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Funding for a food and nutrition program that serves nearly 70,000 Mississippi caregivers and children is expected to last through October amid the federal government shutdown, State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said after a Board of Health meeting Wednesday. 

“We have a runway with our current federal funding for all of October, probably early November,” Edney said. “And the shutdown better be over by then.”

This comes a day after state Health Department spokesperson Greg Flynn said if benefits for the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) program dried up this month, the department would have to look at ways to “shore things up” with state funds. 

These funds make vital services possible for tens of thousands of households statewide, offering breastfeeding support and monthly vouchers for healthy foods to women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or postpartum, as well as infants and children under the age of 5. Roughly 300 WIC-approved grocery stores and pharmacies allow members to use their benefits. 

To stretch federal dollars further, the state Health Department will limit new applicants, Edney said. He added that this could help keep the program afloat for a few weeks. He also said he hopes the use of state funds will not be necessary. 

During the government shutdown, new applicants will only be approved if they fall under “Priority 1” designation, which includes pregnant and breastfeeding women and high-risk infants. However, according to Flynn on Tuesday, officials will not require proof of pregnancy, breastfeeding or a high-risk infant to determine priority status, allowing people to get the help they need while it lasts. 

“Priority 1” applicants will still need to follow the guidelines for approval, including bringing proof of income, residence and identification to their initial WIC appointment. More information about the application process can be found on the state Health Department’s website. 

Leadership at the state Health Department is encouraging WIC applicants and enrollees to direct any questions to an agent at 1-800-338-6747.

PASCAGOULA – Strings of papel picado and flags representing Latin American countries hung above the crowd at the Festival Hispano de Pascagoula, their bright colors and patterns flashing in the sun. Families from across the Gulf Coast gathered at Beach Park in Pascagoula Sept. 20 to celebrate food, music and cultural pride in the open air. 

At the festival, vendors offered tamales, fresh tortillas, empanadas and other dishes. Zona Libre played Latin music as the crowd danced and immersed themselves in the sounds with pride and excitement on their faces. Members of the Studio of Dance and Gymnastics wore colorful cultural outfits as they spun in circles, while older eventgoers spoke about heritage and roots in their native countries.

“It feels good to celebrate my culture,” said Nancy Morosky, a Gulf Coast resident originally from Puerto Rico. “I like to be reminded of where we come from, and I want to pass it down to the next generation.”

Pascagoula has one of the largest Hispanic communities on the Gulf Coast. According to the 2020 Census, nearly 15% of its 22,000 residents identify as Hispanic or Latino. In Jackson County, the share is closer to 7%. 

Main Street Pascagoula and the city organized the event, now in its fourth year.

“We think it is important because we have a large Hispanic community that is all along the Coast of Mississippi, and we just love to bring people together to celebrate that with good food, fellowship and good fun,” said Susannah Northrop, executive director of Main Street Pascagoula. 

“There are so many Hispanic people on the Gulf Coast, it is important for us to know our culture,” said Marisol Perez, a Gulf Coast resident originally from Puerto Rico, as she held her 8-month-old granddaughter, Neylan E. Quirindongo. 

The event highlighted more than food, music or cultural outfits. It showed how Hispanic families have built a growing and connected community on the Gulf Coast.

As the day neared its end, drums and maracas kept the rhythms in play. The crowd danced, laughed and celebrated their rich culture and heritage under the southern Mississippi night sky. 

PASCAGOULA — Tiras de papel picado y banderas de países de América Latina —con sus colores fuertes y diseños llamativos— brillaban bajo el sol de septiembre y sobre las cabezas de los asistentes al Festival Hispano de Pascagoula. El 20 de septiembre, familias de toda la Costa del Golfo se reunieron para celebrar su orgullo gastronómico, musical y cultural al aire libre.

En el festival, puestos de comida ofrecían tamales, tortillas frescas, empanadas y otros platos. Zona Libre tocaba música latina y la multitud bailaba, inmersa en los sonidos. Sus rostros transmitían orgullo y emoción. Los miembros de Studio of Dance y Gymnastics, luciendo trajes típicos coloridos, daban vueltas mientras que los asistentes mayores conversaban sobre cultura y raíces en sus países de nacimiento. 

“Se siente bien celebrar mi cultura”, dijo Nancy Morosky, una residente de la Costa del Golfo que nació en Puerto Rico. “Me gusta recordar de dónde venimos y quiero transmitirlo a la siguiente generación”.

Pascagoula es hogar de una de las comunidades latinas más grandes de la Costa del Golfo. Según el censo de 2020, cerca de 15% de sus 22,000 residentes se identifica como hispano o latino. En el condado de Jackson, la proporción es de casi 7%. 

Main Street Pascagoula y la ciudad organizaron el evento, que ya está en su cuarto año. 

“Creemos que es importante porque tenemos una amplia comunidad hispana a lo largo de toda la Costa del Mississippi, y nos encanta reunir a la gente para celebrar eso con comida, compañerismo y entretenimiento sano”, dijo Susannah Northrop, directora ejecutiva de Main Street Pascagoula. 

“Hay tantos hispanos en la Costa del Golfo, es importante para nosotros conocer nuestra cultura”, dijo Marisol Pérez, una residente de la Costa del Golfo originaria de Puerto Rico, mientras cargaba a Neylan E. Quirindongo, su nieta de ocho meses.

El evento destacó más que comida, música y trajes típicos. Demostró cómo las familias latinas en la Costa del Golfo han construido una comunidad que crece y que se conecta. 

A medida que el día llegaba a su fin, tambores y maracas mantenían el ritmo. Los asistentes bailaban, reían y celebraban su rica cultura y herencia bajo el cielo oscuro de la noche del sur de Mississippi. 

The Clevelands discuss last weekend and the one coming up, including what appeared to be a routine quarterback sack by the Saints’ Carl Granderson of the Giants’ Jaxson Dart that was somehow called roughing the passer. The Saints, believe it or not, won anyway. Also, the conversation turns to what might have been the last Sanderson Farms Championship and the upcoming weekend in college football.

Stream all episodes here.

At least $500 million is expected to flow into Mississippi over the next five years as a part of a major federal investment into rural healthcare. 

The funding aims to offset the disproportionate impact already-struggling rural hospitals are expected to bear as a result of Medicaid spending cuts signed into law by President Donald Trump this summer. 

More than half of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves will decide what to include in the state’s one-time application for the funding, which is due in just over a month.

Reeves did not respond to Mississippi Today’s questions about his plans or priorities for the funds. 

Legislators hold the authority to appropriate money through the “power of the purse.” During a state budget hearing Sept. 24, House Speaker Jason White expressed frustration that they have not been more included in the decision-making process. 

This sets the stage for a possible conflict between the governor and legislators over who has the authority to appropriate the funds, echoing disputes that arose during the distribution of federal COVID-19 aid. 

“I understand the timeline’s tight,” White said to Mississippi Medicaid Director Cindy Bradshaw. “But I also understand, I think people want to have input on what that looks like if they’re going to be appropriating the money.” 

The state Division of Medicaid and the Department of Health are supporting the governor in crafting the application.

Half of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program will be distributed evenly among all states with approved applications, amounting to $100 million a year for five years per state if all states apply and are accepted. The other half will be allocated to states based on a variety of factors, including the rural population, the proportion of rural health facilities and the condition of hospitals. 

Health care leaders told Mississippi Today they expect the discretionary funding allocations to benefit Mississippi, where most people live in rural communities and two out of three hospitals are in rural areas. 

“The key takeaway is Mississippi does do really well with this,” said Ryan Kelly, executive director of the Mississippi Rural Health Association, an organization for health professionals and advocates. 

The funding is focused on strengthening access to health care by investing in lasting improvements to preventive medicine, collaboration between health care facilities, workforce development and innovations in care and technology. 

Hospital leaders have warned that the federal cuts could force some rural hospitals to stop some services or close their doors. 

Bradshaw estimated that cuts to state directed payments, which help hospitals offset low Medicaid payments, will amount to a loss of $160 million a year beginning in 2029.

Rural hospitals may also shoulder rising costs of uninsured care if enhanced premium tax credits, which make marketplace insurance more affordable, expire at the end of this year. Over 100,000 Mississippians are expected to lose health insurance coverage if the credits are not extended.

Some advocates caution that the federal investment in rural health care will be too little to offset the losses Mississippi’s rural hospitals will face. 

“It simply won’t be enough,” said Khaylah Scott, a program manager for the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, an organization aimed at improving health policies.

She called the program a “Band-Aid,” noting that it is temporary and will cover only about a third of the estimated losses to federal Medicaid funding in rural areas. 

Bradshaw said the new funding alone may not resolve the challenges facing rural hospitals. 

“Throwing more money at hospitals I don’t think is necessarily the answer because we’ve done that the last two years and they’re still not thriving,” Bradshaw told legislative budget leaders. 

The application opened in mid-September and states must submit a plan before Nov. 5. The federal government will approve applications by the end of the year. 

“The timing is really tricky and maybe even unfortunate that we have such a short amount of time to be able to submit the application,” Bradshaw said.

Mississippi has moved quickly to solicit input from stakeholders and health leaders.

A survey released at the end of July yielded over 120 responses. Thirteen stakeholders were invited to a closed-door meeting Aug. 28 to present their ideas for the program to representatives from the governor’s office, the Division of Medicaid and the Department of Health. 

The state has not held any public meetings or hearings. Other states, including Louisiana, have held outreach meetings around the state to gain feedback from stakeholders and rural residents. 

“We feel like those funds really need to be focused on the rural hospitals to help them absorb some of the upcoming losses of those supplemental payments that have been so vital in keeping the doors open and keeping access to care alive in those rural areas,” said Richard Roberson, the association’s president and CEO. 

The association has proposed using the funding for a grant to help rural hospitals cover costs of uncompensated care, improve infrastructure, create programs to recruit and retain health professionals in rural areas, expand the state’s ability to share information between providers and improve telehealth technology. 

The Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative, which represents other hospitals and health care organizations and was also invited to present at the forum, did not respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today. 

The program will give Mississippi the opportunity to fund “ready projects” the state has been studying the past two to three years, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said in an interview with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. 

Department of Health spokesperson Greg Flynn declined to say which projects Edney was referencing, citing the governor’s authority to make final decisions about the application.

Kelly, of the Rural Health Association, said it is difficult to determine how to support rural health care with a large amount of funding. 

“Normally we have to find ways to do things without money,” he said. “Now, it’s like we have to flip on its head what we’ve had to do, and now we have to find a way to spend money – a lot of money. And that’s kind of a challenge.” 

GULFPORT – “This is an outdoors person’s state, you know what I’m saying?” Derrick Evans said of Mississippi on a muggy September evening at his office in Turkey Creek. “It’s agricultural, it’s fishing, it’s hunting.”

Yet, Evans said, political priorities in the state, named after the immense river to its west, seem detached from that very culture. 

“A polluted stream, an environmental vulnerability, is actually an abrogation to what we might call the Southern way of life,” he said.

In 2023, a study concluded Mississippi was the most vulnerable state to climate change in the country. The research, done by the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas A&M University, quantified how a litany of social inequities exacerbate frequent natural disasters – such as flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat and drought – not just in Mississippi but across the South. 

Grace Tee Lewis, a Texas-based senior health scientist with EDF and one of the study’s authors, said the region’s history of segregation and underinvestment in public services comes back to bite it when a disaster hits. In a rural state that ranks near the bottom in health outcomes and access to care, for example, a hurricane is all the more likely to sever a sick person’s access to medicine.

“In the South, where you have historical policies that have created a lot of stratification in wealth and resources, I think that contributes to disparities in vulnerability,” Lewis said. “That extends itself to investments in climate – flood mitigation, hurricane preparedness. Often what we see in the Gulf is, they’re the same communities that are getting hit time and again.” 

Lewis and her colleagues’ work echoes similar findings by the federal government. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Global Change Research Program published reports in recent years linking social disparities in the Southeast to a higher risk of impacts from natural disasters.

The study also said Turkey Creek, the historic Gulfport neighborhood founded by Evans’ ancestors and other freed slaves after the Civil War, sits in the fifth most vulnerable census tract out of over 73,000 in the United States. 

As he walked outside his mother’s house, Evans pointed to just under the roof, showing where the water finally stopped after Hurricane Katrina landed in 2005. While surprised Turkey Creek ranked so highly, he was well aware of its environmental challenges. 

The neighborhood’s settlers, he said, knew how to comport their lives with the surrounding watershed. They built their homes, for instance, on a ridge following the curvature of the surrounding streams. But especially after the city of Gulfport annexed the neighborhood in the 1990s, the watershed slowly devolved into pavement-laden developments.

“Climate resiliency,” Evans proclaimed, “starts with not being ground zero to someone else’s future.”

Over the years, coastal developers and officials replaced wetlands, which naturally absorb water, with concrete slabs that repel flooding onto other property.

David Holt, coordinator of sustainability sciences at the University of Southern Mississippi, explained that coastal cities after Katrina began developing further inland, replacing forested or grassy areas with subdivisions. But in doing so, Holt said, they were “not really thinking about drainage.”

“We get a lot of localized flooding with these new developments,” he said. 

Gulfport officials denied to Mississippi Today that commercialization has harmed the city’s drainage, adding they’ve improved stormwater management standards for new construction. But lifelong Coast residents, like Rose Green in Turkey Creek, said their ditches still regularly overflow, and fear their vulnerability to climate change will only grow without better planning. 

“The water is going to back up,” Green said. “We’re going to get drowned out here.”

“We are all in a disaster area”

Leaders and scientists around the world agree greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are warming the planet, leading to more variability in climate trends and a spike in extreme natural disasters. 

“The Southeast faces increasing intensity of climate change impacts including warming temperatures, extreme precipitation events, droughts, sea level rise, and tropical cyclones,” the Environmental Protection Agency says on its website.

In the last 10 years, according to federal weather data, storms in Mississippi caused an estimated $1 billion in property and crop damage. The data, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, directly link those events to 84 deaths and 608 injuries, and indirectly to 19 other deaths and 100 other injuries. 

Half of Mississippi’s counties saw a direct or indirect death linked to a natural disaster in the last decade. 

“ The reality is that we are all in a disaster area,” Holt said. “Every corner of this state can be hit by a natural disaster.”

In many ways, surviving and recovering from disasters comes down to wealth, both on a personal and communal level. 

“Preparedness looks different for people who are low-income,” said Rhonda Rhodes, president of the Hancock Resource Center, which offers disaster counseling on the Coast. “They can’t just go get a hotel at whatever cost, so they’re stuck going to shelters, whether the storm gets here or not. They don’t get paid if they don’t work, they don’t have money for gas. 

“It is a real crisis for families that are low-income to have to evacuate. So a lot of them don’t, which is its own problem.”

The nation’s poorest state, Mississippi is already feeling the financial impacts of climate change more than most states. In 2021, only three states – Louisiana, Florida and Oklahoma – had a higher financial burden than Mississippi paying for home insurance premiums, which have risen as insurers adjust for the risk of increased disasters. 

Last year, amid rising temperatures, a third of Mississippians were unable to pay a recent energy bill, the highest rate in the country.

Over the summer, an Urban Institute study found that, based on average income, Mississippi would have the least fiscal capacity of any state to handle disasters should the Trump Administration follow through with plans to gut the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

“Should more disaster responsibility be pushed to the states, Mississippi would face some unique challenges relative to other states that have a broader set of reserves (for disaster funding),” Sara McTarnaghan, one of the study’s authors, said.

A scramble for mitigation funds

In recent years, governments at every level have shifted their focus to mitigation, or projects that better protect homes and infrastructure from natural disasters. 

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency is overseeing 160 local mitigation projects. Those include safe rooms and sirens to prepare for tornadoes, drainage upgrades to deter flooding, and backup generators for water systems. 

But all of the state’s mitigation efforts are primarily funded with federal programs, and mainly through FEMA. The Trump administration cut one of the agency’s key mitigation programs – the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities fund, or BRIC – earlier this year. Moreover, the recent slew of cuts to EPA grants included $20 million set for a self-sustainable resiliency hub in Jackson. 

For many small, rural areas, federal mitigation dollars are the only path toward funding local climate resilience. Beverly Wright, executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, said recent changes on the national level will disproportionately leave poorer communities in danger going forward.

“The cuts to FEMA are really devastating,” Wright said. “You really see bleak days ahead because Mother Nature is not backing off.” 

In the Delta about 20 miles east of Clarksdale, officials in Marks are worried that flooding could contribute to the outmigration the small city’s seen over the last few decades. 

“In the early spring, it was raining every day,” said Joe Shegog, the town’s former mayor who stepped down from office earlier this year. “A lot of people couldn’t get in or out of their homes unless they used a boat.” 

Since 1980, Marks’ population dropped by over a third, Census data shows, from about 2,200 people to 1,400. The median household income is about $25,000 less than the rest of the state. 

A combination of flash flooding and water from the Coldwater River – which local officials say has gotten worse because of seepage from the Arkabutla Lake north of Marks – has become a regular threat to residents as the city’s drainage infrastructure has aged. 

A large swath of the city and its surrounding areas sit in “Zone A” of FEMA’s flood map, meaning they have high risk. As is the case with much of the Delta, flooding incapacitates Marks’ local farming, a key economic driver in the region and state as a whole. The EDF and Texas A&M study ranked Quitman County, where Marks is located, in the 98th percentile of climate vulnerability in the country. 

Shegog, who served as either an alderman or mayor in Marks since 1987, said the city’s small tax base can’t fund needed infrastructure improvements. In 2023, Quitman County applied for $5 million from FEMA’s BRIC program to upgrade drainage pumps and shore up levees. 

FEMA didn’t select the project, leading local officials to wonder if Marks just didn’t have enough property value to attract the spending. Velma Wilson, the county’s economic director, said the county planned to reapply before the federal government announced plans to cut the BRIC program in April. 

Similarly, Shegog said it’s hard to attract attention from the state with a dwindling population.

“There’s not as many votes in these small areas,” he said. 

“We can’t do this forever”

In 2024, 63% of American adults were worried about global warming, according to a Yale University poll. In Mississippi, that number was 55%. 

What climate change will look like in the state isn’t a simple answer, explained Holt, the USM professor. While the conditions for hurricanes, for instance, have become more common as the ocean warms, increasing wind shear may also keep them from building and hitting land. What’s more clear, he said, is that the average storms are intensifying more rapidly and they’re coming during a wider span of the year.

“We’re supposed to be all nervous and worried in July and August, not October and November,” he said.

Another complicated trend, Holt explained, is that seemingly opposite extremes are each becoming more common: intense heat and ice storms, heavy rainfall and drought. 

But while more of the public recognizes the threats of climate change, the language around the issue is still politicized, Holt said. 

“People want to say it’s not climate change, it’s just a natural cycle, or it’s all in God’s plan,” he said. “But the reality is, it doesn’t change anything.”

Holt argued that the economic effects of climate change may be the key to attract the attention of politicians and other decision-makers in Mississippi: If more intense flooding and drought continue to threaten one of its top exports – the state exported $2.3 billion in agricultural products in 2023 – and the federal government continues to cut funding it relies on, what does that mean for the state’s future?

“I think sustainability is an easy argument,” Holt said. “Do you want what we’re doing right now? Do you want to do that in 10 years? If you do, that’s sustainability. Resiliency is (recognizing) we can’t sustain this. We can’t do this forever. We can’t behave like this forever.”

The Jackson City Council voted Tuesday in favor of taking the city’s water and sewer systems back from under third-party control.

In 2022, as part of a federal consent decree, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate put the struggling water system under the control of now JXN Water manager Ted Henifin, who also took over Jackson’s sewer system in 2023. Henifin said repeatedly he planned to stay until 2027, although Wingate has the ultimate say over when and whether to transition control back to the city.

Tuesday’s resolution “encourages” Wingate to reverse the 2022 order. Longtime Ward 3 Councilman Kenneth Stokes introduced the measure and described a strained relationship between the utility and Jackson residents. Stokes characterized the utility as being “disrespectful” and having “talked down” to customers.

“The citizens are beginning to lose faith in JXN Water,” he said.

Specifically, Stokes claimed JXN Water is sending out inaccurate bills and then aggressively shutting off connections until customers make large down payments on their debt.

The council voted 6 to 1 to approve the resolution, with Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote the lone dissenting vote.

Later in the day, JXN Water responded in a statement that financial challenges with the water system need resolving before returning control to Jackson. The city, the utility added, is largely at fault for those challenges.

“Significant progress has been made in restoring and maintaining reliable operations,” the statement said. “However, achieving financial stability remains the greatest challenge and must be resolved before any transition can occur. Otherwise, Jackson risks returning to the same conditions that led to the federal government’s intervention.

“The failure of the City’s water and sewer systems can be directly tied to a lack of financial resources — largely due to the City’s past inability or unwillingness to set sustainable rates and ensure all users paid for the services they received. Without a long-term, financially sound plan, the system will inevitably deteriorate again.”

Before Tuesday’s vote, Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley asked the city’s chief administrative officer, Pieter Teeuwissen, if there were plans to transition the system back under Jackson management. Teeuwissen said the court order over the water system says the parties need to have a transition plan in place in October 2026, but added he expects the transition to begin sooner than that.

“I suspect the timeline will be something sooner than what the city previously agreed to,” he said, noting that he, Mayor John Horhn and Henifin met last Friday and are “constantly” meeting to discuss transition options.

JXN Water confirmed they’ve met with the city, but said it will be “months before a viable proposal can be shared.” The statement also said a utility authority with appointed board members would likely need to temporarily run the systems after JXN Water while the city developed a transition plan.

While voting for the resolution, Council President and Ward 4 Councilman Brian Grizzell supported the idea of a separate utility authority. It would be more sustainable, Grizzell said, if the systems weren’t subject to the regular turnover in the mayoral and public works offices.

JXN Water communications officer Aisha Carson said multiple council members have reached out to the utility to request it restore water to connections it turned off due to nonpayment. Carson said the utility couldn’t “cherry pick” which accounts to shut off, and added that the city council had earlier this year asked JXN Water to ramp up collections to address revenue shortages.

“It’s very difficult for us to apply that collections policy when we experience pushback from City Council leaders who have actually told us to ramp up collections,” she said.

Carson said JXN Water is shutting off water connections to about 1,000 accounts a week, a rate its maintained for the last three to four weeks. Earlier in the year, the utility said in its financial plan that it found over 14,000 accounts that receive water but weren’t paying, and that they would be the focus of its collection efforts.

In another move, the council voted unanimously for another resolution to encourage JXN Water to offer bill adjustments. Stokes, who introduced that resolution as well, said customers who see discolored water from their taps should receive a discount.

In August, JXN Water said it was seeing increased levels of manganese, a naturally occurring mineral, in the Ross Barnett Reservoir. While the increase may turn tap water brown in some cases, the utility said, the effect is only “aesthetic,” meaning it’s not a health concern. The utility said at the time it was adjusting treatment techniques to reduce the effect, which Carson said adds to their expenses. But some customers, Stokes said Tuesday, are still not drinking the water when they see the discoloration and instead paying extra to buy bottled water.

A program that provides food and nutrition services to nearly 70,000 Mississippi caregivers and children is currently running but could close this month if the Health Department does not find state funds amid the federal government shutdown, according to the state department. 

The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program is federally funded, according to Mississippi State Health Department spokesperson Greg Flynn. Enrollees can continue to use their current benefits until they run out. The department is exploring options to keep the program alive with state funds if the shutdown continues, Flynn said.

Tens of thousands of Mississippians rely on WIC each month. The program offers breastfeeding support and monthly vouchers for healthy foods to women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or postpartum, as well as infants and children under the age of 5. Statewide, there are about 300 WIC-approved grocery stores and pharmacies where members can use their benefits. 

While existing federal funds may keep the program open temporarily, the National WIC Association said in a Sept. 30 statement that immediate action by Congress is necessary to make sure essential services aren’t disrupted. 

“Failure to rapidly reopen the government could result in State WIC directors being put in the horrible position of trying to manage their programs with insufficient funds,” said Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the association, in the statement. 

During the government shutdown, new applicants will only be approved if they fall under “Priority 1” designation, which includes pregnant and breastfeeding women and high-risk infants. However, according to Flynn, officials will not require proof of pregnancy, breastfeeding or a high-risk infant to determine priority status, allowing people to get the help they need while it lasts. 

“Priority 1” applicants will still need to follow the guidelines for approval, including bringing proof of income, residence and identification to their initial WIC appointment. More information about the application process can be found on the state Health Department’s website. 

Federal shutdowns do not happen often. The last one occurred in December 2018 and lasted for 35 days. The current shutdown is a week old, and congressional Democrats and Republicans remain in gridlock over how to fund the government. 

The main point of contention between parties is the expiration of Biden-era subsidies that are making health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans, with Democrats pushing for their renewal. If they are not renewed, KFF estimates premiums on marketplace insurance plans will more than double next year.

In 2024, over 331,000 Mississippians relied on tax credits to make their insurance plans more affordable, according to an analysis by the American Cancer Society. Should those enhanced tax credits expire, annual premiums would increase by $2,571 on average for a family of four with an annual income of $64,000, according to Keep Americans Covered, a nonpartisan coalition of major health care groups, such as the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Meanwhile, state Health Department contract workers were given stop-work orders last week with the end of their pay period, and were notified their jobs and compensation were paused until the shutdown ended. The department has said it is prioritizing maintaining direct services such as WIC during the shutdown.

“WIC is a vital support system for thousands of Mississippi families,” according to the department’s last memo, shared on Oct. 2. “MSDH remains committed to minimizing the impact of the federal shutdown on the families we serve. We thank you for your trust and patience, and we will continue to provide updates as the situation evolves.” 

Leadership at the state Health Department is encouraging WIC applicants and enrollees to direct any questions to an agent at 1-800-338-6747. 

CLEVELAND — One text message in a group chat. 

That’s all it took for Mtume Matthews to gather hundreds of Delta State University students, faculty, staff and neighbors to a candlelight vigil on the night of Sept. 18. 

There they mourned 21-year-old Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the first-year student who took his life earlier that week. 

The death of the Black student jolted the city of Cleveland, a small college town in northwest Mississippi with a roughly 2,700-student population, into national headlines. A flurry of social media posts with conflicting information on Reed’s death led to confusion about campus safety. 

There was also public outcry — prompting a response informed by Mississippi’s history of racism and violence — where many disputed his death twice ruled as a suicide by state and county authorities. Reed’s body was found hanging from a tree on campus Sept. 15. Results of a second independent autopsy commissioned on behalf of Reed’s family have not been released.

But Matthews said that moment of solemnity and stillness on the campus quadrangle that night gave him an idea. 

“In those first few days, students just wanted answers. That was the biggest thing,” said Matthews, a junior studying flight operations. “But now, it’s like, ‘OK, where do we go next?’ How do we hold each other accountable and build a family?” 

In the weeks following the death of their classmate, students including Matthews, Jamaal Bryant and Maitlynn White have rallied their peers to process grief. They’ve created memorials and fundraisers for Reed’s family, launched new mental health initiatives for student groups and provided solutions and support on campus. 

And, university officials are taking notice. 

The day after the vigil, Bryant, president of DSU’s Divine Nine chapter, approached Matthews with a solution. He wanted Black male students to open up and express their feelings about loss. Having a safe space to do it would make everyone more comfortable, he said. 

“There’s a stigma that Black men don’t talk to anybody. That we handle things by ourselves or we don’t need anyone to lean on,” Bryant said. “That can build so much pressure within us. (Reed) could’ve been looking for someone or a community in his time of need.” 

In 2023, suicide was the third-leading cause of death for Black people between the ages of 15 and 35, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Death by suicide spiked for Black males ages 10-24 by 36% between 2018-2021. 

Black youth are also less likely to receive adequate access to care than peers in other demographic groups, in part because of “systemic inequities, including racism, poverty, as well as deeply rooted stigma around mental health and well-founded cultural mistrust of the health care system,” according to an April 2024 report from Pew Charitable Trust. Risk factors for suicide can often be misunderstood or ignored in African-Americans males. 

Starting this month, the African American Student Council and Delta State’s Divine Nine, a council for the historically Black fraternities and sororities on campus, is hosting biweekly discussions on mental wellness. They  aim to provide students with coping skills to care for their mental health, as well as “building a family away from home”. 

“That’s what college is really about, you know,” said Matthews, president of the African American Student Council. “We needed to come around each other because we don’t want anyone to be isolated during this time.” 

Forty percent of the students at Delta State are Black.

The sessions will be on Fridays from 1-2 p.m. for men and 2-3 p.m. for women in the Statesmen Room. 

Each talk will feature a guest speaker, most likely a university official on campus who can share wisdom and insight on how they manage their health. They will be followed with break-out sessions and include pamphlets, guides and resources from the university’s counseling services center. 

“After the vigil, everybody kind of got the reassurance like, ‘we got each other,’” Bryant said. “We’re just trying to make sure that everybody is OK on campus. You know, get us back on a positive foot. ” 

‘The Resolve and Resiliency’

It has been difficult for students and faculty to feel like they’ve emerged from this “dark moment,” said Eddie Lovin, vice president of student affairs. 

When he was first alerted to the news, he called Paula King, the director of health and counseling services. They began to strategize what outreach and support would look like for their students. 

They opened Sillers Chapel, the university’s church, for prayer and meditation knowing that students would lean into their faith. 

King’s office began receiving an outpouring of emails and phone calls from other Mississippi public universities and colleges, Cleveland school system’s therapists and Life and Health, a community mental health agency. All offered to assist with services. 

In trying to use lessons learned from the fatal shooting on campus of history professor Ethan Schmidt in September 2015, King said her staff knew how to manage that swell of support. 

They learned that support for students was needed in weeks following a traumatic event, rather than in that moment. 

Symptoms of grief like irritability and trouble sleeping and concentrating, can show up much later, she said. The goal for King and her staff these past few weeks has been to increase awareness around resources and services. 

“A lot of what we’ve done has been making sure people know what to expect when you experience something traumatic and that you did not have to know (Reed) to be affected by his death. That it is kind of a human thing to feel that way,” Paula King, director of health and counseling services.

“We have definitely seen an influx of traffic,” King said. “A lot of what we’ve done has been making sure people know what to expect when you experience something traumatic and that you did not have to know (Reed) to be affected by his death. That it is kind of a human thing to feel that way.” 

Lovin also received a text from Hayden Kirkhart, president of the student government association. Kirkhart told him the students were setting up tables in the lobby of the Union so peer counselors could connect and talk. It was the initiative within those first few hours that overwhelmed Lovin with admiration. 

“Our student leaders stepped into the trenches right there alongside administration, faculty and staff trying to provide that support knowing that they were also dealing with everything going on,” Lovin said. “The resolve and resiliency of them in the face of everything, I got strengthened every time I found out they were doing this for each other.” 

‘Strong minds, Strong Statesmen’ 

The announcement of Reed’s death hit close to home for Maitlynn White.

White, a senior studying elementary education, lost a childhood friend from suicide during her freshman year. The pain she felt in the moment was heavy and isolating. But, it was small, simple messages that reminded her that her friend “was in God’s arms, at peace.” 

“I realized how important it is to be there for others and  create spaces where students can support each other,” said White, president of College Panhellenic Council. “That experience inspired me to step into the role of being a student for students making sure no one has to grieve alone.” 

So White pulled a six-pack box of colorful sidewalk chalk from the trunk of her car. She walked to different spots on campus and wrote affirmations. 

“You got this,” said one note scrawled in blue chalk on the sidewalk near Cain-Tatum and Lawler-Hawkins Hall. It was accompanied by a big smiley face. 

“Strong minds, Strong Statesmen,” said another affirmation in white and black chalk, echoing school pride, colors and mascot. 

“You are loved,” one note said,  ‘o’ replaced with a pink heart. 

With an increase in mental health campaigns, students are encouraging open dialogue to create a campus culture where everyone is supported and valued, White said. 

The sidewalk messages to students were a break from the solitude, stress and confusion everyone was feeling at the time. Writing them became a reminder of her own strength in that moment. Everyone is processing this loss together, she said. 

“No college student wants to talk about how they’re really feeling,” White said. “Most of the students here are experiencing a loss of a peer for the first time. The mental health campaigns and initiatives we establish now will continue well after we graduate.”

Speaking of Reed, she said. “It’s to honor him and make sure that no Delta State student is left behind.” 

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

Editor’s note: A program on music icon Bob Dylan’s connection to Mississippi and the Civil Rights Movement will be held at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics in Oxford. The panelists will be University of Mississippi professor R.J. Morgan, Mississippi Today’s Jerry Mitchell and Reena Evers-Everette, Medgar Evers’ daughter. The event will not be streamed live, but can be viewed in the coming days at https://youtube.com/@overbycenterforsouthernjou1739?si=zKUdKg3AIv4L_nzs.

Friends, let me just tell you, becoming a Bob Dylan scholar is not how I planned to spend my life.

In my previous careers, I was a sports journalist and a high school history teacher. I went to school to become an academic administrator. I teach media classes at the University of Mississippi, run two very successful scholastic press associations and serve nationally in a number of other capacities. I am deeply proud of this work. But unless you’re really into high school yearbooks and helping young adults find their voice (quick plug — you should be!), the story I’m about to tell is probably more interesting. 

I was a casual Dylan fan in college. Like many folks, I knew he was important, and mysterious, and his lyrics definitely helped me make sense of many social injustices and get over many lost loves. As a young history teacher, I assigned some of his protest songs to my students for projects, but personally I was more into Johnny Cash and what the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood calls, “the Southern Thing.” Dylan was too New York City, too distant. I was fascinated by New York, too, but I lived in Mississippi. The South was my home. 

By 2015, I was teaching at the University of Mississippi. Sensing time might be running out to see a legend live, I bought tickets for a series of Dylan shows, mostly just to pay my respects and visit a few friends spread out across the South.

I had low expectations. It was an excuse to travel. 

What I discovered instead was an artist who was still very much alive and vibrant. Most of the songs he performed were from recent albums, so I understood very little of what was being mumbled into the microphone, but when I dug into the songs later, many struck me as even more stunning, and scholarly in their depth, than his well-known masterpieces from the 1960s and ’70s. When he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, I realized this wasn’t just a popular American artist. This was a cultural icon who would one day be studied alongside Faulkner, Whitman and Hemingway.

I know that sounds a bit hokey. 

But I work on a college campus, and when I hear visiting Shakespeare scholars talk about the importance of preserving the Bard’s “First Folios” (the 235 surviving copies of the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623), it sounds a lot like the reverent whispers I hear “Dylanologists” use to discuss bootlegs of a pre-New York recording at a friend’s Minneapolis apartment or the marked-up pocketsize notebooks he used to sketch out lyrics for “Blood on the Tracks.”

Both camps analyze these artifacts as if they’re the Dead Sea Scrolls. That’s what scholars do. Every scrap of information preserved can offer new ways of seeing and understanding a historical figure, even one who does not want to be seen or understood, like Dylan.

Around this time I also ran across the short, famous video clip of Dylan performing in a cotton field outside of Greenwood “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” his song about the assassination of Medgar Evers.

The novelty of it caught my attention first. I was well acquainted with Evers and his heroism. I’d taught Mississippi studies. Now here was this song, and this poignant performance. I needed to know more. 

So I began casually accumulating any information I could find. The event turned out to be the Delta Folk Jubilee, a voter registration rally put on by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in July of 1963.

Folksingers Pete Seeger, Theo Bikel and Dylan — all white — came down and performed with the Freedom Singers as a way to show support for local Black people, who were fighting for the right to vote, and to help export their story back to the rest of America by generating news coverage.

SNCC’s press release claims it was the first integrated public gathering in the history of the Delta.

Future congressman John Lewis was there as SNCC’s newly-elected chairman. Local law enforcement put up “No Parking” signs along the road to deter attendance, then stood hovering across the street, armed, while sharecroppers traded stories of police brutality. 

Dylan played just two songs. “Pawn” was one, and this was its debut. Evers’ body had been buried for less than three weeks. The other song was “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

The whole affair was bold, risky and dangerous. The more research I accumulated, the more my reporter’s brain activated. This was a major historical event, not just for Dylan but for Mississippi. So I set out to try to document my little sliver of “Dylanology” by tracking down those who were there and recording their stories.

Among others, I’ve interviewed Courtland Cox, the SNCC worker who picked up Dylan at the airport in Jackson; Bob Moses, leader of the Greenwood movement and architect of Freedom Summer; and Dorie Ladner, who dined with Evers the night he was murdered and later became friendly enough with Dylan that he spoke of her in song:

I got a woman in Jackson

I ain’t gonna say her name

She’s a brown-skin woman, but I

Love her just the same

Both Moses and Ladner have now passed on, but my interviews are ongoing. If you know anyone who attended this event or has any information that might be useful, please reach out. 

Researching Dylan’s Greenwood trip led me to dig deeper into the rest of his career and catalog. He may be from Minnesota, but his roots run almost immediately to the South.

In addition to Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, Dylan cites Robert Johnson and other Delta Bluesmen as major early influences. According to my colleague Jason Cain, the radio waves carrying all that music up the Mississippi River to Dylan in Hibbing were the same ones falling on Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, and a young Levon Helm, Dylan’s future bandmate.

Beyond Evers, Dylan penned civil rights anthems about Emmett Till and James Meredith. He cut major, career-defining records in Nashville, Muscle Shoals and New Orleans. His latest studio album, “Rough and Rowdy Ways” (2020), is named after a song by Meridian’s Jimmie Rodgers. 

He wrote a song called “Mississippi” in the late 1990s that was first cut by Sheryl Crow. The hook comes from a 1947 prison work song on Parchman Farm:

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

I grew up just outside of Jackson in the tight-knit, working-class community of Pearl. As a native, these legacies are very important to me. Mississippi is the birthplace of America’s music, and as such, I believe it should be a leader in the study of America’s most consequential musical artist, which is Bob Dylan. 

So, I developed a course called “Bob Dylan and the South” last year for the School of Journalism and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. It was extremely well-received, and faculty voted earlier this fall to make it a permanent part of the catalog. Registration for next spring’s section begins later this month.

Dylan has been the topic of academic study for more than 40 years. Harvard, Penn, Texas, Berkeley and countless others offer courses on him. The University of Tulsa houses the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies. But no other college campus in America could give its students a better education on Dylan’s southern connections than the University of Mississippi. 

We have Greg Johnson and the Mississippi Blues Archive, one of the largest collections of Blues holdings in the world. We have Scott Barretta, whose award-winning “Highway 61” Blues show airs every week on the Mississippi Public Broadcasting radio network. We have David Swider, the insanely knowledgeable musicologist who owns End of All Music record stores in Oxford and Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood.

We have professors Mark Dolan and Vanessa Charlot, who’ve researched Dylan’s lyrical and cultural connections to Florida and the Caribbean, respectively. Jacob Justice in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric presented his research on Dylan’s relationship with the Beatles at the World of Bob Dylan academic conference in Tulsa this summer, alongside myself and some 300 others.

Our very campus is tied to Dylan, who wrote “Oxford Town” about the riots resulting from Meredith’s enrollment as the first Black student in 1962. He sings: 

Two men died ’neath a Mississippi moon 

Somebody better investigate soon 

One of the two men who died was Paul Guihard, a French journalist. He was the only journalist, in fact, to die covering the Civil Rights Movement. My retired colleague Kathleen Wickham spent the bulk of her career researching Guihard and the integration riots. In 2010, the Society of Professional Journalists declared the Ole Miss campus an historic site in journalism. The plaque stands outside my building. 

Guihard’s murder has never been solved, but Wickham quite literally became the “somebody” Dylan called for in song back in 1962. When she shared her work with my students last spring, they could look down from our classroom windows at the riot site below. 

Everyone else mentioned above spoke with my students, too. The course culminated with students having to produce their own podcasts, with original interviews and research, on a Dylan-related topic. We aired their work on campus radio over the summer. Collectively, we used Dylan as a throughline to explore a variety of topics, crisscrossing disciplines and lenses. The contours of Bob Dylan and the American South are those of America itself. 

The music tells the story. 

At a time when the public is openly questioning the value of higher education, courses like this speak to the relevance of scholarship in everyday life. Where else and when would students, especially out-of-state students, learn this cultural heritage? 

And if they have fun along the way, so what? Universities shouldn’t only have fun on Saturdays.

College students are often painted as flighty and entitled (and some of them are). But those enrolled in my course last spring, hailing from more than a dozen majors across campus, were thoughtful and inspiring. 

In her final reflection essay for the semester, one student wrote:

“I was born and raised in Hernando. I wasn’t always proud of that fact. … I never even knew the culture that surrounded me before I made it to college. Mississippi is one of the most historically rich places in the entire country, and nobody talks about it. So much music originated here. It is the state of American Music. Where would we be without Mississippi musicians? There is so much new gained respect I have for this place, and I am lucky to have been born here.”

Mission accomplished.

Bio: R.J. Morgan  is an instructional associate professor in the School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi and executive director of both the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association and Integrated Marketing Communication Association. He was managing fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics from 2022-2024.  He is a former high school educator and a finalist for Mississippi Teacher of the Year in 2011. He is working on a book project about the Delta Folk Jubilee of 1963. Morgan has a Ph.D. in education leadership from the University of Mississippi and earned undergraduate and master’s degrees at Mississippi State University. He lives in Oxford.