Mississippi will receive $1.2 billion in federal money to expand high-speed internet, President Joe Biden announced Monday.
The state’s share of the money — part of $42 billion in spending to expand access nationwide — is part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act, passed by Congress in 2021.
The announcement of funding through the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding came in a press conference at the White House on Monday. Biden likened the efforts to expand broadband access nationwide by 2030 to work to provide electricity to rural America in the 1930s.
Sally Doty, director of the Mississippi office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi, was at the White House on Monday for the announcement.
“The amount is in the range I expected,” Doty said. “It was driven by the large number of high cost (of providing access) areas in the state. The BEAM office is working through all the numerous requirements to get the money out as fast as we can … We know this funding will be transformational for so many Mississippians and their communities.”
The award was based on the number of homes and businesses lacking high-speed internet and estimated costs of expanding it. Mississippi has an estimated 300,000 unserved and 200,000 underserved homes and businesses. BEAM was created to administer Mississippi’s broadband expansion through a competitive grant program. It will now submit a five-year action plan for the federal funding in late summer.
“Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are working with Gov. (Tate) Reeves to close the digital divide so that everyone in Mississippi will be able to participate in the digital economy and realize the benefits of broadband access,” said national Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
Reeves in a statement on Monday said: “People want to live in areas where they can access broadband and that are connected. That’s why we’ll continue to aggressively build out broadband infrastructure to every region of our state, so all Mississippians can harness the opportunities technology provides them.”
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson were the only members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation to vote for the Infrastructure Act.
Thompson, in a statement, said: “I was the only congressman from Mississippi in the House of Representatives to cast a ballot in favor of the infrastructure spending package. I am proud to have taken a stand for the people of my state and to have been an advocate for responsible investment in our nation’s future. Broadband access is essential for our country’s progress, and this spending package is going to get us off the bottom and bring us forward into an era of greater technological advancement.”
Wicker said he was a key negotiator of the Infrastructure Act and “also worked for years as the lead Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to ensure Mississippi’s lack of broadband coverage was accurately reflected in national coverage maps.” He said early versions of federal map incorrectly inflated Mississippi’s coverage.
“I am thrilled at this announcement and, and I will continue working with our leadership to ensure that every dollar is put to work connecting all corners of the state,” Wicker said.
Doty continues to urge Mississippians to contribute to the state broadband map at broadbandms.com, where people can take a speed test that will log lagging service into the map.
The Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, recently filed comments with the federal government over concerns that disadvantaged areas of the state — such as the Delta — might be overlooked as the state expands broadband service. MCJ requested better guidance to the state from the feds and better notification to unserved areas to ensure this doesn’t happen.
“BEAM has struggled to reach communities in the Mississippi Delta, a predominantly rural and Black region,” MCJ wroted. “The Delta’s barriers have resulted in low engagement with the mapping tool (which has) caused Delta communities’ broadband needs to be underrepresented in (maps).” The group called on federal leaders “to be cognizant of news deserts in rural and small communities when forming guidance of community-based notification.”
MCJ also noted that previous state grant programs expanding access were mostly concentrated in north Mississippi that, while rural, does not suffer the levels of poverty of the Delta.
The Mississippi Association of Educators endorsed Democrat Brandon Presley for governor on Monday over incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.
The election between Reeves and Presley, the northern district public service commissioner, is drawing national attention, and the candidates are beginning to roll out their policy ideas to voters.
An April Mississippi Today/Siena College poll showed Reeves with an 11-point lead over Presley: 49% of respondents said they would vote for Reeves compared to Presley’s 38%.
“As a proud product of public schools and the son of a preschool teacher, it’s an honor to earn the support of thousands of educators across this state,” Presley said. He continued, “Mississippi educators know that as governor, I will stand with them to fully fund public education so we can position our state towards the economy of the future.”
MAE President Erica Jones said the decision to endorse Presley was made after reviewing Reeves’ actions during his first term, leading the association to say the first-term governor is “absent as a leader and advocate for public schools.”
Jones elaborated that while Reeves signing the state’s largest teacher pay raise was “an important start,” her organization feels that Presley is the candidate who can step into the leadership role it feels Reeves has not embraced.
“Governor Tate Reeves promised and then secured the largest pay raise for teachers in Mississippi history,” said Elliott Husbands, Reeves’s campaign manager. “If being a Democrat is more important to MAE than historically raising teacher pay, that’s a decision they are free to make.”
This year’s endorsement from the state’s teacher union, one of the largest education associations in Mississippi, came alongside 49 others for state legislators. Pam Johnson, the association’s communications director, said the endorsements were based on candidates’ voting records on issues like the teacher pay raise, an extra $100 million for public schools allocated this session, community schools and advancing mental health resources.
MAE contacted legislators based on their voting records for possible endorsement. The organization said they sent questionnaires to all the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, which Presley responded to and Reeves did not.
When asked if any candidates had approached the association to discuss policy ideas or goals, Jones said several did throughout the legislative session and since it ended. George Stewart, the president of the local Jackson Association of Educators, also said he was contacted by the Presley campaign to discuss its education platform.
“As an organization committed to improving education across Mississippi, we believe these candidates have the vision, leadership, and commitment necessary to create a better future for all of our students, educators and communities,” said Jones in a press release. “We urge voters to support them, and to become engaged in the upcoming election — our children and our future depend on it.”
Hattiesburg’s Alexei Orohovsky became the first Mississippian to win the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition at Thalia Mara Hall. Credit: Richard Finkelstein
Thalia Mara, for whom Jackson’s magnificent municipal auditorium is named, was the daughter of Russian immigrants, grew up in Chicago, studied classical ballet in Paris, toured the world as a dancer, and founded and directed the National Academy of Ballet in New York City in 1963.
But that’s not all…
Rick Cleveland
Mara moved to Jackson in 1976 at the age of 65, and when most folks think of retiring, she began to make ballet matter in, of all places, Mississippi. From all accounts, Mara was a boundless force of nature, who somehow brought the International Ballet Competition (IBC) to Jackson in 1979 — the first time the competition had been held in the Western Hemisphere.
Why Jackson? Mara told writer Bettye Jolly in a 1977 article for Jackson Magazine she saw first-hand that Jackson was a sports town, and that she was “searching for a way to stimulate a similar interest in ballet.”
Competition, she surmised, was what she needed. “Mississippians love athleticism and they love a competition,” she said. The IBC is the Olympics of ballet, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to top competitors across the globe. The dancers most certainly are amazingly athletic, as we will discuss. So, Mara enlisted community support and parleyed her connections in the international ballet community to bring the IBC to Mississippi.
Thalia Mara
Mara died in 2003, but most assuredly her spirit pervaded the auditorium these past two weeks when the IBC welcomed 99 dancers from 17 different countries. And wouldn’t Mrs. Mara have loved it last Saturday night when Alexei Orohovsky, a 16-year-old from 90 miles down U.S. 49 in Hattiesburg, won the gold medal in the juniors competition?
You know she would have. And you may wonder, as I did, how a soft-spoken, incredibly graceful and athletic 16-year-old named Orohovsky, born and raised in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, could win a worldwide ballet competition. We will get to that as well…
First, let’s tackle the age-old question: Are ballet dancers athletes? You only needed to sit through one performance of the two weeks of IBC competition to know the answer. Hell yes, they are athletes — amazingly graceful athletes, men and women, boys and girls. I don’t know a pas de deaux from pass interference, but I know an athlete when I see one. These dancers are tremendously strong and limber with the ability to leap and seemingly suspend themselves in air. At times, it is as if they are flying. The boys and men can lift the girls and women above their heads, while gracefully dancing. The girls and women can stand on the toes of one foot and spin themselves round and round until you, the spectator, become dizzy. Great athletes have stamina; these dancers do, too.
In Mississippi, some wise coaches have long known the benefits of ballet training for their football and basketball players. Back in the 1960s, about the time Mara was founding the National Academy of Ballet, a basketball coach named Fred Lewis was winning and winning big at Mississippi Southern College. Lewis, who later created a powerhouse basketball program at Syracuse, was searching for ways to improve his Southern players’ footwork and leaping abilities. And so he put them in ballet classes at the college’s School of Dance. Did it work? You decide. Lewis’s Golden Giants, as they were then called, were 23-2 and 23-3 in back-to-back seasons.
In 1974, Granville Freeman, a fireball of a young football coach at Lake High School in Scott Country, was looking for an edge. And so he brought in a ballet teacher from Jackson that summer to train his Lake Hornets twice a week. Heresy? Some of his players probably thought so, but years later Freeman told a sports writer, “Ballet is all about footwork, about core strength, about flexibility. I thought it was perfect training for football. We called ourselves the Twinkletoe Hornets. People laughed at us before the season; they weren’t laughing after it.”
No, the Twinkletoe Hornets won every game they played, and what’s more, no opponent so much as scored a point. “Undefeated, un-tied, un-scored upon,” Freeman said. “People around here now refer to us as the un-team.”
Young Alexei Orohovsky tried soccer, baseball, swimming and other sports growing up in Hattiesburg. He kept coming back to ballet, which, to be sure, was in his blood. His father and mother, Arkadiy and Katya Orohovsky, were accomplished ballet dancers themselves and now teach the discipline at South Mississippi Ballet Theatre in the Hub City. Father Arkadiy grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, mother Katya in Hattiesburg.
Their talented son began dancing seriously at age 12. He graduated from high school at age 15. His parents taught and trained him until the age of 14. He now trains at world-renowned John Kranko Schule in Stuttgart, Germany. Indeed, Alexei won the gold medal on Friday, danced a solo from The Nutcracker in the IBC Encore Gala Saturday night and flew back to Stuttgart on Sunday.
In Stuttgart, he spends more than six hours a day dancing and training to perfect his art. Besides hours of dancing, he does weight training, stamina workouts, Pilates and pays close attention to nutrition. In his spare time, he studies German. At his level, ballet is a full-time job.
Alexei is nothing if not dedicated. Taseusz Matacz, his instructor in Stuttgart told freelance writer Sherry Lucas, “On stage, Alexei feels like a fish in water. With visible joy, he dances the variations which are peppered with technical difficulties. He has excellent coordination, his explosiveness in the muscles enables Alexei to bring special lightness into the dance. One of Alexei’s specialties are his pirouettes – small or large, great variability in execution, incredible speed – he masters this in a virtuoso manner.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Alexei is just shy of 6-feet tall and still growing. Weight? “I have no idea,” he says, smiling. I don’t know, either, but I can tell you from observation he has roughly the body fat content of a grasshopper and can jump like one, too. He is polite and well-spoken and insanely talented. He told his mother four years ago he would one day dance in the IBC in Jackson. He did not specify he would win the gold medal.
But he won the silver medal last year at Helsinki and then topped that in his home state 90 miles away from his hometown. “Incredible,” he described the feeling. “Huge,” he said about what the gold medal would mean for his career.
This was 44 years after the IBC first came to Jackson, 41 years after Jackson native Kathy Thibodeaux won the silver medal. No Mississippian had won a medal here since — not until this past weekend when Alexei Orohovsky won the gold. Last Friday night, he stood adorned with the gold medal, while The Star-Spangled Banner played and Mississippians stood at attention.
The Democratic National Committee recently committed to send $250,000 to boost the Mississippi Democratic Party’s election efforts, including the gubernatorial campaign of Brandon Presley.
But after Tyree Irving, the chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party, fired off a nasty written tirade about a fellow state party official and insisted that he alone ran the state party, some fear the DNC will withdraw that commitment, according to several party leaders and emails shared with Mississippi Today.
Irving and state executive director Andre Wagner had a phone call Thursday morning with DNC staffers to discuss the $250,000 donation — a substantial amount from the national party intended to assist with political programs that could help statewide candidates, according to multiple people with knowledge of the call.
Later that morning, DNC senior advisor Libby Schneider followed up with both Irving and Wagner via email.
“Thank you for hopping on the call,” Schneider wrote to Irving and Wagner, copying two of her DNC colleagues. “Confirming that we are excited to make this historic investment in the state party to support Democrats up and down the ticket in 2023 and 2024 and look forward to working together.”
A few hours later on Thursday night, Irving replied to Schneider. Wagner, DNC attorney Andrea Levien and DNC Director of States Ramsey Reid were copied on the reply.
Irving wrote: “We thank the DNC for the financial investment in the Mississippi Democratic Party, but just to be clear, it is my understanding that it is the hope and desire of the DNC that the Mississippi Democratic Party will make an equal investment in the Brandon Presley campaign, although that is not a requirement for the investment that you are making.”
Several party officials who have since read that email told Mississippi Today that Irving’s email would have raised eyebrows — and perhaps even legal questions — following a routine phone call about general party investment. People with knowledge of the call said that there was no specific talk of sending that money to Presley, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves this year.
So on Friday morning, Wagner replied to the email thread with Irving and the DNC officials in an apparent attempt to clear the air.
“Hey Team,” Wagner wrote. “I think the chair (Irving) misunderstood, we plan to use the funds in accordance with Mississippi law and will use the funds in support of electing Democrats up and down the ticket. And we also acknowledge that the DNC has not earmarked any funds for any particular candidate. Thank you.”
In reply to that email, Irving levied a nasty personal attack on Wagner and again copied the same DNC officials.
“Mr. Wagner, you do not speak for the chair, and you are out of order,” wrote Irving, a 77-year-old former Mississippi Court of Appeals judge. “I am an accomplished jurist. I know and understand things that you cannot know or understand because: you do not have the education level, you do not possess the personal or vicarious experience that I have, and you know nothing about the historical political landscape of Mississippi. You are not in a position to speak for the Mississippi Democratic Party or say how the Mississippi Democratic Party will spend any funds without being granted that authority to speak, and it has not been granted to you. You are a salaried employee and nothing else. You need to find your place and stay in it.”
Irving’s emails were not received well by the party officials. Less than an hour later on Friday afternoon, Wagner forwarded the email exchange to several executive leaders of the Mississippi Democratic Party along with a troubling prediction.
“Because of the Chair’s actions, the DNC will not be sending the money to support our candidates and the Presley campaign,” Wagner shared with the state party leaders on Friday afternoon.
Mississippi Democratic Party officials who have seen the email exchange and spoke with Mississippi Today said that they were not expecting the DNC to follow through on the commitment. The officials, including multiple members of the state party’s executive committee, declined to comment on the record.
DNC officials did not respond to requests for comment about the exchange and the national party commitment. Wagner declined to comment. Irving, when reached on Saturday, said he had not heard concerns about the DNC’s commitment.
“The DNC has confirmed to me via email that they are sending $250,000 to the Mississippi Democratic Party to elect candidates up and down the ballot,” Irving told Mississippi Today on Saturday. “Nobody from the DNC has informed me that they are reneging on that commitment. I have no knowledge that that is the case. I’m operating on the assumption that the DNC is sending the money.”
When asked to comment on the content of his emails or whether he worried they might spook national party officials, Irving replied: “No comment.”
The commitment of $250,000 to aid Democratic campaigns in Mississippi would be a boon to a state party that has long struggled to raise money, has been strapped for cash to pay for basic political operation, and has been plagued by administrative dysfunction for years.
Presley, in particular, could use political or financial support. The Democratic candidate for governor has been heralded nationally as a candidate with a real chance to defeat incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. But to win in November, Presley will have to overcome name ID problems across the state and Reeves’ monstrous campaign war chest: $9 million as of the latest campaign finance reports. The Presley campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Sources told Mississippi Today that the $250,000 donation would nearly double the state party’s current cash-on-hand in a critical election year, when all eight statewide offices and many of the state’s 174 legislative seats are up for grabs. The 2023 commitment would far surpass the DNC’s $140,000 investment to the state party in 2019, when Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood was challenging Reeves for the governorship.
Irving was elected chairman of the party in 2020 to serve a four-year term. As of Monday morning, he had not scheduled the next meeting of the state party’s executive committee.
Prospect Hill, a preserved, abandoned building hidden deep in the woods of Jefferson County, Mississippi, is a connection to the history of Liberia in West Africa and to the lives of descendant communities of over 300 enslaved-ancestors from Mississippi.
Former slaves of Capt. Isaac Ross established the Liberian colony known as “Mississippi-in-Africa”, as called for in his will.
Shawn Lambert, assistant professor of anthropology at Mississippi State University, began an excavation of the site June 18, assisted by James Andrew Whitaker, a cultural anthropologist.
A foundation in the ground adjacent to the big house, barely noticeable, is the primary focus during this first broad excavation. Lambert and Whitaker believe many of the enslaved people worked and lived in what could be a dependency, or kitchen house.
With help from participants from the public, they unearthed evidence on the 23.3 acres dating around the early 1800s to late 1800s supporting their hypothesis about the lives and cultural activity: gunflints, chunks of rock used to generate sparks to ignite gunpowder; leadshots, originally used in muskets and early rifles; a 4- to 7-inch knife-blade; dark, rich green fragments possibly from a wine bottle, white pieces from a ceramic plate, and cut (tapered-rectangular) and square (hand-forged) nails.
“These artifacts don’t just provide insight into the daily lives of the people who lived and the tools utilized in their world, but the environment and landscape of how they interacted with each other,” Lambert told Mississippi Today.
Chance Carden, project manager of Research and Curriculum at Mississippi State University, excavates a sectioned off area of what is thought to be a kitchen area, while Shawn Lambert, assistant professor of anthropology at MSU, shows shards of glass bottles found at the Prospect Hill Plantation in Lorman, Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Lambert said the rainbow-like patina on the glass shards is the soil eating away at the glass like a fungus. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Lambert and Whitaker began the archaeological excavation of the Lorman plantation site to understand how aspects of material and social culture from the slaves’ lives in Mississippi were carried through this transAtlantic reverse migration.
As leader of the excavation, Lambert taught the participants archaeological methods and ethical archaeology to have a more “holistic narrative” of what occurred at Prospect Hill.
Nikki Mattson, a Southeast field representative for the Archaeological Conservancy, participated in the dig because she came across the book “Mississippi in Africa” by Alan Huffman around 15 years ago. She said she was at a place and time in her life where she was questioning a lot of the “deep inherent things” she was taught growing up in the Mississippi Delta, and the book was a pivotal moment for her.
After gaining her master’s degree in archaeology, she applied to the conservancy and found that it owned that property. Mattson said she takes any chance to be involved seriously.
“Even though these artifacts might seem kind of insignificant, little things to some people, it’s really huge,” Mattson explained. “It’s all these little pieces of a bigger story, and that’s exciting.”
Finding materials at the site and combining them with historical records to gain a better understanding of the past, while providing a learning experience, Lambert said.
“I think working at this site and working with the descendant communities can have a positive effect on people who come and work. (We can) realize the history and acknowledge the history that has gone on here,” Lambert said.
He said he believes this type of fieldwork can educate people statewide. By looking at the shapes, colors and textures of found artifacts, he can uncover the history of a place and reveal aspects of life that would otherwise be lost.
“I think archaeology is a powerful tool (that allows us) to talk about history and a history that maybe Mississippi doesn’t talk about a lot,” Lambert explained, “our history of enslavement.”
Jerrell Hutson of Clinton and his daughter, Ellen Brewer of Oxford, excavate a plot of land believed to be in the kitchen area at Prospect Hill Platation in Lorman, Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Whitaker, a cultural anthropologist, began his research in West Africa and talked with descendants and some indigenous people not related to the Mississippi settlers.
This summer, he conducted 12 interviews in Liberia, along with 52 last summer in Monrovia and different locations of Sinoe County, Liberia, (the capital of Greenville, Louisiana and Lexington). His research inspired the idea for this excavation.
“This kind of research uncovers aspects about settlement and the history of Liberia as it relates to the United States,” Whitaker continued, “and also as it precedes those interactions with the United States by a long time.”
Whitaker said he and Lambert are attempting to trace this cultural movement, through this collaborative project with the Archaeological Conservancy and the descendant communities of the enslaved ancestors along with grants funded by the Mississippi Humanities Council and Mississippi State University Global Grant.
“We want to understand more about the lives of the people who never went to Liberia and also the ones who later became the first American LIberian settlers.” Whitaker said. “We’re hoping to follow up this excavation with a second one, maybe one or two years from now, to map the material culture in Mississippi to the material culture in Liberia.”
Through this mapping, they aim to uncover aspects of ancestors’ lives in Mississippi that were carried with them and trace the changes in the social lives of those same people.
“I think using the power of archaeology to connect the past with today is powerful,” Lambert said. “This is the beginning of what could be something a lot larger and much more special for research and this community.”
The excavation continues through June 28.
Revolutionary War veteran Capt. Issac Ross founded Prospect Hill in the woods of former Mississippi Territory around 1808.
Traveling from South Carolina to Jefferson County, Mississippi, Ross brought hundreds of slaves and freed Black people he served with in the Revolutionary War.
Soon, his accumulated wealth allowed him access to more acreage and slaves. He allowed his slaves to read and write, illegal at the time in Mississippi. They also learned skills and trades.
When Ross prepared his will in 1834, he stipulated that his plantation should be sold and the proceeds used to pay for his slaves’ passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa formed by a branch of the American Colonization Society, the Mississippi Colonization Society, of which he was a member.
He didn’t want families separated, and those who remained at the plantation would work for pay and be considered free men. The will stipulated his plans would be set in motion once his daughter, Margaret Allison Reed, passed away. Ross died two years after the will was drawn up, and Reed shortly after in 1838.
Faded and nearly unreadable, the grave monuement of Prospect Hill Plantation owner Isaac Ross, in the family cemetery on the grounds of the plantation in Lorman, Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
It was left to Isaac Ross Wade, son of Jane Brown Ross (one of Capt. Ross’ three daughters) and the executor of the will, to uphold the will’s provisions. Instead,Wade contested the will’s legitimacy for more than a decade.
He stopped the slaves from gaining their freedom, leading to a revolt. The mansion burned to the ground in April 1846 under alleged suspicious circumstances, taking the life of a 6-year-old girl. Overseers, hearing rumors of the slaves’ plot to kill the family, lynched at least 11 slaves believed to be involved.
A few months later, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ross’s will. About 120 of Ross’ 160 slaves left for Africa, while the others remained in Jefferson County as slaves. In total, the coalition society arranged for 300 free ex-slaves to travel to Africa.
The plantation house was finally sold in 1848, but the African colony received none of the proceeds. The house returned to Wade’s possession in 1850, and he built the present-day house there in 1854.
The home survived the Civil War and Wade’s death in 1891. After Wade’s death, his brother Battaille Harrison “BH” Wade retained ownership of the house. From 1956 onward, descendants of those enslaved occupied the house. And in 1968, others occupied the site until it became unlivable through neglect.
It wasn’t until 2011 when the Archaeological Conservancy acquired the property that the preservation of the historical site started.
The existence of this rare Mississippi plantation site spans over two continents and over 200 years, with history embedded in its grounds.
“We know a lot about what went on inside the big house. It’s the other side of the story we want to know (such as) the enslaved people who built it and kept it running and the people who have ties to it,” Jessica Crawford, the Southeast Regional director of the Archaeological Conservancy, told Mississippi Today.
The Archaeological Conservancy primarily works on archaeological evidence buried in the ground. However, Crawford convinced her board of directors to consider Prospect Hill because of the site’s significant history.
As of 2023, Crawford said she is talking to architects to draw a blueprint to preserve the house. She also talked to a private donor who is willing to pay for the proposed plan.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to keep it standing. I don’t know specifically where we will start yet,” Crawford said.
A look inside the old Prospect Hill Plantation in Lorman, Tuesday, June 20, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Parts of the house are rotting from previous rains. Plaster on the walls is cracking and falling onto the rotten wooden floor, making it dangerous to walk on. The original porch has not been rebuilt. Termites are eating away at newly constructed wood. In addition, the site lacks water due to lack of community water in the rural area.
“We don’t plan to restore it to some grand plantation house. We want floors so it’s better and safer to walk on,” Crawford explained. “We eventually hope to use it for things like public archaeology events, like this one, and public outreach events like an open house.”
In 2012, one year after the Archaeological Conservancy acquired the site and 3.1 acres, the organization acquired an additional 20 acres. There were many projects to focus on, but replacing the roof was a major concern. The 2017 roof installation was a critical step in preserving the home’s flooring.
“I used to have probably 25 kiddie swimming pools in there catching water every time it rained and that roof absolutely saved it,” Crawford continued. “It’s still dry when it rains, and it wasn’t (dry) for a long time.”
Crawford raised money through donations and grants separate from the organization’s regular funding sources to pay for the new roofing and stabilization of the roofing, which cost $114,611.
The Conservancy obtained a $50,000 emergency preservation grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and raised additional needed capital from donations.
“This place was saved from falling on the ground by a bunch of people. It wasn’t just me, it was a lot of people who cared and came out and gave money and gave time. People volunteered out there so much,” Crawford told Mississippi Today.
“The story of this place is a small picture of what the larger world around us is like. There are a lot of stories there that need to be told. (The enslaved people) names should be known.”
Seth Petersen was at his grandmother’s funeral, and his phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
Three hours away in the village of Luck, Wisconsin, where he served as director of public works, there was an emergency. Petersen was getting calls repeatedly, asking for his expertise.
Petersen and two other employees were responsible for drinking water, wastewater, street maintenance, park and cemetery maintenance and picking up stray dogs, he said. The job never stopped.
“Seth, what the (expletive) are you doing?” his brother-in-law said to him as he came back to the family gathering from another call. “Why are you living like this?”
Petersen left that job at the end of last year. Now, he helps train water operators in small communities for the Wisconsin Rural Water Association.
Luck is not an outlier. In small and rural communities across the U.S., water system operators are stretched thin, covering around-the-clock responsibilities to keep water running safely and reliably despite aging and underfunded infrastructure.
The consequences of a water system falling behind have received the national spotlight, infamously in Flint, Michigan, and most recently in Jackson, Mississippi, where majority-Black communities bore the brunt of mismanagement and aging infrastructure.
Thousands of under-resourced systems risk a similar fate, and small water systems — defined by the EPA as serving fewer than 10,000 people, and making up more than 90% of the nation’s community water systems — are in a particularly precarious position.
Their staffing is often sparse and underpaid. Infrastructure, in many places, is crumbling and underfunded, and though there is a fresh infusion of federal money on the table, it’s a challenge to access.
The American Rescue Plan Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and other programs represent a historic investment in the country’s water infrastructure, totaling billions of dollars.
But the total available funding, even after it’s all been doled out, still won’t be enough. One report from 2020 estimated that the U.S. would need to invest nearly $3.3 trillion in water and wastewater infrastructure projects between 2019 and 2039 to keep systems updated.
Many communities will also face increases in their water bills to keep up with infrastructure and staffing needs. Yet raising the price of water may prove unworkable in rural and historically-underinvested communities like Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, some of the most impoverished in the country.
No one in the U.S. should have to worry about having safe drinking water, said Chris Groh, executive director of the Wisconsin Rural Water Association.
“But a town doesn’t take care of itself.”
Small community water systems falling behind
Over the last two decades, water systems in the ten states bordering the Mississippi River violated U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations for drinking water more than 438,000 times.
That figure includes thousands of instances of heightened levels of harmful chemicals in water each year. Nitrates, trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, which have all been linked to various cancers and other health hazards, were top contaminants in the EPA’s violation data in 2022.
Nitrates are an indicator of agricultural runoff, common in rural areas. And trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids appear as byproducts of the water treatment process, when chlorine reacts with organic contents.
Addressing these issues can require expensive treatment technology. But in the last two decades, small and large utilities alike have reined in the number of violations.
However, an Ag and Water Desk analysis of EPA Safe Drinking Water Act violation data nationwide found small water systems have been slower to reduce their violations than larger systems. And these violations only represented those reported; there could be many more incidences of unreported issues.
In the ten states along the Mississippi River, both small and large water systems saw increases in violations newly reported during 2022. For small water systems, that increase was more significant.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley on Thursday said Republican Gov. Tate Reeves should call lawmakers back to the state Capitol for a special legislative session to abolish Mississippi’s sales tax on groceries, the highest such tax in the nation.
Presley, north Mississippi’s utility commissioner, believes the 7% tax on food should be eliminated because it’s a harsh policy that forces people on all ends of the economic spectrum to pay extra for a basic necessity like food.
“At a time in which Mississippians are struggling, we know that this cost is hurting folks, and particularly working families who are out there trying to make ends meet and meet that family budget,” Presley said.
Both of Mississippi’s leading candidates for governor want to reduce state taxes. Reeves continues to advocate for abolishing the state income tax, and Presley wants to eliminate the state’s tax on food and cut fees on car tags in half.
Lawmakers are typically in the capital city for their regular session from early January to April. After lawmakers adjourn their session, they cannot reconvene at any point during the year to pass new laws unless the governor calls them back to Jackson for a special session.
The state Constitution grants the governor power to set the terms of a special session. Reeves did not respond to a request for comment about Presley’s Thursday comments. Reeves in his first term has only called one special legislative session, to approve $247 million in state incentives for an aluminum mill.
Lawmakers last year significantly reduced the individual income tax, and once it’s fully implemented, Mississippi will have a flat 4% tax on all earned income over $10,000. But Reeves believes that tax should be gone entirely.
“I pushed to eliminate our state income tax, and we’ve achieved the largest tax cut in state history,” Reeves said in Gulfport earlier this month. “And we can do more because this is Mississippi’s time.”
The Republican candidate’s campaign, however, has said Reeves would be open to any type of tax cut the Legislature passes, including reducing the grocery tax.
But Presley said that the governor’s willingness wasn’t enough and excoriated him for not openly advocating on abolishing the tax.
“Where have you been for 12 years?” Presley asked. “Have you been that busy at fundraisers that you didn’t know that people wanted their grocery tax eliminated?”
The different tax cut policies come at a time when Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill into law in the state that lowers its grocery tax from 4% to 3%. The legislation calls for the tax to decrease even further if specific growth metrics are met to offset the tax reduction, according to the Associated Press.
Both tax cut plans from Reeves and Presley would reduce the amount of revenue the state collects each year.
The state’s income tax accounts for over $2.4 billion in the general fund, roughly one-third of its total general budget.
Reeves has said in previous remarks that if the income tax were abolished, the increase in economic investment and consumer spending would make up for the decrease in income tax collections.
It’s unclear how much money Mississippi collects from the grocery tax because the Mississippi Department of Revenue, the state’s tax collection agency, doesn’t precisely track that data.
A spokesperson for the department previously told Mississippi Today there were over $6 billion in grocery sales during the past fiscal year, which they estimated to have generated around $424.8 million in taxes. Of that amount, over $305 million is believed to have gone to the state’s general fund.
Presley did not substantively answer questions about how state government would make up the difference if the grocery tax were eliminated but believed state leaders could find necessary funds to plug the shortfall if they determined that tax cut was a legislative priority.
FLOWOOD — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley last week told reporters that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves can save his “hot air for somebody else” after Reeves insinuated the Democratic candidate was dodging questions about crime and law enforcement.
The remarks came after Reeves at the Mississippi Press Association’s annual conference on Friday said reporters have not asked Presley questions about a newly passed law that creates a new court system in the capital city of Jackson.
“I sure think it’s a good thing to have more people working toward public safety in our state capital,” Reeves said to reporters. “But a lot of Democrats in the Capitol opposed it passionately. My opponent is just hoping that you won’t ask him the question.”
Presley hammered back that Reeves shouldn’t cast doubts about Presley’s history of backing law enforcement officers, given that a suspected criminal killed the Democratic candidate’s uncle, Harold Ray Presley, while he was serving as sheriff of Lee County in north Mississippi.
“I’ve got the badge he was wearing, I’ve got the gun that was on his hip and the flag that was draped over his coffin,” Brandon Presley said of his uncle. “So I don’t want to hear Tate Reeves open his mouth to me in this campaign about backing law enforcement because he’s never stood where I’ve stood.”
Harold Ray Presley served as Lee County’s sheriff from 1993 to 2001, and his life was cut short when the county officer participated in a manhunt for a suspected kidnapper. The suspect burst out of a building and shot the sheriff multiple times.
The remarks from the two leading candidates for governor were centered on questions about House Bill 1020, which creates a new court district within the majority-Black capital city of Jackson with judges who white officials would appoint.
Conservative legislators and Reeves said the law is meant to curtail crime in Jackson, but Democratic lawmakers, many of whom are Black, believe the legislation strips power away from one of the Blackest cities in the nation. Reeves supported the legislation and signed it into law.
“When you take away the right of people to elect their officials who have traditionally been elected, how else are they going to see it?” longtime Democratic Rep. Ed Blackmon of Canton said earlier this year.
Presley said he was against the intent of House Bill 1020 because it usurps the authority of local officials and prevents Hinds County voters from electing their own judges like nearly all other types of judges throughout the state.
“I was a small-town mayor,” Presley said on Friday. “I wouldn’t want the state Legislature coming to tell me how to run my police department. Simple. I do not agree with unelected judges.”
Federal courts have blocked the law from going into effect pending litigation. U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate issued an order last month barring state officials from appointing temporary judges in the new court district, and attorneys for the NAACP have filed a motion asking the judge for an injunction to block the entire law from going into effect on July 1. Attorneys for the state oppose the request.
But the legislation has still sparked questions during the campaign cycle about crime, race and voting rights.
Presley, the current utility regulator in north Mississippi, told reporters that if he were elected governor, he would work to find a solution that legislative leaders and local officials can agree on instead of dragging litigation out in court.
“As governor, I want the ego to go out the window,” Presley said. “Out the window because the future of the city of Jackson is important to the citizens in all other 81 counties in this state. Call me naive if you want to; I still believe an attempt at personal relationships in politics matters.”
