OurTupelo

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Calling Card appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer and former Mississippi State and NFL football great Tyrone Keys was part of the same signing class as the late Johnie Cooks and they played together on some of State’s greatest defenses. Keys remembers his late friend and some of the greatest games in Bulldog history.

Stream all episodes here.

The post Podcast: Tyrone Keys helps us remember his pal, Johnie Cooks. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

KPC Promise Hospital in Vicksburg is now closed, and the former medical director said community members are already feeling the effects. 

The 35-bed, long-term care facility had leased space on Merit Health River Region’s main campus since 2018. 

“It’s just been a month, but it’s already taking a toll on families,” the former medical director Dr. Torrance Green said, adding that he’s heard anecdotally that ERs and ICUs in Vicksburg are now backed up, which he directly tied to KPC Promise’s absence in the community. 

KPC Promise cared for people who had been in a hospital but needed further care than is available through home care, a nursing facility or a rehabilitation center. Many of the people they served were ICU patients who were not progressing swiftly enough, Green said.

Their patients, people who needed extended pulmonary, neurological, trauma and geriatric care, received daily monitoring from a physician and 24-hour coverage by licensed nurses and respiratory therapists, which offered complex wound care, extended IV and other therapies, in addition to respiratory support.

The hospital was officially evicted on June 8. 

As of January, the hospital was behind on rent by about $1 million. Despite a payment plan and two checks totaling more than half a million dollars, according to Green, the larger health system followed up on its plans to terminate the hospital’s lease.

Hospitals across the state are closing their doors, and those that aren’t are shuttering service lines and laying off staff to stay open. A report from the Center of Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform says a third of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure.

Green said the closure will end up costing Mississippians. 

Merit’s decision to evict the hospital came as a surprise to KPC Promise CEO Kerry Goff and Green, who previously told Mississippi Today in May that it was “very disappointing.”

In a statement released in May, Goff said the hospital was looking into legal options and trying its best to stay open, while Green maintained optimism about coming to a resolution. 

“I thought we would have been able to find a better resolve,” he said when reached by phone on Tuesday. “It just didn’t pan out the way we wanted it to.”

According to Alicia Carpenter, Merit’s marketing director, the hospital discharged all its patients prior to its last day in the space. Green said the last few patients they had went to Greenville, Jackson and local facilities in Vicksburg. 

Carpenter also said several Promise employees accepted positions at Merit, though Green refuted that.

“The compensation packages just weren’t comparable, so a lot of them ended up having to find temporary work,” he said. “Some folks did find work at clinics in the area.”

Green, a practicing nephrologist, is now spending more time at his clinic in Flowood. 

“I just think that we have to be more aggressive about increasing the accountability of our facilities to our communities,” he said. “That link used to be held with the doctors, but now that most of the physicians are employed by hospitals, that accountability has been lost.

“Until we get that back, we’re going to see a lot more of these financial decisions happen without recourse.”

The post Vicksburg hospital, evicted by Merit Health, is now closed appeared first on Mississippi Today.

JULY 12, 1976

U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan, who first came to the forefront in the Watergate hearings, became the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. 

In high school, she heard a career day speech by Edith Sampson, a black lawyer. Sampson’s words inspired her to become an attorney, and she attended Texas Southern University, a black college hastily created by the Texas Legislature to avoid having to integrate the University of Texas. While there, she became part of the debate team, which famously tied Harvard University debaters. 

After graduating magna cum laude in 1956, she was accepted at Boston University’s law school. After graduating, she returned to Houston to open a law office in the Fifth Ward. In 1972, she became the first black woman from the South to be elected to Congress. Four years later, she told those at the Democratic National Convention, “We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal. … 

“Many fear the future. Many are distrustful of their leaders and believe that their voices are never heard. Many seek only to satisfy their private work — wants; to satisfy their private interests. But this is the great danger America faces — that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual; each seeking to satisfy private wants. If that happens, who then will speak for America? Who then will speak for the common good? … 

“We cannot improve on the system of government handed down to us by the founders of the Republic. There is no way to improve upon that. But what we can do is to find new ways to implement that system and realize our destiny.” 

Her own destiny had been impacted a few years earlier when she was diagnosed with the debilitating disease of multiple sclerosis. In 1979, she stepped away from politics and began teaching at the University of Texas. She delivered the keynote address again in 1992, this time from a wheelchair. Not long after, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1996, she died of pneumonia and leukemia. The University of Texas and Austin airport have both honored her with statues.

The post On this day in 1976 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Monday came the news that the New York Times will disband its 35-person sports department. Over the weekend we learned the Los Angeles Times sports section will no longer contain what traditionally have been sports page essentials: box scores, standings and traditional game stories.

Both newspapers, two of the nation’s top five in circulation, will continue to cover sports, just not in the traditional newspaper format. The New York Times will integrate sports coverage from The Athletic website into the daily newspaper. The Times last year bought theathletic.com website, which employs many of the nation’s most reputable sports writers, at a price tag of $550 million. The LA Times says it will still cover sports with a more magazine-like approach. It just won’t include what were once considered the nuts and bolts of a daily sports section (i.e. box scores, standings, etc.) Let’s face it, what good are box scores if you have a 3 p.m. copy deadline?

I can’t say either piece of news comes as a shock. Newspapers have been moving in this direction for decades, lately at increasing speed. I will say the erosion of the traditional newspaper sports page is something I could have done without.

As a child in Hattiesburg, I grew up in a family that at times subscribed to six newspapers, all delivered to our doorstep daily: the Hattiesburg American, two Jackson newspapers, two New Orleans newspapers and the Daily Herald on the Gulf Coast. My sweet mama often complained of drowning in newsprint. I learned to read by reading the sports pages. I learned to do arithmetic using the baseball box scores to compute batting averages and earned run averages. And yet that wasn’t enough sports coverage for me. As a kid, I would ride my bike to the public library to read the nation’s best sports columnists, Jim Murray in the Los Angeles Times and Red Smith in New York newspapers, including the Times.

My father was the sports editor of the Hattiesburg American when I was born. I later held the same position. Dad later worked at the Jackson Daily News, where I was later the sports editor as well. My brother worked for the Hattiesburg American and the Clarion Ledger. So has my son.

It is from a press box seat, 50-yard-line, I have watched the erosion of the sports pages until there is almost nothing left.

When I left the Hattiesburg American in 1978, we had a staff of five full-time sports writers and several correspondents. When I became sports editor over the Jackson morning and afternoon newspapers in 1987, we had a combined sports staff of 27 sports writers, and our sections and writers were often cited among the best in the country.

Compare then to now: The Hattiesburg American, operating in a college town and in a hotbed of high school sports, has no sports staff. Zero. None. Nada. The Clarion Ledger lists four sports writers and an intern in its directory. And they are trying to cover an entire state.

In the late 1990s, after the Jackson Daily News ceased to exist and corporate bean counters shrunk our Clarion Ledger staff down to 16, I asked to be relieved of my sports editor duties to concentrate on writing. Why? As I told my boss, I could move into my newspaper office and work 23 hours a day and not be able to produce with a staff of 16 anywhere near what we had with a staff of 27.

I cannot even begin to imagine how you would try to do it with four. You cannot.

Now then, all the news is not that awful. I can go to various websites on the Internet, often for free, and read every box score, published almost instantly after the final out (and during the games as well). The batting averages and earned run averages — not to mention OBP and WHIP are computed for me. There is still terrific beat writing available for professional sports teams and most major college teams on The Athletic website. I am a subscriber at a nominal fee. It is well worth the price. ESPN.com provides nuts and bolts sports coverage as well. 

No, it is not the same, and I miss the feel of newsprint in my hands with my morning coffee. But the sports news is still available and I can read it on my cellphone.

Best news of all for this dinosaur, I still type — and some of you still read — my missives on this vital Mississippi website. For that, I am most grateful.

The post Remember the sports section? This dinosaur does, ever so fondly appeared first on Mississippi Today.

As demand for overnight river cruises on the Mississippi increases, the industry also faces increasing climate threats. Recent years have seen wild swings between heavy rainfall and severe drought, making the river tougher to navigate.

Low water levels forced cancellations last year, and climate experts fear that may happen again as it shapes up to be another dry summer, according to experts during a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration webinar July 6.

The most intense drought conditions are happening in the Midwest, throughout the upper Mississippi River basin, during what should be the rainiest season. Worsening drought upriver is raising red flags for the lower Mississippi, which relies on the Ohio River basin for about 60 percent of its flow. At St. Louis, the Mississippi River is about 10 feet below average for this time of year, with months to go until fall, its typical low season.

Low river levels could bring a cascade of challenges for ships on the Mississippi River. “Their docks may be affected, and they may not be able to get to them,” said Anna Wolverton, the NOAA liaison to the Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi Valley Division.

Last fall was a perfect storm of weather conditions: lower-than-normal rainfall, higher-than-normal temperatures and a longer-than-usual La Niña, which causes drier, warmer weather. This year could shape up to be the same, according to NOAA forecasters.

Viking launched its first Mississippi River cruise last September — a business venture that many saw as a vote of confidence in overnight cruises on the Big Muddy a decade after the industry’s return. But within a month of Viking’s debut, drought created trouble for companies that rely on the waterway.

Viking Mississippi set sail from New Orleans on Oct. 1 with hundreds of passengers on board. The two-week tour was supposed to end in St. Paul, Minnesota, but within a few days, barges were stranded on sandbars because of low water levels, and Viking’s boat was stuck for an entire day, waiting for the green light to continue upriver.

But Viking had to call off the rest of the cruise. It docked just north of Greenville, Mississippi, and bused passengers about three hours north to Memphis to fly home. Because the boat couldn’t continue upriver, it had to cancel its next trip, too, which was supposed to set sail from St. Paul for a trip downriver.

For barges, the key to continuing along the river was to decrease cargo and reduce the number of barges in each tow. With a lighter load, the odds of running aground a sandbar were much lower. Even then, some shippers turned to rail — a less efficient and more expensive method — to get cargo downriver, but cruise companies can’t detour and provide passengers with the same experience.

So last year, the three companies on the river — American Queen Voyages, American Cruises Lines and the newcomer, Viking — had to adjust itineraries, offer refunds and, in some cases, cancel tours altogether.

In the past century, the watershed has oscillated between very dry and very wet, which many Earth scientists believe to be the result of rising global temperatures. The National Integrated Drought Information System — NOAA’s drought monitoring branch — reports that annual lows are getting lower on the Mississippi. It’s one of the ways “climate change rears its ugly head,” according to Dorian Burnette, a professor who studies extreme weather events at the University of Memphis.

“If it’s dry, it’s gonna get drier. If it’s wet, it’s gonna get wetter,” Burnette said.

The Mississippi River’s flow can be slow to respond to changes, since the watershed drains more than 40 percent of the continental United States. It takes about three months for water that leaves Lake Itasa, the river’s primary source, to reach the Gulf of Mexico.

Over that period of time last fall, the river fell 20 feet, making it a flash drought. The National Weather Service has long provided flash flood warnings, but flash droughts are less understood and, as a result, not predicted with the same level of accuracy.

Cindy D’Aoust, president of American Queen Voyages, said that’s just part of the business. “Operating riverboats means that adjustments to itineraries are continually made due to river flow and changing river levels,” D’Aoust said.  

Robert De Luca, captain of the American Queen, said he’s seen the lingering effects of last year’s drought. “It definitely affected our business,” De Luca said. “To this day, we’re still trying to recover from that.”

Riverboat pilots must constantly adapt to the river as it fluctuates. In Memphis, when the river falls below seven feet — still above what the National Weather Service considers to be “low” — De Luca said the American Queen has to land a few miles upriver of Beale Street Landing at Greenbelt Park. Boats have to tie off to trees on the riverbank at Greenbelt Park, there’s no shaded area for passengers and crews have to run a hose to a hydrant more than 100 feet away to refill water.

The cruise lines are always developing contingency plans to keep up with a constantly changing river, but D’Aoust said the deviations last fall were unprecedented. At the time, Burnette and two other Earth scientists at the University of Memphis described the “dramatic plunge in water levels as a preview of a climate-altered future.”

For the shipping industry, Burnette said the future could involve more dredging to keep the river navigable, or adopting new water management practices. As the frequency and intensity of low-water events increase, Burnette said the industries that rely on the waterway must adapt.

For cruises, that could mean building itineraries around new seasonal weather patterns, but he sees the most room for improvement in forecasting.

This story, the second in a three-part series, published in partnership with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, part of Mississippi Today, is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

The post Burgeoning Mississippi riverboat industry grapples with increasing threats of flooding, drought appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Some major Mississippi cities that have used the same private ambulance contractor for decades are reconsidering that relationship in light of questions about response times and potentially deadly consequences. 

Leaders in Biloxi, Gulfport and Jackson have discussed American Medical Response’s ambulance response and the contracts with that service during recent city council meetings. They have said that forming city-specific ambulance districts is a step toward pursuing city-specific ambulance contracts, rather than being part of  countywide contracts.  

It’s a step Jackson resident Donna Echols sees as encouraging. On April 27, she waited 90 minutes for an AMR ambulance to come to her home to help her ex-husband, Jim Mabus, who was found to have suffered a series of strokes and died less than a week later. 

“It magnifies the problem that we experienced in that 90-minute wake,” she said. “It tells me people are dealing with the same issues and problems and they want to get something done.” 

Councilwoman Angelique Lee, who had read Mississippi Today’s story about Mabus, invited Echols to speak at a June 22 Jackson City Council meeting. 

Lee read the company’s explanation in the story for the 90-minute wait – staffing – and said long response times like the one Mabus faced are unacceptable and inexcusable. 

AMR spokesperson Nicole Michel told Mississippi Today that the central Mississippi service area was at a level zero on April 27, with eight ambulances and two sprint medics were already responding to other calls, and during the nine o’clock hour, AMR received six service requests, including one for a heart attack. 

“If AMR cannot handle the call, if they don’t have the manpower, then they need to be replaced,” Lee said during the meeting. “And I just want to know how many people are going to need to die before we do something about it?”

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said steps are being taken to reconsider the city’s ambulance service. Jackson has already formed its own ambulance district and the city is preparing to put out a request for proposals for ambulance services. 

Lumumba said these efforts would give city control of a contract, and it can make sure to incorporate a mutual aid clause, which Echols believes may have helped Mabus get medical attention sooner.  

The night she called 911, Echols tried to get Pafford Ambulance, which is contracted with Madison and Rankin counties, to come to her home, but she was told that company needed permission from AMR to cross into Hinds County where AMR operates. 

Ryan Wilson, operations manager for AMR Central Mississippi, said the company has been the county’s contractor since 1991. Analysis of any ambulance issues and plans must be in line with the Hinds County Board of Supervisors.

Hinds County officials did not respond to a request for comment. 

Wilson also cautioned Jackson about taking independent steps that could have potential consequences that impact other cities, towns and unincorporated areas of the county. 

“It is AMR’s hope that all governmental entities will come together to address ambulance-related issues, jointly,” he said in a statement. “Such a collaborative effort would inspire a countywide examination of the current state of EMS, as well as add understanding to the causes of current challenges, leading to an informed discussion of options to a path forward.” 

Wilson also said blaming AMR for its staff shortage is misguided due to a nationwide shortage of EMTs and paramedics, and bringing in another provider won’t necessarily address staffing. 

In Jackson, family and friends are preparing to hold a celebration of life service for Mabus Saturday to reflect on the life he lived and the person he was. Days later, on July 18, is Mabus’ birthday. 

Echols wants the celebration to be a happy occasion, but she knows her sons are grieving and she still feels angry about what happened. While it is difficult to retell, she sees sharing the story of what happened as a way to turn a tragic experience into a way to help others. 

Similar discussion about ambulance service, city-specific EMS districts and potential contracts are also happening on the Gulf Coast. 

At a June 20 meeting, the Gulfport City Council discussed a resolution to establish an EMS district, but members voted to table it. 

Mayor Billy Hewes said the city plans to put out a request for proposals for ambulance services, which could result in Gulfport choosing AMR again, but it would mean city leaders can negotiate. 

“Sometimes we have to take moves like this to ensure we have a voice in something that is very important to our constituents, and quite frankly, the citizens of Gulfport deserve better ambulance services than they are getting,” he said during the meeting. 

Neighboring Biloxi approved a resolution to set up a city-specific EMS district at its June 13 meeting as part of its consent agenda. 

Fire Chief Nicholaus Geiser said a city-specific RFP and contract are the next steps. 

He said the city has seen some delayed ambulance responses from AMR, especially between 2020 and 2022, when there would be a large number of calls all at once and not enough staff to handle them, but that is happening less now. 

There have been times when a life-threatening call in a different area of the county has been prioritized, which led to an hour wait or longer, Geiser said. 

He sees AMR has taken steps to work to improve its response times in the county, such as having a dedicated ambulance in Biloxi, which was determined after analyzing data and the city’s busy times. There are also supervisors going out who can relieve fire department crews. 

Dwayne Tullos, regional director for AMR’s parent company Global Medical Response, said AMR has served the Gulf Coast for nearly 50 years and believes there is no other provider that can deliver higher standards of care and innovation. 

“If the cities decide to contract for their own ambulance services, we look forward to the opportunity to work with city leaders on a customized proposal for each that includes new innovative solutions that only AMR can provide to the citizens of Biloxi and Gulfport,” he said in a statement. 

Even if the cities continue to stay within the Harrison County EMS district, AMR is open to working with them to find solutions that ensure the best ambulance service for residents and visitors, Tullos said. 

Firefighters, including in Biloxi, Gulfport and Jackson, are often required to train as EMTs and some have gone further and become paramedics. However, that training doesn’t give them the ability to transport people to the hospital. 

Geiser, the Biloxi fire chief, said 80% of the department’s calls are for medical service. He said building codes have helped prevent many large-scales fires from happening, so crews are called to fires less often. 

He read the Mississippi Today story about Echols’ experience waiting for an ambulance and said what happened to Mabus was unfortunate. 

“It’s plain and simple: It’s life and death,” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to prevent here.” 

The post AMR response times spur cities to reconsider ambulance service contracts appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Big Hill appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves continues to add to his large campaign war chest, reporting that he raised over $1 million for June and has $9.6 million in the bank.

Reeves’ Democratic opponent, Northern District PSC Commissioner Brandon Presley, reported raising over $500,000 for June, with $1.9 million on hand — a relatively strong showing for a Democrat in deep-red Mississippi.

Reeves’ largest donation for June was $500,000 from the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Mississippi Strong PAC. Other large donations included $50,000 from the Mississippi State University alumni PAC Bully Bloc and $50,000 from McCormick Drive LLC in Tampa, Florida. He received $25,000 from Louisiana-based Rouses Enterprises LLC and $15,000 from Mississippi Power Co. State PAC.

In a statement Reeves said: “I’m honored by the support I’ve received this cycle, most importantly from the voters of Mississippi. We’re delivering education results that lead the nation, growing our economy by bringing in more, high-paying jobs, and developing the best workforce around — Mississippians are eager to keep this momentum going.”

Reeves’ filing online with the secretary of state’s office, as of Tuesday, failed to list any of his campaign’s expenditures as required.

Andre Wagner, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Party, blasted Reeves for the $500,000 donation from the Mississippi Strong PAC. He said the PAC donation appears to be proceeds from a Republican Governor’s Association fundraiser for Reeves in Alabama, and that Reeves left the state in the aftermath of several severe tornadoes to attend the fundraiser.

In a press release, the Democratic Party said Reeves “jetted off to Birmingham … while Mississippians were still reeling from several tornadoes that left severe damage and one person dead” for a fundraiser with ticket prices ranging from $5,000 for one person to $50,000 for four people. The release said that in 2021, Reeves also left the state, during a serious spike in COVID-19 cases, to attend an RGA conference in Chicago and “had to use taxpayer dollars to haul him back to do his job.”

Wagner said: “For Tate Reeves, the tradeoff of abandoning Mississippians in the middle of a tornado is clear — he can jet off out of state, and then days later, that group hands him half a million dollars to his campaign coffers. Tate Reeves couldn’t care less about doing his job — if it means he can spend time with wealthy lobbyists, he’ll abandon Mississippians in a heartbeat.”

The Reeves campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wagner’s claims.

Presley’s campaign reported mostly small donations, and noted 91%, or 2,300, of his donations were $200 or less. But some larger ones included $50,000 from San Francisco attorney Steven C. Phillips, $25,000 from Gordon McKernan Injury Lawyers of Baton Rouge and $12,500 from Jackson attorney Crymes Pittman.

In a statement, Presley campaign manager Ron Owens said: “Our campaign continues to reach people from all over Mississippi who know that Brandon Presley is the right choice to clean up Tate Reeves’ corruption, cut taxes for working families, and strengthen our healthcare system. Tate Reeves continues to prioritize his highest donors over working Mississippians – even during devastating tornadoes – but these record-breaking numbers show that people know Brandon will be the type of leader who will put Mississippians first.”

Presley’s campaign also noted in a press release that he raised nearly $200,000 more than Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Hood did in June of 2019 in his unsuccessful run against Reeves, and that Presley has $400,000 more in the bank than Hood did at this point in that campaign.

The Reeves campaign took shots at Presley for a $500 donation he received from Stacey Abrams, a Georgia Democratic voting rights activist, former state House member and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in 2018.

“Congrats to (Brandon Presley) on receiving further support from leftwing grifter-in-chief Stacey Abrams!” Team Tate Reeves wrote on social media. “Everyone is looking forward to you joining the ranks of such gubernatorial giants as her and Beto O’Rourke.”

Campaign finance reports for June fundraising were due Monday.

READ MORE: What incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann wants to do for Mississippi

In the homestretch of the Republican primary for lieutenant governor, incumbent Delbert Hosemann reported raising $548,000 for June, while challenger Chris McDaniel reported raising $97,500. Hosemann reported having $3.4 million cash on hand; McDaniel, $338,000.

READ MORE: What lieutenant governor candidate Chris McDaniel wants to do for Mississippi

Mississippi Today reporter Taylor Vance contributed to this article.

The post Reeves adds to huge campaign war chest; Presley garners many small donations appeared first on Mississippi Today.

But what history do they learn, and how?

On a hot afternoon in late May, Lee Hendrix stood on stage in the dimly lit Grand Saloon — an elaborate floating reproduction of the original Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

The former river captain and self-schooled historian described the sinking of the Sultana near Memphis more than 150 years ago, when at least 1,400 people drowned on the Mississippi River. A rapt crowd listened as their own vessel, the American Queen, mosied safely up the same route.

Hendrix is a riverlorian — think: river, lore and historian — aboard the American Queen, a steamboat that can haul more than 400 cruise-goers the length of the Mississippi River. This audience is nearing the end of a seven-day journey from New Orleans to Memphis.

This cruise line offers presentations about local history, as do all three overnight Mississippi River cruise lines — American Queen Voyages, American Cruise Lines and Viking. Some presenters are Ph.D. historians, and others are self-schooled, like Hendrix, who’s a veteran on the river.

The American Queen is billed as capturing the nostalgia of 19th century steamboat travel. The company prides itself on using a restored, century-old steam engine, and the sentiment extends to the rest of the vessel, which oozes with memorabilia of the period.

Passengers are greeted with red carpeted stairs at the bow of the boat, ending at a set of gilded double doors that open to the Mark Twain Gallery, a dimly-lit room lined with ornate bookshelves, steamboat replicas in glass cases and displays of Twain’s works. 

Lower river tours with American Queen Voyages start at about $4,000 — well above the cost of an average Caribbean cruise — and the most expensive tickets come with a $10,000 price tag. They attract a crowd that’s mostly retired, wealthy and well-traveled, and history is part of the draw for many passengers.

The company’s strategy “is to identify thoughtful and deliberate shore excursions” and provide riverlorians to help guests understand the complexity of the region, Cindy D’Aoust, president of American Queen Voyages, said in a statement.. . 

Most days, passengers can find Hendrix walking laps around the fourth floor deck of the American Queen or in the Chart Room — an airy room at the boat’s bow, filled with books and maps of the river — ready to answer passengers’ questions in between excursions in riverside towns.

But at a time when many plantations are facing scrutiny for not accurately representing the legacy of slavery in the South, historians like John Anfinson, a Ph.D. historian and riverlorian with American Cruise Lines, try to add context to these stops along the tour in a “Plantation Preview.”

American Cruise Lines’ description of the Houmas House, one of the most notorious plantations of the South, reads: “Step off of your ship docked right at Houmas House and explore one of the most elaborately renovated of the grand homes along the river, once a private home and thriving historical agricultural enterprise.”

Anfinson read the description and exclaimed: “Talk about a way to avoid saying ‘plantation!’”

Houmas House is named after the indigenous Louisianans they stole the land from and was owned by Revolutionary War general Wade Hampton, one of the largest slaveholders in the antebellum South. In the same year he purchased Houmas House, he suppressed a slave revolt that resulted in the deaths of 95 enslaved people.

The Houmas House website does not mention this history, and Anfinson understands why not all historic sites lead with that.

“In the fractured America of today, the audience is going to be fractured in how they listen to that story,” Anfinson said.

The Laura Plantation, situated between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was the first museum of its kind in the South that highlighted the lives of enslaved people when it opened in 1994. Operations manager Jay Schexnaydre said many other plantations have followed suit since then.

The Laura Plantation prides itself on taking guests through the house, grounds and slave quarters, compared to some other plantations that keep visitors in “the big house.” Some plantations still choose to showcase the grandeur of Antebellum homes on plantation tours, focusing on antique furniture and portraits.

 “What people are interested in is the truth,” Schexnaydre said.

American Queen Voyages and Viking feature the Laura Plantation on their itineraries, but Schexnaydre said the logistics of tours can impact visitors’ experiences.

If passengers start their tour in New Orleans, the Laura Plantation is one of their first stops. If their tour starts in Memphis, heading downriver, Schexnaydre said passengers likely will spend the last week touring other plantations, and might opt for an alternate excursion instead.

“Every stop is plantations, plantations, plantations,” he said.

Part of the Laura Plantation’s tour follows the arc of one family over three generations rather than telling the stories of enslaved people in a general sense. Schexnaydre said it helps visitors connect more intimately with people whose stories might otherwise be lost to history.

The story of the Sultana was lost in headlines about the killing of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth and other events as the war neared its end, but Hendrix said it’s more than that.

“So, why doesn’t anybody know about the Sultana?” Hendrix wondered aloud on stage. “The people on the Sultana were poor soldiers returning home. Most of the people on the Titanic were rich people.”

Anfinson and Hendrix know some passengers will skip their talks. Some people are celebrating a birthday or anniversary, Anfinson said; not everyone is there for a history lesson. In many ways, it’s up to passengers to craft their experiences, but the histories that passengers encounter often depend on who’s telling them, and how.

Hendrix became a riverlorian after decades on the river, first as a deckhand and then as a river pilot, with a brief stint away that involved performing skits where he played a steamboat captain. He said he’s always loved river history, “probably more so than other pilots.”

By the time passengers heard Hendrix’s recollection of the Sultana’s sinking, they had stopped at ports in Nottoway, St. Francisville, Natchez and Vicksburg. In St. Francisville, passengers could choose between two excursions: “Plantations of the Back Roads” or “Redemption and Rehabilitation at Angola Prison.”

The Louisiana State Penitentiary — more often called Angola, for the former slave plantation that occupied the land — is the largest maximum-security prison in the country. Under the convict lease system, prisoners were abused, underfed and worked to death during much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it earned a reputation as “the bloodiest prison in the South.”

The Angola Museum included on the cruise line’s itinerary tries to tell “the complex and compelling stories of corrections and justice in Louisiana.” Visitors tour through the prison’s infamous past, including a stop at the Red Hat Cell Block, adjacent to a small room that was the site of 11 executions by electric chair between 1956 and 1961.

The prison now touts a philosophy of moral rehabilitation, though it continues to come under fire for involuntary servitude. The tour brings visitors to the present-day with a tour of the crop fields, where prisoners grow the food they eat.

As someone who discovered her love of history later in life, and recently wrote a book about her travels, she prioritizes the educational excursions on her tours.

“(River cruises) have just opened my eyes to the whole vastness of our country,” she said.

About halfway through the cruise from New Orleans to Memphis, passengers spent an afternoon in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The itinerary featured mainstays like the Jesse Brent Lower Mississippi River Museum and the Vicksburg National Military Park, but a more recent addition to the lineup tells Civil War history in a different way.

Charles Pendleton opened the Vicksburg Civil War Museum two years ago to talk about the war from a Black perspective.

“You open something like this, and all of the factors are not in your favor,” Pendleton said. “You’re Black, you’re in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where everybody has deep feelings about the Confederacy…and here you are telling a different story.”

A self-made historian, Pendleton started out attending Civil War gun shows, where he said white attendees made a point to tout their own theories about the war. It was the impetus for his own research, which led to him sharing presentations at his church.

Then, he stumbled across more Civil War-era memorabilia at antique shops, including a receipt for a seven-year-old girl named Ella. It elicited an emotional response he hadn’t experienced at other Civil War museums, and he wanted to capture that emotion for other museum-goers in Vicksburg.

Pendleton said most visitors are white and estimates at least half come from river cruises, which he said have been a boon for his museum and other small businesses. As cruise lines add new boats to their fleets and more stops to their itineraries, Pendleton hopes the industry will continue to elevate voices like his.

This story, the first of a three-part series, published in partnership with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, part of Mississippi Today, is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

The post History is huge draw for Mississippi River cruise goers, but whose history? appeared first on Mississippi Today.