Only in Mississippi would you find the last two college baseball national champions playing a regular season game that draws more than 16,000 in attendance for one game and more than 43,000 for a weekend series. The Clevelands discuss the weekend’s Egg Bowl baseball series at Starkville, USM’s weekend sweep of James Madison and more in college baseball. As a bonus, Tyler tells Rick about the football spring games, which Rick was all too happy to miss.
Double murderer James Williams III is set to walk out of a Mississippi prison May 16.
The state Parole Board has agreed to release Williams, who was convicted in 2005 of shooting to death his father, James Jr., and stepmother, Cindy Lassiter Mangum, after failing to poison them to death. He was 17 at the time of the killings in south Jackson.
“He murdered ‘em, threw ‘em in trash bags, put them in Rubbermaid trash cans and threw ‘em out like the trash,” said Magnum’s son, Zeno. “We are concerned not only for our personal safety, but also for the safety of anyone who may come in contact with this psychopath.”
Parole Board Chairman Jeffrey Belk said he was limited in what he could share, “but I can tell you all facts and information was considered and he received the majority number of votes required to be paroled.” He said the parole received no objection from the family or others.
Williams’ lawyer, Jake Howard, called his client “an exceptional candidate for parole. He has served over 20 years in jail and prison — more than half his life — for the tragic crimes he committed on December 28, 2002, when he was just 17 years old. Since then, he has worked tirelessly to better himself and atone for his crimes.”
Originally given two life without parole sentences, Williams, now 38, qualified for parole after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that juveniles should be eligible for parole.
Mangum’s sister, Barbara Rankin, said it may have been more than 20 years since the 2002 killings took place, but it seems like yesterday to her and her family.
She said Williams presumed by killing his father and stepmother he would inherit $850,000 in life insurance benefits. Their bodies were found a week later in the woods.
“My husband and I saw the bodies,” Rankin said. “The investigator said it was the most horrific thing he’d ever seen.”
Williams initially denied that he killed them before telling police that his father beat him and pulled a gun on him for missing work days earlier, according to court records.
Williams then got a gun from his room and shot his father, and when Mangum walked in the room and started screaming, he shot her, too, according to records.
At trial, Williams gave a different version of events. He testified that his father accidentally shot Mangum and that a friend shot his father.
A jury convicted Williams of murdering the couple, and the judge sentenced him to life without parole.
Mangum’s son, Zeno, said each time Williams has become eligible for parole, the family has flooded the Parole Board with letters and has appeared before the board.
Last year, the board assured her and her family that Williams would never be paroled, Rankin said.
On her birthday, April 15, she opened something from the mailbox. It was a letter from the Parole Board.
“We understand this decision may come as a disappointment to you,” Stephanie Walters, the board’s executive secretary, wrote. “However, the board believes that Offender James Williams is able to be a law-abiding citizen and that parole supervision would be more beneficial than further incarceration.”
Rankin said she couldn’t read past the first line before she was overcome with emotion.
Former Parole Board Chairman Steve Pickett said he and the Parole Board had reviewed Williams’ case “numerous times, and he was previously denied for parole multiple times.”
Pickett worked at the time in the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department. “Because it happened in Hinds County,” he said, “I was familiar with the case.”
Asked why parole was denied, Pickett replied that Williams gave varied stories to the board “about the circumstances that led to the deaths of his father and stepmother.” There was also “community opposition all along,” he said.
Belk told Mississippi Today that Mangum’s family “admittedly chose not to reply or schedule a meeting with the Parole Board.”
Zeno Mangum responded that he received no notification.
Belk disputed that claim, saying that the board and Victim Services of the Mississippi Department of Corrections “made numerous attempts months ahead of the hearing to notify all registered victims. They admittedly chose not to reply or schedule a meeting with the Parole Board.”
He added that Williams’ parole also received no opposition from the sheriff, district attorney or judge.
James Williams III, convicted of killing his father and stepmother, is seen in this photo from his graduation from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary with a Bachelor’s degree in Christian Ministry. Credit: Courtesy of MDOC
Howard pointed to Williams’ achievements as proof of change: a GED and a bachelor’s degree in Christian ministry as well as completing numerous other educational and rehabilitation programs.
“James has devoted himself to serving God and his fellow inmates,” Howard said. “He has been affiliated with MDOC’s faith-based programs since 2008, began tutoring students in 2012, became a field minister in 2018, and served as the Minister of Music for Parchman’s Koinonia Church from 2020 until 2022.”
At that time, Williams voluntarily agreed to transfer to the Marshall County Correctional Facility as a missionary and field minister, served as pastor for the Living Waters Baptist Church, taughta “Fundamentals of the Faith” class and provided counseling services to other inmates, Howard said.
Williams has received glowing letters of support for his release from chaplains, the seminary director and the Parole Board’s own psychologist as well as dozens of others, Howard said. Upon release, Williams hopes to serve as a chaplain at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility.
If Williams is truly changed, Rankin asked, why hasn’t he reached out to the family?
“He has never shown an ounce of remorse,” she said. “In 20 years, he has never reached out to Zeno and said he’s sorry, because he’s not sorry.”
Howard responded that Williams “is deeply remorseful, makes no excuses for his crimes, and understands why members of his father’s and stepmother’s families oppose his release on parole.”
He pointed to Williams’ letter to the Parole Board, where he wrote, “I will have to live the rest of my days knowing that I took the lives of two people I loved. I could give reasons for my state of mind at the time, but I know that nothing can ever justify taking lives. I also know that there is nothing I can do to lessen the pain of those I deprived of loved ones. I sincerely wish I could change the past, but I cannot.”
Howard said Williams is “truly a model of what our correctional system hopes to accomplish. I’m honored to call him a friend, as well as a client. If James Williams hasn’t earned the privilege of supervised release on parole, then I’m not sure who could.”
Rankin said it would be one thing to parole someone for a drug offense or a nonviolent offense, “but when you have somebody who threw away bodies, and we can’t even see the bodies at the funeral because it’s so bad. No family should have to go through that.”
She has never missed a single parole hearing, but one of her sisters had to recently enter the intensive care unit, she said. “I don’t know if she’s going to die up in that hospital.”
She hopes the Parole Board will rescind Williams’ parole, just as the board has done before.
She choked back the tears. “I’m devastated to say the least, because it’s like living the thing over and over,” she said. “I feel like I’ve failed Zeno.”
Staff members of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and other Southern states are unionizing.
Workers of the nonprofit in Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky joined under the name ACLU Southern Affiliates United and are requesting joint union recognition from their employer, according to a Tuesday news release.
The staff are looking to bargain jointly and urge leadership from each affiliate to commit to setting new standards for the Southern affiliates by negotiating a common agreement across the organizations.
McKenna Raney-Gray, staff attorney for the LGBTQ Justice Project at the ACLU of Mississippi, said she wants to unionize to create more stability.
“I am not interested in doing this because this is the worst job I’ve ever had. I am interested in doing this because it’s the best job I’ve ever had,” she said in an interview before the announcement. “If people have a say in what they’re working conditions are, they’re more likely to put down roots and stay.”
The workers organized with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents news, information and nonprofit employees, and is a local chapter of The NewsGuild.
The announcement comes a week after staff from the ACLU of D.C. requested union recognition with the news guild.
Other Southern affiliates including Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia have formed unions, and in recent years, ACLU national staff and other affiliates have organized, according to the news release.
Jaclyn Maffetore, member of the ACLU-NC union, said organizing has helped establish policies that make work sustainable and align with their values, which helps support staff
as they work to protect and advance civil rights.
Yvonne Slosarski, a member of ACLU-D.C. Staff United, said they are excited to join the growing labor movement with the Southern affiliate staff.
“Unions are a great way for ACLU staff and management to embody our commitment to civil rights and liberties by ensuring that the workers who are most impacted by the organizations’ policies can shape our working conditions,” she said in a statement.
The unsolicited email arrived in Emily Goldsmith’s inbox shortly before 6 p.m. on April 12 with a subject line that was short and to-the-point: “provost protest.”
Goldsmith, a graduate student at the University of Southern Mississippi, had recently been critical in the student newspaper about a growing controversy on campus: One of the finalists for provost — an administrator and finance professor named Lance Nail — had a checkered past at a former employer, Texas Tech University. A Title IX investigation found Nail reportedly mishandled a report of sexual misconduct and “failed in his responsibility as the Dean of the College.”
The news touched a nerve on campus where students had called on the university to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual assault a year and a half ago. More than 750 students, faculty and alumni signed a petition protesting Nail’s possible hiring. Goldsmith, whose pronouns are they/them, just so happened to be the only student quoted in the student newspaper. Still, they knew they were speaking for many when they said that hiring Nail “would communicate that all the university’s claims about diversity, inclusion, and equity were meaningless platitudes.” And, they began helping to plan a protest.
Days later, the email came through.
“You do not know me but my name is Chuck Scianna and I am the guy that Scianna Hall is named after,” it began.
Chuck Scianna, a USM alumnus and founder of an oil drilling equipment company, addresses the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees on Oct. 3, 2022. Credit: Sean Smith/SM2
Goldsmith knew of Scianna. The 93,000-square-foot building that bears his name in gleaming gold font faces U.S. Highway 49, a major thoroughfare in Hattiesburg. Scianna, an alumnus and co-founder of a major distributor of oil pipeline products, also happens to be one of USM’s largest individual donors along with his wife, Rita, having given more than $10 million. He is also “lifelong friends” with USM’s new president, Joe Paul.
But Goldsmith didn’t know why Scianna cared about their protest.
In the email obtained by Mississippi Today, Scianna wrote that he knew Goldsmith was planning to protest but asked them to consider that USM had hired a search firm, created a search committee and instituted a “process” to vet the candidates for provost and still, Nail had become a finalist.
“If you are going to protest the interviewing of Dr. Nail, should you not protest Dr. Paul and the search committee, the search firm and everyone else involved in the selection process,” Scianna wrote. “Should we just turn the university over to you and your group to hire the provost and run the university?”
In his 48 years of business, Scianna wrote, he had been accused of “many things that were not even close to the truth.” He suggested there was more behind the news articles about Nail, who he noted he had worked with “in the past.”
“I am not advocating that you should not have a voice, but it should be peaceful and armed with the facts, not just a google search,” he wrote, adding “I believe that if you have a conversation with him before you rely only on a google search you might have a different opinion.”
“You are completing a PhD,” he concluded. “Don’t you have to have an open mind to get the best out of an education? Does your program allow you to get all of your research facts from one source? I am only asking that you go into this with an unbiased opinion of Dr. Nail and let the process pick the best candidate.”
Goldsmith felt shaken and intimidated by Scianna’s email.
“I do think it’s troublesome to discount the students who are saying they have feelings about this,” Goldsmith said. “This is their campus. Even if we’re going to say ‘majority rules,’ nobody has made a petition to say that we should hire Lance Nail, so it’s not like there’s this loud opposite voice.”
Goldsmith didn’t reply to Scianna and forwarded the email to their dissertation advisor — their immediate superior — who then sent it up the chain. Scianna’s email soon started circulating among faculty before it ultimately made its way to Chris Winstead, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Troubled by the message, Winstead texted and called Paul about it, according to another email shared with Mississippi Today.
“I do think that there is a power dynamic at play,” Goldsmith said. “Perhaps it would not have been unusual if I had had prior overlap (with Scianna) or conversations or a personal connection or even perhaps if I was in the College of Business.”
Scianna told Mississippi Today that he was just trying to offer Goldsmith some advice — not telling them not to protest. “Read the email. It’s very clear. There’s no threat,” he said.
“The higher up you get in any organization, you’re more susceptible to people finding fault with what you do, finding fault with your decisions and then the narrative gets misconstrued — a lot of times by the media, to be honest, because they don’t go out and get all the facts or look at both sides,” he said.
The controversy started earlier this month after USM announced that Nail was one of four finalists for provost, the university’s chief academic officer. Students at USM promptly dug into his history — and had concerns about what they found.
Nail became dean of Texas Tech’s business college in 2012, after spending four years at USM’s College of Business. In 2015, Nail let go of a business school professor, reportedly a friend of his, who had been accused of sexual misconduct, according to KCBD. But the Title IX investigation, which Nail said had “inaccuracies,” found that he still invited the former business professor to a university trip to Chile, where the professor harassed a female student.
Later that year, Nail resigned from Texas Tech after the university determined he had broken its grading policies.
Nail, who was visiting the USM Gulf Park campus on Monday, didn’t return an inquiry from Mississippi Today before press time. In a comment to SM2, the student newspaper, Nail wrote that “the many Southern Miss colleagues I worked with” could attest to his character, particularly his former students and “those who served on the Business Advisory Council who supported my mission to graduate ethical business leaders from Southern Miss.”
Scianna told Mississippi Today that he is one of those colleagues who served on USM’s Business Advisory Council, which advises the dean of the business college. He said he worked closely with Nail, reviewing the college’s curriculum to see how it “would be beneficial to my company” and recruiting students for internships or non-profit projects that he declined to share more details about.
As dean, Nail had a key handin stewarding the campaign to build the business school. He lists the project as one of his significant professional accomplishments on the first page of his resume.
“He didn’t just walk in one day and say ‘Will you write a check?’” Scianna said.
After Nail left USM, Scianna said the two stayed “acquaintances.” He said he didn’t recommend Nail for the position or express a preference for Nail to anyone on the search committee.
“I’m not impartial,” he said. “I want the very best candidate, but I want the process to work out. My email to Emily has nothing to do with Lance Nail. It’s with the way that it’s being approached. … Don’t make your decision based on Google searches.”
Scianna has served on search committees for key hirings at USM before, most recently last year when he was on the committee convened by the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees to select the university’s next president. When it comes to the hiring process, he said that unlike the majority of students, faculty and alumni, the search committee has access “to all the facts.”
“Shouldn’t their decision weigh more?” he said. “I mean, we don’t like chocolate ice cream. Let’s have a protest. Should we ban chocolate ice cream? Should we have the facts? And that’s all I’m saying.”
He said he wasn’t sure what a protest — no matter how large — could accomplish when the university ultimately makes a hiring decision based on the help of the search committee and the headhunting firm.
“What if a thousand people got together and said your newspaper was dishonest, didn’t report the truth?” he said. “Should there be an investigation? You know, I don’t know. That’s, that’s, I’m just not smart enough, I guess, to figure that out.”
USM’s provost 13-person search committee does include two student voices — the SGA presidents of the Hattiesburg and Gulf Park campuses — but Goldsmith said the process should be more transparent so that all students can be heard. They suggested the university share the steps that were taken to vet Nail before he became a finalist.
And while they don’t plan to ask Nail any questions when he visits campus Tuesday, they will attend the protest they helped organize in USM’s designated free speech zone in the middle of campus.
“I do think generally that undergrad and graduate students should be made more aware of administrative hiring,” they said. “There isn’t always a ton of transparency in higher education. Sometimes students don’t even know to look at this stuff … but I have learned through this process that many undergrad students do care. They’re not thoughtless, they’re not uninvolved. They are thinking, they are thoughtful, they are involved.”
Scianna, who is back in his office in Waller, Texas, after visiting Hattiesburg this weekend, doesn’t plan to see the protest for himself because his philanthropy shows his dedication to USM.
“I don’t have to be part of this,” he said. “They can do what they want to do. I mean, talk, beat your drum, do whatever. But let your actions speak for yourself.”
Lieutenant governor candidate Chris McDaniel has reported returning legally questionable large donations from a Virginia dark-money nonprofit, and shutting down his PAC through which the donations flowed to his campaign.
McDaniel’s Hold the Line PAC has reported it returned $460,000 to the American Exceptionalism Institute nonprofit corporation and closed out the PAC. This came days after McDaniel’s campaign account returned $465,000 to Hold the Line.
McDaniel’s Hold the Line PAC campaign finance public filings and subsequent explanations and amended reports have been confounding. Hold the Line initially failed to list the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars and its reports have had amounts and dates that don’t add up. For instance, Hold the Line reported having raised hundreds of thousands of dollars the year before McDaniel legally registered it with the secretary of state’s office, and failed to list the source of that money as required by law.
McDaniel’s PAC was the largest contributor to his lieutenant governor campaign, donating $465,000 of the $710,000 his campaign reported raising last year.
Oddly, in some of its latest filings, Hold the Line reported it returned $460,000 to American Exceptionalism Institute on the same day it received the second of two donations of $237,500 from AEI, in February. But McDaniel’s campaign had reported it received a total of $465,000 from Hold the Line in January, before the PAC would have had that much money — primarily coming from AEI — per its own reports.
When questioned about this, McDaniel’s camp declined comment, but filed an amended report changing the date of the second donation to mid-January. Even with multiple amended reports, it appears McDaniel’s PAC received $475,000 from AEI but returned only $460,000 to the nonprofit corporation.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s campaign has a complaint pending with the attorney general’s office that includes claims that McDaniel’s PAC and campaign violated Mississippi law, which prohibits a corporation from donating more than $1,000 in a single year to a candidate or PAC and requires listing of sources of donations.
Hosemann campaign adviser Casey Phillips in a statement said: “Chris McDaniel’s campaign is based on a lie, staffed with Democrat operatives, and funded with illegal money. Election integrity includes campaign finance transparency. McDaniel would know that if he bothered to show up to vote when the Senate passed the election security package. Instead, he is blatantly disregarding Mississippi’s election laws.”
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office, asked for comment on Hosemann’s campaign finance complaint, said only, “We are reviewing it.”
A Mississippi Today article in February pointed out McDaniel’s financial reports for his campaign and PAC left voters in the dark about the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars and raised questions about whether donations violated state law.
McDaniel, a four-term state senator, has vocally called for stricter campaign finance laws and more transparency in the sources of campaign money. But when questioned about his campaign and PAC finances, he said he knows scant details about them, has deferred questions to staffers and chalked up any discrepancies to “clerical errors.”
McDaniel initially deferred questions to the Rev. Dan Carr, a pastor and political consultant from Gulfport listed as treasurer of the Hold the Line PAC. Carr, mostly by text messages, gave a series of confusing and conflicting statements that never explained what the clerical errors were, or the source of the large amount of unaccounted for donations to Hold the Line.
McDaniel’s campaign last month said that U.S. Supreme Court rulings on federal campaign finance issues nullify Mississippi’s law banning corporate contributions over $1,000. But a spokeswoman said McDaniel’s campaign and PAC would be returning American Exceptionalism Institute donations “to avoid a protracted legal fight with the establishment.”
Hosemann filed his campaign finance complaint against McDaniel last month with the secretary of state’s office. Records show the secretary of state’s office, citing its lack of investigative and prosecutorial authority, forwarded the complaint to the criminal investigations division of the attorney general’s office.
An intentional violation of the campaign finance disclosure law is a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of $3,000, six months imprisonment, or both. But in Mississippi, campaign finance laws are seldom enforced, and alleged violations seldom investigated or prosecuted.
Hosemann, former secretary of state, is seeking a second and final term as lieutenant governor overseeing the state Senate. McDaniel is a four-term state senator who has run twice unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate.
The life and work of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer is being commemorated with a historical marker to be unveiled Saturday in Kilmichael, her husband’s hometown.
The ceremony will be at 11 a.m. at 311 N. Depot Ave. in the heart of downtown Kilmichael in Montgomery County. Leslie Burl McLemore, who worked alongside Hamer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, is the guest speaker.
Fannie Lou Hamer often said she was born in Montgomery County, but testified in federal court in 1963 that she was born in Tomnolen in Webster County, which borders Montgomery County.
Chris and Wiley Snell came up with the idea and funding for the historical marker for Fannie Lou Hamer in Kilmichael, Miss. Credit: Courtesy of Chris Snell
Montgomery County native Chris Snell and her husband, Wiley, a retired high school administrator from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, raised the funding and worked with Jim Woodrick and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for two years in their effort to preserve the Hamers’ legacy with the marker.
“This marker is a reminder that we are in this space because Fannie Lou Hamer fought and gave her life so that future generations can continue their thrust for excellence by lifting up their voices as she did,” Chris Snell said in a news release announcing the unveiling.
Additional funding for the event was provided by the Kappas of Rust College and the Zetas as part of their outreach activities.
Hamer’s last surviving child, Jacqueline Hamer Flakes had been asked to be the guest speaker, but declined due to failing health. She died on March 27.
Leslie B. McLemore, veteran of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement at his home in Walls, Miss. Credit: Ashley F. G. Norwood, Mississippi Today
“We don’t concentrate enough on how brilliant Fannie Lou Hamer was and her ability to adapt to her new environment — and her new environment was in the civil rights movement,” McLemore said in the news release.
She went from from being a timekeeper on the Marlow Plantation in Sunflower County to becoming SNCC’s chief fundraiser, noted McLemore, professor emeritus of political science at Jackson State University, was the founding director of the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy at JSU in 1997.
This will be the second marker in Montgomery County that acknowledges Hamer’s efforts for racial equity. The first was unveiled on June 9, 2022, in Winona at the site of the former jail where Hamer and several other activists were beaten in June 1963. A third marker, as part of the Mississippi Civil Rights Trail, will be unveiled on June 9, 2023, at the site of Staley’s Café/Trailways Depot where Hamer and the others were arrested prior to the jailhouse beating.
Two weeks after being rejected by the Senate to serve as state superintendent, Robert Taylor defended his record of improving schools and said his nomination was manipulated into a political issue by Sen. Chris McDaniel as a part of his campaign for lieutenant governor.
Robert Taylor Credit: Mississippi Department of Education
Taylor lost out on the job to lead Mississippi’s public schools when the Senate rejected his nomination last month. Had he been confirmed, he would have been the second Black person to serve as state superintendent. Those who opposed his nomination took issue with his track record turning around schools, his status as an outsider, and the selection process itself. Immediately after the nomination failed, Senate Democrats said it was because of race.
“The person that we’re talking about, Dr. Taylor, is a native son,” Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, said in a press conference after the vote. “He’s a Mississippian, who went to North Carolina and worked in their system, that system rated is higher than Mississippi, and he came home to serve. He’s a great and impressive son of Mississippi, and we rejected him for no reason other than the fact that God made him Black.”
Taylor was most recently a deputy state superintendent for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction before moving back to Mississippi to begin his tenure as state superintendent in January. A native of Laurel, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and his masters and doctorate in North Carolina.
Earlier in the confirmation process, questions were raised about Taylor writing for a Black student publication at USM, The Unheard Word, while he was in college. In an interview he gave in 2020 when the university celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Unheard Word, he said he wrote for the publication because it “… in my opinion, recognized that The University of Southern Mississippi was in the most racist state in the Union … ” In an interview with Mississippi Today, Taylor said he felt this way in college and his worldview has since been broadened by living in other places.
Sen. Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg, chaired the education nominations subcommittee and said Taylor’s writing for the publication was not something he remembered people talking about a lot.
“Really I don’t think that was a huge part of what happened, but you’d have to ask other senators who voted no,” Johnson said.
Taylor said his conversations with senators focused on education issues, but that when his involvement with The Unheard Word came up, he was straightforward with them and said it didn’t seem to be a concern for people.
“I like to think (race) didn’t play a role, but I do believe that politics had everything to do with it,” Taylor said.
McDaniel, the Republican senator from Ellisville, made comments on Facebook before and after the confirmation vote calling Taylor a supporter of critical race theory, affirmative action, and the removal of historical monuments, among other things.
“(Taylor) has all the makings of someone who has sold out to this woke culture,” McDaniel said on Facebook after the vote. “The step the Senate made today was to in some respects push back against the woke culture, to push back against liberalism in the institutions.”
Taylor rejected these claims and said he’s never spoken publicly on any of these issues.
“The only thing a person could say about Robert Taylor is that he is a registered Democrat in the state of North Carolina,” Taylor said. “That is it.”
Taylor said McDaniel wanted to use his nomination as a part of his campaign for lieutenant governor, to put pressure on senators with primary opponents who had previously told Taylor they would support him and later changed their votes.
“I represent the conservatives in the state of Mississippi,” McDaniel told Mississippi Today. “I wasn’t attempting to put pressure on anyone in a primary race. I was doing the same thing I’ve done for the past 16 years, and that’s to fight for my conservative values and principles the best way I know how.”
Taylor reiterated that while he would like to believe he was not rejected because he is Black, the accusations made against him make it look that way.
“Any senator that voted no, I would like to think it was not because I am Black, but they need to understand what the appearance looks like to people in the field,” he said. “When I am accosted about something I said thirty-five years ago, a view of why I did something thirty-five years ago, and all these things are said about me to make it appear as though I’m a particular type of person, people are going to look at that and believe that it’s race-based. If that’s the case or not, you’d have to ask those individual senators.”
Senators also expressed frustration with the hiring process, saying that the state Board of Education was not transparent, and that Taylor had not worked as an educator in Mississippi. Individuals familiar with the confirmation process said many local superintendents asked the state Board of Education to select a Mississippi educator and were frustrated by the pick.
A review of the hiring process by the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) found that of the 26 candidates who applied for the position, nine were employed in Mississippi and 17 were employed in another state. A source close to the hiring process said that of the four finalists, three were working in Mississippi.
Taylor, who prior to this appointment worked in North Carolina schools since 1992, said he did not get the impression that local superintendents wanted someone different when he met them.
“What I saw was superintendents looking forward to working with someone who had actually done the work that they had done,” he said. “You’re always going to have those that look for something different, and I absolutely respect that, but they were very gracious with me when I met with superintendents.”
Carey Wright, the previous state superintendent, had worked in district-level leadership positions but never served as a local superintendent before becoming the leader of Mississippi’s public education system.
Concerns were also raised about whether the district Taylor led for 10 years improved enough under his tenure. Some senators said they were dissatisfied with his record.
Taylor led the Bladen County School District from 2011 to 2021, but data is only available for some of those years on the North Carolina School Report Cards website. Between 2015 and 2019, the number of C-rated schools in the district rose from four to seven. D-rated schools fell from eight to three between 2015 and 2018, before jumping back up to six in 2019. The graduation rate for that period also rose from 77.3% to 91.6%, surpassing the state average during that period.
Taylor said the North Carolina accountability model, or the system that gives out letter grades, is significantly different from the system in Mississippi. North Carolina’s system is much more reliant on proficiency, or how many students hit a certain benchmark, he said, while Mississippi’s puts more weight in how much districts grow students from one year to the next.
“I’m very proud of the track record that I had, we were never a failing district,” Taylor said. “That accountability system is very different than what you see in Mississippi and a person would need to look at that in context.”
Taylor had publicly discussed his goal of providing direct support to low-performing districts and had visited all but one of them in his first two months on the job to learn about their needs. He said he had hoped to hire coaches for administrators and create regional support teams that would work with those districts in a variety of areas, a method he said had been successful in North Carolina.
“I’ve seen a state superintendent visit my district once in my 15 years in the classroom, and that was three weeks ago when Dr. Taylor came to Rosedale,” Shana Bolden, a teacher in the West Bolivar School District, said in a Teach Plus Mississippi press release. “I think the search should include public input before a decision is made. There should also be a way for teachers to have a voice in the process, since whoever is hired directly impacts us and our students.”
In terms of next steps, Taylor is currently looking for opportunities that would be a good fit for him, both in Mississippi and elsewhere.
“I certainly want to work in a place where someone welcomes my ability to work with an educational system and state for improvement,” he said. “There’s never a place I’ve been that didn’t improve. I’ve never worked in a place that was replete with resources that made the work easy. My work has always been uphill in challenging situations and I know that’s where I’m needed.”
He added his rejection will likely make this position harder for the state Board of Education to fill moving forward and that he does not expect any candidate will be willing to move here before being confirmed by the Legislature.
“(Senators) have to recognize the position they’ve put the (Mississippi Department of Education) in and the state of Mississippi because the rest of the nation has looked at what happened, and I’ve had people from all over the country reach out and share how horrible they thought this was,” he said. “It puts a stain on the state.”
