth court records can be shared between courts, state agencies, attorneys and law enforcement expire.

When a repealer, or sunset clause, is included in a state law, the law or a section goes away on a specified date unless the Legislature votes to reenact it. Because the Legislature didn’t pass a measure extending the repealer, those confidentiality measures and other youth court laws and funding expired.

After the confidentiality measures expired, three individual youth court judges entered their own local orders for how confidential youth court records can be shared. 

This prompted Child Protection Services to file an emergency request with the Mississippi Supreme Court asking the state’s highest court to block those local orders from going into effect because the state agency argued the local judges did not have the power to issue them.

The Supreme Court unanimously granted the request, blocked lower courts from issuing their own local orders and established temporary rules for confidentiality. 

The Senate proposal would revive the state law on confidentiality and allows it to sunset July 2029. 

Mississippi Today will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a two-day gathering focused on civic dialogue, community impact and the future of Mississippi.

The nonprofit news organization invites readers, supporters, business leaders, policymakers and changemakers from across the South to gather in Jackson for conversation, celebration and connection.

The anniversary celebration is Oct. 7 and the second annual “All In on Mississippi” summit is Oct. 8, both at the Two Mississippi Museums in downtown Jackson.

For the past decade, Mississippi Today has reported on the people, policies and communities shaping the state. Through investigative reporting, accountability journalism and community-centered storytelling, it has become an essential part of the state’s civic fabric.

“This anniversary is an opportunity to celebrate the people, communities and stories that have shaped Mississippi Today,” said Editor in Chief Emily Wagster Pettus. “It is also a chance to look ahead and bring together leaders from across Mississippi to discuss what the next decade of public service journalism looks like in our state.”

Mississippi Today 10th Anniversary Celebration

The Mississippi Today 10th Anniversary Celebration begins at 7 p.m. Oct. 7. With live music, immersive visuals and special guest appearances, the celebration offers participants a chance to connect with people and stories behind the headlines and to gain insight into the future of independent reporting in the South. The event is designed as a tribute to democracy and communities that thrive when truth is told.

‘All In on Mississippi’ summit

“All In on Mississippi” is Mississippi Today’s flagship event focused on innovative solutions, economic opportunity and community impact. The summit begins at 1 p.m. Oct 8, convening leaders from government, business, education, workforce development, philanthropy and journalism for conversations about the state’s future.

Sessions will focus on sustainable solutions for a thriving economy. Topics will include:

• Boots on the Ground: Mississippi Industry, AI and the Future of Work 
• A New Era for Apprenticeship Programs in Mississippi 
• The Literacy Launching Point and What Comes Next
• Mississippi on the National Stage

Additional speakers and agenda details will be announced soon. Presenting support is provided by JPMorgan Chase. The Foundation for the MidSouth is an Impact Sponsor. 

Tickets and registration

Celebration tickets are available beginning at $150. Additional ticket options include table sales and event sponsorships.

Tickets for the “All In on Mississippi” are $25.

Sponsorship opportunities available

People and organizations interested in supporting this anniversary and summit can reach out directly to sponsorships@mississippitoday.org. 

Sponsorship opportunities include event visibility, digital promotion, recognition throughout anniversary programming and participation in one of Mississippi’s most significant civic gatherings of the year.

Learn More

Additional information, registration details and sponsorship opportunities are available at: https://summit.mississippitoday.org/

7/16/2026: This article has been corrected to show the Foundation for the MidSouth is an Impact Sponsor.

BELZONI — Harmony Ball-Stribling’s path to pregnancy had been turbulent, from an endometriosis diagnosis to an arduous in vitro fertilization process and sky-high blood pressure. But as her due date approached in the summer of 2021, her health improved and those storm clouds seemed to scatter.

“It was just too perfect,” said her mother, Shenelle Ball-Green, of those calm, hot weeks.

Then, after midnight on July 5, four days shy of her scheduled cesarean section, Ball-Stribling began experiencing complications from preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening blood pressure disorder. Speeding up to 110 mph, her husband drove her to the nearest hospital 25 miles away from their home in Belzoni, a Mississippi Delta town of about 1,900 people.

Minutes before reaching the facility, Ball-Stribling suffered a seizure in the passenger seat. Her husband pulled her from the car and performed CPR on the side of the road. It was too late. She and the couple’s unborn daughter, Harper, died on the side of U.S. Route 49.

The tragedy might have had a different outcome if the hospital in Belzoni, a five-minute drive from Ball-Stribling’s home, hadn’t closed 13 years ago. Today, Humphreys County has no hospital, no emergency room, no urgent care clinic, and no county health department. It is one of more than 100 rural hospitals in the U.S. that have fully closed since 2005.

In Belzoni, self-proclaimed “The Heart of the Delta,” and its surrounding area, communities are close-knit, and Harmony’s story is well known. Now, her death has galvanized local and state leaders determined to bring a hospital back to the county that has suffered without one.

“It was a tremendous eye-opener for this community,” said state Rep. Timaka James-Jones, a Democrat who represents the district that includes Belzoni and is Ball-Stribling’s aunt. “It brought to light how we are so without.”

Poverty often shapes the health disparities Humphreys County residents experience. Approximately 1 in 7 Humphreys County residents under age 65 lack health insurance coverage, compared with about 1 in 11 people nationwide. Humphreys County also has the highest rate of Medicaid enrollment of any Mississippi county, reflecting the economic challenges many residents face. These disparities are evident in the county’s infant mortality rate, which is among the highest in the state at roughly 15 deaths for every 1,000 births.

James-Jones has watched these circumstances influence the lives — and deaths — of her loved ones. She said she wants to see a hospital reestablished before her four-year term is up in early 2028.

But that may be easier said than done. In Belzoni, local leaders hoping to restore healthcare services face a tangled web of policy challenges that are especially demanding for a small town with limited resources. Its story reflects what many healthcare policy experts warn: Once a rural community loses a hospital, bringing it back can be nearly impossible. 

Humphreys County’s healthcare losses

Humphreys County Memorial Hospital opened in Belzoni in 1951 as part of a nationwide hospital building boom fueled by a Truman-era law called the Hill-Burton Act. The legislation provided billions of dollars in grants and loans to build and modernize healthcare facilities. At the time, roughly 40% of all U.S. counties had no hospital. When the building boom began to subside by 1970, all but seven counties in Mississippi had at least one hospital.

But by the 2000s, many rural hospitals in the U.S. confronted financial difficulties. Low patient volumes, an increase in outpatient care, and meager revenues left many on precarious footing. Many had high rates of uninsured patients or those covered through government programs such as Medicaid, which typically reimburse providers at lower rates than commercial insurers.

Humphreys County’s hospital was among those struggling facilities. It was burdened with millions of dollars in debts, and county officials sold it in 2008 to a private company. It was renamed the Patients’ Choice Medical Center. The hospital shut down five years later after Ray Shoemaker, the company’s CEO, was convicted on healthcare fraud charges related to another hospital he owned.

“I do hope they reopen,” Shoemaker wrote in a recent text message to Mississippi Today. “The community needs a hospital.” He said he stepped down from the company before going to prison in 2012.

In 2017, the University of Mississippi Medical Center partnered with the county supervisors and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat whose district includes Humphreys County, to secure a nearly $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to open an after-hours acute care clinic in Belzoni. The clinic shut down in 2020, and UMMC officials declined to say why. 

G.A. Carmichael Family Health Center, a Canton-based federally qualified health center with five other locations in Mississippi, took it over but did not maintain the extended hours, again leaving Humphreys County residents without after-hours care. Other public health services in the county have closed outright. Three years ago, the county’s health department stopped providing clinical services, said Greg Flynn, a spokesperson for the Mississippi State Department of Health. The county department closed entirely last year, citing staffing shortages and low patient volumes. 

In the years since the hospital closed, the county has lost a fourth of its population, falling to 7,000 people, according to census data. James-Jones said she does not believe the community can experience growth until healthcare services are reestablished. 

“I don’t know how I can see us growing any other way,” she said.

‘Something’s way better than nothing’

Months after losing her daughter and unborn granddaughter, Ball-Green climbed the steps of the stately, tan, brick Humphreys County Courthouse to attend a crowded Board of Supervisors meeting.

She stood at the dais and urged the supervisors to reestablish emergency healthcare services in the county to protect other residents from the fates of her loved ones.

“I wanted to let them know at any given moment, that could be your child, your mother,” she said. “We’re a small town. Everyone knows everyone.”

She remembered the disappointment she felt when the supervisors told her there was nothing they could do. But when the board’s makeup changed after the 2023 elections, she said, she saw these attitudes shift.

Among the newly elected officials was Reggie Pinkston, who is now the president of the board and previously worked as an EMT when the hospital was open. His own family has suffered the consequences of limited healthcare access. A cousin living in Louise, a town about 20 miles south of Belzoni in the county, had a stroke in 2021 and waited an hour for an ambulance to arrive. She died two days later.

Pinkston said witnessing residents’ delays in care has made expanding access to healthcare services one of his priorities.

“We’re losing too many people in our county because of lack of healthcare,” Pinkston said.

The board enlisted several consultants to develop a strategy for expanding healthcare access and identifying funding sources to support these efforts. In late 2025, Thompson secured approximately $1 million for Humphreys County through the congressional Community Project Funding process, which allows lawmakers to request federal support for specific projects. 

The funds will be used to expand services at G.A. Carmichael’s Belzoni location in a county-owned building on U.S. Route 49, Pinkston said. Expansion plans include extending its hours of operation overnight to 5 a.m., purchasing equipment, and a possible renovation of the facility. It could begin its expanded operations by September, said James Coleman Jr., the health center’s CEO.

Establishing an after-hours urgent care clinic is a starting point toward reestablishing emergency care services or a hospital, James-Jones said.

“Something’s way better than nothing,” she said.

‘Not for the faint of heart’

Despite that encouraging first step, Humphreys County faces steep obstacles to opening a hospital.

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, George Pink is a senior research fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and tracks rural hospital closures across the U.S. He said he’s aware of only a few communities that have successfully reopened a hospital after it closed.

“I can count that on one hand,” said Pink, who knows of roughly five such examples.

Communities face significant hurdles to reestablishing a hospital, including securing financing for construction or renovation, recruiting qualified staff, and covering substantial operating expenses during the licensing process before the facility can treat patients and generate revenue, said Brock Slabach, the National Rural Health Association’s chief operations officer and a former rural hospital administrator in southwestern Mississippi.

“Reopening a hospital is not for the faint of heart,” Slabach said. “Once they close, it’s very difficult to reopen them.”

To finance a potential hospital project in Humphreys County, local and state leaders said they plan to seek funding through the Rural Health Transformation Program, a federal initiative that will distribute $50 billion to states over five years. The federal government allocated Mississippi nearly $206 million in December for the program’s first year.

The program is meant to offset budget cuts passed into law last summer that could harm rural hospitals. Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act will cut the federal government’s Medicaid spending by $911 billion over 10 years and increase the number of uninsured people by 10 million, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. Mississippi hospitals are projected to lose roughly $160 million annually beginning in 2029, according to Cindy Bradshaw, executive director of the Mississippi Division of Medicaid.

But according to federal guidelines, the program’s funding cannot be used for construction or major building expansions. Officials said the county will instead consider applying for funds through the program to support the recruitment of healthcare professionals.

The federal Rural Emergency Hospital designation is another way rural communities can keep emergency and outpatient services. Hospitals in that program receive over $3 million annually from the federal government and a higher Medicare reimbursement rate, but they cannot offer inpatient care.

Research by Pink’s team shows that many hospitals that converted to the model, which was established in 2023, saw an increase in profitability.

But there’s a catch. To receive the designation, a hospital must have been open in 2020, making Humphreys County ineligible. Mississippi’s junior U.S. senator, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, introduced legislation in 2024 to extend the cutoff to 2014, a threshold that would have still excluded Humphreys County.

James-Jones said county leaders have urged Hyde-Smith to amend the proposed legislation so Humphreys County could qualify. Hyde-Smith did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

For county leaders, the path to widening healthcare access means navigating a thicket of state and federal policies, funding streams, and regulatory hurdles.

Some recent state-level policy changes have created new opportunities for healthcare expansion in Humphreys County. In March, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed legislation exempting Humphreys County from Mississippi’s certificate of need requirements, which are meant to prevent unnecessary healthcare expansions.

The exemption could make the county more attractive to prospective healthcare providers. But the financial challenges that contributed to the closure of Patients’ Choice Medical Center in 2013 remain, and Mississippi lawmakers have continued to reject Medicaid expansion, limiting a potential source of reimbursement for rural hospitals and clinics.

Industry officials expect hospitals’ financial pressures to intensify as Medicaid funding cuts take effect. The latest challenge is predicting how these cuts will affect the bottom lines of these facilities and whether additional cuts will come in the future, said Richard Roberson, president and CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association.

“If someone’s trying to run a business, they’ve got to be able to know what those numbers look like,” Roberson said. “And it’s really hard to try to project that out right now.”

‘Now I understand’

For Ball-Green, giving in to these obstacles would be a disservice to the Humphreys County residents who face health emergencies similar to the one her daughter experienced.

It has been five years since the funeral, but Ball-Green remembers it clearly.

As friends and family gathered to pay their respects, her mother thought back on a relative’s funeral four months earlier. At that service, Ball-Stribling sang the gospel classic “You Are My Strength” to a roomful of mourners.

“She was singing, and she looked at me,” Ball-Green said, describing a peaceful but eerie expression on her daughter’s face in that moment — a sign of something to come, though she didn’t yet know what. “She turned around, and it was just that look, you know?”

Months later, as she sat at her daughter’s funeral, she began to interpret the foreboding glance differently. She came to believe it was a sign that Ball-Stribling’s gift for helping others by sharing her story would not end with her death.

That purpose had taken shape years earlier in her work as a teacher and continued as she shared candid social media posts about her fertility struggles and IVF journey in the final months of her life. Ball-Green said the community became deeply invested in her and Harper’s story.

In the years since, this gift has endured, she said. Ball-Stribling’s story has continued to resonate throughout Humphreys County, serving as a reminder of what residents stand to lose if they do not reopen the hospital. 

“I think back on when she looked back at me,” Ball Green said. “Now I understand.”

Correction, 7/16/2026: The photo credit for two courtesy photos of Harmony Ball-Stribling are updated to the current name of the person who submitted the photos.

This story was produced in collaboration with KFF Health News.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

The Mississippi Legislature reconvened in Jackson on Wednesday for a special session called by Gov. Tate Reeves to consider an overhaul of the state’s youth court system, which fizzled at the end of the regular session this year and caused some of the laws and funding for youth court to sunset.

But lawmakers faced a major problem: The House chamber in the Capitol is undergoing major renovation and is currently unusable. So, the House is meeting blocks away in the Old Capitol, which is now mostly a museum, while the Senate is meeting in its regular chamber at the Capitol on High Street. The logistics, plus the session being announced by the governor somewhat impromptu on Tuesday afternoon, caused for some scrambling by staff, and grumbling by lawmakers.

READ MORE: Reeves: Special session will overhaul Mississippi’s ‘fragmented’ youth court system. Here’s how

Some lawmakers were at the Southern Legislative Conference in Kentucky when they caught wind Tuesday that they needed to be in Jackson 24 hours later. As lawmakers scrambled to get to Jackson from that conference and from every corner of the state, they received instructions from House staff on how logistics would work at the Old Capitol.

In a text message to lawmakers obtained by Mississippi Today, House members were instructed by Speaker Jason White’s staff to park at the nearby Two Mississippi Museums, where they would then be transported to the Old Capitol on covered golf carts.

Lawmakers are considering reforms to the state’s youth court system that would lead to more full-time judges presiding over cases, the creation of two new state-run juvenile jails and the fixing of expired statutes that have led to several lawsuits.

In total, the proposals call for $29.5 million in new spending on the youth court system. 

Democratic leaders in both chambers said their caucus had “neither seen nor been meaningfully engaged in negotiating,” and some rank-and-file Republican lawmakers said they knew little about the agreement before their return to Jackson.

After gaveling in for a few minutes and honoring two former House members who died last month, Republican Rep. Price Wallace and Democratic Rep. Bo Brown, Speaker Jason White said the House would adjourn until the Senate advanced the youth court legislation.

The Senate Judiciary A Committee began debating the reform measure on Wednesday evening, where Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula who leads the committee, said Mississippi’s current youth court system of part-time referees in rural areas handling youth court cases is failing children.

“The system of referees and the hodgepodge system were not working,” Wiggins said. “It’s certainly not returning outcomes we want and need.”

Before the committee meeting, Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat from Amory, attempted but failed through a parliamentary move on Wednesday to simply have lawmakers do away with the sunsets on current laws and funding, and give lawmakers more time to work out an overhaul later.

Bryan said the issue is too important to deal with in a hastily called special session, and that some input from “the 3 million people in this state who might also have some ideas about this matter” should be considered. But Reeves and other proponents of the special session proposal said much work, over a long time, has gone into the bills being presented this week.

Lawmakers worked into Wednesday night, expecting to return Thursday, with continuing into Friday or beyond a possibility.

Lawmakers had been set to reconvene at the Old Capitol building in May to redraw state Supreme Court districts, but Reeves ultimately called that special session off.

The Old Capitol is the site where Mississippi lawmakers once implemented Jim Crow and voted to secede from the Union over slavery. The plan to host a special session there on redistricting drew fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers, most of whom are Black.

As of now, Reeves has not called a special session on redistricting.

Weeks before the first day of school, teachers across Mississippi say state leaders have made it more difficult for them to access money for classroom supplies. 

Educators have to complete training before they’re able to spend the money the state gives them for classroom supplies, but teachers say the live training has been hard to access — the online meetings have been filled to capacity. Teachers also say that to buy from local vendors, they now have to go through an arduous reimbursement process. 

The money for teachers’ classroom supplies comes from the Education Enhancement Fund, or procurement card program. EEF, established in 2012, gives every K-12 public school teacher $748 — around $25 million in total — to buy supplies for their classrooms. But educators have long said they get the money too late for it to be useful. A report released last year by State Auditor Shad White’s office found that a bulk of the money is locked for teachers as they prepare their classrooms because of the state-mandated Aug. 1 deadline to activate the cards.

This year, Mississippi Department of Education leaders said they wanted to make the process easier for teachers by giving districts access to the money on July 15 and switching from physical cards to a digital wallet platform.

The agency has a one-year $573,000 contract with the platform ClassWallet, according to Shanderia Minor, a spokesperson for the state Education Department. 

The new platform is used in several states and allows teachers to purchase supplies directly from online, pre-approved vendors. State Superintendent Lance Evans said ClassWallet streamlines the process of buying classroom supplies, and the change reflects input from school district leaders across Mississippi. 

One frustration for teachers is that many of the vendors they buy supplies from are not included in the list of more than 160 vendors on ClassWallet’s marketplace, where teachers can spend their EEF money.

According to the state Education Department’s website, five Mississippi-based vendors are approved for teacher reimbursements, as are Walmart and TeachersPayTeachers, an online marketplace for classroom supplies. 

But teachers then have to spend their own money upfront. Additionally, their purchase must be approved before they can be reimbursed. 

If teachers want to buy from local vendors not included on that list, the state Department of Education must first contact that vendor to ensure they’ll give teachers itemized receipts and that the items will be tax exempt. Then the vendor will be added to the list, and teachers can submit reimbursement requests through ClassWallet.

Because of the administrative burden, educators are concerned they’ll have to wait weeks to get their money back.

“The words I’ve heard are ‘insane,’ ‘cumbersome,’ and ‘frustrating,’” said Kelly Riley, executive director of Mississippi Professional Educators. Riley said she’s received numerous emails from educators across the state who are confused by the new process and annoyed by the extra layers of bureaucracy. “There’s just a lot of unknowns at this point.”

White’s office released a statement on social media Tuesday that the education agency has “misinformed the public” about the program and called on the state Education Department to rectify issues with the new process. 

“Teachers will again, through no fault of their own, have to spend their own funds to get classroom supplies while they’re forced to navigate through bureaucratic hoops to get the money promised to them,” the statement reads. “This should not be complicated.”

State Education Department officials say they’ve been communicating with districts for months, but some teachers say the change has caught them by surprise. Additionally, educators must first attend or watch one of five virtual training sessions scheduled this month before their district can activate their accounts. 

Many teachers say they were unable to access the first training on July 13. 

Marie Lane, a longtime special education teacher in north Mississippi, was one of those teachers waiting for the Zoom meeting to start on Monday. 

“At 8:40 a.m., I had my notebook out, my laptop plugging in, all excited,” she said. But as the 9 a.m. meeting started, Lane was still waiting to get in. She got a message a few minutes later that the webinar had reached capacity. 

Lane hopes she can get into one of the other meetings. She’s been gleaning what she can from other educators on social media. That’s how Lane realized how much the state was paying ClassWallet to administer the EEF program. 

“That really grates on my last nerve,” she said. “That’s money that could be spent in the classrooms for these kids.”

She’s doubtful she’ll get what she needs for her class — such as cups for paint to make learning more accessible for her students, a walkie-talkie to communicate with her assistant teacher, dim lamps for her students with sensory needs — before the first day of school on Aug. 3.

“There’s no way at this point I’ll be able to submit a list and get it by the time students are back,” she said. “Lots of times when you’re teaching and someone isn’t getting what we’re doing, you think, ‘If I could run to Walmart real quick for Play-Doh or beads, I could help them.’ But now, if we don’t want to spend our own money, we’re going to have to place an order, wait for it to be accepted and delivered.”

Lane plans to use the money she’s gotten from a recent yard sale and selling items on Facebook to buy the supplies she needs. 

“We as teachers have enough on our plate,” she said. “For special education teachers like me, it’s still required that our students meet certain standards. Meeting those without the supplies we need is going to be really tough.”

Riley said that’s a frustration being voiced by educators across the state. They’re also concerned about the platform’s vendor list, she said, which includes about 50 homeschool-centric vendors.

ClassWallet’s website promotes the new federal tax scholarship program and includes testimonials from homeschoolers and education savings account recipients across the country. 

Jean Cook, a spokesperson for the state education agency, said the homeschool vendors are included on ClassWallet’s list because the platform operates across the country. The Mississippi-specific vendor list will be updated weekly, according to the agency’s website. 

A statement released by the education agency on Monday notes, “Many other states do not have programs like Mississippi’s that give teachers money to buy supplemental instructional materials for their individual classrooms.”

David Bates, a former teacher, is the owner of one of the Mississippi-approved vendors — Old School Learning Depot in Pascagoula. His business provides tutoring services for students after school and sells classroom supplies for teachers. In past years, Bates drove a bus packed with supplies to local schools, allowing teachers to buy in-person with their EEF cards without leaving school property. 

But now, he estimates that the new process will result in a $60,000 loss in revenue for his business because teachers will want to avoid spending their own money.

“For a mom-and-pop shop, that is a pretty big chunk of money,” he said. 

“I’m not combating change,” Bates said. “I just want the opportunity to be part of the change. I’m frustrated about last-minute rollout and last-minute communication about how to make this work for everyone.”

Keyana Hawthorne, an English teacher at Murrah High School in Jackson, was initially skeptical about the agency switching to ClassWallet. Now, she said she hates that she was right. 

Hawthorne plans to attend a training on July 28, which she said conflicts with the professional development she receives in the days leading up to school. Her students return July 29. 

As a result, all of her classroom supplies will come out of her own pocket this year, Hawthorne said. She’s planning to buy them in increments because she can’t afford to buy everything in one go. With two children of her own to buy school supplies for, Hawthorne said she’s overwhelmed, frustrated and disappointed. 

“This is pulling from my little budget, and it makes me question: How are we supposed to survive over here?” she said. “I’m so frustrated right now. This is what happens when teachers aren’t asked to sit at the tables where crucial decisions are being made.”

Mississippi lawmakers in special session will consider reforms to the state’s youth court system that would lead to more full-time judges presiding over cases, the creation of two new state-run juvenile jails and the fixing of expired statutes that have led to several lawsuits, Gov. Tate Reeves said. 

At a press briefing hours before lawmakers were convened for the session Wednesday, Reeves said changes will move Mississippi toward creating a uniform youth court system statewide, as opposed to the “fragmented” system that currently exists. The reforms before the Legislature are the beginning of a long road toward improvement, Reeves added.

“Changing a system that has developed over decades will take time,” Reeves said. “But that is not a reason to delay. It is a reason to begin now. We should be honest with the people of Mississippi that no single bill will eliminate juvenile crime, no single bill will fix every child welfare case, and no single bill will immediately produce uniform outcomes in all 82 counties. But we should also be clear that maintaining the status quo is unacceptable.”

Reeves first announced the special session in a social media post on Tuesday afternoon, exactly 24 hours before lawmakers returned to Jackson. The special session is necessary because statutes relating to youth court expired on June 30, thrusting the system into a period of uncertainty that has prompted state and federal litigation. 

READ MORE: State court office will follow judge orders on youth court access, while legal conundrum around secrecy remains

But in addition to reviving the old system, which has statutorily sunsetted, Reeves said House and Senate leaders reached a deal on a wider range of reforms that will “create a far better system.”

Lawmakers are considering four bills, three of which are appropriations measures. In total, the proposals call for $29.5 million in new spending on the youth court system, Reeves said. 

The measures being considered include:

• Moving Mississippi to a system in which full-time judges preside over youth court matters statewide. Today, only 24 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have a full-time judge handling youth court cases. In many other counties, these matters are handled by “part-time referees” who may only serve a few days a month. 
• Creating additional chancellor positions, beginning in 2027, to serve counties that do not currently have full-time youth court judges. There will be a transition period that gives counties with existing youth courts the opportunity to decide whether they want to continue operating those courts or phase into a “chancery court model.”
• Requiring that oral orders from judges be put in writing promptly, so families know exactly what the court has ordered and can exercise their right to appeal, a measure that “strengthens due process protections.”  
• Creating “a statewide evidence-based diversion program” to determine which juveniles can be “redirected before they become more deeply involved in the court system.” This approach reflects the reality that the state “cannot address juvenile crime through punishment alone.”
• Expanding detention capacity at the Oakley Youth Development Center in Raymond and beginning “the process of developing additional secure detention options in both North Mississippi and South Mississippi.” 
• Helping counties cover the cost of housing juveniles in state facilities. Reeves said the legislation would cap the cost at $100 a day per youth.
• Giving youth courts exclusive jurisdiction over truancy issues. 
• Providing a $7.5-million boost to funding for a statewide intervention system run by the Department of Human Services. The Legislature also appropriated $1.5 million for the system, so this would bring the total funding to $9 million. 
• Giving $10 million to the Department of Public Safety to “show that the state is committed to having a detention facility similar to Oakley” in northern and southern areas of the state.

Reeves said the timing for the special session is related to several lawsuits executive agencies are involved in over expired youth court confidentiality laws.

The Office of State Public Defender in June filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s administrative court system because public defenders were not able to access crucial court records that would help serve their clients. The parties in the case had agreed to pause proceedings in the case until July 15, but were willing to extend that pause until July 27.

This lapse also prompted Child Protection Services, an agency under the governor’s control, to file an emergency request with the Mississippi Supreme Court asking the state’s highest court to establish interim youth court rules for how confidentiality records can be shared.

The Supreme Court unanimously granted the request, which essentially allowed the youth court to proceed as usual. This expires on July 24, but the court could extend this.

Democratic leaders in both chambers say Democratic members have “neither seen nor been meaningfully engaged in negotiating,” and some rank-and-file Republican lawmakers said they know little about the agreement.

Reeves said he hopes lawmakers from both parties will still support the reforms. He did not outline a timeline for the special session, but said it was possible lawmakers would not finish their work on Wednesday. He also said there are no definitive plans to add any other topics to the special session agenda “at this time.”

Mississippi Today reporter Taylor Vance contributed to this report

More than a week after the body of Nolan Xavier Wells was found in the waters off a Gulf Coast barrier island where he was last seen, his family met for the first time with the county prosecutor. 

Wells’ parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, met with Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath Wednesday morning in Pascagoula. After the meeting during a news conference, they said McIlrath told them once the investigation is complete, she plans to present the findings to a grand jury. That jury would determine whether there was any criminal wrongdoing and whether anyone should be indicted. 

Although the prosecutor shared those plans and the process the case would follow, McIlrath was not able to share investigation updates with the family, said Ben Crump, the Wonsleys’ attorney. 

“But they still have questions,” he said during a news conference after the meeting. “ … Every morning they wake up, and there’s a hole in their heart and they are trying to say, ‘What happened to my son?’” 

Typically, a district attorney’s office will present non-natural deaths to a grand jury. 

State and independent autopsies have been completed, but results including the cause of death and toxicology, have not been released. On Wednesday, Crump said the legal team would likely share the preliminary findings after Wells’ funeral. 

The service will be held Monday at Center Pointe Church in Ocean Springs. Visitation will be from 9-11 a.m., and the funeral will follow. Afterward, Christine Wonsley said they plan to host a repast at the Jackson County Fairgrounds, bringing together family, close friends and former teammates.

“He would not want us to be sitting around crying and eating,” she said, thanking the community for support.

Christine Wonsley again asked people who plan to demonstrate to keep any marches peaceful, which her son would have wanted.

Last week in New York, the Wonsleys were joined by Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who called for an investigation that can shed light on whether foul play was involved in Wells’ death. 

They also recalled Mississippi’s history of racial injustice and violence, and how investigations into the deaths of Black people aren’t always pursued with the same rigor as the deaths of white victims. 

“Our lived experience tells us that we must question everything, question everybody’s role, the law enforcement role,” Crump said Wednesday. “That is the lived experience of us as Black people.”  

However, some public officials and friends of Wells have pushed back on how some perceive race as a factor in Wells’ case. 

On July 4, the 18-year-old Ocean Springs native traveled by boat with a mostly white group of friends to Horn Island, but he did not return with them. He was reported missing, and following local, state, federal and volunteer search efforts, his body was found off the northwestern tip of the barrier island July 6.  

Wells’ parents have questioned why he separated from the group and why he did not have his phone or keys with him. Crump said at the Wednesday news conference that the legal team’s experts and investigators from the sheriff’s office will inspect the contents of Wells’ phone.  

The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department is investigating Wells’ death. The sheriff’s office, the legal team and Christine Wonsley have asked the public to share photos, videos and information from those who were on or near Horn Island that day. 

Sheriff John Ledbetter has also asked the public not to spread unverified information about the case, especially as speculation and commentary have been shared widely on social media. 

On Wednesday, Crump was asked about misinformation being spread in the case, including a picture shared on his Instagram of Wells in a large group at a pool party with drink containers seen in the background. That image was found to be from a month before Wells disappeared. Crump clarified that his office often reposts pictures to encourage people to comment and call in. 

Crump has represented other Mississippians, including the family of Kohen Wiley, the 1-year-old shot by a law enforcement officer in June responding a reported shoplifting from a Walmart in Senatobia and Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the 21-year-old Black man found hanging on Delta State University’s campus in September last year.

BILOXI – When nine young adults tossed their mortarboards into the air at the Little Biloxi Theatre on June 20, it wasn’t their first time graduating from high school. After an emotional celebration that honored the transgender and LGBTQ+ students’ resilience, it became their first graduation without gender-based dress codes or stipulations on how they present themselves. 

Surrounded by friends, local allies and in some cases, family, each student walked across the stage, shook the hand of LGBTQ+ advocate Jensen Luke Matar, and received a “Pride! Graduation” certificate. With their names printed under the intersex-inclusive Progress Pride flag, each student was celebrated for graduating with “courage, authenticity and pride.” 

“We love and appreciate our students, and we care to uplift and serve them always,” said Matar, director of the nonprofit organization Transgender Resources, Advocacy, Networking and Services Program, or TRANS Program, which was a sponsor of the event. 

Students at the event told Mississippi Today that school policies like Harrison County’s restricting gender expression are harmful to their mental health and physical safety. The Harrison County School District is unique among Gulf Coast counties for requiring students to dress according to their “biological sex that is stated in the student’s cumulative folder and permanent record.” 

In contrast, student handbooks for school districts in Hancock County, Ocean Springs, Gulfport, Jackson County, Pascagoula-Gautier, Pass Christian, Long Beach and Biloxi do not include language that restricts students’ clothing choices to their sex assigned at birth. 

For 2023 Harrison Central High School graduate Lana Brown, the June celebration was the first time she walked a graduation stage. Three years ago Harrison Central leaders told Brown, a transgender woman, that she could not wear a dress to her graduation ceremony. She chose not to attend, and filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that the dress code policy, enforced based on gender stereotypes, violated her rights. Although Brown lost the case, she knew at the time that it was a long shot, she told Mississippi Today. Both of her parents were fully supportive, and her dad told her that regardless of the outcome, it was a win to have the incident recorded. 

This year, Brown was the first speaker at Pride Graduation, thrown by several local nonprofit programs. Wearing a formal black dress and in full glam, she addressed her fellow students, who had graduated high school since 2023.

“Three years ago I was, too, ripped from my graduation,” she said. “I was told that I could not walk across the stage unless I dressed like a boy.”

Out of her own experience, Brown said, she learned the importance of self-respect.

“You must respect yourself, and you have to not tolerate the disrespect of others,” she said to the graduates. “It won’t always be easy, but you have to stand up or you will be knocked down.”

Nearly two months ago, a Facebook post by D’Iberville High School drew public attention to the school’s policies around gender nonconforming students. School officials, including then-Principal Cheryl Broadus and Harrison County schools Superintendent William Bentz have not responded to repeated requests for comment from Mississippi Today.  

Brown said she doesn’t know what to say to Harrison County school officials, who in the years after her graduation have doubled down on the dress code. She said they know their policies hurt students.  

“What do you say to one who already knows?” she said. “You’re turning a blind eye. You won’t listen to me.”

Advocates question district’s gender-based dress codes

This was the first year of Pride Graduation, organized by advocates after Harrison County schools students faced gender-norm-based dress codes for senior portraits and the graduation ceremony. Due to the policies, several transgender and gender nonconforming students weren’t able to participate in graduation activities while affirming their identity. 

A letter from the school district that a parent shared on social media, which Mississippi Today reviewed, outlined that male students had to wear a white button-down shirt and black pants, while female students could wear a dress or black slacks. 

A group of parents and advocates are sharing their concerns about restrictive policies at school board meetings. 

At the June 1 Harrison County school board meeting, the first after high school graduation, Noelle Nolan-Rider shared that in the 1960s, when Mississippi was undergoing forced integration, Black students were omitted from multiple yearbooks. Nolan-Rider was one of at least three people working with the TRANS Program who attended the meeting.

Nolan-Rider shared that the first Black woman to graduate from South Natchez High School was her 10th-grade English teacher. 

“She is not in the yearbook,” Nolan-Rider said. “Her name is Patricia West, and it is discrimination when you do that. It was discrimination then. It is discrimination now.”

A school board member who remained off-camera responded to Nolan-Rider, saying students knew they had to adhere to the dress code for their senior portraits, and that in most cases, students get a second chance to take their photo. 

“I want you to understand they are well aware ahead of time, and there’s a second round,” the board member said. 

A Harrison County parent posted on social media a screenshot of the Harrison County School District’s guidelines for senior portraits. 

“Female portraits published in the yearbook will be photographed using the traditional drape. Male portraits published in the yearbook will be photographed using the traditional tuxedo,” the guidelines read. 

Advocates said students told them they were not given a second chance to take their senior portraits. 

The next meeting on June 15, Jonathan Blue, a transgender woman and parent of Harrison County students, attended the meeting. She expressed concerns about D’Iberville High School deadnaming and allegedly digitally altering the photo of a transgender student on social media. School board president Steven Ramsey thanked her for presenting the comment and did not further discuss the comment, according to Blue and corroborated by a recording she shared with Mississippi Today. Harrison County School District policy does not require the board to engage with public comments at the meeting. 

Blue said the board would not allow her to speak at the June 29 meeting. She said she arrived at 5:29 p.m., one minute before the meeting was scheduled to begin, and the employee who had badge access to open the locked door to the meeting waited until it was 5:30 to let her in. The board meeting was underway when she entered, and the sign up sheet had been removed. Because she was not signed up to speak, the board did not allow Blue to give a comment. 

Mississippi Today has reached out to school board members and Bentz, the superintendent, five times since July 10 to verify this sequence of events, and has not gotten a response. 

School boards have wide discretion in how they address public comments, said Jonathan Collins, who researches education policy and teaches political science at Columbia University. While the Harrison County school board’s policies are not unusual, he said they represent a concerning lack of attention to public opinion. 

“Parliamentary procedure is meant to ensure that there is standardization across meetings,” he said. “But it also becomes one of the biggest weapons that school boards can use to keep the public out of the public meeting.”

Collins’ research shows that when a school board is responsive and engaged in public comments, it deepens public trust in their elected officials. Conversely, a lack of engagement tends to reduce trust. 

At the July 13 school board meeting, Blue arrived 30 minutes in advance and was allowed to address the board. She alleged that the district was in violation of federal Title IX policy, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education-related activities. 

In this meeting, Blue estimated that over 20 people showed up who supported the school district’s current dress code policies. Three individuals told the board they didn’t think there were Title IX violations, and they supported the district’s language about students needing to dress as their biological sex.

“I just wanna tell you that I appreciate the work that you are doing,” one speaker said. “We ask that you continue to hold the line for us.”

Blue said she has received a slew of negative comments on social media, and some positive ones. Several commenters, including some anonymous accounts, have labelled her as mentally ill and threatened her with racist and homophobic slurs. Blue said other comments threatened her and her family, including direct threats of violence. 

Blue, who attended the meetings alone, said she left after the public comment period due to concerns about her safety. 

‘I wanted to see myself happy’

The challenges high school students and graduates along the Gulf Coast face extend beyond school photos and board meetings. At the Pride Graduation, recent high school graduates told Mississippi Today about challenges they encountered after “coming out,” or sharing their gender and sexuality identities publicly.

O.K., identified by initials for her safety, is a transgender college student who graduated high school in 2024. As someone who has struggled with depression, speakers’ comments about the resilience of the transgender community resonated with her.

“It takes so much pushing through and remembering that one day it might be better,” she said. 

O.K.’s parents were not present. She said they’re good people but not supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, so she’s sought support elsewhere. Finding the TRANS Program was an important step in that journey, she said. O.K. remembers dressing as a woman for the first time at one of their events. Not only was it accepted, but people cheered her on, she told Mississippi Today.

Now, she’s grateful she was able to keep going during the days she felt numb. 

“I wanted to see myself happy,” O.K. said. “I never want to see myself let the end of the story be, I died sad.”

T.G., another student at the event who asked to be identified by his initials for fear of retaliation, said supportive events like the ones TRANS Program holds are crucial to let people know they’re not alone. In the area of central Mississippi where he’s from, T.G. said there’s little to no public community for LGBTQ+ people. 

A friend of O.K.’s, T.G. has guarded her when she uses the men’s bathroom in states that require people to use the bathroom consistent with the gender they were assigned at birth. 

All the students who spoke to Mississippi Today expressed their love for Mississippi, and their feeling that it would always be home. But many are trying to leave as soon as possible because they don’t feel safe. 

“I’m nine months on (testosterone) now, and I’m still scared to use the bathroom,” said J.W., a transgender student identified by his initials for safety concerns. “It’s pretty much 50/50. I get sir’ed a lot, I get ma’am’ed a lot. I get hit on by old people.”

Others, like Brown, know they may not settle in Mississippi, but are trying to make the most of their time here by educating others about the LGBTQ+ community. 

“Hate is taught. They were taught to hate those who aren’t like them,” she said. “So we’re gonna teach others to accept, to understand, to learn before we judge or push away.”

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