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GREENWOOD – There’s a truck parked in the gravel lot of Greenwood Community Center, muddy from a recent spring shower. 

From the outside, it’s easy to overlook. But inside, people who need it are being provided critical, hard to access health care.

Plan A operates the mobile clinic that travels the Delta, offering free family planning and reproductive health services at each of its stops. It’s become a fixture in a region of Mississippi that sees some of the state’s worst health outcomes. 

The organization does it all — their patients can get birth control, blood sugar and pressure checks, pap smears and mammograms, and even sexually transmitted diseases tests. 

And recently, they’ve added another service to their already-long list. 

Months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned abortion rights, the organization has launched a telehealth program to make it easier for Mississippians to access emergency contraception. 

Plan A first began shipping free emergency contraception in fall 2022. After organizers learned from patients how challenging it was to access emergency contraception due to cost and availability, the organization started mailing free care packages, filled with emergency contraception, condoms, pregnancy tests and lubricant to people across Mississippi. 

The idea was to get emergency contraception to Mississippians before they need it, ensuring access immediately after unprotected sex.

But Executive Director Caroline Weinberg didn’t want to stop there.

“From the day we started shipping emergency contraception, we always knew we needed to do Ella if we were going to get people what they needed,” she said. “You can’t look at the demographics of this country and think just sending levonorgestrel is the solution, though it’s certainly a start and better than nothing.”

Ella is the emergency contraception recommended for people above 165 pounds, instead of levonorgestrel. While levonorgestrel is over the counter, Ella requires a prescription. Neither medication will harm a pregnant person or a fetus.

So, to make it easier to access, the group launched its telehealth program and started distributing Ella in January.

Plan A’s reach now extends far past the Delta, where most of its operations are housed — people call in from across the state to ask for Ella prescriptions as far away as Gulfport.

The organization currently gets 250 orders a month for both levonorgestrel and Ella. To date, they’ve shipped out 1,800 care packages. 

In April alone, Plan A has received more than 300 requests for emergency contraception. About 40% of people who request emergency contraception from the organization need Ella. 

Erin Rockwell, the organization’s evaluation and research associate, has been collecting and analyzing survey results about the state’s emergency contraception needs. 

According to Rockwell, while most people knew that there was a specific emergency contraception for people who weigh more than 165 pounds, a minority thought they’d be able to get a prescription for Ella in their community within three days, the time frame of effectiveness. Only a third of those people said they’d be able to afford a doctor’s visit for a prescription.

More than half of survey respondents said they have needed it in the past but been unable to access emergency contraception. The biggest barrier was cost, but access is a close second – many reported they couldn’t buy it anywhere. 

For the past two years, Antoinette Roby has been traveling the Delta in the clinic. She’s a driver turned community health worker, which means she’s the first person most patients will see as they enter the clinic, and the one they’ll primarily deal with. 

Roby, a daughter of the Delta herself, stressed that the clinic is judgment-free. Plan A serves clinics of all ages, background, sexual orientations and gender identities — more often than might be expected, she gets calls from cisgender men who are seeking emergency contraception for their significant others. 

Despite being on the road several days a week with the mobile clinic, Roby said the telehealth program is helping ensure no one falls through the cracks. 

“I feel like sometimes we miss people, even though we go back again,” she said. “So we got the whole telehealth program, and that was another way that we were able to reach the people in the community.”

She wishes something like Plan A would have existed when she was growing up.

“To me, it would have made a big difference,” Roby said. 

Myia Graham of Port Gibson lost her Medicaid-sponsored health insurance after turning 18, and since then, has had a difficult time consistently getting the birth control she needs to regulate her polycystic ovary syndrome. 

So when Graham, a 26-year-old graduate student at Delta State University, saw in a school-wide email last spring that the clinic would be visiting campus, she made sure to go — and after her appointment, she made all of her friends go, too.

Graham said the care Plan A provides is more important than ever.

“I hated being a Mississippi resident when we overturned Roe, because we are a state that says one thing and does another,” she said. “We say we care about women … but Mississippi is the last for everything in terms of women’s health.” 

As a Black woman, Graham said the state cares even less about people who look like her. If you’re Black, Mississippi is one of the most dangerous states in this country to give birth in.

That’s why it gives Graham some comfort to know that if she ever needs emergency contraception, she knows where to get it. 

“I wish that it was everywhere, a clinic like this,” she said.

The post This clinic is making emergency contraception easier to access in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Within the past several weeks, at least four people have been detained after routine check-in appointments at the Pearl U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement office, local advocates say. 

The most recent was Carthage resident Baldomero Orozco Juarez, who is Guatemalan and has been living and working in Mississippi for 14 years. He was detained April 12 during a scheduled check-in, said Lorena Quiroz, executive director of the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity. 

Since then, he has been at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana, which is where many Mississippi immigrants are sent, she said. 

Orozco Juarez was deported after the 2019 ICE chicken plant raids, reentered the country and spent over a year in a detention center in Texas until the agency approved his probationary release, she said. 

“It was already determined you can do that,” Quiroz said about Juarez awaiting his court date from home instead of in a detention center.

Nearly two weeks ago, she and a dozen other community advocates went to the Pearl ICE office to ask for answers about Orozco Juarez’s detention but were not told much. Demonstrators were asked to leave the building and local police were called as they stood outside. 

With probationary release, Orozco Juarez was able to obtain a work permit, driver’s license and a Social Security card, Quiroz said. 

She said Orozco Juarez, who has been working, caring for his family and going to routine ICE check-ins, is not a flight risk. Before his recent detention, he had gone to three scheduled check-ins. 

Orozco Juarez’s wife, Sylvia Garcia, came to the immigration office once she learned her husband had been detained. With translation from Quiroz, Garcia said it will be difficult without Orozco Juarez because she is injured and unable to work. 

“They are separating our families without any reason,” Garcia said. 

She and Juarez have two children, ages 5 and 9, who were born in Mississippi. 

Dalaney Mecham, an immigration attorney in Gulfport, said officers have a lot of discretion when it comes to deciding whether to let someone into the country at the U.S.-Mexico border or whether to detain them during a check-in.  

Due to changes with processing at the border within the past several years, the agency has started issuing paperwork for people to report to an ICE office so they can get a document called a “notice to appear,” which would include a time, date and location of their next immigration court date. Previously, people were issued a notice to appear at the border, Mecham said. 

A clear picture of common arrests during check-ins in Mississippi and nationwide is not known. A spokesperson with ICE’s public affairs office in Washington D.C. did not respond to a request to access any data the agency keeps about arrests during check-ins, and data the agency does have online does not specify about these kinds of arrests. 

ICE spokesman Nestor Yglesias said the agency makes decisions about who to place in custody on a case-by-case basis regardless of nationality based on policy and factors of each case. 

But Orozco Juarez has a documented history of disregarding immigration law, which contributed to his recent detention, he said. 

“For the past two years, ICE afforded Mr. [Orozco Juarez] the opportunity to be compliant with his removal order by planning his own return to Guatemala,” Yglesias said in the statement. “He will remain in ICE custody pending his removal from the country.”

The Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity knows of three other people who have been detained in recent weeks. 

ICE had given those people a smartphone with an app that allows the agency to monitor whether they are staying in the area by taking a picture of themselves or answering a phone call when requested, Quiroz said. 

The immigrants received an email saying the app was closed and they needed to come to the ICE office, she said. When they called the office back to learn when to come, there was no answer. They went to the office to check in on their appointment and were held without explanation. 

All three of the detained people are Nicaraguan immigrants who are seeking asylum due to political instability and violence in their country, Quiroz said. They had been in the United States for a year or less, and one was transferred to the Jena detention facility.  

Orozco Juarez could be detained until his trial, which could take years, but the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity and his attorney are hoping to bring him home. 

Most of the immigration court proceedings for the area are conducted in New Orleans. 

The average wait time for a case in the New Orleans court is 709 days, which is nearly two years, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse immigration backlog tracker by Syracuse University. This wait time is about two months shorter than the national case wait time of 762 days. 

As of January, there are an estimated 48,690 pending cases across all of Louisiana’s immigration courts, which include the largest in New Orleans and two smaller ones based in detention centers in Oakdale and Jena, according to the TRAC backlog tracker. 

Mecham said some people he has represented have also been taken into custody during their routine ICE check-ins. He has noticed how people seek attorneys before their appointments because they are scared and have heard stories about others being detained during their check-ins.  

“Not knowing if they are going to come home that day is scary, especially if you have kids and you’ve been here for a while,” Mecham said. 

Similar to the experience of Orozco Juarez at the Pearl office, Mecham’s client, Lenin Ramirez, went to an ICE check-in in August 2021 in New Orleans, and that resulted in a two-month detention in a Louisiana detention center. 

Mecham called the immigration office to ask why his client was detained, especially since Ramirez, who lives in Mobile, was seeking asylum from Nicaragua. The officer said he was detained because he entered the country without authorization, Mecham said. 

Mecham was able to get Ramirez out by going first to the New Orleans ICE field office, then at the federal level through ICE’s ombudsman and the Department of Homeland Security, which reviewed Ramirez’s case and issued him a notice to appear with his scheduled court date. 

Since Ramirez’s release, Mecham has filed Ramirez’s asylum application and they are waiting for his next court date in July 2025. 

The post ICE agents detain immigrants during routine check-ins, advocates say appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A man who sued the Lexington Police Department alleging violence and racism says an officer assaulted him in retaliation for that litigation.

That man, Malcolm Stewart, is “still in pain” after being bonded out of jail, said Jill Collen Jefferson, whose nonprofit JULIAN brought the lawsuit on behalf of Stewart and four other Black men. “He went to the hospital immediately after being released. He had a knot on the back of his head.”

Police Chief Charles Henderson disputed the accusation by Stewart, who was charged April 16 with aggravated assault on an officer, failure to comply and disturbing the peace. There are certain people who “make these accusations every time they’re arrested,” the chief said.

He encouraged an outside investigation of this case, predicting that in the end, “We’re going to come out on top.”

The police department came into the national spotlight last summer when the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, now part of Mississippi Today, obtained a recording of a white law enforcement officer bragging about killing 13 people in the line of duty, saying, “I shot that n—– 119 times, OK?” 

Jefferson identified the voice as then-Police Chief Sam Dobbins, who was fired the next day by the city council in Lexington, an 85% majority Black town on the edge of the Mississippi Delta. The council chose Henderson to take his place.

Stewart’s arrest came less than a week after U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee dismissed Stewart’s claims in an October lawsuit.

In that litigation, Stewart alleged that Henderson threatened to kill him in September 2019 as he sat in his car on private property because Stewart had refused to leave the premises — an allegation Henderson denied in court records.

Stewart quoted Henderson as saying, “If you don’t get the f— off this lot, your family’s gonna be wearing a black suit or a black dress by Sunday.”

Henderson, who is now running for constable, called Stewart’s claim “misleading” in court records.

In that litigation, Stewart also said he worked off outstanding fines by servicing police vehicles, only to be arrested after a community meeting where he voiced concerns about police.

On June 30, Stewart said that an officer saw him in a car and “reached in and yanked his shirt collar, … continuing a pattern and practice of excessive force and retaliation.”

Jefferson said Stewart was arrested on a charge of possession of stolen property.

“He was in a car that didn’t belong to him,” she said. “He’s a mechanic. He was fixing the car and didn’t know it was stolen. The police still charged him.”

Lee concluded that the bodycam video showed that the officer had probable cause to arrest Stewart and used reasonable force. The judge dismissed Stewart’s false arrest claim.

In an April 17 letter, Jefferson told Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division that Stewart “somehow exceeded his prepaid gas amount and went inside the station to advise the clerk. Words were exchanged which resulted in the clerk calling 911.”

When an officer arrived, he “struck Mr. Stewart in the back of the head,” she wrote. “Malcolm Stewart suffered injuries in the process.”

She asked the Justice Department to join in the litigation to protect members of the Black community from police harassment and attacks. “This is a last-ditch effort,” she said. “There is no accountability for these officers.”

The post Lexington man says police assaulted him for filing lawsuit appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The ink was barely dry on Gov. Tate Reeves’ signature of legislation designed to create a separate judicial and law enforcement district within the city of Jackson before the NAACP filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new laws.

Reeves signed controversial House Bill 1020 and its companion legislation Senate Bill 2343 on Friday afternoon. Later that day, the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed lawsuit in federal court of the Southern District of Mississippi.

“These laws target Jackson’s majority-Black residents on the basis of race for a separate and unequal policing structure and criminal justice system to which no other residents of the state are subjected,” the lawsuit reads.

Earlier this year the legislation generated national attention by creating a separate judicial district in the whiter and more affluent areas of Jackson, the nation’s Blackest large city. The legislation calls for judges in the district to be appointed by the white chief justice of the Supreme Court instead of elected by the city’s majority Black voters.

The legislation also expands the borders of the existing Capital Complex Improvement District to encompass more of the whiter and more affluent areas of the city and expands the jurisdiction of the state law enforcement. The state police, under the authority of the state-run Mississippi Department of Public Safety, will have primary jurisdiction in the capital complex area and secondary jurisdiction throughout the city.

According to the lawsuit, the new laws expand “the CCID to approximately 17.5 square miles to include roughly half of the white population of Jackson, when only 15 percent of the entire population of Jackson is white.”

During sharply divisive debate on the legislation in the recently completed 2023 session, both Reps. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, and Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, said they were speaking on the House floor “to make a record” for the lawsuits that would be filed.

Among those filing the lawsuit were the national, state and city chapters of the NAACP. Included as a plaintiff in the lawsuit is Derrick Johnson, who is the national president of the NAACP and a Jackson resident.

In signing the legislation Friday afternoon, Reeves said, “The fact is that Jackson has so much potential. It is our capital city and the heart of our state … But Jackson has to be better. Downtown Jackson should be so safe that it is a magnet for talented young people to come and live and work and create.

“This legislation won’t solve the entire problem, but if we can stop one shooting, if we can respond to one more 911 call – then we’re one step closer to a better Jackson. I refuse to accept the status quo. As long as I’m governor, the state will keep fighting for safer streets for every Mississippian no matter their politics, race, creed, or religion – regardless of how we’re portrayed by liberal activists or in the national media.”

In a news release, the governor went on to highlight Jackson’s crime problem, citing numerous statistics, including the claim that Jackson makes up 6% of the state’s population but accounts for 50% of Mississippi’s homicides.

Many quickly rebutted Reeves’ cited statistics. Brannon Miller, who runs Mississippi-based Democratic political consultant firm Chism Strategies, pointed out Reeves’ statistics were misleading.

Miller said that based on statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control, “Mississippi had 576 murders in 2020 – the highest murder rate of any state,” and 128 of those or 22% were in Jackson. “And to be clear, that’s really high,” Miller wrote. “But even if you take Jackson out of the statistics, Mississippi would still be No. 2 in murder rate.”

Only one of the 53 Black members of the Legislature supported the bills. Black lawmakers conceded that Jackson has a crime problem and most agreed some type of state help was warranted. But they argued that members of the Jackson delegation were denied the opportunity to have input in what that help would be. They said white legislators routinely are consulted when legislation is drafted impacting their constituents.

Plus, African American legislators said the help should not include taking away the vote from Jackson’s Black majority population.

Most white members of the Legislature supported the legislation that had the backing of House and Senate Republican leaders. They argued there was no racial intent in the legislation, but only a good faith effort to solve an agreed-upon crime problem in the state’s largest and capital city.

The Senate leadership did win an argument to make the appointed judges temporary instead of permanent as was proposed by House leaders.

In the lawsuit, the NAACP makes an equal protection argument, saying it is discriminatory to force something on the residents of Jackson, including a large African American majority, that does not apply to other citizens of the state.

The lawsuit reads, “H.B. 1020 deprives and disenfranchises the predominantly Black population of Jackson of the rights accorded to every other Mississippi resident.”

The lawsuit also contends the bills make it more difficult to hold peaceful protests within the Capital Complex Improvement District, which includes the Capitol, Governor’s Mansion and other state buildings.

While the lawsuit was filed in federal court on the grounds the bills are in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, there is an argument that the legislation also violates the state Constitution that calls for elected judges. That argument, though, might have been more convincing under the original bill when the judges were appointed permanently.

Past legislation impacting the city of Jackson already is being challenged in court. A lawsuit was filed in past years after the Legislature stripped the Jackson municipal government of some of its governing authority of the Jackson- Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.

The post NAACP files lawsuit arguing House Bill 1020 violates US Constitution appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Talamieka Brice is an award-winning artist, photographer, and filmmaker. She sits down with Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey to discuss her documentary, A Mother’s Journey, her mural of President Barack Obama, her family, and how her art helped her cope during trying times. 

The post Mississippi Stories: Talamieka Brice appeared first on Mississippi Today.

APRIL 23, 1951

Barbara Johns, the 16-year-old niece of civil rights leader Vernon Johns, stood before the all-Black student body at the R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. She proposed a walkout to protest deplorable conditions inside the school, which had no laboratories, no gym and no cafeteria. 

When some students said they were afraid they would be arrested, she replied, “The Farmville jail isn’t big enough to hold us.” And walk out they did, all 450 of them. 

Johns’ hopes ran high. “People would hear us, would see us and understand our difficulty, would sympathize with our plight and would grant us our new school building,” she wrote. “It would be grand, and we would live happily ever after.” 

Two weeks later, the students returned, but instead of a new building, they were met with anger from administrators. Johns reached out to the NAACP, which challenged the segregated system. 

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case that resulted, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, as part of Brown v. Board of Education. 

A statue of Barbara Johns has been built on the grounds of the state Capitol in Richmond, and the Ninth Street Office Building, where the Virginia attorney general’s offices are housed, has been named after her. 

She died in 1991 of bone cancer. The state of Virginia is now replacing the statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee with a statue of Johns in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

The post On this day in 1951 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Based on the budget passed hurriedly and with barely any debate in late March during the final days of the 2023 session, legislators apparently were saying all of the state’s problems had been solved.

They were saying:

• Education — pre-kindergarten through graduate school — is funded at an adequate level.
• All state employees are paid at an acceptable rate.
• The state Crime Lab is adequately staffed and can respond to the needs of local court jurisdictions and law enforcement in a timely manner to prosecute those accused of committing crimes.
• Crime, not only the much ballyhooed problems in Jackson, but throughout the state is being solved.
• Health care needs for Mississippians — young children as well as senior citizens — are being met.
• The economy is thriving.

Empirical evidence does not bear out those statements. Compared to other states, Mississippi continues to have the highest infant mortality rate, shortest life expectancy, one of the lowest work force participation rates (a fewer percentage of eligible people working) and highest homicide rate.

Oh by the way, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides for the basic needs of local schools, was underfunded — again — this time $150 million or more depending on how the shell game the Legislature played in 2023 with education funding is interpreted.

Despite all these problems, legislators left money on the table — probably close to $1 billion. That is right — the Legislature had another $1 billion to address the state’s needs.

Never in the history of the state has that much available revenue been left knowingly unspent.

Back in November, the 14 members of the Legislative Budget Committee, which includes Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Phillip Gunn, met with Gov. Tate Reeves to adopt an official revenue estimate for the upcoming fiscal year beginning July 1.

The governor and the committee agreed on an estimate of $7.52 billion based on the recommendations of economists and other financial experts. After 2% of that amount was set aside to provide a safeguard if revenue collections do not meet the estimate, the Legislature had $7.37 billion in general funds to budget on those needs during the 2023 session.

Yet, the 2023 Legislature appropriated $6.55 billion of those funds, leaving $710.3 million unspent. And it is important to note that all of the state’s reserve funds are filled to their statutory limit.

But wait, there is more.

Normally, legislative leaders on the Budget Committee would have met again near the end of the session to hear input from the state’s financial experts on whether they should revise the revenue estimate, meaning increasing or decreasing the amount of money available to spend in the 2023 session for the upcoming fiscal year.

Legislative leaders normally meet to consider revisions because obviously more information about upcoming revenue trends is available months later at the end of the session than in November weeks before the session begins.

In the past 25 years, the number of times legislative leaders have not met at the end of the session to revise the revenue estimate could be counted on one hand.

Yet, this year, even as collections for the current fiscal year through March are a whopping $601.9 million above the estimate, legislative leaders did not meet.

The responsibility for calling that meeting rested with Speaker Gunn. The lieutenant governor and speaker alternate each year chairing the Budget Committee.

Gunn, who is not seeking re-election, apparently did not want to preside over a final session where such a large increase in state spending occurred, thus, he balked on calling the traditional revenue revision meeting.

If that meeting had been called, it is safe to assume that financial experts would have, based on current collections, recommended increasing the revenue estimate by another $200 million or more. If that revision had occurred, legislators would have left $1 billion or more on the table based on the budget they passed.

That would have been enough money to address some of the needs facing the state, while providing a one-time rebate to Mississippians like many other states have done. Many legislators indicated that they did not want to pass an additional tax cut after the $525 million income tax reduction they passed last year — the largest in Mississippi history. They fear that in future years as revenue collections slow — as they surely will — an additional tax cut could make it difficult to fund state services.

But a one-time rebate instead of enacting a tax cut would not have impacted revenue streams in future years.

The bottom line is that legislators could have done a lot they did not do. But by the budget they passed, they send the message nothing else needs to be done.

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APRIL 22, 1892

Fiery civil rights pioneer Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in Prince Edward County. He taught himself German and other languages so well that when the dean of Oberlin College handed him a book of German scripture, Johns easily passed, won admission and became the top student at Oberlin College. 

In 1948, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, hired Johns, who mesmerized the crowd with his photographic memory of scripture. But he butted heads with the middle-class congregation when he chastised members for disliking muddy manual labor, selling cabbages, hams and watermelons on the streets near the state capitol. He pressed civil rights issues, helping black rape victims bring their cases to authorities, ordering a meal from a white restaurant and refusing to sit in the back of a bus. 

No one in the congregation followed his lead, and turmoil continued to rise between the pastor and his parishioners. In May 1953, he resigned, returning to his family farm. His successor? A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. 

James Earl Jones portrayed the eccentric pastor in the 1994 TV film, “Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story”, and historian Taylor Branch profiled Johns in his Pulitzer-winning “Parting the Waters; America in the King Years 1954-63”.

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