Ralph Boston (right) poses with Jesse Owens in 1960 after breaking Owen’s 25-year-old world record in the long jump. Credit: Mississippi Sports Hall of fame
Laurel native Ralph Boston, a three-time Olympic long jump medalist and surely one of the most accomplished athletes in Mississippi history, died April 30 at his home in Peachtree City, Ga., following a massive stroke suffered in late March. Boston would have turned 84 on May 9.
In addition to his remarkable athletic accomplishments, Boston will be remembered as a smart, friendly, courteous gentleman, immensely proud of his Laurel and Oak Park High School roots and the fact that he was the first Black athlete ever inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame (1976).
Boston won a gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics, a silver medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and a bronze in the ’68 Olympics at Mexico City. “Yes sir, I got the complete Olympic set,” Boston once told this writer, which was as close to boastful as Boston would ever get.
Rick Cleveland
The story behind the bronze medal at Mexico City might tell us more about Boston’s sportsmanship and character than all his other accomplishments. Those were the Olympic Games when Bob Beamon set perhaps the most astounding track and field record ever, leaping 29 feet, 2.5 inches, an amazing two feet beyond the world record.
Beamon, making a promotional appearance in Jackson three decades later, sat down for an interview with this writer. “What people don’t know is that I wouldn’t have done any of that if it hadn’t have been for Ralph Boston,” Beamon said. “I fouled on my first two attempts and was about to get disqualified and then Ralph told me how I needed to adjust my footwork leading to my takeoff. I figured I had better listen to the master, and I did. The rest, as they say, is history. I owe a lot to Ralph Boston.”
A few days later, Beamon’s words were recounted to Boston, who chuckled and then said, “He beat me by two feet; that’s a heck of a way to treat your teacher isn’t it. If you see Bob again, tell him I’m still waiting for my check.”
Another time, Boston recounted the day that made him famous. The 1960 U.S. Olympic track and field team was holding a conditioning meet in preparation for Rome at Mt. San Antonio College near Los Angeles. Boston leaped 26 feet, 11 inches, breaking the 25-year-old record of the legendary champion Jesse Owens. It was the last world record Owens owned.
“Suddenly people recognized me,” Boston said. “Before that night nobody outside of Laurel, Mississippi, knew who I was, and the people in Laurel knew me as Hawkeye Boston, not Ralph Boston.”
Boston remembered a short time later getting ready to board a plane for Rome and the Olympics. A handsome, strapping young man from Louisville, Ky., stopped him and asked if he could have his photo made with him. Said Boston, “He introduced himself as Cassius Marcellus Clay and told me, ‘You don’t know who I am yet, but you will soon.’ You don’t forget moments like that.”
Boston recalled entering the Olympic stadium in Rome for the opening ceremonies. “I was just a bright-eyed, skinny kid from Laurel who didn’t know which way was up. And then I walked into that stadium and there were more people there than I had ever seen in my life. I thought, man, what have I gotten myself into.”
And then the skinny kid from Laurel won the gold medal. “Boston! Boston! Boston!” a crowd of nearly 75,000 chanted. He had just turned 21.
Today, the same feat most likely would earn Boston millions in endorsements. Back then, there were no such rewards for Olympic athletes, who were amateurs in the strictest sense of the word. Boston worked as a school counselor and trained and competed on the side.
“I’ve got no complaints, no regrets,” Boston said when a writer mentioned that 40 years later. “I did OK for myself.”
He surely did. The 10th of 10 children born to a Laurel farmer and his wife, Ralph Boston did far, far better than OK.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down once again with Pamela Junior, who is retiring as the director of the Two Museums – The Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi. She talks about the museum, its mission, and some of her favorite memories.
Junior, a native Jacksonian, is a Jackson State University graduate, the former manager of the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, and even was a park ranger with the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. Honored by many national and local groups, prepared to be inspired by Junior’s story.
The memoir by Richard Wright about his upbringing in Roxie, Mississippi, “Black Boy”, became the top selling book in the U.S. He described Roxie as “swarming with rats, cats, dogs, fortune tellers, cripples, blind men, whores, salesmen, rent collectors, and children.”
In his home, he looked to his mother: “My mother’s suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life.”
When he was alone, he wrote, “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”
Reading became his refuge. “Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books,” he wrote. “Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.”
In the end, he discovered that “if you possess enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find you are not alone.”
He was the first Black author to see his work sold through the Book-of-a-Month Club. His novel, “Native Son”, told the story of Bigger Thomas, a 20-year-old Black man whose bleak life leads him to kill. Through the book, he sought to expose the racism he saw:
“I was guided by but one criterion: to tell the truth as I saw it and felt it. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.”
The novel, which sold more than 250,000 copies in its first three weeks, was turned into a play on Broadway, directed by Orson Welles. He became friends with other writers, including Ralph Ellison in Harlem and Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in Paris. His works played a role in changing white Americans’ views on race.
When Gov. Tate Reeves signed legislation to create a separate court and police district within Jackson, he said the focus was public safety and used various statistics to make his point about crime in the capital city.
“Jackson has to be better,” he said in an April 21 statement. “This legislation won’t solve the entire problem, but if we can stop one shooting, if we can respond to one more 911 call – then we’re one step closer to a better Jackson.”
As the law faces twolawsuits seeking to block it from going into effect in July, Mississippi Today is fact checking some of the claims Reeves made and providing more context about what these numbers say and efforts Jackson police and leaders are taking to address crime and community safety.
Claim: “The capital city is approximately 6% of Mississippi’s population yet, in 2020, accounted for more than 50% of the homicides in our state.”
Reeves is incorrect about the number and portion of homicides committed in Jackson compared to the rest of the state.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks homicide mortality for all states, and in 2020 found that Mississippi’s rate was 20.5 per 100,000, which was 576 homicides.
Half of the CDC number would be 288 homicides in Jackson – a number that is higher than the 130 recorded in 2020 and higher than the city’s all-time high of 157 set in 2021.
Gov. Reeves may have reviewed information from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report expanded homicide data for 2020, which says Mississippi had 213 homicides and Jackson had 107, which is roughly 50%
But this data does come with limitations. In 2020, 113 of 251 law enforcement agencies in the state reported crime data to the FBI, meaning calculations made about it are not complete.
Claim: “In 2021, Jackson’s homicide rate was almost 100 murders per 100,000 residents – nearly 13 times higher than the U.S. rate of 7.8 per 100,000.”
Reeves is correct about the capital city’s homicide rate for 2021 compared to the national homicide rate.
The way to calculate the homicide rate is to divide the total number of homicides,155, by the total population, estimated at 156,800, and multiply that result by 100,000, which would result in a rate of nearly 100 homicides per 100,000.
A similar figure has also been reported in local and national news sources.
City leaders have acknowledged Jackson’s high number of homicides and, along with community members, have tried to find ways to address crime, including by taking a more holistic approach.
Jackson is launching an office focused on violence prevention and trauma recovery.
During a January forum with the U.S. Marshals Service, participants from the city said they want to see root causes of crime such as poverty, trauma and mental health to be addressed and the support of community violence interruption and credible messenger programs, which aim to prevent crime and people’s involvement in the criminal justice system.
Claim: “In 2022, it (the homicide rate) was approximately 88.9. On the global level, Jackson found itself in the company of Tijuana, Acapulco, and Caracas as one of the most dangerous places in the world.”
Reeves is correct that Jackson’s homicide rate last year would rank it among the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Acapulco and the Venezuelan city of Caracas with high homicide rates.
In 2022, Jackson had 135 homicides and a population of about 156,800, giving the city a rate of about 87per 100,000, according to data kept by the city and shared with Mississippi Today.
The Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, based in Mexico, releases yearly rankings of the most violent cities in the world. Its report for homicides in 2022 ranked Tijuana as fifth with a homicide rate of 105.12 per 100,000 and Acapulo at tenth with a rate of 65.55 per 100,000.
Its list does not include Jackson, but if it did based on a homicide rate of 87 per 100,000, the capital city would rank seventh.
Instead, the first United States city listed is New Orleans in eighth with a homicide rate of 70.56 per 100,000.
Another list of the most dangerous cities in 2022 by Statista ranks Tijuana, Acapulco and Caracas as the top three with homicide rates of nearly 100 and higher.
Again, Jackson is not mentioned on the list, but based on its rate for 2022, it would make the top five. The only U.S. cities mentioned are St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans.
Claim: “We can arrest all the violent criminals in the city, but if the judicial system puts them right back on the street—what have we really accomplished?”
Reeves does not specify who in the judicial system is allegedly responsible for releasing people nor does he provide evidence that this is happening.
If someone is arrested on a felony charge in Jackson, a Hinds County judge has a say in whether to approve bail, which if paid could allow the person to await their next court date from home, or to order them to be held in jail before trial.
Rep. Ed Blackmon Jr., D-Canton, who has spoken out against HB 1020, said under the state constitution and presumption of innocence, people have a right to bail. It’s a judge’s discretion of what amount to set and whether to allow bond.
“The judges in Hinds County follow the same guidelines as any judicial district in Mississippi,” he said, referring to rules and guidelines for bond release set by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Blackmon said the state should not be empowered to hold a person who has not yet been convicted unless there is a reason, such as they are a flight risk or if they pose a risk to public safety.
It is possible for people to be released on their own recognizance without posting bail, but this release is usually for minor and nonviolent offenses and whether the person isn’t found to be a safety threat to the community or if they don’t have an existing criminal record. If they fail to appear in court, an arrest warrant could be issued.
For years, Jackson police officials have also been talking about how the lack of a misdemeanor holding facility has led to letting most people charged with misdemeanor offenses go until their appearances in Municipal Court.
Between March 2020 and November 2021, police released at least 3,000 people charged with misdemeanors, Chief James Davis said during a community meeting in November 2021.
Police haven’t been able to take those charged with misdemeanors to the Raymond Detention Center because of a 2016 federal consent decree.
Hinds County sheriff candidate Marshand Crisler has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly soliciting bribes and giving ammunition to a convicted felon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Thursday.
The alleged actions took place in 2021 when Crisler unsuccessfully ran for Hinds County sheriff, according to the news release. Crisler was appointed as interim sheriff that year following the death of Sheriff Lee Vance and sought a full term, but lost to the current sheriff, Tyree Jones.
Crisler, 54, is charged with soliciting and accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for passing information about criminal investigations to the person who paid for the alleged bribe, according to court documents.
He also allegedly agreed to protect the jailed family member of the person he’s accused of having bribed him and agreed to hire the person who paid for the alleged bribe in the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department, according to court records.
The indictment alleges that Crisler gave ammunition to a person he knew was a convicted felon, which is also against federal law, according to the news release.
Crisler has an initial court appearance scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today at the U.S. District Court in Jackson before U.S. Magistrate Judge LaKeysha Greer Isaac.
If convicted, he could face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for each of the two counts in the indictment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The FBI is investigating the case.
Crisler most recently served as the executive director of the Hinds County’s Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center. He resigned that position earlier this year to run again for sheriff, local media reported.
The white woman at the center of the Emmett Till saga, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died.
Megan LeBoeuf, chief investigator for the Calcasieu Parish coroner’s office, confirmed Donham’s death. The 88-year-old was suffering from cancer and was receiving end-of-life hospice care.
Devery Anderson, the author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” said Donham’s death marks the end of a chapter.
Some people “have been clinging to hope that she could be prosecuted. She was the last remaining person who had any involvement,” he said. “Now that can’t happen.”
For many, “it’s going to be a wound, because justice was never done,” he said. “Some others were clinging to hope she might still talk or tell the truth. … Now it’s over.”
Till’s cousin, Wheeler Parker, said he and his family send their sympathies to the Donham family. “We don’t have any ill will or animosity toward her,” he said.
He said Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, forgave her son’s killers.
In a speech she made shortly before her 2003 death that God told her not to hate her son’s killers. “I am glad he took hatred out of my heart,” she said.
The killers thought they would be heroes, but became nobodies who lived miserable lives, she said. “There’s one sentence that you cannot escape, and that is when you go before the judgment seat of God. He will give the verdict.”
In August 1955, Till had barely turned 14 when he visited his Mississippi relatives from Chicago, only to be beaten and shot to death after he reportedly wolf-whistled at Donham at a store in Money.
His mother decided to leave the casket open to “let the world see what they did to my boy.” More than 50,000 attended the funeral, and the photograph of his brutalized body appeared in Jet and other publications around the world.
An all-white jury acquitted Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, only for them to confess later to Lookmagazine they had indeed beaten and killed Till.
The injustice made international headlines and fueled the civil rights movement. Four days after Rosa Parks heard a talk about Till, she boarded a city bus in Montgomery and refused to give up her seat. She was later quoted as saying she thought about Till the whole time.
Donham had long insisted on her innocence in Till’s murder, repeating that assertion in her unpublished memoir, “I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle,” but civil rights activists and others have called for her prosecution, accusing her of identifying Till to the killers.
After an intensive FBI investigation, a majority-Black Mississippi grand jury declined to indict her in 2007. Last year, another grand jury voted against indicting her.
Her memoir until Thursday was sealed in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill until 2036. But through a source, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, now part of Mississippi Today, has obtained a copy of that single-spaced, 109-page memoir, which contradicts her original statement to her husband’s defense lawyer, Sidney Carlton.
In that original statement, Donham said when Bryant brought Till to her, he “was scared but hadn’t been harmed. He didn’t say anything. Roy asked if that was the same one, and I told him it was not the one who had insulted me.”
File photos of John W. Milam, 35, left, his half-brother Roy Bryant, 24 , centre, who go on trial in Sumner, Miss., Sept. 18, 1955, are charged with the murder of 14-year-old African American Emmett L.Till from Chicago, who is alleged to have “whistled” and made advances at Bryant’s wife Carolyn, seen right. (AP Photo)
That is far different from her memoir, which portrays Till as fearless and her as frightened. After she denied Till was the one at the store, she claimed he “flashed me a strange smile and said, ‘Yes, it was me,’ or something to that effect. … He didn’t act … scared in the least.”
Davis Houck, co-author of “Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press,” said Donham’s claim sounds like it was ripped from William Bradford Huie’s lie-filled Look article, which depicted Till as fearless to the end.
“The idea that Till would essentially out himself in front of his kidnappers and would-be killers,” he said, “is beyond absurd.”
Dale Killinger, who as an FBI agent investigated the Till case, said Donham’s claim in her memoir contradicts what she told him in 2005 — that Till said nothing when his kidnappers brought him to her.
During his investigation, he took the statements of two Black men. The first had been confronted by Bryant, who accused him of insulting Donham. She intervened and said it wasn’t him, and Bryant let him go.
The second man was walking home from Money after buying molasses for his mother, only to be picked up by Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam. The man quoted Donham as saying, “That’s not the n—–! That’s not the one.”
The man said he was tossed from the truck and lost his front teeth when he hit the ground.
Those statements dovetail with the testimony of Till’s uncle, Moses Wright, who said Milam told him, “If this is not the right boy, then we are going to bring him back. If it is not the right boy, we are going to bring him back and put him in the bed.”
As Milam and Bryant left, Wright said they asked someone in the vehicle if this was the boy and that a voice replied, “Yes.”
“Was that a man’s voice or a lady’s voice you heard?” the prosecutor asked.
“It seemed like it was a lighter voice than a man’s,” replied Wright, who later told his son, Simeon, it was a woman’s voice.
Killinger said he believes that Donham escaped justice.
“She should have faced a jury on manslaughter charges,” he said. “Under Mississippi law, if you did or said something, knowing that someone might be harmed, and your statements or actions led to them dying, you would be subject to manslaughter charges.”
Informed of Donham’s death, Keith Beauchamp, whose documentary on Till played a role in the FBI’s reopening of the case in 2004, said, “Damn, damn, damn.”
Since 1955, law enforcement and local officials have allowed Donham to evade justice “without answering to her participation in the kidnapping that led to the lynching of Emmett Louis Till,” he said. “The good old American judicial system has failed us yet again. Now Carolyn Bryant Donham will face her maker.”
Houck said Donham’s passing closes a long chapter that began in the early 2000s to prosecute those involved in the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till.
“Despite efforts from the Department of Justice, the FBI, local prosecutors in Mississippi and private citizens,” he said, “she was never arrested or indicted for her role in one of the 20th century’s most infamous lynchings, this despite the fact that Leflore County Sheriff George Smith had issued a warrant for her arrest days after Till had gone missing from his great aunt and uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi.”
In her memoir, Donham wrote that she did not wish Till any harm, pointing out that someone else, not her, told Bryant what had happened at the store. She wrote that those responsible for his murder should have been held accountable.
“His death was tragic and uncalled for beyond all doubt,” she wrote. “For that, I am truly sorry. If it had been within my power to change his fate, I would have done so.”
Clarification 4/27/23: This story has been updated to reflect that Carolyn Bryant Donham’s memoir is no longer in the University of North Carolina’s collection. Author Tim Tyson removed it.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center’s TEAM Clinic has long been one of the few medical spaces in Mississippi that aims to serve the LGBTQ community.
Its co-founder, Dr. Scott Rodgers, has described the “Trustworthy, Evidence-Based, Affirming, and Multidisciplinary” clinic’s mission in passionate terms: “The clinic, its presence and its openness, sends a powerful message that we are here for you.”
But last fall, UMMC leadership made a drastic decision. TEAM Clinic would no longer provide gender-affirming medical care — meaning puberty blockers and hormone therapy — to trans minors. The move in mid-October 2022 came months before lawmakers banned gender-affirming care for trans youth, and was implemented as quietly as possible. Parents received phone calls instead of letters and were supposed to be told only that “unforeseen clinical circumstances” necessitated the change.
The news swiftly spread through Mississippi’s small LGBTQ+ community, but the reasons for it haven’t been reported — until now.
Emails obtained through a public records request show UMMC’s decision to stop providing gender-affirming care to trans youth was a reaction to lawmakers who were seemingly angered that the public hospital was helping trans kids transition at all.
In late August, a legislative committee had begun formally probing for information, like how much state funding supported gender transition at the clinic, part of UMMC’s Center for Gender and Sexual Minority Health.
“While our one pager clearly outlines what the Center is and does and much of it is not objectionable, it seems that the overarching issue of concern is our providing hormone therapy and reassignment is most alarming to Members, coupled with their feeling caught off guard that we do this at all,” Kristy Simms wrote in a Sept. 12 email to Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor, and other executive leadership.
Simms, UMMC’s point person with elected officials at the state and federal level, had a proposal.
“It’s looking more and more like we have two options: Pause or shutter some/all of the work of the Center or be told to do so by the legislature in January.”
UMMC said it had no comment for this story. The emails do not show UMMC officials taking into account the impact that suddenly rescinding care would have on trans youth, but it is unclear what leadership discussed in person.
Among the handful of trans teenagers affected was 17-year-old Raymond Walker, who received puberty blockers and a testosterone prescription through the clinic. That care — which Walker had waited months to get starting in 2020 — was the only thing that relieved the intense gender dysphoria that came with female puberty. It was also a comforting environment. His mother, Katie Rives, recalled that the pediatric endocrinologist“treated Ray like everybody should treat Ray but not everybody does.”
Then one day in early November, Walker learned he could no longer go to TEAM Clinic when Rives picked him up from school. His dad had received a call that the clinic was no longer offering hormone therapy — but wasn’t told why. It was just a few days before Walker’s appointment and he was running out of testosterone.
“Because it was such a welcoming environment, I couldn’t believe that they had just dropped patients like that,” Walker said. “I was just completely blindsided.”
Walker said he felt like UMMC abandoned trans kids.
“I don’t know how they could have a clean conscience about this,” he said. “They stripped away health care from children. It was an important resource that they just took away.”
Though lawmakers had asked about TEAM Clinic in the past, its work hadn’t come under fire.
In fact, it was thriving. The pioneering clinic, founded in 2015, was booked the first Friday of every month. The staff — a roster of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, physicians and plastic surgeons — often saw more than 50 patients in a day, some of whom had traveled across state lines to be there.
Simms responded by creating a one-pager. She asked leadership if she should send lawmakers a press release that “‘humanizes’ the mission of the clinic and shows that it is doing much more than gender reassignment and hormone therapy.”
“When we transmit this to legislators, we will be sure to reiterate that state funds support our education mission ONLY,” she wrote on Sept. 9.
Three days later, Simms had an urgent update. She had received even more calls.
“We have been contacted by chairmen we rely on, friendly legislators and leadership staff,” she wrote on Sept. 12. “Today I got a call from Sam Mims who was very frustrated and indicated that he had been talking with the Speaker about this and he is not happy. I would characterize the conversation as hostile and slightly threatening.”
It’s unclear what Mims, chair of the House Public Health and Human Services Committee, said because he did not return inquiries from Mississippi Today. But things moved quickly after that. Simms suggested leadership discuss the future of TEAM Clinic, and Woodward emailed Brian Rutledge, her chief of staff, to coordinate. Rutledge then suggested Rodgers, the clinic’s co-founder, be included, noting he “will likely have some feelings.”
The emails don’t include details about a meeting, so it’s unclear what leadership discussed or how Rodgers’ perspective was factored into the decision. But later that week, Woodward sent Rodgers an email, urging him to focus on “what we can do for UMMC that is feasible and good.”
“I know this is not fully possible – but to the degree that you can do so – please don’t let the current challenges and issues get you down,” she wrote on Sept. 14. “There is nothing about the situation that is your fault. We likely will have to make some adjustments. And I can not predict what the legislature will do.”
Rodgers replied that night.
He asked Woodward about an idea she would “likely consider ‘high risk.’” He wrote that he had traveled the country giving successful talks on TEAM Clinic. Perhaps he could convince the Institutions of Higher Learning or lawmakers of the clinic’s value.
“I am confident that I won’t be able to win over everyone, but if my track record is any indicator, I will likely make some inroads into changing hearts and minds,” he wrote.
It was either that, Rodgers continued, or “sit back, hope this dies down, and begin dismantling TEAM clinic, which is likely the safer approach to take, but it sure doesn’t feel right to me.”
Woodward didn’t reply in writing, and it’s not clear if she ever OK’d Rodgers’ request. Rodgers didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“I am not intimidated by the politicians and the Board, and I would treat them with great respect throughout, just as I treat each and every family that I’ve ever worked with,” he assured Woodward. “I also wouldn’t make it political at all.”
In the following month, emails show that leadership monitored the growingcoverage about the clinic and expressed surprise that it had been targeted at all.
“For example, the recent bru ha ha created about our TEAM clinic (clinic for LGBTQ) – not expected,” Woodward wrote in an Oct. 13 email to Tom Duff, the IHL board president. “The clinic has been in place in some form since 2015 and in its current form since 2017 – who knew it would be a hot topic in September of 2022?”
A plan to end TEAM Clinic’s services for trans youth, createdby the co-directors of UMMC’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Minority Health, Alex Mills and Seth Kalin, was dated for the next day. It was printed and hand-delivered to leadership. Employees at the TEAM clinic had been told not to use email to communicate about the transition period.
According to a copy obtained by Mississippi Today, the goal was to move all trans youth patients away from the clinic by Nov. 4. Though the plan was specific to TEAM Clinic, it impacted services across UMMC. Minors who had gone to TEAM Clinic for counseling would be moved to another UMMC center. Those being seen for gender-affirming care were to be given a list of “LGBTQ+ friendly health services” — all outside of UMMC. The only “providers outside of Mississippi” were two websites: getplume.com and queermed.com.
If parents wanted information about a UMMC-specific provider, the plan says they were supposed to be told to call TEAM clinic.
“We need to ensure a safe and adequate transfer of care and on emergent bases may need to have patients seen during the November TEAM clinic,” Mills and Kalin wrote. “These potential cases can be reviewed by UMMC leadership should they wish.”
It didn’t always work out that way in practice — at least not for Walker, the teen whose testosterone prescription was running out. His dad left three calls for his pediatric endocrinologist, but ultimately, his parents found a new provider on their own. They ended up at Spectrum: The Other Clinic in Hattiesburg, an hour and a half drive from the Jackson metro area.
Stacie Pace, Spectrum’s co-owner, received a flurry of calls from other scared parents. A passionate advocate for trans health care, she was furious to hear of UMMC’s decision.
“It’s pitiful to me that the leadership in an organization as large as UMMC — that has its own medical school, that produces its own research — is being forced to bend to political whims,” she told Mississippi Today. “This is insanity. This is a page from Hitler’s book on how to erase people.”
The emails obtained by Mississippi Today do not show whether leadership appeared to consider the impact that ending gender-affirming care would have on trans youth patients, who have high rates of mental illness and suicidality.
That would have been crucial to consider, noted Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University. He said that neither the plan, nor the way it was implemented in Walker’s case, was sufficient, because patients need to be fully apprised of their options for care both in state and out.
“You can’t say, ‘We’re done, call this 1-800 number of this website, good luck.’ That’s not adequate,” he said. “You’ve gotta do much better than saying goodbye, here’s a website.”
Per Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure policies, physicians wanting to end a patient relationship should give written notice and agree to continue providing care for at least 30 days.
Kalin couldn’t be reached. Mills, who spoke to Mississippi Today on his behalf and not UMMC’s, said he was “demoralized” by the failure of health care leaders in Mississippi to stand up for trans kids.
He apologized for what happened.
“I don’t know how to summarize it other than just saying I’m sorry to the community, to these families,” he said. “If there was something that I could do, or if I could just say the right thing to the right person in power to defend the right to health care and life, I wish I knew what it was. And I wish I could have said it before September.”
Walker said he could see how UMMC leadership may have felt like they were picking “the lesser of two evils,” that perhaps if they stopped treating trans kids at the clinic, lawmakers might not pass House Bill 1125.
But he still felt there was “a better way to do it.”
“They could have stayed and fought for their patients and maybe fought the lawmakers or say hey we swore an oath as medical providers, we can’t just stop,” Walker said. “I want to know what they were thinking. They swore an oath as medical providers to do no harm. Every person who helped in making this decision has broken that oath.”
Read all the emails here and the transition plan here.
