OurTupelo

College basketball’s Cinderella has died, and with her, so much of the NCAA Tournament’s magic has been laid to rest. Both were victims of the out-of-control transfer portal and the almighty NIL dollar.

Another way of putting it: March Madness isn’t so mad any more.

You may like that. I do not. For me, the beauty and allure of the tournament always has been when the unthinkable happens, like two years ago when 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson shocked No. 1 seed Purdue. There was often drama, if not magic, when the monumental upset almost happened but did not, such as in 1986 when Lafayette Stribling’s Mississippi Valley State team led for most of the game before narrowly losing to overall No. 1 seed Duke.

The 2025 NCAA Tournament, one of the most predictable on record, ended Monday night with an exciting, remarkably well-played game. Florida defeated Houston 65-63. It seems appropriate that one of the Gators’ heroes was 23-year-old Mississippian, Alijah Martin, a graduate student from Summit in Pike County, who transferred to Florida after playing four seasons at Florida Atlantic. Mid-major transfers played critical roles for power programs throughout the tournament.

This Final Four consisted of all No. 1 seeds. Two No. 12 seeds won a first-round game, but there were no real stunners where a team seeded 13 or above advanced. Arkansas, a 10-seed from the SEC, was the only double-digit seed to make the Sweet 16. All the other 15 were 6-seeds or higher. 

There were no stunners. No school named Oakland beat a blue blood like Kentucky. No UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) upset Virginia. No Bucknell beat Kansas. Those ships have sailed away, perhaps forever.

This year’s biggest upset came when McNeese State defeated Clemson. And that one gets an asterisk because McNeese State reportedly out-spent many power conference schools with NIL money in the transfer portal.

“Follow the money,” longtime college and NBA coach Tim Floyd, a Hattiesburg native, says. “In college basketball today, recruiting is basically buying. For the most part, low- and mid-majors simply can’t compete financially with the power conference teams.”

Belmont University of Nashville was one of those low-to-mid major schools that might have pulled a gigantic upset in this year’s NCAA Tournament. The makings of an NCAA Sweet 16 team were there from last year’s 22-12 team. But then, power forward Malik Dia transferred to Ole Miss, point guard Jacobi Miller transferred to Maryland and small forward Cade Tyson transferred to North Carolina. Strike one, strike two and strike three: Belmont was out. Ole Miss, Maryland and North Carolina all made the NCAA Tournament; Belmont, which still somehow managed to win 22 games, did not.

Belmont was not alone. Across the land, richer teams from the power conferences cherry-picked from low-and-mid major teams, buying their best players with higher NIL packages. Stetson, a mid-major powerhouse in 2023-24, lost all five starters and all top reserves through the transfer portal. A team that won 22 games a season ago won only eight this past season.

Florida Atlantic shocked everyone by going to the Final Four in 2023, then made the NCAA Tournament again in 2024. The Owls won 60 games over those two seasons. Then, Coach Dusty May left for Michigan and nine — count ’em, nine — players, including Martin, left via the transfer portal. Cinderella no more, FAU was essentially a .500 team this past season.

Mississippian Kermit Davis has been on both sides of the NCAA power divide. He coached at Middle Tennessee State for 16 seasons before a five-year run at Ole Miss. In 2016, his Middle Tennessee team, a 15-seed out of Conference USA, shocked Tom Izzo and Michigan State 90-81 in one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history.

Davis doesn’t know if the same feat would be possible today. 

“I am not sure we could have afforded to hold that team together in today’s college basketball climate,” Davis said. “I know we couldn’t have held them together for that next season.”

What a lot of people might have forgotten is that Davis’s Blue Raiders won 31 games and beat another Big Ten team, Minnesota, in the 2017 NCAA Tournament. 

“Today, all those players would have left Middle and have been playing for Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee or somebody like that,” Davis says. “And you couldn’t blame them. There’s so much money out there. I’m not sure it’s good for college basketball overall, but it’s just the way it is.”

Floyd, who coached at Idaho and New Orleans before jobs at Iowa State and Southern Cal later in his career, strongly believes the new trend isn’t good for the NCAA Tournament or for college athletics in general. 

“It used to be that if you had a couple holes in your roster, you would go the junior college route for immediate help,” Floyd said. “Now, you just pluck then away from smaller four-year schools and leave them high and dry. It’s professional basketball without salary caps or contracts. It’s crazy as hell.”

And, at least for this one observer, it has stolen much of the madness from March.

The post Transfer portal, NIL have stolen the madness from March appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The word “bittersweet” doesn’t do justice to the news we share today. After six years with Mississippi Today, Marshall Ramsey, our editor-at-large and beloved editorial cartoonist, will be leaving the newsroom to launch the Mississippi Media Lab at the University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media. In this first-of-its-kind position, Marshall will serve as editor of the journalism school’s media lab and as the civic engagement coordinator for the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, where he will serve as a liaison between the center, the school and the broader community.

Marshall joined our newsroom in December 2018 with decades of editorial cartoons under his belt. He’d been nominated for multiple Pulitzer Prizes, published numerous books, hosted television and radio programs and emceed nearly every event in the state. He brought to Mississippi Today his insatiable appetite for community connection, levity and creativity. He helped us build our brand of accountability reporting into a household name, and he gave readers across Mississippi hope, humor and an illustrative critique of current events. He is simply irreplaceable, and we will miss his presence in the newsroom and on the website.

Of Marshall’s many admirable qualities, his bravery will always be the one I admire most. Marshall often tells the story of getting a cancer diagnosis and being made part time at his newspaper job on the same day. He does so with his signature comic style, but what he doesn’t share is the tenacity and gumption it took to reinvent himself. He grew his artistic talent as a cartoonist into a full-time gig as a creative entrepreneur. His social media became a brand of its own, and Marshall Ramsey fans are a dedicated and loyal bunch to this day. Through his public speaking engagements, Marshall gave Mississippians what they hadn’t seen before: a mix of sarcasm and empathy that resonated deeply and profoundly for folks from all walks of life. From there, he developed television and radio programs that highlighted the creative spirit of our state but never shied away from the hard-truths that inspire the artistic process.

As an editorial cartoonist, Marshall’s pen spared no one and never played favorites. Marshall amplified the work of our journalists through his editorial cartoons and always had the backs of our reporters, and of our readers. We, as a team, never cease to be amazed by how he can capture the essence of a 7,000-word story in a single cartoon. He’s helped us all laugh to keep from crying, and to collectively seethe when words can’t do justice. For that, we as Mississippians are grateful.

Mississippi Today is growing, and for that we are grateful, but we won’t be posting a job description to replace Marshall Ramsey. That is simply impossible. What we will be doing is cheering on his work at Ole Miss, collaborating closely with the students and projects he leads and continuing to publish his original cartoons weekly for our readers. We are immensely proud of the accomplishments Marshall has made during his years in our nonprofit newsroom, and we are exponentially hopeful for the influence he will have on a new generation of journalists and newsroom leaders.

The post Marshall Ramsey to lead the Mississippi Media Lab at UM’s School of Journalism and New Media appeared first on Mississippi Today.

For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University. 

In 2011, the state’s largest historically Black university’s cultural center and museum, received a $48,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services. The grant paid for staff to travel and learn about the historical preservation work from larger museums and institutions across the country. 

“That grant was my professional development,” Robert Luckett, director of the cultural center said. “It was so important and has been foundational for all of the work we’ve done at Jackson State for the last fifteen, sixteen years.” 

But, Jackson State isn’t the only Mississippi college that has benefitted from funds from IMLS, and the federal agency has flowed millions of dollars in grants to the state.

In 2022, Mississippi State University received a $74,000 grant to fund its Office of Museum Services and a $50,000 grant from the American Rescue Plan for Museums and Libraries to train and hire students from underserved communities to assist with biological collection and conservation. That same year, Northwest Mississippi Community College received $33,000 from the agency to support a series of community engagement discussions for students around racial injustice, mental health and stress in the post COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2020, Hinds Community College Utica’s campus received a $101,000 grant from IMLS’s Museums Grants for African American History and Culture to establish an oral history project for Black rural Mississippians and provided technology and equipment to record stories for residents who couldn’t make it to the campus museum. The federal agency also awarded $500,000 to the University of Mississippi through its Save America’s Treasures program and in 2010 a $450,000 grant to its Modern Political Archives to preserve and digitize 3,800 audio and visual recordings. 

The Margaret Walker Center, which houses oral histories, manuscripts, book collections and history archives of Black Mississippians, and operates as the Black Studies Institute for Jackson State University, has been a cornerstone of cultural development for students. 

Now, with an executive order from President Donald Trump, which led the federal agency’s nearly 70 employees to be placed on administrative leave last week, the future of the Margaret Walker Center’s work remains unclear.

The move to shut down IMLS comes weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to scale down six other federal agencies to “the minimum presence,” according to The Washington Post. 

The agency’s funding, which is less than one percent of the federal budget, has dolled out millions of dollars to museums, libraries and institutions. But, in states like Mississippi, where access to traditional resources and support for cultural institutions may be near to none or nonexistent, the agency’s funding has been essential in providing tools to do important work, Luckett said. 

Out of the eight full-time staff members at the cultural center, two staff and a graduate fellow who works to digitize the historical archives is funded by subgrants of IMLS through the Smithsonian Institute, another national cultural institution facing cuts by the Trump administration. These jobs on the digital humanities staff could be in jeopardy. 

Earlier this year, Luckett said his team applied for another grant from IMLS to pay for their renovation project of Ayer Hall, the oldest building on Jackson State University’s campus and home to the Margaret Walker Center. The grant funding will provide support for staff to move its collections into a safe environment. 

Luckett said the cultural center was supposed to be notified in June if they receive the grant. But, with the changes to the agency, he’s unsure of what comes next. 

“We don’t have the funding to do this,” Luckett said. “We’ll be back to square one.” 

Other cultural institutions and organizations across the state such as the Mississippi Humanities Council, which currently has 35 open subgrants to various state colleges and universities, were reeling after hearing a major defunding announcement. 

In a late night email, the organization learned their grant through the National Endowment of Humanities had been terminated.  The national organization has provided more than 400 grants in Mississippi, including colleges in the state. 

Sweeping cuts at IMLS and the National Endowment of Humanities threaten the future of established museum and library programs at local colleges from panels, literary festivals, history tours, youth education workshops and other public programs. 

“In [Mississippi] our greatest strength is our history and culture,” Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, said. “Our grants and our programs have helped highlight that especially in smaller towns and rural areas of our state.” 

The state’s cultural organization doled out various grants to Mississippi’s public universities and colleges, including a $8,400 grant to the Margaret Walker Center last year, which held a panel discussion on local activism in reflection to Mississippi’s civil rights movement history. 

Luckett said protecting the state’s historical collections and providing access to them are key components for the curriculum for students at Jackson State University  to engage in scholarship and research. 

“These skills are not politicized,” Luckett said. “These are important learning tools for any student of any discipline.” 

While it’s easy to ignore the federal agency being closed, the outside impact that such a small agency has on the country is remarkable, Luckett added. 

“These are public servants doing these jobs, who are committed and who aren’t willing to get rich,” Luckett said. “This assault on IMLS is something we should all be worried about.”

The post ‘We should all be worried’: Trump order threatens funding for Mississippi’s colleges cultural centers and programming appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report last week in its investigation of the UMMC helicopter crash in March that killed three crew members. 

AirCare 3 – one of four helicopters in UMMC’s critical care transport program – was destroyed March 10 after it crashed on a grass field in Canton. 

The pilot and two UMMC employees died in the crash: Cal Wesolowski of Starkville; Dustin Pope, a flight nurse and the base supervisor for AirCare in Columbus; and Jakob Kindt, a critical care paramedic from Tupelo. Denton, Texas-based Med-Trans Corporation provides helicopters and pilots to UMMC.

The preliminary report does not identify the cause of the crash, and the final report could take one to two years to be completed, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told press after the crash. 

The flight was headed to its home base at Golden Triangle Regional Airport in Columbus after the crew completed a patient transport to St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson and topped off its fuel at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, according to the report. 

The flight was classified as low-risk by the operator’s safety management system. 

The helicopter communicated with air traffic control at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport and terminated communication about five minutes before the accident, after the pilot reported “clear to the north.” 

The helicopter flew over the Ross Barnett Reservoir northeast of Jackson and reached an altitude of 2,500 feet above mean sea level before it began to descend north of the reservoir. 

The flight nurse transmitted a message to the UMMC’s aircraft communications center about halfway through the descent. “We’ve got a major problem, we are having an emergency landing in a field right now, ops are not good, controls are giving us a lot of trouble, coming in fast,” he said. 

No further radio transmissions were recorded from the helicopter. 

The helicopter impacted multiple trees south of a flat grass field in the Pearl River State Wildlife Management Area before coming to rest in the field. 

A manager at Turcotte Fish Hatchery 700 yards from the accident site heard a “boom” or “explosion” while the helicopter was still airborne. He did not hear engine sounds after the boom and did not see smoke or fire coming from the helicopter while it remained airborne, he told the National Transportation Safety Board in a postaccident interview. 

It appeared the pilot was “having trouble controlling” the helicopter, and that the tail was pitching up and down, he said. The craft did not descend straight down but was “coasting,” in a 40 to 45 degree angle descent. 

The time from “boom” to impact with the ground was about 15 seconds, he reported. 

The helicopter was destroyed by a post-impact fire that burned for three hours. Fire department units deployed 1,300 feet of hose after the initial fire suppression, which was carried out using tank water. Water was then shuttled to the site for the remainder of firefighting. 

The National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Aviation Administration, Med-Trans Corporation and Colorado-based Global Medical Response, the company that owns Med-Trans, traveled to the site of the crash but were unable to functionally test any of the helicopter systems due to the fire damage. 

Wesolowski, the pilot, was hired by Med-Trans in September 2024 and passed a competency checkride in October. He had completed over 10,000 hours as a helicopter pilot, according to the report. 

The helicopter, a Eurocopter EC135 P2+, was inspected two and a half hours before the accident. It was manufactured in 2012 and transferred to the Med-Trans operating certificate in 2020. 

There have been 12 other crashes involving the Eurocopter EC135 since 2005, according to publicly available information from the National Transportation Safety Board. 

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive pertaining to the helicopter model three days before the crash, to take effect March 24, 2025. Airworthiness directives are legally enforceable regulations to correct an unsafe condition in a product. 

The directive was “prompted by reports of malfunctioning emergency fuel shut-off switches on the warning unit,” and mandated inspections of certain switches on the warning units and depending on the result of the inspections, replacing or repairing the warning unit. 

AirCare flights were temporarily grounded after the crash but have now resumed operations.

The post Preliminary report released in UMMC helicopter crash appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Summer School appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Infighting between Mississippi’s Republican House and Senate legislative leaders reached DEFCON 4 as the 2025 legislative session sputtered to a close last week.

Lawmakers gaveled out unable to set a $7 billion state budget — their main job — or to even agree to negotiate. Gov. Tate Reeves will force them back into session sometime before the end of the fiscal year June 30. At a press conference last week, the governor assured he would do so but did not give a timetable, other than saying he plans to give lawmakers some time to cool off.

The crowning achievement of the 2025 session was passage of a tax overhaul bill a majority of legislators accidentally voted for because of errors in its math. House leaders and the governor nevertheless celebrated passage of the measure, which will phase out the state individual income tax over about 14 years, more quickly trim the sales tax on some groceries to 5% raise the tax on gasoline by 9 cents a gallon, then have automatic gas tax increases thereafter based on the cost of road construction.

The error in the Senate bill accidentally removed safeguards that chamber’s leadership wanted to ensure the income tax would be phased out only if the state sees robust economic growth and controls spending.

The rope-a-dope the House used with the Senate errors to pass the measure also stripped a safeguard House leaders had wanted: a 1.5 cents on the dollar increase in the state’s sales tax, which would have brought it to 8.5%. House leaders said such an increase was needed to offset cutting more than $2 billion from the state’s $7 billion general fund revenue by eliminating the income tax, and to ensure local governments would be kept whole.

Reeves was nonplussed about the flaws in the bill he signed into law (at one point denying there were errors in it) and called it “One big, beautiful bill,” borrowing a phrase from President Donald Trump.

Quote of the Week

“Quite frankly, I think it’s chicken shit what they did.” — Gov. Tate Reeves, at a press conference last week when asked his thoughts about the Senate rejecting his nomination of Cory Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, to serve as four-year term on the board of Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Full Legislative Coverage

What happened (or didn’t) in the rancorous 2025 Mississippi Legislative session?

Mississippi Today’s political team unpacks the just ended — for now — legislative session, that crashed at the end with GOP lawmakers unable to pass a budget after much infighting among Republican leaders. The crowning achievement of the session, a tax overhaul bill, was passed by accident and full of major errors and omissions. Listen to the podcast.

Gov. Tate Reeves, legislative leaders tout tax cut, but for some, it could be a tax increase

Many of those retirees who do not pay an income tax under state law and other Mississippians as well will face a tax increase under this newly passed legislation touted by Reeves and others. Read the column.

Trump administration slashes education funding. Mississippi leaders and schools panic

Mississippi schools and the state education system are set to lose over $137 million in federal funds after the U.S. Department of Education halted access to pandemic-era grant money, state leaders said this week. Read the story.

Gov. Tate Reeves says he’ll call Mississippi lawmakers back in special session after they failed to set budget

Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday said he will call lawmakers into a special session to adopt a budget before state agencies run out of money later in the summer and hinted he might force legislators to consider other measures.  Read the story.

GOP-controlled Senate rejects governor’s pick for public broadcasting board. Reeves calls it ‘chicken s–t’

The Senate on Wednesday roundly rejected the nomination of Cory Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, to serve a four-year term on the board of directors of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the statewide public radio and television network. Reeves reacted to the Senate’s vote on Thursday, calling it “chicken shit.” Read the story.

Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session

Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.  Read the story.

Mississippi Legislature ends 2025 session without setting a budget over GOP infighting 

The House on Wednesday voted to end what had become a futile legislative session without passing a budget to fund state government, for the first time in 16 years. The Senate is expected to do the same on Thursday.  Read the story.

Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.   Read the story.

Fear and loathing: Legislative session crashes with lawmakers unable to set a budget because of Republican infighting

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and other Senate leaders on Saturday excoriated the Republican House leadership, after the House didn’t show up for what was supposed to be “conference weekend” to haggle out a $7 billion budget. Read the story.

‘We’ll go another year’ without relief: Pharmacy benefit manager reform likely dead

Hotly contested legislation that aimed to increase the transparency and regulation of pharmacy benefit managers appeared dead in the water Tuesday after a lawmaker challenged the bill for a rule violation. Read the story.

The post Mississippi lawmakers end 2025 session unable to agree (or even meet about) state budget: Legislative recap appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hundreds of Mississippians gathered across three cities on Saturday afternoon as part of a national movement called “Hands Off” to protest President Donald Trump’s policies and Elon Musk’s government cuts.

About 300 people gathered at the state Capitol in Jackson and dozens others gathered at rallies in Gulfport and Tupelo on Saturday. Organizers at the rallies decried many of Trump’s executive orders since he took office for a second term, and they focused attention on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has abruptly slashed funding for countless public services.

Tens of thousands of Americans participated in the “Hands Off” protests in several cities across the country on Saturday.

The post ‘Hands Off’: Hundreds of Mississippians protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk as part of national movement appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Madison County Circuit Court Judge Bradley Mills dismissed former Gov. Phil Bryant’s defamation lawsuit against Mississippi Today on Friday, ending a nearly two-year case that became a beacon in the fight for American press freedom.

For the past 22 months, we’ve vigorously defended our Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting and our characterizations of Bryant’s role in the Mississippi welfare scandal. We are grateful today that the court, after careful deliberation, dismissed the case.

The reporting speaks for itself. The truth speaks for itself.

This judgment is so much more than vindication for Mississippi Today — it’s a monumental victory for every single Mississippian. Journalism is a public good that all of us deserve and need. Too seldom does our state’s power structure offer taxpayers true government accountability, and Mississippians routinely learn about the actions of their public officials only because of journalism like ours. This reality is precisely why we launched our newsroom nine years ago, and it’s why we devoted so much energy and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending ourselves against this lawsuit. It was an existential threat to our organization that took time and resources away from our primary responsibilities — which is often the goal of these kinds of legal actions. But our fight was never just about us; it was about preserving the public’s sacred, constitutional right to critical information that journalists provide, just as our nation’s Founding Fathers intended.

Mississippi Today remains as committed as ever to deep investigative journalism and working to provide government accountability. We will never be afraid to reveal the actions of powerful leaders, even in the face of intimidation or the threat of litigation. And we will always stand up for Mississippians who deserve to know the truth, and our journalists will continue working to catalyze justice for people in this state who are otherwise cheated, overlooked, or ignored.

We appreciate your support, and we are honored to serve you with the high quality, public service journalism you’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today.

READ MORE: Judge Bradley Mills’ order dismissing the case

READ MORE: Mississippi Today’s brief in support of motion to dismiss

The post A win for press freedom: Judge dismisses Gov. Phil Bryant’s lawsuit against Mississippi Today appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi schools and the state education system are set to lose over $137 million in federal funds after the U.S. Department of Education halted access to pandemic-era grant money, state leaders said this week.

In a Wednesday letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, Mississippi Superintendent of Education Lance Evans said the federal education department failed to provide states with required notice that it would cut of access to funds committed to schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Schools were already using the money to pay for a range of initiatives, including literacy and mathematics programs, mental health services, construction projects for outdated school facilities and technology for rural districts.

“This unexpected change creates a severe hardship for Mississippi’s students, educators, and school communities,” Evans wrote. “These are not merely numbers on a spreadsheet; they represent critical services and supports that directly benefit our most vulnerable students …”

The abrupt loss of funds sent Mississippi public and private school leaders rushing to brace for the impact of wide ranging cuts. By Friday, some were already forced to fire grant-funded teachers, coaches and nurses.

At St. Richard Catholic School in Jackson, Father Joe Tonos and Principal Russ Nelson said the school would lose approximately $1.5 million, funds that pay staff salaries and fund programs for mental health. All schools staffers who were employed through grants were to be fired by Friday.

“This funding was not just a budgetary line item; it was a transformational support system for our school,” Nelson wrote in a memo reviewed by Mississippi Today. “Without it, we are facing difficult decisions and significant setbacks in our mission to provide a high-quality, supportive education for every student.”

McMahon set off panic when she declared in a March 28 letter state education heads that schools would lose the federal COVID-19 relief money they originally thought they would be able to spend until 2026.

President Donald Trump’s administration has made deep cuts to government programs, cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants and other funding to states, a priority McMahon cited as a justification for the education cuts in her letter.

“Extending deadlines for COVID-related grants, which are in fact taxpayer funds, years after the COVID pandemic ended is not consistent with the Department’s priorities and thus not a worthwhile exercise of its discretion,” McMahon wrote.

McMahon indicated the federal education department might consider keeping funds available on a project-by-project basis.

The money was awarded to help schools across the country recover from the disruption wrought by the pandemic. Schools began hiring new staff members, creating new education programs and planning new projects under the assumption they had until 2026 to access the federal money

Phillip Burchfield, executive director of the Mississippi Association of School Superintendents, said the federal government’s decision to move up the deadline will force schools to find money for projects that are already underway.

“Some districts have already received the money and spent it,” Burchfield said. “Where it’s becoming problematic is … services have been committed to, but the money has not yet been received, so it puts districts in a little bit of a bind to come up with the money.” 

The back and forth between Mississippi education leaders and the Trump administration unfolded on the same week state lawmakers left the state Capitol without reaching agreement on an annual budget to fund the state education department and other agencies.

Mississippi is one of the most federally dependent states in the nation.

Superintendent Evans said he has asked the federal government to reinstate access to the money.

Mississippi Today’s Kate Royals contributed to this report.

The post Trump administration slashes education funding. Mississippi leaders and schools panic appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In an interview years and years ago, the late Willye B. White told me in her warm, soothing Delta voice, “A dream without a plan is just a wish. As a young girl, I had a plan.”

She most definitely did have a plan. And she executed said plan, as we shall see.

And I know what many readers are thinking: “Who the heck was Willye B. White?” That, or: “Willye B. White, where have I heard that name before?”

Well, you might have driven an eight-mile, flat-as-a-pancake stretch of U.S. 49E, between Sidon and Greenwood, and seen the marker that says: “Willye B. White Memorial Highway.” Or you might have visited the Olympic Room at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and seen where White was a five-time participant and two-time medalist in the Summer Olympics as a jumper and a sprinter.

If you don’t know who Willye B. White was, you should. Every Mississippian should. So pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, follow along and prepare to be inspired.

Willye B. White was born on the last day of 1939 in Money, near Greenwood, and was raised by grandparents. As a child, she picked cotton to help feed her family. When she wasn’t picking cotton, she was running, really fast, and jumping, really high and really long distances.

She began competing in high school track and field meets at the age of 10. At age 11, she scored enough points in a high school meet to win the competition all by herself. At age 16, in 1956, she competed in the Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia.

Her plan then was simple. The Olympics, on the other side of the world, would take place in November. “I didn’t know much about the Olympics, but I knew that if I made the team and I went to the Olympics, I wouldn’t have to pick cotton that year. I was all for that.”

Just imagine. You are 16 years old, a high school sophomore, a poor Black girl. You are from Money, Mississippi, and you walk into the stadium at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds to compete before a crowd of more than 100,000 strangers nearly 10,000 miles from your home.

She competed in the long jump. She won the silver medal to become the first-ever American to win a medal in that event. And then she came home to segregated Mississippi, to little or no fanfare. This was the year after Emmett Till, a year younger than White, was brutally murdered just a short distance from where she lived.

“I used to sit in those cotton fields and watch the trains go by,” she once told an interviewer. “I knew they were going to some place different, some place into the hills and out of those cotton fields.”

Her grandfather had fought in France in World War I. “He told me about all the places he saw,” White said. “I always wanted to travel and see the places he talked about.”

Travel, she did. In the late 1950s there were two colleges that offered scholarships to young, Black female track and field athletes. One was Tuskegee in Alabama, the other was Tennessee State in Nashville. White chose Tennessee State, she said, “because it was the farthest away from those cotton fields.”

She was getting started on a track and field career that would take her, by her own count, to 150 different countries across the globe. She was the best female long jumper in the U.S. for two decades. She competed in Olympics in Melbourne, Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich. She would compete on more than 30 U.S. teams in international events. In 1999, Sports Illustrated named her one of the top 100 female athletes of the 20th century.

Chicago became White’s home for most of adulthood. This was long before Olympic athletes were rich, making millions in endorsements and appearance fees. She needed a job, so she became a nurse. Later on, she became an public health administrator as well as a coach. She created the Willye B. White Foundation to help needy children with health and after school care. 

In 1982, at age 42, she returned to Mississippi to be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and was welcomed back to a reception at the Governor’s Mansion by Gov. William Winter, who introduced her during induction ceremonies. Twenty-six years after she won the silver medal at Melbourne, she called being hosted and celebrated by the governor of her home state “the zenith of her career.”

Willye B. White died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospital in 2007. While working on an obituary/column about her, I talked to the late, great Ralph Boston, the three-time Olympic long jump medalist from Laurel. They were Tennessee State and U.S. Olympic teammates. They shared a healthy respect from one another, and Boston clearly enjoyed talking about White.

At one point, Ralph asked me, “Did you know Willye B. had an even more famous high school classmate.”

No, I said, I did not.

“Ever heard of Morgan Freeman?” Ralph said, laughing.

Of course.

“I was with Morgan one time and I asked him if he ever ran track,” Ralph said, already chuckling about what would come next.

“Morgan said he did not run track in high school because he knew if he ran, he’d have to run against Willye B. White, and Morgan said he didn’t want to lose to a girl.”

The post Meet Willye B. White: A Mississippian we should all celebrate appeared first on Mississippi Today.