When Alvin Ailey and other young, modern Black dancers performed at New York City’s 92nd Street Y, it was meant to be a one-night event. Instead, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater company introduced the world to the discovery of what Black dancing could be, performing for audiences in 71 countries, including kings and queens.
Ailey grew up in Texas, “glued to my mother’s hip. Sloshing through the terrain. Branches slashing against a child’s body. Going from one place to another. Looking for a place to be. My mother off working in the fields. I used to pick cotton.”
In 1960, Ailey debutedRevelations, regarded as a masterpiece. Through his dances, he sought to show “dark deep things, beautiful things inside me that I’d always been trying to get out.” And when his friend, fellow choreographer Joyce Trisler died, he created a dance to honor her —a dance that illustrated both loneliness and celebration.
“I couldn’t cry,” he later confessed, “until I saw this piece.”
In 1988, he received Kennedy Center Honors, with legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite introducing him as “a choreographer who helped free Blacks from the cage of tap-dancing.”
Dying of AIDS, Ailey passed on his company to Judith Jamison, who said, “Alvin breathed in and never breathed out.” She continued: “We are his breath out.”
A 2021 documentary details his journey, and the Ailey school remains the largest place in New York City dedicated to training dancers.
The Mississippi Legislature, finally reaching a budget accord, worked late Wednesday night to pass that agreement with hopes of ending its 2023 session on Thursday.
A key peg in that deal is an agreement between House and Senate leaders to provide an additional $100 million for local school districts. The agreement will be divvied out to schools based on student enrollment with the understanding the money cannot be used to provide pay raises for administrators.
A key obstacle in the prolonged budget stalemate that began before last weekend was the desire of the Senate to place an additional $181 million in the funding formula in state law that provides for the basic needs of local school districts.
The Senate plan was to make minor adjustments in the Mississippi Adequate Education Program formula, and fully fund it for an additional $181 million for the first time since the 2007-08 school year.
But House Speaker Philip Gunn and other members of his leadership team opposed placing additional money in MAEP. They have been advocates in the past of scrapping or overhauling the program.
Gunn stressed late Wednesday the additional $100 million will not go into the formula. But it will be provided to the schools, like the MAEP is, based on student enrollment. And while school districts will not have as much discretion as with MAEP in how the funds are spent, they still will have significant leeway in expending the funds.
Overall, Gunn said he is pleased with the agreement.
“We are going to make significant progress tonight and probably finish up on Thursday,” he said. “We are grateful to the Senate for working with us.”
The agreement also will include additional funds to deal with the devastation caused by last week’s tornadoes that ripped through the Delta and north Mississippi killing at least 21. Final details of the amount of money that will be set aside for storm relief was still undecided late Wednesday.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the amount of funding “will be a significant amount of money.”
The agreement will take shape in multiple appropriations bills that must be passed by both chambers. Additionally, a handful of general bills — some controversial — still are pending to be taken up.
House Bill 1020 is perhaps the most controversial. In its original form it created a separate judicial district in the white and more affluent areas of Jackson where the judges would be appointed instead of elected by the Black majority population of the city.
A version of that proposal is still alive and expected to be taken up on Thursday.
Another measure, Senate Bill 2343, would give Capitol Police, under direction of the state Department of Public Safety, jurisdiction to patrol within the entire city of Jackson.
But efforts to restore the state’s initiative process where citizens can gather signatures to place issues on the ballot for voters to decide was not part of any agreement. That proposal is dead for the session unless an additional agreement is reached overnight. The state had an initiative process until May 2021 when the state Supreme Court ruled it invalid because of a technical flaw. At the time, legislative leaders vowed to fix the concerns of the Supreme Court and restore the process. But for the past two sessions, legislative leaders have been unable to agree on a fix to restore the process.
The Senate rejected the nomination of Robert Taylor for state superintendent of education on Wednesday.
Taylor was most recently a deputy state superintendent for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction before starting his role here on Jan. 17. A native of Laurel, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi and has worked in North Carolina schools since 1992.
Robert Taylor, a native of Laurel. Credit: Mississippi Department of Education
The state superintendent oversees Mississippi’s 870 public schools and is appointed by the State Board of Education. Once the board makes a selection, that person must be confirmed by a nominations subcommittee and the Senate Education Committee before being approved by the full chamber with a vote. Taylor’s nomination passed through the first two steps before failing the Senate vote 21-31.
Senators expressed concerns during the Senate Education Committee vote on Tuesday that Taylor had worked outside of Mississippi for most of his career, citing that this was the same reason they had just rejected Gov. Tate Reeves’ nomination for the State Board of Education. Taylor’s predecessor Carey Wright is not a Mississippi native and took the position after working in District of Columbia Public Schools.
“This is nothing personal with me, but it’s absolutely what this Capitol needs (sic) to stay consistent with your votes, and I will be staying consistent with mine,” said Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando.
Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory responded to these concerns both in committee and on the Senate floor, arguing the state doesn’t take this stance with many other positions as not to limit the options.
“I don’t understand the notion that we only want people from Mississippi, I thought we wanted people from other states to come here,” Bryan said.
Sen. Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg, chaired the education nominations subcommittee and was one of five Senate Republicans who voted in favor of Taylor.
“We talk about brain drain – well here was a chance to bring someone back,” Johnson said. “In conversations I had with him, I thought he answered things well. He praised what Mississippi has done with education in the last 10 years and said he wants to continue that trend. I thought he had a great knowledge of education and what’s going on here.”
Sen. Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, expressed frustration with lack of transparency in the hiring process, saying on Tuesday he was “disgusted” with the way it was handled. This concern was also discussed at the March 15 hearing to interview Taylor and State Board of Education Chair Rosemary Aultman, where Aultman answered questions about the hiring process from senators.
The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) reviewed the hiring process at the request of legislators, finding the board lacked a standard scoring method for evaluating candidates and the selection process “lacked transparency,” as finalists for the position were not shared publicly despite the consulting firm proposing to do so.
Aultman responded to these concerns, saying applicants for the position asked to remain anonymous, and the board chose to honor the request. Aultman also explained the board developed a list of attributes an ideal candidate would have and judged applications based on how well they matched the list. For finalists, while they were not scored by a rubric, Aultman said each board member did rank the four options.
Aultman reiterated this support for Taylor and the hiring process after Taylor was rejected by the Senate in a statement from the Mississippi Department of Education.
“The State Board of Education conducted a fair, competitive and rigorous application process to select the most qualified candidate to fulfill the duties of state superintendent of education,” she said. “The search firm we hired was helpful in giving the board direction, and we are confident we selected the best candidate.”
Sen. Daniel Sparks, R-Belmont, also raised concerns on the Senate floor that the school district Taylor led in North Carolina did not significantly improve under his nearly 10-year tenure. Between 2015 and 2019, the years for which data is publicly available from the North Carolina School Report Cards website, the Bladen County School District did see more schools meeting their growth targets, as well as the number of C-rated schools rising from four to seven. D-rated schools had fallen from eight to three between 2015 and 2018, before jumping back up to six in 2019. This data does not represent all of the years that Taylor led the district.
Taylor has previously said at State Board of Education meetings that assisting low-performing districts was one of his top priorities, and had visited all but one of them in his first two months on the job to learn about their needs.
“It is our duty and responsibility to be able to get in and work with those districts before they end up on the list being over by the state,” Taylor said at the March 15 committee hearing. “We don’t have the capacity to take over ten or eleven districts, but we do have the ability to be able to get into those districts and help them build capacity.”
Dennis DeBar, R-Leaksville, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said he voted against Taylor for multiple reasons, but most specifically because he “wanted to see someone with a better resume on low-performing schools.”
Taylor would have also been the second Black state superintendent after Henry L. Johnson, who also came to Mississippi from North Carolina in 2002. Some have raised concerns that race placed a role in this rejection.
“Any time you put politics and partisanship and race ahead of serving the state of Mississippi, we do our citizens a great disservice,” said Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson.
The State Board of Education said in a press release that they will schedule a special-called board meeting in the coming days to name an interim and begin a new search process.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit Rolling Fork on Friday following last week’s devastating tornado, according to a White House statement.
Tornadoes ripped through Mississippi on March 24, leaving at least 21 dead, dozens injured and a trail of destruction throughout the Delta and into the state’s northern region.
Rolling Fork, the lower Delta town where the Bidens will visit, took a direct hit from an EF-4 tornado. The president had declared a major federal disaster for the Mississippi counties affected by the storms.
“The President and the First Lady will visit with first responders, state and local officials, and communities impacted by the devastation from recent storms, survey recovery efforts, and reaffirm their commitment to supporting the people of Mississippi as long as it takes,” the White House statement said.
This will be Biden’s first trip to Mississippi since he was elected in 2020. During the 2020 campaign, he stumped in Jackson. Jill Biden visited a pop up COVID-19 vaccination site at Jackson State University in June 2021.
The Republican leadership of the Mississippi Legislature has for years attempted to make it easier to remove voters from the election rolls.
They finally succeeded with legislation that passed both chambers on Tuesday and now needs the signature of Gov. Tate Reeves to become law. The governor is expected to sign the bill, which authorizes Secretary of State Michael Watson to perform election audits throughout the state.
The bill, opposed by all Black members of the House and Senate and by most Democrats, does not make the process to remove voters from the rolls as easy as Republican leaders first proposed this session and have attempted to do in past sessions.
Under the proposal, people who do not vote in one of two presidential elections in a four-year period or in any other election between those national elections would be mailed a card asking them to confirm they still live at the same address. If they do not respond to that card, they would be required to vote affidavit in the next election.
People who vote by affidavit — with their vote accepted as still residing in the voting district — would be considered a voter in good standing. But if they do not return the card or take no voter-related action over a period of two federal elections they would be removed from the registered voter list.
Republicans said the legislation is needed to ensure accurate voter registration lists.
“What we want to do is clean up the voter rolls,” said Senate Election Chair Jeff Tate, R-Meridian, of the proposal. “When we have people on the rolls by name only and they are not actually living there, that is a vessel for fraud. And yes, there is voter fraud. What this does is give our local election officials another tool to clean up their rolls.”
Democrats said people have a right to decide not to vote and should not face the possibility of being removed from the rolls by making that choice.
“The only thing this person has done is not vote. We’re saying you can’t be left alone to mind your own business,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez.
During debate in the House, Rep. Brent Powell, R-Brandon, told members that the confirmation card sent to people would be by certified mail, which would ensure that the intended recipient of the confirmation card received it.
Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, said, “You can become intoxicated at the podium because you are handling a bill and want to see it pass and you can offer and see things not in the bill. There are no requirements that certified mail be sent out … Voting is not a privilege in this country. It is a right. It is a right that brought death and pain and suffering to those who did not have this right.”
There is no reference in the legislation saying the confirmation cards should be sent via certified mail.
At any rate, Democrats say the legislation is part of a package of efforts to make it more difficult to vote. Earlier this session the Legislature passed and the governor signed into law a bill that would prohibit the so-called “harvesting” of ballots.
The Republican leadership said the bill prohibits people from obtaining and submitting multiple absentee ballots for the elderly and for others who are allowed a mail-in ballot in Mississippi. They said there are people who gather multiple ballots for people who are eligible to vote by mail and that can be a vehicle for voter fraud.
Democrats said the new law makes it more difficult for people to help the elderly and disabled vote by mail.
While bills are being passed that some say make it more difficult to vote, Mississippi is one of only four states not having some version of no excuse early voting.
“I appreciate the institution of voting on Election Day,” Tate said.
Rolling Fork residents devastated by last week’s fatal tornadoes that destroyed the town’s main health care centers and damaged other parts of the state will soon have better access to doctors at a new field hospital.
Sharkey Issaquena Community Hospital lost power and had its emergency room “blown off” among other severe damages, said Charles Weissinger, a Rolling Fork resident and attorney for the Issaquena County Board of Supervisors.
Meanwhile the Delta Health Center based in Rolling Fork was “split in half,” according to the clinic’s Facebook page.
As a result, residents have been accessing a patchwork of medical care from vans to parking lots. By Friday, patients should be able to receive care at the field hospital set up at the Rolling Fork National Guard Armory.
“So many people were hurt,” said Weissinger, who was at his home with his 5-year-old grandson when the tornado struck.
The rural community hospital has been struggling to stay afloat and was, as of September, seeking a buyer. It has continued to lose money over the years, even after pooling its resources with other small hospitals to buy supplies at a discounted rate.
Now, it’s missing part of its roof and its patients have been spread across the state in other hospitals or nursing homes. Mississippi Today has reached out to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s office seeking comment on whether federal money may be allocated to rebuild the decimated hospital. Thompson’s district includes the areas ravaged worst by last week’s tornadoes.
Dr. Dominick Trinca, a family medicine doctor in the Delta, posted a photo to his Facebook page standing in front of the mangled Rolling Fork Delta Health Center. On Tuesday, the clinic said it was seeing patients in a tent in the parking lot.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center and local partners were setting up tents at the Armory site, 19719 U.S. 61 in Rolling Fork, Wednesday with the plan to be open Friday.
UMMC is coordinating with the state’s health department and emergency management agency. The field hospital will be the temporary home for the hospital and medical clinics for Sharkey and Issaquena counties.
The Mississippi Center for Emergency Services housed at UMMC dispatched first-responder support and triage teams to areas impacted by the storm since the tornadoes struck. On Monday, UMMC’s school of nursing started a mobile clinic in Rolling Fork to provide routine health care and give out prescription medications.
Patients have been able to visit with nurses in a van equipped with an exam room. The van will stay in Rolling Fork until the field hospital is fully operational.
Delta Health Center staff will operate the field hospital.
“There is a lot of work ahead, but we’re here every step of the way,” the health center wrote on its Facebook page.
On an otherwise pleasant Mississippi Monday, Rick visited Amory and Tyler headed to Rolling Fork. Those two tornado ravaged towns, 159 miles apart, face a long recovery and rebuilding will include new baseball fields. In Amory, Rick visited Joe Burrow’s grandparents, who rode out the EF4 tornado in the storm cellar they built beneath their home of 60 years.
A Lafayette County grand jury indicted Sheldon Timothy Herrington, Jr., the Ole Miss graduate from a connected North Mississippi family, for the murder of Black, queer student Jimmie “Jay” Lee.
A filing from the Lafayette County Circuit Court states that jurors on Tuesday indicted Herrington on charges of capital murder because he killed Lee while kidnapping him. Capital murder is punishable by the death penalty or life in prison in Mississippi.
The decision, which means the case could go to trial, comes as Lee’s body has been missing for more than 260 days. Herrington was arrested for Lee’s murder on July 22 last year. The theory of the case that the prosecution presented at the preliminary hearing last fall is that Herrington killed Lee to keep their casual sexual relationship a secret — somethingHerrington’s defense attorney deemed “sensational.”
Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a 20-year-old University of Mississippi student, has been missing since Friday, July 8, 2022. Credit: Courtesy Oxford Police Department
Lee’s disappearance caught national attention last year in part because of the fear it sparked in Oxford’s tight-knit LGBTQ+ community. Some students, feeling unsafe, vowed not to return to the University of Mississippi for the fall semester. Many others have started a local movement called “Justice for Jay Lee” that wants to see Herrington convicted.
News of the indictment spread yesterday afternoon before the “true bill,” the document showing a grand jury finding, was uploaded into the court system.
“Victory!” members of Justice for Jay Lee said after they heard about the decision while waiting in front of the courthouse.
On Wednesday morning, Steven Jubera, the assistant district attorney working on the case, said the indictment is “the beginning of a long process.”
“Oxford Police Department spent thousands of hours doing everything possible to get us to the point where we have an indictment, and now we’re working towards getting a trial setting date for Mr. Herrington to bring peace to the Lee family,” Jubera said.
The Oxford Police Department released a statement thanking law enforcement and the district attorney’s office for their “hard work during this investigation.” OPD said that it has not stopped looking for Lee’s body.
In a text message to Mississippi Today, Herrington’s defense attorney Kevin Horan said “the return of a much publicized indictment by the grand jury is simply the next step in the process.”
Herrington’s family has maintained his innocence in interviews with news outlets.
“We’re all in shock, we’re all devastated, and we are all looking forward to proving his innocence,” Herrington’s half-brother, Tevin Coleman, told Mississippi Today last year.
His family, which runs a large Apostolic Christian church in Grenada, is well-connected in north Mississippi. Last fall, dozens of people, including powerful local officials in Grenada like the superintendent, wrote letters to the court on Herrington’s behalf.
“I have also known Sheldon Timothy Herrington, Jr. since he was a small child, never had any problems with him,” Grenada County Sheriff Roland Fair wrote to the court.
It has not been clear to what extent OPD is working with law enforcement in Grenada, where Lee’s body might be located. Fair told Mississippi Today in September last year that no one from Oxford has reached out to him personally even though officers executed a search warrant on Herrington’s parent’s house in late July.
OPD has defended its work on the case as well as its choice to share little information with the community about the investigation.
It’s unknown what evidence was presented by the prosecution to the grand jury on Monday, which was specially convened for a day-and-a-half to hear Herrington’s case due to the “amount of evidence.” The true bill lists the witnesses as OPD detective Ryan Baker, Lee’s mother, Herrington’s parents and uncle,and Angela Fletcher, a DeSoto County sheriff’s officer.
At Herrington’s preliminary hearing last fall, an OPD detective laid out some of the evidence that led to his arrest. Video surveillance footage and Snapchat data and messages show Lee going over to Herrington’s apartment early in the morning of July 8after the two had a fight.
Snapchat location data put Lee in the vicinity of Herrington’s apartment for the last time early in the morning on July 8. Soon after, video footage from Walmart showed Herrington viewing garbage cans and purchasing duct tape. Later that day, more footage shows Herrington retrieving a long-handled shovel and wheelbarrow from his parent’s house and putting it into the back of a moving truck.
Next, Herrington will appear in court for arraignment so he can be formally notified of the charge.
Tom Bradley became mayor of Los Angeles — the first Black mayor of a predominantly white major city in the U.S.
Bradley was born into poverty in Texas, the son of sharecroppers and the grandson of slaves. Seven years after his birth, his family moved to Los Angeles. He attended UCLA on a track scholarship and left there to join the Los Angeles Police Department. After his 21 years at the department, he became a lieutenant — the highest rank achieved by a black officer at the time.
In 1963, he became the first Black member elected to the Los Angeles City Council. After losing his first race for mayor in 1969, he returned to defeat incumbent Sam Yorty, building a coalition with White voters. His 20 years in office marked the longest tenure of any mayor in the city’s history.
During his time, he oversaw great expansion of the city and the 1984 Summer Olympics. During his tenure, he also appointed Myrlie Evers to the Public Works Commission.
“His mayoralty was a time in which Los Angeles reconfigured itself, redefined itself,” historian Kevin Starr told the Los Angeles Times.
But the humble politician saw his share of disappointment, falling thousands of votes short of becoming California’s first Black governor in 1982. He also endured his share of criticism for his “nearly expressionless demeanor,” receiving the nickname “The Sphinx of City Hall.” Criticism also came in 1991 after four white police officers beat Rodney King — an assault captured on videotape. He died in the hospital in 1998 after suffering an unexpected heart attack — his second.
Raphael J. Sonenshein, the author of Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles, called Bradley “the most important political figure in Los Angeles in the last three decades.” The Los Angeles International Airport now features a bust of Bradley, and the international terminal bears his name.
The Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees has selected a new president of Delta State University following a nationwide search.
Daniel J. Ennis will be the ninth president of Delta State University, beginning June 1. Credit: Institutions for Higher Learning
Daniel J. Ennis will be the ninth president of the regional college in Cleveland, a small town in the Mississippi Delta. He is currently serving as the provost and executive vice president of Coastal Carolina University in northeastern South Carolina, a position he worked up to after starting there as an assistant professor of English in 1999.
In recent years, the board has made it a priority to hire alumni to lead Mississippi’s universities. Ennis, who has degrees from colleges in the Carolinas and Alabama, is the first non-alumnus to be selected to lead a state university since 2017.At listening sessions last year, the Delta State community was split on if its next president should be an outsider or an alumnus.
“As I have learned more about the university, the Delta region, and the state of Mississippi, I have been inspired by the history, culture, and resilience of the people with whom I will soon work and live,” Ennis said in a press release. “I am committed to helping Delta State University continue to thrive, and my wife and I look forward to becoming members of the community.”
His tenure will begin June 1. It was not immediately clear how much Ennis will be paid, but Delta State’s interim president, E.E. Butch Caston, is making$300,000.
The search for a new president at Delta State began after the board suddenly let go William LaForge, the university’s eighth president, due to declining enrollment and financial metrics.
LaForge’s tenure saw repeated budget cuts. In the last eight years, enrollment has plummeted at Delta State faster than at any other public university in Mississippi. Headcount has dropped 29% percent since 2014, with just 2,556 students enrolled this year
In a press release, IHL touted Ennis’s success in boosting first-year retention and enrollment at CCU and his ability to bring in financial resources.
“Dr. Ennis is also experienced and accomplished in friend- and fund-raising,” the press release reads. “He connects donors, faculty, and the community and helps them to see the potential in the institution by articulating how their resources can transform lives.”
Ennis had served as the president of CCU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a membership-based organization that advocates for faculty. This goes to show that Ennis “understands how shared governance strengthens the university and helps a wide variety of campus community voices to be heard,” the press release notes.
Ennis is also involved in a restructuring of CCU that led to the creation of the Conway Medical Center College of Health and Human Performance in 2021.
“His long tenure there demonstrates how beloved he is by the campus community,” Teresa Hubbard, an IHL trustee and Delta State alumnus who chaired the board’s presidential search community, said in a press release. “His academic credentials, administrative skills, student-centered focus, and ability to connect students, faculty, alumni and the community make him a great fit for the university.”
It was not clear how many applicants the board received or the number of finalists interviewed by trustees. Many aspects of IHL’s presidential searches are confidential.
