Jackson, Mississippi’s own Wilson Furr recently became one of the 30 newest members of the PGA Tour with his play over the last two months on the Korn Ferry Tour. Furr joins the podcast to discuss what it feels like when a life-long dream comes true. The Cleveland boys also discuss the college football season and pivotal matchups this Saturday for Ole Miss and Mississippi State.
Chuck Berry, sometimes called “The Father of Rock & Roll,” was born in St. Louis.
He traded factory work for music, and his big break came in 1955 when he met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. Berry wound up recording “Maybellene,” which reached #1 on Billboard’s Rhythm and Blues Chart and sold more than 1 million copies. He went on to record “Johnny B. Goode,” “Roll Over Beethoven!” and “Rock and Roll Music,” which influenced the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and countless others.
Bob Dylan called Berry “the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll,” and John Lennon declared, “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’”
In 1986, Berry became the first inductee into the Rock & Rock Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #5 among the “100 Greatest Artists of All Time,” and in 2000, the Kennedy Center honored him. Before the Voyager departed earth for deep space, NASA officials included recordings of music from around the world, including Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and “Johnny B. Goode.”
Welcome to The Homestretch, a daily blog featuring the most comprehensive coverage of the 2023 Mississippi governor’s race. This page, curated by the Mississippi Today politics team, will feature the biggest storylines of the 2023 governor’s race at 7 a.m. every day between now and the Nov. 7 election.
From the back of a press gaggle over the weekend, a reporter raised his voice to ask Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor, a question.
“I don’t know if I hear that much about you in New York and D.C.,” the reporter said. “I imagine some of those folks are supporting your campaign, though, behind the scenes. Do you have a message for Democrats who don’t live in Mississippi about why this is an important race?”
Presley, whose hometown of Nettleton might as well be on another planet from those east coast cities, must have wanted to laugh. He’s been criss-crossing Mississippi the past few months, trying to convince everyday voters who hate national politicians with a deep, burning passion to vote for him in November. And he’s faced false but repeated criticism for months from Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for being tight with national Democrats — bogeymen from big cities who many Mississippians, including most Democrats, just don’t like.
Presley replied, graciously: “My message is for Republicans, Democrats and independents in Mississippi. I’m not worried about a message for the nation.”
National political journalists, the peculiar creatures that they are, have breached the Mississippi state line, having realized recently that we have a race worth covering. You average voters can run, but you cannot hide. They’re out for blood, and they’ll stop at nothing to tell their coastal audiences what’s what in our fine state. Their aim? To guess national political trends and land juicy scoops.
If you want to survive their attack, just point them to your favorite diner. They might not eat the food, but they’ll definitely bother the clientele and claim they got a real sense of place. (Bonus points if you provide them with the folksiest, Mississippi-est quote you can muster … consider practicing by reading some Faulkner.)
Now this jest isn’t descriptive of all national reporters, but there are some legendarily terrible offenders — and usually several of them each Mississippi cycle. They are nosy, they are obsessive, and they are annoying. They arrive with preconceived notions about this state and its people, and they refuse to change their minds or their coverage no matter what they hear from people on the ground.
So why care about national reporters covering Mississippi? Both spectacle and political money — both of which will be imminently affecting Mississippians’ lives.
The stories these reporters write typically create a snowball effect within the national media and political ecosystem: Cable news producers read the Mississippi stories written by the national papers. Anchors pontificate about a race and a place they don’t know. Fanatical viewers and, yes, even political insiders who can’t peel their attention away from Fox News or MSNBC start to sense a trend, and the campaign checks begin to flow. That money finds its way onto TV screens and billboards and social media ads until you cannot go more than 20 minutes without hearing about how great one candidate is and how awful the other is.
If you think you’re tired of the ads right now, just wait a few days. Sources close to both campaigns say they have become inundated with out-of-state press requests, and that’s certain to continue through election day. We won’t even talk about what happens in case of a runoff.
One other thing to watch here: Sometimes, the out-of-town reporters do land a big scoop that can change the course of a race (see: 2017 U.S. Senate race in Alabama). Will one of these intrepid national reporters have an impact on this 2023 governor’s race? We’ll find out soon.
1) Tate Reeves campaign yesterday in the Mississippi Delta, making stops in Yazoo City, Tchula and Hollandale. The Delta is an area of the state where fewer and fewer Republicans live. Four years ago, Reeves picked up no more than 3,500 votes in any Delta county (with the exception of DeSoto County, which is technically the Delta but not like the other counties). A tipster shared with Mississippi Today that Reeves attended a fundraiser Tuesday night at the Greenville home of Johnny McRight, a campaign donor who Reeves reappointed to the Mississippi Community College Board in 2021.
2) Brandon Presley, meanwhile, announced a Wednesday campaign stop in Perry County. Several months ago, the Democrat vowed to visit all 82 Mississippi counties. Political observers struggle to remember a gubernatorial candidate in recent history who achieved that feat. Will Presley fulfill that promise by Nov. 7?
3) Presley continues to hammer Reeves over the state’s TANF scandal, in which at least $77 million was misspent by state officials and their network of appointees and friends. The Democrat’s “war on corruption” rages on.
The 15-year-old had just played in the September 2022 rivalry football game between South Jones and Northeast Jones high schools in Ellisville, and he was ready to go home.
After he went with a group to retrieve a phone charger from a friend’s car near the other team’s area, the vice principal asked what they were doing. As they headed to the locker room, security guards confronted the group and the teen cursed and continued to walk.
He didn’t expect the officers to follow him and to see them and Jones County Sheriff Joe Berlin in the locker room calling out his jersey number. When he and the officers found the teen, Berlin began to yell at him repeatedly calling him “homie.” What the student athlete did outside moments earlier was seen as talking back, and the sheriff would not stand for it.
After the teen told the sheriff to get out of his face, the sheriff slammed him into a locker, according to a federal lawsuit documenting the alleged use of force against the student athlete and other constitutional violations.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” the teen, who is identified in the lawsuit as CJW, told Mississippi Today.
“But you took it too far,” he said of the sheriff’s actions.
Cyntrelle Woodard-Wells filed the lawsuit Sept. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on her son’s behalf against the sheriff, 10 or more unnamed officers who were in the locker room and Jones County.
County and sheriff’s department representatives referred comment to Brookhaven Attorney Will Allen, who is representing the defendants in the lawsuit. Allen did not respond to a request for comment. The defendants will have an opportunity to answer the lawsuit complaint in court filings.
Woodard-Wells said the Lord’s angels were with her son that night and kept him safe. She’s heard about too many instances of police brutality across the country that have led to the death or injury of young Black men.
She was reminded of that reality about two weeks after her son’s encounter with the sheriff. On Oct. 6, 2022, 15-year-old Jaheim McMillan was shot by a Gulfport police officer and died days later in the hospital. In February, a grand jury cleared the officer.
Broken trust
CJW, who is now 16, said before the incident with Sheriff Berlin, he never had a problem with law enforcement and that his mother taught him and his siblings to look to the police for help or protection. He said the experience left him uncomfortable and less trusting.
The complaint alleges violations of the teen’s Fourth Amendment rights, which protects citizens from excessive force by law enforcement and unlawful seizure, and his First Amendment right of protected speech.
The lawsuit demands a jury trial, punitive damages of at least $500,000, compensatory damages of at least $75,000 and attorney and legal fees.
Hattiesburg attorney Matthew Lawrence, who is representing Woodard-Wells and her son, said the incident is not something a law enforcement officer should ever be involved in, especially because the teen didn’t do anything wrong or illegal.
The lawsuit alleges Berlin verbally and physically abused CJW as an act of retaliation because he “mouthed off” to sheriff’s deputies while on his way back to the locker room.
“Unhappy with the reports that a teenage African-American had disrespected law enforcement and the Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Joe Barlin entered the South Jones High School’s football locker room to confront C.J.W. and let him know he could not disrespect his department,” according to the amended lawsuit complaint.
The lawsuit alleges that the Jones County Sheriff’s Department has a culture and pattern of retaliating against people who use their protected speech rights.
Other lawsuits in federal court filed this year by Lawrence against Berlin and the sheriff’s office allege similar behavior, such as when the sheriff slammed a panhandler up against a car in Laurel on New Year’s Day, according to court documents.
In January, deputies tried to search a Laurel home and ordered one of the residents out of his car and threw him on the ground and searched and arrested him without cause, according to court records.
School takes disciplinary action
CJW and his mother thought everything was over after the football game, but it wasn’t.
On Monday at school, CJW said he was called to the principal’s office and asked to write a statement and that he would be sent home. The teen said it felt like the school turned on him and assumed he was in the wrong.
By Wednesday, he was suspended five days for cursing and being out of area after the game, according to his mother.
Then CJW was expelled and given the option to go to alternative school, according to their attorney.
Then in early October, Woodard-Wells and her son attended a Jones County School Board hearing about the expulsion and alternative school. She said they weren’t given much opportunity for her son to provide his perspective of what happened.
At the beginning of this year, the family moved and the children started school in a nearby county in south Mississippi.
Superintendent B.R. Jones and School Board Chair Jerry Terry Jr.did not respond to a request for comment.
Five day’s suspension and placement in alternative school are allowable punishments for cursing and disrupting school events, according to the Jones County middle/high school student handbook. The handbook includes a disciplinary ladder with seven steps of consequences and it lists various behaviors that will refer a student to the principal’s office.
The five days’ suspension and 45 days of alternative school would have placed CJW between steps six and seven of the disciplinary ladder – the top end for school discipline and for behaviors such as disrespect and campus disruption, according to the handbook.
‘It’s an overreach of school authority’
Charles Bell, an assistant professor in the criminal justice department at Illinois State University, studies school suspension and how punishment disproportionately affects Black students.
He said what happened to CJW is in line with the type of punishment that has happened in Southern schools.
“It’s an overreach of school authority,” Bell said about suspensions for in- and out-of-school behavior. “It’s indicative of over-policing of students and it really creates an environment where students feel unsafe.”
Suspension is harmful because it takes students out of the classroom and can make it difficult for them to catch up on assignments, leading some to drop out of school, Bell said. He said suspensions can also affect parents who work full time and might risk employment to pick up their child from school after a suspension.
When looking at what happened to CJW, Bell said it was problematic that the school district’s handbook mentions students’ rights and responsibilities, but doesn’t define what their rights are.
In Jones County, students suspended for more than 10 days or expelled have a right to due process via a hearing, right to have legal counsel and present evidence and right to cross examine any witnesses. Due process is mentioned in the district’s policy but not the handbook.
Bell said suspension is often the way that students are pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline. Research shows that students who are disciplined in school are at a higher risk of entering the juvenile justice system and later the adult criminal justice system.
One of Bell’s research focuses is on students and families who leave the school district after facing challenges from school administration. Especially for Black parents, they don’t always know if the next district will be worse for their children because nationally there is a lack of transparency in school disciplinary data, including suspension rates, he said.
Woodard-Wells said one of the driving forces to move her children to a new district was to keep them safe. Thankfully, they have adjusted well, she said.
CJW joined his new school’s football team and started playing a new position. He said the team is helping him become a better athlete, and he participated in other sports after football season.
“It’s a way better environment,” he said about his new school, team and city. “It’s better for me and my brothers and sister.”
Updated 10/18/23: This story has been updated with more details about what led to CJW’s disciplinary issues, encounter with the sheriff and security officers and the actions taken by the Jones County School District.
Every region in Mississippi ranked higher in infant mortality than the national average of 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the state’s 2021 Mississippi Infant Mortality Report released last week.
This report comes one month after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that Mississippi’s infant mortality rate reached a five-year high while the national rate remained relatively stable from 2020 to 2021. That report also showed that the state continues to lead the nation in babies who die before their first birthday.
In 2021, 327 Mississippi babies died before the age of one, according to the state’s report.
The leading causes of infant death in Mississippi are prematurity, low birthweight, birth defects and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Babies whose deaths were caused by SIDS also reached a 10-year high in Mississippi in 2021, the report said.
“Mississippi also has the highest premature birth rate in the nation, and this drives our high infant mortality rate,” said Dr. Anita Henderson, a pediatrician and past president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “We encourage all moms to get in to see their OBs in their first trimester for optimal prenatal care.”
While deliveries of babies with very low birthweight (defined as less than 3.3 pounds) decreased from 2020 to 2021, most infant deaths in the state still occurred in infants born with very low birthweight, according to the report. The statistic is more dire for Black babies, who saw three times as many deaths due to prematurity and very low birthweight than their white counterparts in 2021.
Henderson said lack of access to health care in Mississippi is contributing to high rates of prematurity and infant mortality.
“Presumptive eligibility for moms on Medicaid would facilitate timely access to prenatal care for that critical, first trimester OB visit. Over half of the counties in Mississippi do not have an OB or a delivering hospital,” she said.
Pregnancy presumptive eligibility, which Mississippi does not have, allows women to receive care during pregnancy, even if they’re not on Medicaid. Providers can enroll their pregnant patients and start billing Medicaid, which reimburses them without delays or questions.
The new report also detailed each county's average infant mortality rate over a 10-year period, showing that only two counties – Rankin and Smith – met the national recommendation of no more than five infant deaths per 1,000 live births. The other 80 counties were above that recommendation, with 31 counties seeing at least twice the recommended rate.
The three counties with the highest 10-year averages were rural counties in the Delta. Issaquena County had the highest rate in the state at 18.7 infant deaths per 1,000 births. Humphreys and Quitman counties were the other two, with rates of 16.9 and 15.8, respectively.
“We’re losing too many babies in transfer,” Edney recently said to a legislative committee. The proposed system would evacuate high-risk pregnant women in rural areas to either Children’s of Mississippi in Jackson or out of state.
When asked for updates about how the system of care would work, including what states Mississippi would model its system on, officials with the Mississippi Department of Health did not respond by the time of publication.
Edney was also not available to comment on the latest report, though he said in September the numbers are “extremely concerning.”
Infant morbidity, which the report defines as “any condition that adversely impacts the ability of newborns to survive and thrive,” highlights numerous racial and socioeconomic disparities.
Twice as many Black women as white women in Mississippi are diagnosed with preexisting hypertension, one of the leading causes of infant and maternal morbidity and mortality.
The report referenced a study from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that found that pregnant women on Medicaid have an increased risk of complications and poor fetal outcomes when compared to women on private insurance. That is significant in Mississippi, where, according to the report, “an estimated 22,633 deliveries are from women who have Medicaid insurance” – nearly two-thirds of the 35,156 live births that occurred in the state in 2021.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Jackson State University alumnus, said on Monday the proliferation of gun ownership and its resulting violence in America contributed to the fatal shooting of a student over the weekend at an on-campus apartment complex.
“I’m not certain that in the greatest democracy, in America, that we just ought to walk around with guns on our hip just because some folks said we can do it,” Thompson told reporters in Jackson on Monday. “In a civilized society, I’m convinced we can do better.”
The shooting that killed Jaylen Burns, a senior industrial technology major from Chicago, prompted the university to cancel classes Monday and is still under investigation. It came on the tailend of a homecoming weekend where the university had increased security in an effort to address repeated concerns from students and faculty about safety at the historically Black university in Mississippi’s capital city.
“This loss is devastating and unfathomable to the JSU community, it does not represent who we are,” Elayne Hayes-Anthony, the temporary acting president, said in a statement Tuesday. “It further undercuts our mission to cultivate an environment where students come to love and to evolve as individual and free thinkers.”
Burns’ killing is the most recent incident that has led to calls for improving campus security at Jackson State. Last year, on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month, the university was one of several HBCUs across the country and in Mississippi to receive bomb threats. In December, a deceased student who had been shot was found on campus, according to multiple reports.
Since Hayes-Anthony became temporary acting president, the university has been working on fencing the campus off from its surrounding community just west of downtown Jackson, a request that several students and faculty made during a listening session earlier this year.
“It’s not necessarily Jackson State that’s unsafe,” said Elijah Karriem, a senior journalism and media studies major who is the president of the Jackson State NAACP chapter. “It’s the city that we’re living in. Jackson State is collateral damage.”
Jackson Police Department spokesman Sam Brown said the office wouldn’t comment.
At the same time, there is more the university could be doing, Karriem said, adding “we have to have security in our security.”
“This wasn’t during homecoming, this was after homecoming,” he said. “When all your alumni, family and friends went away and went back home, where were the security measures then?”
Karriem lives at University Pointe Apartment Complex where Burns was shot. Last year, he said his roommate was held at gunpoint and his car was stolen. Even though University Pointe has a security box, Karriem said he doesn’t see guards staffing it.
The on-campus police can take longer than they should to respond, Karriem said, despite new golf-cart-type vehicles.
But it’s not just about the university, Karriem said. Individual students, faculty and the Jackson State community also have to grapple with what they could do in their daily lives to address gun violence. Tonight, the NAACP chapter is holding a town hall to give students the space to do that.
“We all have to take accountability for what has transpired,” Karriem said. “We cannot solely blame the university for the lack of security. When it comes down to it, you can get mad, you can do all you want to do, but we have to stop this.”
He knew Burns — they had taken a journalism class together a few years ago. Whenever they saw each other on campus, Karriem said they would stop and say hello.
Valencia Green, a sophomore political science major who volunteers with Jackson State University Students Demand Action, which advocates for policies to end gun violence in the U.S., said the violence that led to Burns’ death was preventable.
“Despite my generation literally dying in our classrooms, homes, and communities, our politicians have chosen a path of inaction,” she said.
Thompson said that on the federal level, the Biden administration has made several grants available to help HBCUs improve security, which he said Jackson State has applied for.
“I’m not certain there’ll ever be enough money to guarantee anybody that something won’t happen,” he said.
Political reporter Taylor Vance contributed to this report.
UPDATE 10/17/23: This story has been updated to reflect that U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson made his comments to reporters. It has also been updated to include additional comments.
Nearly 13,000 Mississippians were kicked from Medicaid’s rolls in September during the most recent batch of disenrollments, while the agency’s backlog grows.
The latest numbers bring the state’s total disenrollments to 81,454 people, most of whom were dropped for paperwork issues, not because they were found to be ineligible.
Medicaid divisions all over the country are reviewing their rolls for the first time in three years after the end of federal regulations that prevented state Medicaid agencies from disenrolling beneficiaries during the pandemic. Prior to this process, referred to as “unwinding,” Mississippi Medicaid enrollment exceeded 900,000 people for the first time in the agency’s history.
June numbers showed that 29,460 Mississippians were dropped in the first wave of disenrollments. Another 22,507 people followed in July, and 16,659 people were disenrolled in August.
Many of them have been children, according to the agency’s monthly enrollment reports. Federal research predicts that kids are most at risk of losing benefits during unwinding, and it’s not clear how many are being dropped despite being eligible. Before the terminations began, children in low-income families made up more than half of the state’s Medicaid rolls.
Almost 45,000 kids in Mississippi have been dropped from Medicaid since the start of unwinding.
Though Medicaid's spokesperson Matt Westerfield previously told Mississippi Today that the agency hopes to increase its ex-parte rate, or automatic renewal rate, the state continues to disproportionately drop beneficiaries for procedural reasons, which means their paperwork was either not turned in on time or it was incomplete.
Of the 12,828 people dropped in September, around 75% were procedural disenrollments. Overall, Mississippi reports a 78% procedural disenrollment rate thus far. According to KFF, 72% of all people disenrolled were terminated for procedural reasons across all states with available data.
And though it appears in recent data that Mississippi’s disenrollments are decreasing, that’s because the agency’s backlog is growing.
During the first round of disenrollments completed in June, Mississippi Medicaid didn’t get around to checking the eligibility of 5,892 people that were due for the review. However, that backlog has significantly increased — to 19,402 in July; 29,788 in August and now 45,989 in September.
Westerfield did not reply to questions by press time.
As Republican Gov. Tate Reeves continues to voice his opposition to Medicaid expansion, which would insure thousands more working Mississippians, unwinding is set to continue for months. Thousands more Mississippians are poised to lose Medicaid coverage amid a statewide health care crisis — nearly half of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, according to one report.
KFF says at least 8,696,000people nationally have been dropped from Medicaid as of Oct. 11.
Welcome to The Homestretch, a daily blog featuring the most comprehensive coverage of the 2023 Mississippi governor’s race. This page, curated by the Mississippi Today politics team, will feature the biggest storylines of the 2023 governor’s race at 7 a.m. every day between now and the Nov. 7 election.
It’s the prevailing question in Mississippi political circles: Can incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves earn over 50% of the vote on Nov. 7 to avoid a runoff with Democratic challenger Brandon Presley?
Because of a recent change in the Mississippi Constitution, the governor’s race could be decided by a runoff for the first time in the state’s 206-year history.
Recent polling indicates Reeves leads Presley by single digits, but several polls suggest it will be a struggle for him to break the 50% mark. If he doesn’t, the two candidates will face a runoff on Nov. 28, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Over the weekend, Republican and Democratic operatives in Mississippi were openly speculating about the runoff possibility with other politicos, according to several sources across the state. Both campaigns, according to the sources, are said to be preparing for the possibility of a three-week November sprint to the runoff election.
If you’re curious about why the runoff is a possibility this year, Mississippi Today political reporter Taylor Vance provided us with a deep dive. It involves the elimination of a Jim Crow era law and the curious independent candidacy of Gwendolyn Gray.
Gray recently dropped out of the race and endorsed Presley, but her exit came so late in the race that ballots were already printed with her name on them. That means any votes for her will count, and her presence could send the state into an unprecedented political spectacle.
Three weeks — the time between today and the Nov. 7 election — is a lifetime in politics. Three more weeks for a potential runoff feels like an eternity.
1) Tate Reeves is working to shore up support from the most conservative bloc of Republican Party voters, many of whom have been less than thrilled with his leadership during his first term. He continues to pan the national Democrats, even firing off a tweet late Saturday night about Louisiana Governor-elect Jeff Landry’s decisive victory over “the far left policies of the national Democratic Party.”
2) Brandon Presley, meanwhile, is working to shore up support from Black Democrats, many of whom have felt ignored or burned in the past by white Democratic candidates like Presley. He campaigned at the Jackson State homecoming game on Saturday, and he also spent time over the weekend at events with Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.
3) Reeves last week began airing a new TV ad that touts his solution to the state’s hospital crisis — an issue he’s been largely silent on for months, even as Presley has made it a pillar of his campaign. Mississippi Today’s Devna Bose fact-checked some of Reeves’ claims about his own role in health care policy decisions.
