Two proposed charter schools have made it through the first stage of the annual application process with hopes of opening in the Delta.
This year’s application cycle saw fewer applicants at this stage than in previous years, with five applicants in 2021 and nine in 2022.
The schools are:
Clarksdale Collegiate Prep, grades 7-12 in the Clarksdale Municipal School District
Level-Up Academy Public Charter School, grades K-8 in the Greenville Public School District
Both schools are seeking to open in the fall of 2024 and would serve fewer grades at their opening. This is not the first application for either applicant.
The applicants that have made it to this stage will be reviewed by an outside evaluator. This year, the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board contracted with a local group of former Mississippi education officials to review the applications, which includes former Interim State Superintendent Kim Benton. Final decisions on the potential schools will be announced in September.
Charter schools are free public schools that do not report to a school board like traditional public schools. Instead, they are governed by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, which oversees the application process to open a new charter school. They have more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction, and are funded by local school districts based on enrollment.
Charter schools can apply directly to the authorizer board if they’re planning to open in a D or F district. If an operator wants to open in an A, B, or C district, they need to get approval from the local school board. Both of the schools applying this cycle would be opening in D or F districts.
Ten schools have been approved through this application process since it was created, with eight currently operational and two planning to open this fall in Natchez and Canton. The majority of schools are in Jackson, but schools are also located in Clarksdale and Greenwood.
Brielan Terrell sat a few rows behind the other boys in the auditorium at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The 18-year-old leaned forward, listening intently, as Eric Lucas Jr., a fourth-year medical student, demonstrated how to perform an ultrasound. As Lucas slid the probe across a medical manikin’s chest, he peppered his audience, about 35 young Black men clad in sports coats and bowties, with questions.
“Can anyone tell me what a stable blood pressure is?” he asked.
Terrell raised his hand and answered correctly: “120 over 80.”
Lucas beamed. This was exactly what he imagined three years ago when he came up with the idea for the Black Men in Health Care Empowerment Summit.
The one-day summer program saw its third cohort on Saturday, as over 100 middle and high school students from all over the state visited UMMC for tours and clinical simulations. Aimed at encouraging young Black men to pursue health care careers, Lucas pitched his idea during his first year at UMMC.
“That’s how I was raised,” he said. “When you walk through the door, you should help someone to walk in.”
Lucas, a graduate of Mississippi State University and native of Ocean Springs, always had a career in health care in his sights.
He remembers getting a microscope kit for a gift when he was 4.
“Science has always kind of been my thing,” Lucas admitted.
Brielan Terrell, center, and Clayton Neely participate in a dentistry exercise during the Black Men in Health Care Empowerment Summit at University of Mississippi Medical Center on Saturday, June 10, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Growing up with a dentist for a mom and a critical care intensivist for a dad, Lucas always knew being a physician was a real career option. But he also knows that’s not the case for many Black kids in Mississippi, including some of his medical school classmates.
“One day, we were all hanging out, and I was like, ‘Man, how cool would it have been if we had a summer camp that brought us through all the medical schools and just getting exposed to what it takes?’” Lucas recounted.
“If you don’t see it, you’re not going to believe it.”
And so the summit was born.
In Mississippi, a state with one of the worst health outcomes for people of color in the country, getting more young Black people involved in health care could make all the difference.
That’s why Dr. Demondes Haynes jumped at the opportunity to make Lucas’ dream a reality at UMMC.
“Just to let students know that a career in health care is an option,” he said. “Not that everybody that’s here today will become a doctor or dentist or a nurse, but we want them to know that it is an option.”
Students attend the Black Men in Health Care Empowerment Summit at University of Mississippi Medical Center on Saturday, June 10, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Haynes, associate dean for admissions at UMMC, said the only demographic group that had a decrease in students applying and being admitted to medical school in the past 40 years were Black men.
Less than 6% of doctors in the United States identify as Black or African American, though Black people make up about 12% of the population.
Though it’s been shown that, when Black patients are treated by Black doctors, they’re happier with their health care and are more likely to get the preventative care they need, one recent study linked the prevalence of Black doctors to longer life expectancy among Black populations for the first time.
Black men have the shortest life expectancy in the country. The potential power of increasing the number of Black men in the health care field is clear.
“We, as a medical center, want to improve the lives of Mississippians overall,” Haynes said. “This is important because we want to invest in students to contribute to Mississippi. So our hope is that some of these will enter the healthcare field and hopefully stay in Mississippi and improve life in Mississippi for all citizens.”
Throughout the morning, Black medical students and doctors led summit participants — including Terrell — through tours, panels and lectures.
As one of the oldest students in attendance, Terrell lagged behind to talk to medical professionals and raised his hand often. The incoming freshman at the University of Southern Mississippi had a lot on his mind.
During downtime of the ultrasound session, Terrell started chatting with Jaharah Muhammad, a third-year medical student, about his interest in pharmacy.
“Are you going to stay in Mississippi?” she asked.
He answered indecisively.
Later, moments before the students filed out of the auditorium and the next group of medical students and doctors would try to open their eyes to the possibilities of a career in health care, Muhammad shared some parting words.
“Consider staying here,” she said. “If you want more people who look like y’all in health care, this is where it starts.”
A recent report from the State Auditor Shad White’s office found that Mississippi’s eight public universities spent at least $23 million on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives since July 2019. Just under half was state funding, the report states, with the remainder coming from federal or private grants.
Much of the spending in the report covers what appears to be traditional DEI initiatives, like funding for diversity offices, affinity-based student groups and events celebrating Black History Month and Women’s History Month. DEI is generally understood to refer to programs that promote the “fair treatment” of historically marginalized people.
But it also includes programs that may not be typically seen as DEI, like legally-mandated scholarships for non-Black students attending historically Black colleges and universities, a lecture at Mississippi University for Women by the artist collective Guerilla Girls and an event at Alcorn State University called “pet-a-puppy.”
That’s because each institution was operating off it’s own definition of diversity, not DEI. The auditor’s office did not define DEI in its report. A spokesperson told Mississippi Today it was up to the Institutions of Higher Learning and each university, not the auditor, to define DEI.
But IHL has not approved a definition of DEI for the system or for any of the universities, a spokesperson confirmed. Instead, the agency has approved institution-specific definitions of “diversity,” or groups traditionally under-represented at each campus, for the purpose of setting diversity goals.
So that’s the definition the auditor’s office directed IHL and each university to use, emails obtained by Mississippi Today show.
At the state’s three historically Black colleges and universities, that means non-Black students. Programs aimed at recruiting and retaining non-Black students were included in the auditor’s report and accounted for roughly $2.3 million, or 10%, of the total budgeted dollars.
It’s also unclear if the report is comprehensive. Jackson State University’s spending is blank for two of the four fiscal years the auditor requested; a spokesperson told Mississippi Today that was because the university did not have state-funded programs to report for those years. One fiscal year from Mississippi State University includes an accounting error that shows it spent $35,000 less than it actually did.
The university wrote in an email to Mississippi Today that it told the auditor’s office to update the error on June 1 after the office reached out, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Fletcher Freeman, the auditor’s spokesperson, wrote in an email the office did not audit the spreadsheets the universities submitted.
“If a university said they spent DEI money on a program and it was listed in their survey it was included,” Freeman wrote. “We did not ‘choose’ to include one expenditure over another. If it was included in the universities DEI expenditures it was attached to the report.”
In a video, White said he directed his office to run this report because Mississippi taxpayers deserve to know what universities are spending on DEI. (The report, modeled off a similar review by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, did not include DEI spending at the state’s 15 community colleges.)
“I have real concerns about taxpayer dollars being spent on DEI initiatives, particularly whether taxpayer dollars are being spent to teach ideas that tear us apart rather than bring us together,” he said.
After the report published last week, the Institutions of Higher Learning, which worked with the auditor’s office to create the report’s spreadsheet, countered with a statement that said DEI spending is a workforce investment and represents less than 1% of the system’s state appropriations.
“Our public universities have diverse student bodies and an obligation to support them,” the press release said.
IHL had suggested the auditor’s office ask the universities to report DEI spending as a percentage of university expenditures and state appropriations, according to emails obtained by Mississippi Today. But the auditor did not go with that suggestion.
The auditor’s office also asked IHL to provide criteria showing how diversity outcomes factor into performance reviews for the university presidents, according to that same batch of emails. That wasn’t included in the report, though the auditor’s office may be working on an additional report due out in October, according to the emails. Freeman said he was not aware of that.
So how do Mississippi’s universities support their diverse student bodies?
At Delta State University, that looks like $30 spent on an event called “United in Green,” which was held to “engage students, faculty and staff in non-partisan conversations about (the) 2020 election elections.” The university also spent $1,014.66 in 2023 on a civil rights field trip to Jackson.
At Mississippi State University, about $18,970 in state funds in 2020 were spent on a leadership conference for high school juniors who identify as underrepresented. In the spreadsheet, MSU noted that “students participating have shown a greater likelihood to enroll at Mississippi State, as well as be retained.”
Almost every school reported spending DEI funds on programming or activities for international students.
Some of the spending even aligns with programs the state auditor has endorsed — which White did not mention in his video. Many of the universities reported spending DEI funds on events for student veterans, like approximately $33,599 in state funding that the University of Mississippi spent in 2020 on staff who support those students.
But a significant slice of the spending that was reported covered programs that seem to have very little to do with the goals of DEI.
In 2021, Alcorn State reported spending $2,500 on a Department of Fine Arts Strings Workshop and Master Class, $40,000 on “new student orientation” and $1,337 on programs to support student health, such as “National Go Red Day for Heart Health.” That same year, the oldest historically Black university in Mississippi also reported $150,000 of spending on $10,000 scholarships for non-Black students.
Mississippi Valley State University also counted funds it was legally mandated to try to spend as part of the Ayers settlement on recruiting and scholarships for non-Black students as DEI funds.
One of just two DEI programs that Jackson State reported was about $6,972 in 2022 and 2023 to prevent chronic kidney disease in “equitable populations” across Mississippi.
A $400 million federal civil rights lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of two men allegedly beaten and tortured by Rankin County sheriff’s deputies during what attorneys say was an unlawful arrest earlier this year says the department has a pattern of excessive force against Black people.
The 14-count lawsuit details the night of Jan. 24 when six white deputies conducting a drug investigation raided the Braxton residence where Michael Corey Jenkins, 32, and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker, 35, were living. What followed was 90 minutes of unlawful imprisonment and unjustified torture while the men were handcuffed, according to the lawsuit.
The height of the alleged mistreatment came when a deputy placed his service weapon inside Jenkins’ mouth and pulled the trigger, leading to a broken jaw and lacerated tongue. Jenkins’ family and attorneys said the injuries nearly killed him.
“This lawsuit here is all about punitive damages. These acts are egregious and worthy of punishment,” said Jenkins’ attorney, Malik Shabazz, during a Monday morning news conference.
“Why punitive damages? Why punish? Because we don’t want this to happen again,” he said.
Defendants named in the lawsuit are the county, Sheriff Bryan Bailey, and deputies Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Christian Dedmon and three unknown deputies.
The lawsuit details the men’s experience: racial slurs allegedly hurled by the deputies, waterboarding, attempted sexual assault and threats of death by having guns pointed at them.
A spokesperson from the sheriff’s department and an attorney representing the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
At the news conference, Jenkins and Parker declined comment due to pending civil action, but they did thank people and family for their support.
Elward is identified in the lawsuit as the deputy who placed a gun inside Jenkins’ mouth and pulled the trigger. As a result, Jenkins has suffered permanent physical injury such as nerve damage, numbness and risk of losing his eyesight.
“The acts described herein, committed under the color of law, set the standard of what is wrong with policing today in America,” the lawsuit states.
During the news conference, Shabazz showed several pictures of evidence from the scene and of the injuries Jenkins and Parker faced, including taser marks on Parker’s body.
None of the deputies intervened or tried to stop each other from hurting Jenkins and Parker during the nearly two-hour encounter, the lawsuit alleges.
The deputies did not show a search warrant or announce themselves, nor were drugs or a firearm alleged to have been pointed at a deputy were found at the scene, Shabazz said. Nonetheless, charges were filed against Jenkins and Parker, according to the lawsuit.
As of Monday, Shabazz said he has no information whether the deputies have been suspended or reprimanded.
The lawsuit also mentions other uses of excessive force by Rankin County sheriff’s deputies and holds Sheriff Bailey responsible for failing to properly train the deputies involved in those incidents, including the 2019 death of 31-year-old Pierre Woods in Pelahatchie and the 2021 death of Damien Cameron in Braxton.
Rankin County is accused of acting with reckless and deliberate indifference to the rights and liberties of Jenkins and Parker, who are county residents, according to the lawsuit.
Shabazz said the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case earlier in the year, has completed its investigation and it is now up to the attorney general’s office whether to prosecute the sheriff’s deputies.
The lawsuit comes months after the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi opened a civil rights investigation into the incident.
In May, Shabazz asked the DOJ to prosecute the deputies on charges of hate crimes and other civil rights violations.
This month, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke visited Mississippi and made several stops, including at Jackson State University, where she heard from Jenkins’ mother and Parker during a public forum, according to the men’s attorneys.
Supporters of Jenkins and Parker have demonstrated at the sheriff’s department and, on Saturday, gathered at a Brandon church for a public hearing about police brutality in Rankin County.
At hearing, attorney Trent Walker, who is also representing Michael Corey Jenkins, urged citizens to share their experiences with Rankin County deputies. “It’s past time that we do something,” he said.
If nothing is done, more people will be shot, he predicted.
“Ain’t nobody coming into our neighborhood,” activist Marqwell Bridges told the crowd. “We’ve got to save ourselves.”
Several residents at the hearing urged Black residents to buy guns for self-defense. Both Kenneth Jackson and Angela Green spoke in favor of buying guns and getting trained on how to use them.
“Most of my life, I didn’t have a gun,” Green said. “Every Black person should own a gun. Yes, I have an AR-15, and I’m ready to use it. Come to my door, and you’ll know I have it.”
Mississippi Today investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell contributed to this report.
Mississippi state Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando, faces a driving under the influence charge in Alabama, Baldwin County Chief Deputy Anthony Lowery said.
McLendon was arrested around 10 a.m. on June 5 after being pulled over on Highway 98 near Foley, Alabama, and faces a charge of DUI combined with substance.
“That means alcohol combined with another substance,” Lowery said. “We are not alleging what that substance is at this point, and that does not necessarily mean anything nefarious — it can be cold medicine.”
McLendon did not immediately respond to a call and message seeking comment on Monday.
McLendon was released the evening of his arrest after posting a $2,500 bond and has a court date scheduled for Oct. 25.
Lowery said McLendon was “completely compliant, with no issues whatsoever” when he was arrested.
McLendon, 59, is finishing his first term in the Mississippi Legislature representing District 1 in DeSoto County and is unopposed for reelection this year.
A new Mississippi Today/Siena College poll shows incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann with a substantial lead over challenger Chris McDaniel ahead of the Aug. 8 primary, but Hosemann doesn’t crack 50% and many remain undecided.
The poll of respondents who are likely to vote in the 2023 GOP primary showed Hosemann with 47% support and McDaniel with 32%. But 21% said they don’t know who they’ll vote for or declined to answer.
The poll also surveyed favorable/unfavorable numbers for both candidates. Hosemann was at 58% favorable to 22% unfavorable, and McDaniel was at 46% favorable to 28% unfavorable.
Editor’s note: Poll methodology and crosstabs can be found at the bottom of this story. Click here to read more about our partnership with Siena College Research Institute.
With incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves’ recent semi-endorsement of McDaniel, the poll showed 41% of likely primary voters said they would rather vote for a candidate with his endorsement down ticket, 24% said they would not and 35% said they don’t know.
Both candidates appear to have loyal bases among Republican primary voters. Of those polled who voted for Hosemann in 2019, 61% plan to vote for him again. Of those who voted for McDaniel in his unsuccessful runs for U.S. Senate in 2014 or 2018, 63% plan to vote for him again.
The poll showed some wide differences in regional voter sentiment. In the northeast congressional district, Hosemann and McDaniel were a dead heat, at 36% each. In the Delta and west Mississippi, Hosemann led 60%-20% and led 50%-26% in east-central. In the southeast district which includes McDaniel’s hometown Ellisville, Hosemann polled 45% to McDaniel’s 42%.
Of those surveyed, 31% said they would vote for a candidate considered part of the far-right wing of the GOP, while 45% said they would support a moderate Republican and 24% said they don’t know.
The Mississippi Today/Siena College Research Institute poll of 646 registered voters was conducted June 4-7, 2023, and has an overall margin of error of +/- 4.8 percentage points. Siena has an ‘A’ rating in FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of pollsters.
Editor’s note: The methodology and crosstabs document linked directly above this note was updated to accurately portray the makeup of the survey sample.
Lawsuits alleging that Mississippi’s legislative and judicial districts dilute Black voter strength could be bolstered by a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In a surprise ruling last week, the nation’s highest court found that the seven U.S. House seats in Alabama were unconstitutional and violated the federal Voting Rights Act because they diluted Black voter strength. Presumably, that ruling will force the congressional districts to be redrawn in Alabama and perhaps in other states and could impact the balance of power in the U.S. House.
The ruling could also have an impact in Mississippi. In February the U.S. Supreme Court refused an effort to continue a decades-old lawsuit that placed congressional redistricting in Mississippi under the jurisdiction of a three-judge federal panel. The federal panel had overseen the drawing of Mississippi’s congressional districts since the early 2000s. But with the state Legislature redrawing the districts in 2022 after the 2020 Census, the federal panel opted to end its jurisdiction. A group challenged the decision to end the lawsuit, claiming the districts drawn by the Legislature still diluted Black voter strength.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused the effort to keep congressional redistricting under the jurisdiction of the three-judge panel. Theoretically, the decision in the Alabama case could leads to groups again challenging whether the congressional district in Mississippi dilute Black voter strength.
The decision in the Alabama case also could impact lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the drawing of the 174 Mississippi House and Senate districts and the three districts used to elect Mississippi Supreme Court justices and commissioners to the Public Service Commission and the Transportation Commission.
Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the Mississippi ACLU, said the Supreme Court decision in the Alabama case “affirmed the (federal) Voting Rights Act (and) prevents states from packing or cracking Black communities in a way that limits their ability to elect candidates of their choice.”
“This is exactly why the ACLU of MS is challenging Mississippi’s recently enacted legislative districts and the decades-old state Supreme Court district lines,” Dortch said.
The groups filing the lawsuits challenging the legislative districts and the judicial districts include the ACLU of Mississippi and the national chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the national and state chapter of the NAACP, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the law firm of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, the Mississippi Center for Justice and others.
The groups filing the lawsuit have asked the three judge federal panel hearing the case to set an expedited trial date so that if they prevail a special election could be set for November 2024 to elect legislators under new districts. The groups are not trying to hold a trial quick enough to have new legislative districts drawn, should they prevail, for the regularly scheduled legislative elections in November of this year.
The lawsuit says the state Legislature’s redrawing of the House and Senate districts in 2022 to match population shifts gleaned from the 2020 Census “packed” Black voters in a limited number of districts to dilute their electoral impact.
Carroll Rhodes of Hazlehurst, a longtime civil rights attorney who is involved in the lawsuit, has said the new legislative districts violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution by “packing” Black voters in a smaller number of districts to dilute their strength.
Rhodes and others claim that a new redistricting plan could generate more Black majority districts in addition to increasing the number of African Americans in other districts to provide them more impact in non-minority majority districts.
Dortch pointed out that in 2010, there were 12 House districts that had Black populations of over 40% but not a majority, meaning they could have a significant impact in those districts. But under the maps drawn in 2022 by the Legislature, there is only one district in that category.
A separate lawsuit says the three Supreme Court districts that have not been redrawn in more than 35 years also are unconstitutional.
The state, which has an African American population of about 38%, has nine Supreme Court justices — just one of whom is Black.
Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, who is running for governor as a Democrat, said the ruling in the Alabama case “was a victory for the Voting Rights Act — and the generations of Southern organizers who made it a reality. Instead of shutting the door on Black and minority communities, those of us in elected office must protect this fundamental right and work to bring new voters into our democracy.”
Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves did not comment on the case on social media.
Southern Miss shortstop Dustin Dickerson (10) attempts to turn a double play against Tennessee during an NCAA Super Regional Sunday, June 11, 2023, in Hattiesburg, Miss. (Aimee Cronan/The Gazebo Gazette via AP)
HATTIESBURG — Southern Miss was up one game in the best-of-three Super Regional and had snatched a 4-0 lead over Tennessee in Game 2. A sun-baked, humidity-broiled overflow crowd at Pete Taylor Park of 5,882 was thundering its approval Sunday. The Golden Eagles were six innings away from a trip to the College World Series, and two-time All-American Tanner Hall was on the mound.
Rick Cleveland
Then it happened.
Christian Moore doubled to left field to start the Tennessee fourth. After a fly out, Merritt Griffin singled home Moore to cut the lead to 4-1, bringing first baseman Blake Burke, a left-handed slugger, to the plate. The count reached two balls and two strikes, and Hall threw a slider, down at the knees across the plate.
“A good pitch,” USM coach Scott Berry would later say. “It wasn’t like Tanner hung it. It was a good pitch down in the zone.”
Burke unleashed a violent swing, connected and there was never any doubt. Golden Eagle right fielder Carson Paetow just turned around and stared. He didn’t move. No need.
Burke’s blast rocketed far above the smoking barbecue grills in Southern Miss’ right field roost, sailed through the tops of tall pine trees, landed in the parking lot of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, and then one-hopped high off the church’s brown exterior.
We were told in the press box Burke’s two-run home run, which cut USM’s lead to 4-3, traveled 479 feet from home plate. It did more than that. It changed the game.
Tennessee coach Tony Vitello used a basketball metaphor. “It’s like in basketball where two points is two points, but yet an emphatic slam dunk can kind of change the momentum of the entire game. A home run like that can be like a slam dunk. It changes the mood in the dugouts. It kind of changes everything.”
Burke’s blast surely seemed to do just that. Before the fourth inning was over, the Vols would score three more runs, take a 6-4 lead and never look back for an 8-4 victory that sends this Hattiesburg Super Regional to a third and deciding game Monday. Late Sunday night, the starting time was set for 5 p.m.
Southern Miss’s Dustin Dickerson (10) slides safely into third base while Tennessee infielder Zane Denton (44) waits for the ball during an NCAA Super Regional game Sunday. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
The first two days of this Super Regional have been like a grueling, sweat-drenched marathon. Southern Miss won the first game, which began at 2 p.m. Saturday, endured two lengthy weather delays, and ended early Sunday afternoon. After leading 4-0 Saturday, Southern Miss held on for a hard-earned 5-3 victory.
Beginning at 11 a.m., Justin Storm pitched the last 4.2 innings for Southern Miss for the victory, blanking the powerful Vols on just two hits after Billy Oldham had given the Golden Eagles a quality start the day before. Shortstop Dustin Dickerson slammed a home run and a double, second baseman Nick Monistere homered and left fielder Tate Parker ripped a two-run triple.
Game 2 also started well for the home team. Hall blanked the Vols for three straight innings and then his teammates struck for four runs in the third inning off Tennessee’s highly touted right hander Chase Dollander, expected to be a top 10 pick in this summer’s Major League draft.
Christopher Sargent’s three-run home run off the scoreboard in left field was the big blow of the four-hit, four-run inning. But who would have thought it? Southern Miss never managed another hit off Dollander, who mixed 96- and 97-mph fastballs with some nasty breaking pitches. Dollander only seemed to get stronger. Put it this way: Dollander’s 107th pitch in the 9th inning was a 97-mph fastball on the inside corner.
Dollander couldn’t quite finish. Vitello brought in Chase Burns for the final three outs, which must have seemed like good news for the Golden Eagles at the time. But then three of Burns’ first four pitches hit 100 mph on the radar gun and he used just 10 pitches to get the last three outs.
Berry, who Monday could be coaching his last game of a remarkable 14-year run as Southern Miss coach, often likens post-season baseball games to heavyweight fights. In this Super Regional, Tennessee has gotten off the canvas and floored Southern Miss with a bevy of punches, including Burke’s haymaker.
How will the Golden Eagles respond?
Hall, who might well have pitched his last game as a Golden Eagle Sunday, believes he knows. “We know what it takes to win and we’ll do what it takes to win,” Hall said. “After a tough loss, we always come back.”
Said Berry, “We are a veteran team. We believe in ourselves.”
Tennessee, just one season removed from being one of the most dominant regular season teams in college baseball history, is likewise a veteran team that feels like it has some unfinished business after falling flat in its own Super Regional last year.
So here we are, one game, winner-take-all for a ticket to Omaha. Tennessee will likely pitch sophomore Drew Beam (8-4), who won the final game of the Clemson Regional. USM will likely go with either sophomore Nikko Mazza (5-1) or junior Matthew Adams (3-2).
Civil rights attorney Jill Collen Jefferson was arrested Saturday night by Lexington police — the same department she complained about nine days earlier to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke.
Holmes County Sheriff Willie March confirmed Jefferson’s arrest. She is being held in the Holmes-Humphreys County/Regional Correctional Facility. According to Jefferson’s defense attorney, Michael Carr of Cleveland, she is charged with failure to comply, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. March referred all questions to the Lexington Police Department, which referred comments to Police Chief Charles Henderson, who was out of the office and unavailable.
Carr said he reached Henderson on Saturday night and that the chief said he knew nothing about the arrest and agreed to release Jefferson without bond. But the jail rdquires detainees to pay a $35 processing fee before being released. Carr said Jefferson refused to pay the fee, both because she said it was an unlawful arrest and because people in Lexington can’t afford to pay such a fee. Carr said Jefferson will remain in jail until her court date, which has yet to be set.
Carr said around 10 p.m. Saturday Jefferson was filming traffic a stop from her car on a public street and that apparently incensed the police officer. He asked for her ID, which she gave him. Then he told her to get out of the car, which she refused to do. So he pulled her out and arrested her, Carr said.
Those working for Jefferson’s nonprofit, JULIAN, complained that she has been falsely arrested. In a press release, her office maintains the charges are bogus: “It’s clear this is retaliation against her work to seek justice and truth for the onslaught of police brutality in the area.”
On June 1, Clarke met with residents of Lexington to hear their concerns and complaints regarding local law enforcement. She also met with Jefferson, who has filed repeated complaints against the Lexington Police Department.
The Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting broke the story of a recording of then-Lexington Police Chief Sam Dobbins, who is white and can be heard on a recording filled with racist and homophobic slurs, bragging about killing 13 people in the line of duty.
In one case, he said, “I shot that n—– 119 times, OK?” In another part of the tape, Dobbins can be heard saying, “I don’t give a f— if you have to kill a motherf—er in cold blood.”
A day later, the City Council fired Dobbins, but Jefferson and other residents said the harassment of Black residents has continued under the new chief. JULIAN filed a lawsuit that said more than 200 Black residents had complained about unconstitutional treatment by the Lexington Police Department.
But a federal judge rejected a request for a restraining order against the department.
In her visit to Mississippi, Clarke said the Civil Rights Division she oversees is already investigating whether Rankin County sheriff’s deputies used excessive force when they allegedly shot a Black man in the mouth during a drug raid.
Jefferson named the nonprofit, JULIAN, after her mentor, Julian Bond. She worked on civil rights policy in Congressman John Lewis’ office and helped implement and served as a speechwriter for then-President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.
