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Accumulating household waste continues to sit unbothered across the state’s largest city as local officials repeatedly fail to choose a garbage collector.

The city’s emergency contract with Richard’s Disposal, the company who the mayor and a minority of the city council are endorsing for a long-term contract, ended on April 1. Six days later, the state environmental department issued Jackson an official notice that the city was in violation of Mississippi pollution law.

The notice says that by not collecting garbage, “the City has caused wastes to be placed in locations where they are likely to cause pollution of the air and waters of the state,” violating state law, and opening Jackson up to $25,000 in fines for each day it doesn’t collect trash.

Jackson spokesperson Melissa Faith Payne said on Monday that, as far as she was aware, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality hasn’t yet levied any fines against the city. MDEQ spokesperson Jan Schaefer declined to comment on the agency’s enforcement.

While it’s unclear what punishments Jackson will face from MDEQ, the idle piles of garbage threaten local habitats as well as the creeks that flow through the city’s residential neighborhoods, a local conservation expert explained.

“When we do our cleanups, a lot of the trash that enters the (Pearl River) comes from our storm drains from our neighborhoods, not just Jackson, but from all our neighborhoods,” said Abby Braman, executive director of Pearl Riverkeeper.

During heavy rain events like Jackson saw last week, rainwater carries trash left on the street towards the city’s storm drains. The waste then either blocks storm water from getting into the drains, or it goes into the drains and flows out into the city’s creeks. Once that happens, Braman explained, the garbage not only goes into the wildlife habitat in the creeks and the Pearl River, but it also creates a flood risk for Jackson residents.

“We have, depending on where you count from, about 11 creeks that run straight through Jackson into the river. All of those run through neighborhoods” she said. “A lot of them, particularly Lynch Creek, that creek’s already clogged up with debris, including trash. It’s already overtopping its banks several times a year and causing a lot of problems in that community, and destruction of public and private property.”

Lynch Creek starts just past Interstate 220 in west Jackson, and runs south near Ellis Avenue and the Washington Addition neighborhood before meeting the Pearl River just below Interstate 20.

The section of the river near Jackson, as well as several of the city’s creeks, are under a contact advisory from MDEQ because of overflows from the city’s overwhelmed and depleted sewer system.

When residential garbage pickup will return to Jackson is up in the air.

On Monday, city council members were unable to vote on a new contract for Richard’s Disposal after the mayor pulled the item from the agenda, after learning that Richard’s was readying a lawsuit against Jackson. The company is arguing it won the city’s bidding process and that the city council has wrongly voted against awarding Richard’s the contract, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba explained.

Lumumba has argued for the last year that Richard’s deserves the contract. Through the blind bidding process, Richard’s received the best score for options that include twice-a-week pickup and a trash bin for residents. The company’s bid was also the cheapest of any offering twice-a-week pickup.

Opposing city council members have made a wide-range of arguments against the Richard’s option: They argue that the company is less experienced than the previous vendor, Waste Management, and also that Lumumba is trying to steer the council towards his preferred choice. They’ve also argued that the 96-gallon bins included in that option would be a nuisance for residents.

Despite the majority opposition to Richard’s, Lumumba has refused to present another contract for the council to vote on. The mayor argued that not picking the “winning” bid would open the city to a lawsuit, since the city is legally required to use the bidding process to pick its vendor.

On Monday, Lumumba said he was meeting with MDEQ on Wednesday to explain the city’s position. He also hinted at calling another council meeting this week to vote on an emergency contract for Richard’s to collect garbage in the interim while the dispute lingers on.

The city last week opened a site at the Metrocenter Mall for residents to bring garbage during limited hours. Officials have yet to announce any drop-off times for this week. Some wards have offered alternate sites to bring trash.

This most recent standoff over garbage pickup comes a month after Jackson officials launched its citywide cleanup campaign, called “Stop Trashing Jackson.”

The post How the Jackson garbage standoff impacts local environment appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The “blue slip” process Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is using to block the nomination of Scott Colom of Columbus to the federal judiciary began under a previous Mississippi senator who used the process to discriminate against Black Americans.

Starting in the 1950s, U.S. Sen. James Eastland of Mississippi was the first Senate Judiciary Committee chair to use the process to allow a single home-state senator to block a presidential nominee to the federal bench. Eastland used the process to block federal judges from being appointed in Southern states sympathetic to school desegregation, according to multiple accounts detailed in news stories and scholarly research articles.

A broad range of groups agree on Eastland’s role in the blue slip process.

In 2017, during his time as Senate Judiciary chair, conservative Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, wrote, “For the vast majority of the blue slip’s history, a negative or unreturned blue slip did not stop the Senate Judiciary Committee from holding a hearing and vote on a nominee. In fact, of my 18 predecessors as chairman of the committee, only two allowed home-state senators unilateral veto power through the blue slip. The first to do so, Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.), reportedly adopted this policy to thwart school integration after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.”

The progressive organization People for the American Way said Eastland’s actions “gave immense power to segregationist senators in Southern states to prevent judges who would take civil rights seriously.”

The process allows a single home-state senator to block the Senate confirmation of judicial nominees by not returning the “blue slip” voicing support. Under the current process, nominees to district courts, such as Colom to the Northern District of Mississippi, can be blocked but not nominees to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The way Eastland applied the process, nominees to both were blocked.

Sen. Roger Wicker, Mississippi’s senior U.S senator, returned his blue slip for Colom.

Various progressive groups are calling for current Judiciary chair, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, to stop allowing the blue slip process to be used to block judicial nominees. A spokesperson for Durbin told Mississippi Today that the chair was “extremely disappointed” in Hyde-Smith’s actions and would be commenting “more fully” on those actions in the coming days.

Durbin, in the statement, called Colom “highly qualified.”

READ MORE: Senate chairman ‘extremely disappointed’ by Hyde-Smith’s effort to block judicial nomination

According to various accounts, starting sometimes in the 1910s, the blue slip process was initiated to give home-state senators more of a voice in the nomination and confirmation process. But it was not until Eastland in 1956 that the process was used to allow home-state senators to completely block the nominations. Under Eastland, if a blue slip was not returned, the Judiciary Committee normally would not even have a hearing on the nominee.

Under the process before Eastland, nominees opposed by a home-state senator normally still would receive a full vote before the Senate, but with a negative recommendation from the Judiciary Committee.

In a paper titled “The Collision of Institutional Power and Constitutional Obligations: The Use of Blue Slips in the Judicial Confirmation Process,” professors from Georgia, Michigan State and Wisconsin wrote, “When Senator Eastland took over as Judiciary chair (1956-1978), he significantly changed blue slipping policy. During his tenure, a negative blue slip or unreturned blue slip from a single home-state senator blocked any further action on the nomination. Why Eastland changed blue slipping policy is unclear, though racial politics likely had something to do with it, as Eastland could use committee rules to block pro-civil rights nominees from reaching the bench … While later Judiciary chairs would also alter their treatment of negative blue slips depending on political context, a single blue slip continues to impose a strong and negative effect on any nomination’s chance of success.”

Most Judiciary chairs since Eastland, including Democrats Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy and Republicans Orrin Hatch and Strom Thurmond, did not allow the process to be used as an absolute where one home-state senator could stop a nominee. Both political parties, though, have used the blue slip to prevent presidents from the other party from getting judicial appointments.

Hyde-Smith currently is blocking the nomination of Colom, the first African American elected as district attorney for the 16th District in north Mississippi. She cited Colom’s opposition to legislation to ban trans women from competing in women’s sports as a reason for opposing him.

While Colom has voiced general support for trans rights, he has never publicly commented on the issue of trans women competing in women sports.

Hyde-Smith also said she opposed Colom because a political action committee funded at least in part by billionaire George Soros spent funds on his first election to the office of district attorney in 2015. Soros, a New York billionaire, has supported criminal justice reform and other issues such as governmental transparency.

Colom did not receive any financial help from Soros in 2019.

The post Blue slip process Sen. Hyde-Smith used to block federal judge began as an effort to preserve Jim Crow appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Office of the State Auditor has asked public universities in the state to detail spending on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the latest attempt by officials to mimic Republican efforts across the country that take aim at “woke” policies. 

The request, obtained by Mississippi Today, was sent via email last week to public universities by Laura Gray, an employee in the office’s Government Accountability Division. Gray wrote that White’s office “is conducting a performance review of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs/ activities administered by Mississippi’s public universities.” 

In higher education, the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” refers to a range of policies and programs that foster enrollment and retention of historically marginalized groups. 

Gray’s email instructed universities to fill out an attached spreadsheet, send it back to her and copy Casey Prestwood, an associate commissioner at the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), by April 20. 

IHL is the governing board for Mississippi’s eight public universities. Kim Gallaspy, IHL’s interim communications director, said IHL’s role is to provide the auditor’s office, which initiated the review, with information.  

Fletcher Freeman, a spokesperson for the auditor’s office, told Mississippi Today that the request was inspired by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s review of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public universities in Florida earlier this year. 

“After seeing Florida’s review of DEI spending, we have decided to use the same model to review DEI spending at universities in Mississippi,” Freeman wrote in an email. 

Mississippi Today obtained a copy of the request sent to Delta State University on April 6. The attached spreadsheet asks for spending from fiscal year 2020 to present. The columns ask for a “brief description” of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the total funding received from all sources, the number of full-time-equivalent employees and their titles, and how much in state funds was expended. 

It’s not evident from the request how White’s office plans to use this information, but the auditor, who is facing reelection this year, has become known for reports on topics like out-of-classroom spending or the economic impact of “fatherlessness.” White has denied these reports are politically motivated, though his office’s findings are often accompanied by conservative policy solutions, such as JROTC programs to combat “the dissolution of families.” 

White’s latest aim at diversity, equity and inclusion comes just a few months after similar efforts from Republican officials in other states. In January, DeSantis asked public universities in Florida to account for spending on diversity, equity and inclusion as part of his pledge to “eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies” in the state, POLITICO reported. The State University System of Florida — which is similar to IHL — has supported DeSantis’s efforts. 

A few weeks later, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott went a step further, issuing a memo to state agencies and public university officials that diversity, equity and inclusion policies in hiring violate state and federal employment laws. 

In Mississippi, lawmakers have yet to touch diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, so far only nominally banning the teaching of critical race theory in public K-12 schools and universities. 

Dan Durkin, a professor at University of Mississippi and the president of the United Faculty Senate Association of Mississippi, said the request caught him off guard but that he thinks the auditor should find diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are money well-spent because it improves recruitment and retention. 

“In Mississippi, it’s particularly important, and with our university’s history, I think that makes it even more important in our mission to reach out to African American students,” Durkin said. “We want to bring students here, but we want to make sure that they feel at home while they’re here and that they feel supported.” 

Durkin added that he had recently spoken to Chancellor Glenn Boyce about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and that Boyce was supportive of the initiatives. 

Universities across the state post on their websites statements about diversity, equity and inclusion. IHL has for years now given out an annual “diversity” award to faculty, staff and even House Speaker Philip Gunn in 2021 for his efforts to change the Mississippi state flag. 

The IHL Board of Trustees, a politically appointed body, recently asked applicants during the Delta State presidential search to submit a “written philosophy” of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The post How much are Mississippi universities spending on DEI initiatives? State auditor wants to know appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid spent months working to determine how much it paid in claims associated with gender identity disorder or gender dysphoria following an anonymous legislative request, according to emails obtained through a public records request. 

The answer: A maximum of $58,900.82 in taxpayer money over the last five years from the agency’s annual budget of $6 billion – nearly half of which paid for a mastectomy to treat a “life-threatening disease” that was not gender dysphoria. No money was paid to providers for intersex surgery for trans men or trans women.

Attorneys for Medicaid initially miscalculated the answer, but after many back and forths over email with a representative from a legislative committee, landed on this imperfect estimate. 

It is unclear from the documents how much Medicaid paid in reimbursements specifically for gender-affirming care for trans youth. It is also unclear which procedures are directly related to gender-affirming care. Some include descriptions of routine medical claims such as emergency room visits and lipid panels. Only one reimbursement could be more easily connected to gender-affirming care for trans children: $94.20 for “bone age studies.” 

In a letter to Mississippi Today, Medicaid noted that some claims “may not be directed related to” services for a patient’s primary diagnosis of gender dysphoria. 

The Division of Medicaid did not answer questions from Mississippi Today for this story. 

Earlier this year, Medicaid became the first state agency to take a public position on gender-affirming care for trans children as lawmakers sought to ban it. In mid-February, Executive Director Drew Snyder sent a letter stating that there is not enough medical literature to support that it is a “safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria” for trans youth. 

Snyder’s letter did not mention Medicaid reimbursements for gender-affirming care. 

Rob Hill, the state director of Human Rights Campaign of Mississippi, said that Snyder’s letter contradicts Medicaid’s past actions of paying for gender-affirming care. Despite Medicaid’s letter, major medical associations support gender-affirming care for trans youth.

“I’ve always known Drew Snyder to be a fair-minded person, so I would say I was really disappointed to see this letter released that was not based on fact,” Hill said. “There is plenty of research that he or his folks in the department could’ve done. It’s easily found on the internet. I could have sent him a fact sheet.” 

For trans people, it can be challenging to get gender-affirming care covered by private health insurance. Trans people report being uninsured at a rate seven times higher than cis people, due in significant part to job discrimination and the employment-based health insurance model in the U.S., according to a report from the Center for American Progress. That same report found that 46% of trans respondents – and 56% of trans respondents of color – said their health insurance denied coverage for gender-affirming care. 

“Honestly, I’m glad to know that people have received (gender-affirming) care in Mississippi through Medicaid, through taxpayer dollars,” Hill said. “But I would like to see it be a lot more because this care is well-researched for decades and supported by all the major medical associations.” 

One of the first signs that gender-affirming care would become a flashpoint during the legislative session came last fall when the Mississippi Freedom Caucus, a far-right wing of the Legislature, published a blog post by Rep. Dana Criswell of Olive Branch that claimed public dollars were funding the “mutilation of children” at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. 

“You read that correctly, you, the taxpayers of Mississippi, are paying for children to receive hormone therapy and for mutilation of children,” the post read. 

But during the legislative session, lawmakers spent little time on the issue of state funds supporting gender-affirming care despite efforts to determine the amount. 

Lawmakers’ first inquiry to Medicaid came in mid-December from Lonnie Edgar, the deputy director of the Joint Legislative Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review Committee. The PEER Committee is tasked with assisting legislators with requests for information and the results of its research are confidential. 

On Dec. 13, 2022, Edgar sent an email to Cody Smith, an attorney for Mississippi Medicaid, asking if the agency had reimbursed claims for gender-affirming care “anywhere else in the state besides UMMC.” Edgar noted that “this is similar to the request you all provided information on about Planned Parenthood facilities on September 13, 2022.”

Edgar told Mississippi Today he is not allowed to disclose who made the request or whether any similar requests have been made in the past. He also did not have an answer as to why the request excluded UMMC.

It could be that PEER already had information about the medical center. In August 2022, the PEER committee also sent an inquiry to UMMC asking if it had billed gender-affirming services to Medicaid. 

Smith responded to Edgar about two weeks later, writing that Medicaid had determined a total of $131,865.03 was paid for 47 visits. He noted that no payments were made to the Spectrum Clinic in Hattiesburg, the only clinic in the state that exclusively serves transgender patients. Medicaid’s research found that the agency has reimbursed providers across the state, including Singing River and UMMC, for care given to people with gender dysphoria.

After House lawmakers passed HB 1125 early in the session, the inquiries from Edgar continued.

“This request seems to change every iteration,” Edgar wrote on Jan. 26. “Based on the information you provided on Medicaid claims broken out by provider … can you also determine the amounts spent on puberty blocking hormones or cross sex hormone treatment?”

It doesn’t appear that Medicaid was able to determine that amount since Medicaid-enrolled prescribers are not required to give a diagnosis code to pharmacists.

Soon after, Smith and Brett Brown, a technology specialist at Medicaid, discovered an error in the initial accounting. 

Brown realized that the previous number Medicaid had provided lawmakers – $131,865.03 – was more than double the actual amount the agency had paid out because it included Medicaid “crossover claims.” Crossover claims occur for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare, federal health insurance for people 65 or older, pays a portion of the claim, and Medicaid is billed for any remaining deductible or coinsurance.  

Hill said there’s “no number” that can be put on the positive impact gender-affirming care has on trans people and especially trans youth. 

“Anybody who suggests that it’s wasted money – one, I would think that they don’t have a heart,” he said, “and two, they’re just absolutely wrong.”

The post Mississippi Medicaid spent a tiny fraction of its budget on gender-affirming care before lawmakers banned it appeared first on Mississippi Today.

APRIL 11, 1865

Two days after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a joyous crowd gathered outside the White House, calling for President Abraham Lincoln. 

“Outside was a vast sea of faces, illuminated by the lights that burned in the festal array of the White House, and stretching far out into the misty darkness,” reporter Noah Brooks wrote. 

Lincoln obliged the crowd, stepping out into the darkness. Someone held a light so that Lincoln could read his speech. 

“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart,” he said. “The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. … A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. … No part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skillful officers, and brave men, all belongs.” 

He expressed his vision for the future: a united land free of slavery, public schools for Black and White that were truly equal, and support for Black voting. In the audience stood white supremacist John Wilkes Booth, who vowed this would be Lincoln’s last speech. He carried out his threat three days later, assassinating the President.

The post On this day in 1865 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Terry Grassaree was dogged for years by questions about how he did his job as a law enforcement officer in Macon, Miss., a tiny, rural town near the state’s eastern border.

There were allegations of rape inside the jail that Mr. Grassaree supervised, and lawsuits claiming that he covered up the episodes. At least five people, including one of his fellow deputies, accused him of beating others or choking them with a police baton.

Mr. Grassaree survived it all, rising in the ranks of the Noxubee County Sheriff’s Department, from a deputy mopping floors, to chief deputy, to the elected position of sheriff, making him one of the most powerful figures in town.

Now, more than three years after losing an election and retiring, and 16 years after a woman first claimed that Mr. Grassaree pressured her to lie about being raped, the former sheriff faces criminal charges.

A federal indictment filed in October accuses him of committing bribery in 2019, near the end of his eight-year tenure as sheriff, and of lying to federal agents when they questioned him about whether he requested sexually explicit photographs and videos from a female inmate. Mr. Grassaree has denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.

But an investigation by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times reveals that allegations of wrongdoing against Mr. Grassaree have been far more wide-ranging and serious than those federal charges suggest. The investigation included a review of nearly two decades of lawsuit depositions and a previously undisclosed report by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

At a minimum, the documents detail gross mismanagement at the Noxubee County jail that repeatedly put female inmates in harm’s way. At worst, they tell the story of a sheriff who operated with impunity, even as he was accused of abusing the people in his custody, turning a blind eye to women who were raped and trying to cover it up when caught.

Over nearly two decades, as allegations mounted and Noxubee County’s insurance company paid to settle lawsuits against Mr. Grassaree, state prosecutors brought no charges against him or others accused of abuses in the jail. A federal investigation dragged on for years, and led to charges last fall, a few weeks after reporters started asking authorities about the case.

Even now, no higher authority has reviewed how Mr. Grassaree ran the jail or whether his policies endangered women, because in Mississippi, as in many states, rural sheriffs are left largely to police themselves and their jails.

In 2006, after Mr. Grassaree and his staff left jail cell keys hanging openly on a wall, male inmates opened the doors to the cell of two women inmates and raped them, according to statements the women gave to state investigators. One of the women said Mr. Grassaree pressured her to sign a false statement to cover up the crimes, according to the state police report that has never been made public.

About a year later, in a lawsuit, four people who had been arrested gave sworn statements accusing Mr. Grassaree of violence. Two of the people said he choked or beat them while they were in his custody. A third said he pinned her against a wall and threatened to let a male inmate rape her.

In 2019, a jailed woman told investigators that she had been coerced into having sex with two deputies who offered her a cellphone in exchange for her compliance. Instead of punishing the deputies, she claimed in a lawsuit against the county, Mr. Grassaree demanded that she send him explicit pictures and videos of herself. The federal indictment also accuses Mr. Grassaree of using his cellphone to facilitate a bribe, which experts say could have been the perks the woman says she received.

All told, at least eight men — including four deputies and Mr. Grassaree himself — have been accused of sex abuse by women inmates who were being held in the Noxubee County jail while Mr. Grassaree was in charge.

Over the years, the accusations of rape and other misconduct at the jail have been investigated separately by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. No rape or assault charges have been filed.

Mr. Grassaree has denied all of the allegations against him and has faced no disciplinary action. His lawyer declined to comment further.

Holding people accountable for rapes and assaults behind bars is difficult under the best of circumstances. There is little to protect incarcerated victims and witnesses from retaliation for speaking up. When they do come forward, they are often dismissed as not credible, especially if the person accused is a law enforcement officer.

What happened inside the Noxubee jail, and how the authorities responded, is a case study in how those difficulties can be even harder to surmount in rural places, where jails are the exclusive domain of a county sheriff who operates largely without oversight.

No state agency oversees Mississippi’s county jails, and no state regulator has the authority to fine a sheriff for endangering people in custody or for failing to train the staff who operate the jail. In 2017, state lawmakers stopped providing funds for jail inspections by the Mississippi Department of Health, removing even the basic requirement that the facilities meet food safety and cleanliness requirements.

“They are closed-off institutions, and the people held inside them are unpopular and politically powerless,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project. “That makes them ripe for neglect and abuse that is entirely foreseeable.”

Scott Colom, the elected district attorney for Noxubee County, took office in 2016 and was not involved in the investigation of the 2006 rape allegations.

After learning of the more recent allegations against Mr. Grassaree and his deputies, Mr. Colom said, he notified federal authorities and worked with them on an investigation. Although he believed the evidence against Mr. Grassaree in the case was “clear and strong,” Mr. Colom said he knew it would be tough to seat an impartial jury in Noxubee County. He has twice been forced to cancel criminal trials because there were too few potential jurors available, he said, and neither of those cases involved a public official.

Darren J. LaMarca, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, declined to comment on the case and so did others responsible for investigating the alleged abuses in the Noxubee County jail.

Mr. Grassaree spoke briefly in an interview about his professional history, but would not answer detailed questions about the 2006 rape cases or the more recent allegations related to his federal charges.

Mary Taylor, a retired dispatcher who worked full time at the jail from 1988 to 2017, said in a phone interview that in her years at the jail she never witnessed any sexual abuse.

She said she wasn’t working on the day the two women said the rapes took place in 2006, but that she doesn’t believe their version of events.

“My belief? They weren’t raped,” Ms. Taylor said. “They did that to get out of jail.”

She maintained that it’s “impossible for one man to rape a woman, unless she’s not moving, unless it’s a Bill Cosby thing.”

“They could have yelled out and told somebody,” she said. “You can’t rape the unwilling.”

Building a tough reputation

When Terry Grassaree was born in Macon in 1962, the idea that he could one day be sheriff seemed far-fetched.

In Macon, which briefly served as Mississippi’s capital during the Civil War, only white men worked as law enforcement officers in those days. The county had a long history of violence against African Americans, including the massacre of 13 Black Mississippians at a church, gunned down by nightriders on a single August night in 1871. The sheriff at the time arrested no one.

Though the county’s population is mostly Black, every sheriff elected in Noxubee County was white until 1988, when Albert Walker became the first Black man to hold the office. Mr. Grassaree, his handpicked successor, was the second.

Mr. Grassaree started his law enforcement career as a police officer in Macon and in nearby Brooksville, and sold insurance on the side to help make ends meet. Sheriff Walker hired him as a county deputy in 1992 and put him to work mopping floors, among other duties, at the county jail. Mr. Grassaree was also a deputy coroner, paid $85 for each body he handled.

He worked his way up to chief deputy, and took on running the jail.

Mr. Grassaree, known to keep order by issuing physical threats, said in an interview last year that he drew inspiration from the professional wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

“Even while they were whipping him, he was still the toughest guy on the mat,” Mr. Grassaree said. “He’s like, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ No matter how long a man whips you, he will get tired. He might think he’s winning. The only thing you’ve got to do is hold out.”

This idea, he said, became the foundation for how he behaved when he put on his uniform.

Early in his career, he beefed his 6-foot-2 frame up to 230 pounds, and people started calling him “Big Dog.” Not many people crossed him after that, he said.

His reputation for being aggressive spread across town. In a 2006 letter to the editor in the local paper, a mother complained that Mr. Grassaree had threatened her 16-year-old son. The boy, she wrote, had fought with Mr. Grassaree’s son at school.

The editor of the same newspaper, The Macon Beacon, arrived to cover an arrest near a nightclub in 2000 and snapped a picture of Mr. Grassaree kneeling on a man’s neck. The photo made the front page.

People who passed through the jail describe being attacked by Mr. Grassaree when he thought they were causing trouble. Four people gave sworn statements about such attacks as part of a 2005 lawsuit against Mr. Grassaree and Noxubee County filed by former deputy Kendrick Slaughter. In the lawsuit, Mr. Slaughter claimed that Mr. Grassaree tried to bribe him not to run for City Council, and then hauled him to jail for talking to the FBI about the alleged bribe.

Noxubee County’s insurance company settled the suit for an undisclosed amount.

The four sworn statements accuse Mr. Grassaree of a number of violent acts, which he has denied committing. One man wrote that while he was handcuffed in a courtroom in 2002, Mr. Grassaree beat him until a judge came off the bench to rescue him.

Another man said in his sworn statement that Mr. Grassaree choked him with his nightstick and warned him to follow his orders. The man said Mr. Grassaree told him, “I’ll shoot you in the head! I’m the Big Dog! I’m Number One! This my jail!”

A 19-year-old woman said Mr. Grassaree hit her twice with his nightstick and threw her against a wall after accusing her of stealing potato chips from a man held in jail. Mr. Grassaree “spread my legs apart with his foot,” she said in her deposition.

Then, she said, he told her that he ought to let the inmate rape her.

A jail with no rules

The jail that Mr. Grassaree oversaw for most of his career sits frozen in time on Industrial Road on the outskirts of Macon, next to the old Purina pet food mill that now produces feed for catfish farms.

The building has been locked and empty since about 2014, when Mr. Grassaree and his deputies packed up and moved to a new facility down the street. Inside the old jail, a blackened mix of dirt, rust and mold has crept over the white iron cell doors. Bags of trash and dusty bed linens litter the remaining furniture and the floor.

When Mr. Grassaree was put in charge of this building in the 1990s, he inherited a jailhouse that essentially operated without rules. Jail workers allowed inmates to come and go from the building without logging the inmates’ movements or supervising them closely.

The only policies about the jail that appear in the 2003 Noxubee County Sheriff’s Policy Manual center on the use of force. None tell how to run the jail.

For years, certain inmates were let out of their cells to help cook, pass out food trays and clean.

Kennedy Brewer, who entered the jail in 2002, was one of the facility’s most trusted inmates. Eyebrows were raised when he showed up at a court hearing on his own, having driven himself to the courthouse without a deputy to escort him, according to Forrest Allgood, the district attorney at the time.

Mr. Brewer spent five years at the jail waiting to be retried after DNA evidence proved he had been wrongly convicted of sexually abusing and murdering a 3-year-old girl. When prosecutors gave up on a new trial, Mr. Brewer was released, and his case was featured in the Netflix documentary series “The Innocence Files.”

Testifying under oath as a witness in a lawsuit in 2007, Mr. Brewer said he served as a jail trusty, or an inmate with special privileges, and had access to keys that opened each cell. He said he would check newly arrested people into the jail and that he once escorted an inmate to a cell with no one else present.

Mr. Grassaree has denied that inmates were allowed to use jail keys without supervision.

On a June day in 2006, Mr. Brewer had no problem getting into the women’s cell block undetected.

He grabbed the jailer’s keys off the nail hanging on the wall and slipped down the short hallway that ran the length of jail. In a building smaller than a McDonald’s, he and a fellow inmate didn’t have to go far. There were no guards patrolling the halls and no surveillance cameras to catch any movements.

When Mr. Brewer unlocked the cell door, one of the women inside was laying down for a nap.

Then Brewer was on top of her, grabbing her arms and forcing her down, according to statements the first woman later gave to state agents.

“No, I don’t want to do this,” she begged, according to her statements.

Then she looked for her cellmate, Jessie Levette Douglas. She told investigators she saw another inmate, Laterris Goodwin, on top of her.

It was all over in moments.

The woman who originally reported the rapes declined to be interviewed for this article. Ms. Douglas died of renal failure in a state prison in 2018.

When investigators interview rape victims, they are supposed to remain impartial. But when Mr. Grassaree, who was chief deputy at the time, found the woman crying on the floor, he stood over her and shouted, the woman said in a deposition taken as part of her subsequent lawsuit against the county. He and another member of the sheriff’s office yelled that she couldn’t tell anybody about the rape and that she was “going to make them lose their jobs and make the department look bad,” according to her sworn statement.

“They kept berating me as if I had done something wrong,” she said.

When state agents arrived the next day at the request of the sheriff’s office, Mr. Grassaree handed them everything they needed to dismiss the allegations, including signed statements from two of the men saying the women had invited them to have sex, and more important, a statement from Ms. Douglas saying everything she saw and experienced was consensual.

If Mr. Grassaree and his deputies had been in charge of the investigation, it might have ended there. But when state agents interviewed Ms. Douglas, her story changed.

She told investigators that she and her cellmate had been raped that day and that she lied in her first statement because Mr. Grassaree had pressured her to cover up what happened.

Mr. Grassaree “told me to tell everybody the sex was consensual and that for me to ‘help a brother,’ referring to Brewer,” Ms. Douglas wrote in a later statement. “He told me to tell everybody that we put on a freak show for the male inmates.”

In reality, Ms. Douglas told the agents, three men incarcerated at the jail — Mr. Brewer, Mr. Goodwin and Michael Slaughter — had entered her locked cell at different times on the same day and had raped her.

In statements to investigators, Mr. Slaughter, Mr. Brewer and Mr. Goodwin denied that they had raped the women, claiming that the sex was consensual.

In an interview from 2022, Mr. Brewer denied ever having sex with anyone inside the jail. Neither Mr. Slaughter nor Mr. Goodwin could be reached for comment.

Both women were given polygraph tests, and the examiner concluded that they were telling the truth, according to state investigators’ records. Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Slaughter failed polygraph tests; Mr. Brewer declined to take one.

State agents shared their findings with federal and state prosecutors, and the case was presented to a Noxubee County grand jury. The grand jury decided not to issue charges.

Legal experts say Mr. Grassaree could have been investigated for obstructing justice in the case. That never happened, and neither did an investigation of practices in the jail, where agents concluded that four rapes had taken place.

Noxubee County’s insurance company settled the woman’s lawsuit in 2009. The Macon Beacon reported that she was paid $375,000.

Sabrina Campbell said her sister, Ms. Douglas — the woman who said she was raped by three inmates and who died many years later — wanted the public to know what happened to her. “I don’t want my sister to have died in vain,” Ms. Campbell said.

The rapes devastated her sister, who never stopped battling nightmares afterward, she said. “She was scared all the time. She would tell nieces and nephews about the jail, ‘Don’t ever come here, because your life is over.’”

Another round of allegations

Allegations of sexual abuse at the Noxubee County jail did not end with the 2006 case.

In 2020, Elizabeth Layne Reed, a woman incarcerated at the jail, made explosive allegations against the men she encountered there. In a lawsuit she filed that year, she accused two deputies, Vance Phillips and Damon Clark, of coercing her into having sex.

She said the men gave her a cellphone and other perks so that she would have sexual encounters with them in remote spots around the jail or when the deputies checked her out of the facility. The deputies even put a sofa in her jail cell, she said.

Ms. Reed said in an interview that she wanted the public to know what happened to her in the hope that others would come forward. “It made me terrified to trust anybody,” she said. “Women in jail and prison need to be protected.”

According to her lawsuit, Mr. Grassaree knew all about his deputies’ “sexual contacts and shenanigans,” but did nothing to “stop the coerced sexual relationships.” Mr. Grassaree denied any knowledge of what deputies were doing. “Are you a boss?” he said. “Do your employees tell you everything they do?”

Instead of intervening, the lawsuit alleged, the sheriff “sexted” her and demanded that she use the phone the deputies had given her to send him “a continuous stream of explicit videos, photographs and texts” while she was in jail. She also alleged in the lawsuit that Mr. Grassaree touched her in a “sexual manner.”

The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.

News outlets in Mississippi made brief mention of the lawsuit, but government officials at all levels, including federal and state prosecutors, were silent for two years about what, if anything, they were doing to investigate the allegations it raised, and whether they had found evidence to support them.

A review by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times of documents filed in the lawsuit, along with documents from the preceding 2019 state investigation, reveals that Ms. Reed accused other deputies besides Mr. Phillips and Mr. Clark of sexual harassment and abuse. None of the other deputies has been charged or named publicly. It is unclear whether the FBI investigated those allegations.

The federal bureau’s investigation into Mr. Grassaree, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Clark took more than two years to yield charges, even though investigators had confessions of sexual contact from the deputies as well as text messages between the woman and the three men. In fall of 2022, several weeks after reporters began asking authorities about the case, Mr. LaMarca successfully sought indictments against Mr. Grassaree and Mr. Phillips on bribery charges. Mr. Clark has not been indicted.

Ms. Reed hoped that other deputies, including Mr. Clark, would be held accountable, she said. “They’re still walking around free, not worried about any charges.”

Ms. Reed said that she felt sick to her stomach when she found out that neither Mr. Grassaree nor Mr. Phillips had been directly charged in connection with her allegations of sex abuse. Lawyers for Mr. Phillips did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Clark could not be reached for comment.

The indictments do not mention sexual abuse. Along with bribery, Mr. Grassaree was also charged with lying to the F.B.I. in denying that he had “requested and received” nude photos and videos from Ms. Reed. A trial is scheduled for summer.

Julie Abbate, who served as the deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2003 to 2018 and reviewed the allegations at the news organizations’ request, said the federal prosecutors could have explored criminal charges against Mr. Grassaree and his deputies for violating the civil rights of women in his facility.

The question of whether to bring federal charges in the case may have been complicated by guidance the Department of Justice issued in 2018, saying that law enforcement officers cannot be federally prosecuted for violating a person’s civil rights if the person “truly made a voluntary decision as to what she wanted to do with her body,” particularly if she received a benefit or special treatment in exchange for sex.

But Ms. Reed’s decisions in the episode in the Noxubee County jail were “not free-will choices,” said Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University, and the cellphone Ms. Reed received from deputies “was the vehicle by which more abuse could be directed towards her.”

Mississippi law makes it a crime for law enforcement officers to engage in sexual acts with incarcerated people. Prosecutors are not required to prove the victims were physically overpowered or even that they told their abuser to stop.

But the district attorney’s office that handles criminal cases in Noxubee County chose to pass the 2020 case on to federal prosecutors, instead of seeking charges under the state law, because of worries about getting a fair jury in the county. When asked about federal prosecutors’ decision to charge Mr. Grassaree and Mr. Phillips with bribery in the case, the district attorney, Mr. Colom, said, “I trust federal authorities to use the best statutes.”

Ms. Abbate said the allegations about abuses in the Noxubee County jail were indicative of a larger, pervasive problem at the facility and a harmful culture inside the sheriff’s office. That culture, she said, undoubtedly endangered inmates and allowed abuses to continue.

“The allegations that come to light are almost always just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ms. Abbate, who is now director of Just Detention International, an organization dedicated to ending sexual abuse in correctional facilities. Referring to the 2006 and 2020 cases, she said, “I guarantee you that these two instances are not the only ones.”

This article was co-reported by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today.

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After a push this session to fully fund public schools, districts will receive $100 million outside of the regular school funding formula because lawmakers passed a bill they say aims to put more money in the classroom. 

While superintendents say they’re grateful for the additional funds, some are pushing back on the notion that the current funding formula doesn’t directly support students.

Senate leaders introduced a plan in early March to give an additional $181 million to public schools by slightly modifying the state’s public school funding formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP), and fully funding the new version. 

The formula was established by the Legislature in 1997 and has been consistently underfunded every year since 2008. MAEP provides the state’s share of money for the basic needs of districts, such as teacher salaries, utilities, textbooks and transportation. Districts have broad discretion when it comes to spending the MAEP dollars, something school leaders say is necessary in order for each district to meet its unique needs. 

Despite the plan passing the Senate unanimously, House leadership refused to put more money into the formula, saying they believed it would be used for increased administrative spending and would not benefit students. Instead, House leaders wanted to direct additional funding into specific programs, like the capital improvements loan fund or an assistant teacher pay raise. 

“When our folks were calling their legislators repeatedly, House members were telling them ‘We want to fully fund the MAEP, everybody I know over here wants to fully fund the MAEP,’” said Nancy Loome, executive director of public school advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign. “It was Speaker (Philip) Gunn refusing to allow them to vote on a bill that would have fully funded the MAEP. If they had put a bill in front of House members like they did with senators, it absolutely would have passed.”

Neither proposal triumphed, with lawmakers eventually agreeing to give an additional $100 million to school districts outside of the funding formula with the only spending restriction that the money can’t be used to give raises to superintendents, assistant superintendents and principals. The additional funds will be distributed based on enrollment, similar to the funding formula. 

“This was a way to get a compromise,” Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar said on the Senate floor. “It’s almost the same effect as if it was in the (MAEP) formula.”

The total value of MAEP this year is $2.4 billion, a $38 million increase over last year. Both the $100 million compromise and the $240 million to fund last year’s teacher pay raise were left outside the formula. 

READ MORE: Lawmakers, debating MAEP full funding, have plenty of money to spend

Some officials and school leaders disagree with the idea the compromise is nearly the same as MAEP, since allocating the money this way bypasses the portion of MAEP that distributes money based on school need. 

“Every school district getting the same amount per pupil, there’s no equity in that,” said Todd Ivey, former chief operating officer at the Mississippi Department of Education. “That was one of the primary reasons the state went to MAEP 20+ years ago, to try to prevent an equity funding lawsuit.” 

“I would have preferred it to be put in the formula just because there’s some equity components in the formula that help out schools that maybe aren’t able to generate as much (local tax dollars) as others, accounting for longer bus routes in rural areas, students in poverty,” said Tyler Hansford, Superintendent of the Union Public School District. “But at the same time, I’m not going to complain about additional funding.” 

Robert Williams, superintendent of the Hattiesburg Public School District, said he didn’t have an opinion about how the funding was distributed, just that he was grateful to the Legislature for providing the additional money. While the exact total of how much extra each school district will get is not yet available, Williams said he hopes to hire additional school resource officers and continue to invest in counseling and social-emotional supports.

Other districts said the additional funding will save them from having to cut employees that were hired with federal pandemic relief dollars. Chris Chism, superintendent of the Pearl Public School District, said this one will be one focus area for him, the other to give the lowest-paid employees a raise to combat the impact of record inflation. Chism said increased legislative investment in public schools will continue to be critical to overcome these conditions. 

Toren Ballard, K-12 policy director for education policy organization Mississippi First, said he expects to see a more detailed conversation about revising the formula next session. 

“It seems like, at least in the House, in order to get more money for education the formula is going to have to be rewritten,” he said. 

Loome said she is “optimistic” about education funding next session. 

“I’m hoping that (House members) are having conversations right now with candidates for speaker and saying, ‘Fully funding our public schools is really important to us, it’s important to our communities,’” she said. 

Recent polling shows that full funding of MAEP is very popular, with 79% of respondents saying they support it in a recent Sienna College/Mississippi Today poll. 

Superintendent of the Kemper County School District Hilute Hudson said that while he would have liked to see full funding, he appreciates that the compromise struck this year gives schools some more money while also giving legislators more time to revisit the formula. 

He also pushed back on the notion that additional money put into the formula would have been used irresponsibly. 

“If you look across the state, (school leaders) are taking these funds and trying to put them to the best use for our students. It’s not a situation of trying to inflate salaries,” Hudson said. 

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Mississippi State and Ole Miss have won college baseball’s national championship in back-to-back seasons, rampaging through the College World Series at Omaha before crowds that seemed 98% Mississippians.

But take a quick look at the Southeastern Conference current standings and we must ask ourselves: Did the Bulldogs and Rebels make a deal with the devil to win those national crowns? And, is it now time to pay the devil? There are seven teams in the SEC’s Western Division. Mississippi State currently is in sixth place with a 3-9 league record, one game ahead of seventh place Ole Miss, which is 2-10.

Is this a case of, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen?” Or is just a case of two talented teams, off to bad starts, but still with plenty of time to turn it around?

It’s probably somewhere in between. Let’s take a look. Defending national champ Ole Miss is 18-13 overall. 2021 champ Mississippi State completed the Easter weekend with an overall record of 19-14. Both are five games above .500 and have played inconsistently, while displaying the potential to go on a late season run the way Ole Miss did a year ago.

Remember, the 2022 national champs were 22-17, five games above .500, at an even later juncture last year and turned it around in late April, May and June in one of the most unlikely championship runs in college baseball history. After winning just 22 of their first 39 games, the Rebels won 20 of their last 27.

It can happen.

But it has to start soon.

Neither Ole Miss, nor State, is nearly as destitute as it might have seemed when both began the SEC season by getting swept in their first two series. Ole Miss opened against Vanderbilt and Florida, both ranked among the top six teams in the country. State likewise opened against Kentucky and Vandy. If you’re not at you best against that kind of competition, the result will not be pleasant. And it wasn’t for either. Both started 0-6.

But both have played better since. Ole Miss has lost two of three to both Texas A&M and Arkansas. State lost a tough series to South Carolina, then won the series at Bama.

Both the Rebels and Bulldogs need to play far better still. And just look whom they play in their next weekend series. That would be each other. Ole Miss and State square off for a three-game series at Starkville beginning Friday at 6 p.m. Because of their slow starts, this becomes much more crucial than your normal mid-April series.

Both play mid-week games Tuesday night — State on the road at UAB and Ole Miss at home against Memphis. Then comes the showdown, which State has dominated in recent seasons.

Ole Miss has not won the annual weekend series since 2015. State has won seven of the last 10 games between the two, and 16 off the last 20. State has won six of the last nine games played at Starkville.

Important to remember is that we haven’t quite reached the halfway point of the SEC season. So, this can’t be described as a make-or-break series. State currently sits at No. 29 in RPI ratings, while Ole Miss is No. 38. State has played the nation’s second most difficult schedule, Ole Miss the 10th most difficult. Both have time to turn it around. That said, this weekend would be the optimum time to get headed in the right direction.

•••

Southern Miss coach Scott Berry earned victories Nos. 500 and 501 at the school in a weekend series at Old Dominion as the Golden Eagles took two of three from the Monarchs, who had been tied for first in the Sun Belt.

The Golden Eagles enter the week with at 19-11 overall and 7-5 in the Sun Belt – and with a No. 27 RPI against the nation’s 20th most difficult schedule. The Golden Eagles are two games out of first place with James Madison coming to town for a weekend series.

After a slow start, the Eagles have won seven of their past 10, playing most of those on the road. After 30 games a year ago, the Eagles were 22-8 and then won 25 of their last 34 games.

The schedule sets up well. Southern Miss plays four of its last six conference series at home.

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APRIL 10, 1967

Unita Blackwell, Fannie Lou Hamer and others testified about the immense poverty in the Mississippi Delta as Sen. Robert Kennedy and others listened at a Senate subcommittee hearing in Jackson. The next day, Kennedy and Sen. Joseph Clark from Pennsylvania toured the Delta with Marian Wright, seeing malnutrition they equated with Third World countries. The senators wrote a letter to President Lyndon B. Johnson, describing what they found. The press covered the story, including The New York Times and Jet and Look magazines. 

“Congress talks of poverty and how it should be dealt with,” Daniel Schorr reported on the CBS Evening News, “but rarely does it go to look at it.” More congressional hearings resulted, and reforms followed. Ellen Meacham’s book, “Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi,” tells this story.

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Mississippi Today’s political team breaks down three major issues from the 2023 legislative session that will become inescapable issues during the 2023 election cycle.

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