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VICKSBURG – Makayla Shows pointed out a display cabinet in her dining room. It doesn’t have pottery, vases or fine china. Instead, it holds onesies, pacifiers and hospital bracelets. 

“Isn’t that the smallest urn you’ve ever seen?” Shows asked, looking toward the second shelf. 

Makayla and Carson Shows’ daughter Mazeigh died in 2023 in a hospital after she was found unresponsive at First Baptist Children’s Center in Brandon. She was 3 months and 3 days old. 

That year, deaths of  40 children were reported in day care centers across the U.S. But 16 states, including Mississippi, had incomplete numbers or no recorded data.

Day care deaths in the U.S. are rare, but complaints about injuries, neglect, abuse and unsafe conditions are more common. Together, they paint a picture of an industry without enough resources to guarantee safety for young children at a price that parents can afford to pay. 

Advocates and industry experts say the problems are driven by staffing shortages, low pay and a lack of oversight, and are indicative of a deeper problem: an undervaluation of caregiving and early education in the U.S.

The medical examiner’s report on Mazeigh’s death says she was put in an unsafe sleep position, on her side in a crib, at day care and that a worker a short time later found Mazeigh “unresponsive.”

Makayla Shows said several details from that day still haunt her. 

“I just remember them wheeling her out to the ICU, and she was already purple,” she recalled. “She didn’t look real. She didn’t smell like my baby.”

First Baptist Children’s Center did not respond to multiple requests for comment in recent weeks from Mississippi Today. 

Across the country, the industry is responsible for 11 million children under the age of 5 – the most critical years for learning and development, research shows. 

Many have long argued that the work of early child care deserves more respect and investment, and that the education that occurs – or doesn’t – in those early years is just as important as K-12 education. 

Like most systemic problems, the solution isn’t simple, especially in a country that values capitalism and limiting the government’s role in families’ private lives. Still, experts say it’s long past time to make child care consistently safe, functional and affordable, and the solution will require more than just the argument that it allows parents to go back to work. 

“Ultimately, if you want to move to a system where all families have the child care that they need and their children need to flourish and live the family life that they want to live, we’re going to need more than just attaching parents to the labor force,” said Elliot Haspel, a nationally recognized child and family policy expert based in Colorado. “We need to see child care as an essential part of our social infrastructure just like parks and roads and libraries and schools and all these other things that let our communities thrive.”

Unaffordable costs and unlivable wages

On a hot day in June, Shows scrolled through photos on her phone of her older daughter Luna Scott sitting on the floor with Mazeigh the morning before Mazeigh died. 

“Those were the last ones,” Shows said. “Sometimes I can go through them, and sometimes I can’t.” 

Luna, now 10, spent most of the morning running in circles around the kitchen table asking her mom if she can make cookie dough and whether they can all go swimming later. But when her mom struggles to find words to talk about Mazeigh, Luna quiets and walks over to put her arms around her mom, who tells Luna, “I’m fine.” 

“Those tears in your eyes says otherwise,” Luna remarked in a comedic drawl, and her mom laughed. 

They have each other, and Makayla and Carson Shows welcomed another daughter, Juniper, in 2024. But Makayla Shows struggles with the guilt of staying home with her children, something that is only possible because of the settlement they reached in the wake of Mazeigh’s death. 

“We don’t have money problems, we don’t have many bills, we have a beautiful child, we have all these blessings – and I feel guilty,” she said. “Because it wasn’t because we worked for it. It was because something terrible happened.”

On average, it takes 10% of a married couple’s median income to afford the nation’s average cost of child care, according to Child Care Aware, a national advocacy group. That number rises to 35% for a single parent. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded child care is unaffordable if it exceeds 7% of a family’s income. 

The U.S. has the highest child care costs in the world, according to the World Economic Forum – something that hasn’t translated into higher quality standards. 

Out of 41 high-income countries, the U.S. ranked second to last on child care policies, according to a United Nations Children’s Fund report. The report evaluated the accessibility of child care for young children whether countries had nationwide paid parental leave policies. It also assessed quality measures such as child-to-teacher ratios, minimum qualifications for teachers and affordability. 

Makayla and Carson Shows aren’t sure what they could have done differently. Back in the summer of 2022, they splurged on a small house in Brandon near Luna’s school and Mazeigh’s day care. Makayla took two weeks of unpaid parental leave after giving birth to Mazeigh before returning to work. It was as much time as the family could go without pay.

They made sure to include in their daughter’s day care notes that Mazeigh was only to be laid to sleep on her back – a long held public health recommendation that was especially important because she had torticollis, a condition that causes a baby’s neck muscles to tilt and can make a baby more susceptible to suffocating.  

At the time they thought the instruction was overly cautious, since the day care’s internal guidelines mandated employees only put infants to sleep on their backs, and national guidelines recommend the same.

Between 2017 and 2023, Mississippi child care facilities were cited at least 20 times for unsafe sleep practices, according to Mississippi State Department of Health records. It’s not a large number, but the fact that it happens at all is significant, said Grace Reef, president of the Early Learning Policy Group in Washington. 

“When there is a tragedy involving an infant in safe sleep, it points to training,” Reef said. “Does the provider understand safe sleep – not just the requirement but the reason for it?”

The center in Brandon did not respond to Mississippi Today’s specific questions about why Mazeigh was placed on her side that morning. 

The facility was fined $500 for failing to prevent Mazeigh’s death, an additional $200 for leaving children unattended that day and $50 for unsafe sleep practices. The facility agreed to stop caring for infants under the age of 1, according to a 2023 statement by the Mississippi State Department of Health.

“Infant care was suspended, pending our investigation,” the statement said. “The facility subsequently entered into a consent agreement voluntarily surrendering infant care of the program until further notice.”

Mississippi Today reviewed investigations into First Baptist Children’s Center by the Mississippi State Department of Health in the year leading up to Mazeigh’s death. The records showed no other deficiencies related to unsafe sleep practices and no other deaths. They also showed no other serious injuries that resulted in penalties.

Sometimes, low staffing and lack of oversight at U.S. day care centers result in tragedy. But more often, they result in less egregious but potentially lasting harm, such as bad teaching practices. 

A common example is the way many facilities encourage silence, even though research recommends engaging young children with back-and-forth exchanges, said Cathy Grace, who founded the Early Childhood Institute at Mississippi State University.

“I can’t tell you the number of child care facilities I’ve been in where it was ‘shh-shh-shh,’ thinking that what the school wants them to do is not talk, which may be, but that’s not good practice,” Grace said. 

According to Grace, problems arent’ unique to Mississippi, though the state has the lowest median hourly wage for child care workers at $9.44 and the second-largest percentage of early childhood educators living in poverty.

“If  you talk to people across the country, the answer’s the same,” Grace said. “We have very low salaries. That doesn’t promote longevity within the staff in many of the centers. Right now, we have fast food places and service places that actually pay almost twice as much.”

Public investment and other solutions

Many countries have struggled with child care, but the acuteness of the problem in the U.S. is unparalleled, said Haspel, the Colorado-based expert in family policy. 

“Where the U.S. really stands alone is that we haven’t done much to fix the problem,” Haspel said.

Much of it comes down to longstanding economic practices. 

“The way that free market economics works is: One person is making six cars every day, and eventually that person is involved in making 60 cars and then 600 cars a day,” Haspel said. 

“Their productivity goes up and so their wages go up and the profit goes up and that’s the whole system of how capitalism works,” he said. “It doesn’t work in care. The market can’t reward care because care will never meet the capitalist definitions of productivity in the same way.”

That means that parents are sometimes forced to put their children in subpar child care centers so they can return to work themselves. 

“With Luna, my whole life was completely different,” Shows said of her first daughter. “I was young, had no job, lived with my mom. But as an adult, when I was doing the right things, being a responsible adult, my child died. How do you reconcile that?”

Child care can’t become more safe and functional without public investment. That may seem counter to U.S. values, but examples of successful public investment in child care are starting to sprout up in red and blue states. 

In New Mexico, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham established an Early Childhood Trust Fund in 2020, investing $300 million largely from oil and gas revenue. By the end of 2024, the fund had risen to over $9 billion, a portion of which goes toward making child care free for most families. 

Vermont, which has a Republican governor and Democratic-controlled legislature, passed a small payroll tax in 2023 – three-quarters of which is paid by employers – that will generate about $120 million to increase salaries for child care workers and make the system more affordable for families. 

Republican-led Texas passed several child care bills this year, including one that turned $100 million in previously unallocated federal funds into child care scholarships to benefit nearly 95,000 children. 

This year, the Mississippi Legislature appropriated $15 million for child care vouchers for low-income families, which will help reduce the number of children on the waitlist after pandemic-era funds ran out. However, it won’t do anything to add resources or staff to facilities. 

Data around incidents like Mazeigh’s death are critical to forming state policies. That information is scarce, according to the only comprehensive national study about deaths in child care that was conducted in 2005 by researchers at the City University of New York Graduate Center. 

“Key to any effort aimed at reducing risks is gathering consistent, reliable data on fatalities, serious injuries, and near misses in child care,” the researchers wrote.

“Unlike fatalities or serious injuries in public schools, harms to children in child care have been largely invisible, with only a few gaining widespread media attention. This has hampered efforts to understand patterns and devise prevention strategies.”

While public discourse on the issue remains quiet, for parents like Makayla and Carson Shows, every day is a reminder of a future that won’t come to be. 

“Me and grief won’t be sharing cookies and a cup of tea,” Makayla wrote in her journal. “I will have to fight it off with blood, sweat and tears. People talk of acceptance, this is not one of those times. Losing your baby, your infant child, feels like the loss of the future. You don’t know who you are or what you are or what your goals were before. You only know after.”

Mississippi Today’s Gwen Dilworth, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield contributed to this report. 

The large number of Mississippians with voting rights stripped for life because they committed a disenfranchising felony was a significant factor in a federal judge determining that current state Supreme Court districts dilute Black voting strength. 

U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, who was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush, ruled last week that Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts violate the federal Voting Rights Act and that the state cannot use the same maps in future elections. 

Mississippi law establishes three Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the northern, central and southern districts. Voters elect three judges from each to the nine-member court. These districts have not been redrawn since 1987. 

READ MORE: Mississippians ask U.S. Supreme court to strike state’s Jim Crow-era felony voting ban

The main district at issue in the case is the central district, which comprises many parts of the majority-Black Delta and the majority-Black Jackson metro area. 

Several civil rights legal organizations filed a lawsuit on behalf of Black citizens, candidates, and elected officials, arguing that the central district does not provide Black voters with a realistic chance to elect a candidate of their choice. 

The state defended the districts arguing the map allows a fair chance for Black candidates. Aycock sided with the plaintiffs and is allowing the Legislature to redraw the districts.

The attorney general’s office could appeal the ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. A spokesperson for the office stated that the office is reviewing Aycock’s decision, but did not confirm whether the office plans to appeal.

In her ruling, Aycock cited the testimony of William Cooper, the plaintiff’s demographic and redistricting expert, who estimated that 56,000 people with felony records were unable to vote statewide based on a review of court records from 1994 to 2017. He estimated 60% of those were determined to be Black Mississippians. 

Cooper testified that the high number of people who were disenfranchised contributed to the Black voting age population falling below 50% in the central district. 

Attorneys from Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office defended the state. They disputed Cooper’s calculations, but Aycock rejected their arguments. 

The AG’s office also said Aycock should not put much weight on the number of disenfranchised people because the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Mississippi’s disenfranchisement system doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

Aycock, however, distinguished between the appellate court’s ruling that the system did not have racial discriminatory intent and the current issue of the practice having a racially discriminatory impact. 

“Notably, though, that decision addressed only whether there was discriminatory intent as required to prove an Equal Protection claim,” Aycock wrote. “The Fifth Circuit did not conclude that Mississippi’s felon disenfranchisement laws have no racially disparate impact.” 

Mississippi has one of the harshest disenfranchisement systems in the nation and a convoluted method for restoring voting rights to people. 

Other than receiving a pardon from the governor, the only way for someone to regain their voting rights is if two-thirds of legislators from both chambers at the Capitol, the highest threshold in the Legislature, agree to restore their suffrage. 

Lawmakers only consider about a dozen or so suffrage restoration bills during the session, and they’re typically among the last items lawmakers take up before they adjourn for the year. 

Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of a list of 10 types of felonies lose their voting rights for life. Opinions from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office have since expanded the list of specific disenfranchising felonies to 23. 

The practice of stripping voting rights away from people for life is a holdover from the Jim Crow era. The framers of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution believed Black people were most likely to commit certain crimes. 

Leaders in the state House have attempted to overhaul the system, but none have gained any significant traction in both chambers at the Capitol. 

Last year, House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, advocated a constitutional amendment that would have removed nonviolent offenses from the list of disenfranchising felonies, but he never brought it up for a vote in the House. 

Wallace and House Elections Chairman Noah Sanford, a Republican from Collins, are leading a study committee on Sept. 11 to explore reforms to the felony suffrage system and other voting legislation.  

Wallace previously said on an episode of Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast that he believes the state should tackle the issue because one of his core values, part of his upbringing, is giving people a second chance, especially once they’ve made up for a mistake. 

“This issue is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Wallace said. “It allows a woman or a man, whatever the case may be, the opportunity to have their voice heard in their local elections. Like I said, they’re out there working. They’re paying taxes just like you and me. And yet they can’t have a decision in who represents them in their local government.”

Sharon Brown planned to release balloons in neighborhoods where Jacksonians had lost their lives to gun violence after she was hired to lead the city’s fledgling Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery in early June. 

Her goal was to show these communities that someone cares enough to meet them where they are. But she never got that far. 

Instead, the longtime community activist said she found herself swamped by the demands of the city’s bureaucracy, such as figuring out how to submit a purchase order for pens or reminding the police department to send her the names of relatives of the recently deceased, so she could bring them candles, flowers and a pamphlet with resources. 

What Brown did manage to accomplish in her month leading the office — cleaning a city-owned building that will be the site of a youth engagement center downtown — was through sheer will. 

“Their process impedes progress,” Brown said of the city. 

Acknowledging this reality, Brown was nonplussed when Mayor John Horhn let her go, along with other hires made by the outgoing administration under Chokwe Antar Lumumba, days after Horhn took office July 1.

“I came in doing the work, and I’m going to leave doing the work,” she said. 

Jackson officials say the office will continue working to decrease violence in Jackson through non-police interventions under a new name, the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. It will once again be led by Keisha Coleman, a trauma therapist who was allegedly fired in the midst of the city’s peace initiative by Lumumba’s chief of staff for speaking with Horhn at a campaign rally earlier this year. 

“We’re aligning with the current mayor John Horhn’s vision, but the mission is the same,” Coleman said, “and that is to create programming and support programming that is already happening in the community to reduce the likelihood of gun violence.” 

This restart comes as Jackson has recently experienced a spate of shootings that Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said are driven by gangs of young men.

In one of her first efforts back at the helm, Coleman is working with Jackson State University and other organizations in the city to host a gala this Friday in partnership with a student club, JSU Votes’ Girls Against Gun Violence. 

“If you know someone or if you have someone related to you who you know needs some type of help, come out,” JSU professor Jacobi Grant, who is working with the club, said at a press conference at City Hall on Monday. 

The gala will be followed by a brunch Sunday at the Two Mississippi Museums to discuss violence in Jackson’s Black communities. 

“Gun violence remains one of our most urgent issues facing families and young people,” Horhn said at the press conference. 

Lumumba launched the office in 2023 with $700,000 in grant funding from the National League of Cities, a nonprofit organization, to tackle the root causes of violence in Jackson such as poverty and trauma.

But that grant funding will end in September, so Coleman said she is working on more grant applications and a request for a little over $500,000 from the City Council. Coleman said she hopes to use those funds to host classes focused on parenting and job readiness. She also wants to create a “community consortium” to get input from neighborhood associations, faith leaders, mental health professionals and youth in the city.

“The message that we want to send is there is a seat at the table for every member of the community,” she said. 

Coleman said the council allocated $202,000 last year to renovate the defunct Mary C. Jones center to house youth engagement programming, but that she was unable to spend the funds. She hopes to regain access to that money. Her goal is to get the center up and running by next year – a timeline that she said makes the city’s building maintenance skeptical.

“I’m being optimistic saying we’re gonna be in there mid-fall, but when I say that the people doing renovations kind of give me a side eye,” Coleman said. 

When Brown led the office, she experienced similar frustrations with the delay in reopening Mary C. Jones, because she had a hard time finding a company to bid on the project. 

So she bought her own buckets and mops and rallied volunteers, including youth who were being mentored by Strong Arms of Mississippi, a credible messenger organization which received a grant from the office under Coleman. 

To Brown, the crisis of violence in Jackson is too urgent to wait for government processes such as requests for proposals or official death notifications. 

“If we’re talking about changing the trajectory of violence, people need to know that people really care,” she said. “The conditions have always been the same. We have always been in poverty, but what has changed is people don’t feel connected and loved anymore.” 

Since leaving the city, Brown has been working on renovating several homes in her neighborhood, “The Bottom,” to create unofficial respites. She’s linked up with the People’s Advocacy Institute – the nonprofit group founded by Lumumba’s sister, Rukia Lumumba – to start a new organization that aims to tackle violence not just in Jackson, but statewide. 

She’s calling it the Mississippi Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery.

Renee Gentry of Pascagoula will turn 58 next month. A few months after that, she’ll take her board examination to become a licensed practical nurse. 

“Everybody’s like, ‘You’re going back to school at your age?’” she said. 

Gentry spent 14 years working as a flight attendant, and said she’s also surprised she was able to make the career change. A vocation in medicine became possible when she enrolled in Singing River Health System’s medical apprenticeship program, the first of its kind in Mississippi. 

Singing River Healthcare Academy in Ocean Springs allows students to earn as they learn, pursuing certifications in a range of health careers at no cost while receiving a salary and full benefits. It combines classroom instruction with hands-on clinical training in hospitals and clinics, and many students accept jobs at Singing River locations after graduating. 

The apprenticeship program celebrated the opening of a dedicated building around the corner from the system’s Ocean Springs hospital this month, which will expand the program’s capacity from about 150 to 1,000 students a year, said Jessica Lewis, chief human resources officer for Singing River Health System. 

It was launched in 2021 as Singing River, like other hospitals, was facing critical staffing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Nurse vacancies skyrocketed across Mississippi in 2021 and 2022 as nurses retired, took jobs outside of hospital settings or accepted more lucrative travel nursing positions.

“We were having to shut down floors and beds,” Lewis said.

But the academy’s effort to train the staff the health system needs has paid off, she said, providing the staff necessary to reopen closed beds and resulting in lower workforce turnover rates. 

Gentry saw the effects of the health care worker shortage firsthand while working as a Singing River telephone operator and hospital lobby assistant at the height of the pandemic. Instead of pushing her away from the field, it inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. 

She joined the academy’s first class of medical assistant apprentices in 2022. She completed her clinical training at a surgery clinic and was hired on as a full-time employee at the clinic after graduating from the program. 

She decided to resume her studies at the academy this year to become a licensed practical nurse and bring a greater wealth of health care knowledge to people in her community. 

A new career in medicine was only possible for her because students receive a paycheck while attending school. 

“This program has opened up a lot of doors for a lot of people in this community, like me, that probably would have never had a chance to do this,” Gentry said. 

Students at the academy can train to become a certified nursing assistant, medical assistant, phlebotomy tech, pharmacy tech, surgical tech or licensed practical nurse. The licensed practical nurse program operates in partnership with Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, and the academy also offers classes to high school students. 

Because academy students have the opportunity to work in real-world clinical settings, they graduate with four to 10 times the clinical experience they would receive if they went through a traditional program, Lewis said.

Over half of the program’s students are single parents and nearly all are women, said Stephanie Utesch, the human resources operations director for Singing River. 

Accessibility is a cornerstone of the academy’s model. Fees for certifications are covered, and students receive supplies like scrubs and backpacks, assistance with child care and transportation, and financial literacy training. 

The program is supported by grant funding and requires a large investment from Singing River Health System, Lewis said.

“‘Earn as you learn’ is expensive, but we’re going to be showing the return on investment,” she said, gesturing toward retaining students as full-time employees and being able to offer higher quality patient care. 

The new facility includes two simulated hospital suites, an eight-bed clinical skills lab, high-fidelity simulation rooms, seven modern classrooms and a computer testing center. 

The academy recieved $8.5 million in state funding for construction of the new building, Utesch said.

It also has space for the program to grow. The academy hopes to add a medical billing and coding certification and a program for licensed practical nurses to become certified as registered nurses, or RNs.

Gentry said she hasn’t decided if she will pursue certification as a registered nurse if given the opportunity, though she’s been encouraged to consider it. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to take it one day at a time.” 

Jackson Police Department Chief Joseph Wade told the mayor last week he was choosing to retire after 29 years of service and two years at the helm of the force. Wade said he’d been given another job opportunity, which has yet to be announced.

His last day is Sept. 5.

Mayor John Horhn said he told Wade the officer would be crazy not to take the job — one that comes with less stress and more pay.

“His wife has been on his back, his blood pressure has been up,” Horhn said during Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “He has done a commendable job.”

Wade became chief during a period in which Jackson was called the murder capital of America. Under his tenure, Wade said crime has fallen markedly, including a roughly 45% reduction in homicides so far this year compared to the same period in 2024, the Clarion Ledger reported. He said he’s also increased JPD’s force by 37, for a total of 258 officers.

Wade said his biggest accomplishment is reestablishing trust. “We are no longer the laughing stock of the law enforcement community,” he said.

The chief’s departure comes less than two months after Horhn took office, replacing former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba who originally appointed Wade, and on the heels of a spate of shootings that Wade said were driven by gangs of young men.

“I have received so many calls from the community: ‘Chief, please don’t leave us,’” Wade told the crowd in council chambers.

But Wade said he “would rather leave prematurely than overstay my welcome,” adding that the average tenure of a police chief is 2.5 years.

Wade said that last year he stood next to Jackson Councilman Kenny Stokes and told the media he was going to cut crime in half, “And what did I do? Cut it in half,” he said.

“What I’ve seen in our community in some situations is people want police, but they don’t want to be policed,” Wade said.

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones will serve as interim police chief until the administration finds a replacement. Jones said he has not finalized a contract with the city, responding to a question about whether he will draw a salary from both agencies.

“I could think of no one better than the sheriff of Hinds County,” Horhn said, adding that the appointment is temporary.

Jones said during the meeting that his responsibility as sheriff will continue uninterrupted and that his goal within JPD is to ensure continued professionalism in the department.

“I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my dear friend and retired police chief Joe Wade,” Jones said. “Again, let me be clear, I have no aspirations to permanently hold the position.”

Horhn said there is precedence for the dual role that “Chief Sheriff Jones is about to embark upon,” citing former mayor Frank Melton’s hiring of Sheriff Malcolm McMillin.

The city has enlisted help from former U.S. Marshal George White and the former chief of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, Col. Charles Haynes, to lead the Law Enforcement Task Force that will conduct a nationwide search to fill the position. The administration expects that to take between 30 and 60 days, according to a city press release.

The release said the task force will also examine safety challenges in Jackson more broadly, such as youth crime, drug crimes, departmental needs and interagency coordination.

“I am grateful that Marshal White and Col. Haynes have agreed to lead this important effort. Their breadth of experience, commitment to public safety and deep understanding of law enforcement challenges will ensure the task force conducts a rigorous search for our next chief,” said Horhn. “I am confident they will help shape solutions that address the evolving needs of Jackson.”

The city said it would soon release details about the opportunity for the public to offer input on the process.

“Hinds County is all in for whatever we have to do to make Jackson and Hinds County the safest it can be,” Hinds County Supervisors President Robert Graham said during the meeting.

Wade, who hails from nearby Terry, graduated from JPD’s 23rd recruit class in 1995, rising from a police recruit and hitting every rung of the ladder on his way to chief. “I was homegrown,” he said.

Wade said he received “an amazing offer in a private sector at an amazing organization. Don’t ask me where. That will be released at the appropriate time.”

This story may be updated.

When Deion Sanders left Jackson State for Colorado in December of 2023, many observers predicted a Humpty Dumpty-like fall for the proud JSU Tiger football program.

Surely seemed that way. After all, not only did Neon Deion abruptly head for the mountains, he took his best players with him, most notably his quarterbacking son Shedeur Sanders and eventual Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter. Losing Hunter was like losing three players in one: a wide receiver no one could cover, a shut-down cornerback and a kick returner deluxe. Nine Tigers in all, 11 if you count Hunter three times, transferred to Colorado, including the teams’s leading passer, leading rusher, leading receiver, leading scorer, best kick returner and best offensive lineman. Oh yeah, and Deion took six assistant coaches with him, as well.

This was going to be more than a rebuilding job, it was going to be like starting over. To former Jackson State football standout T.C. Taylor fell the task of reconstructing the Tigers. 

Don’t look now, but that mission has been accomplished — and then some.

I don’t know if all the kings horses and all the king’s men could have done it, but Taylor certainly has put the Tigers back together again. Two seasons in, Taylor has achieved what Sanders never did at JSU. That is, he has won the Celebration Bowl and the HCBU National Championship. After an impressive-considering-the-circumstances 7-4 season in year one A.D. (after Deion), Taylor’s Tigers finished the 2024 season with a 12-2 record, 10 consecutive victories, the SWAC Championship, a 28-7 victory over South Carolina State in the Celebration Bowl and the HBCU national crown. In that 10-game win streak, the Tigers’s victory margin was a whopping 24 points per game.

The contrasts between Deion Sanders and Taylor are stark. When Sanders was at JSU, all cameras and microphones were aimed at him and that was clearly the way he wanted it. Taylor, on the other hand, consistently deflects all praise and attention to his players and his assistants. Taylor is as low-key and humble as Sanders was flashy and egocentric.

At JSU, Sanders was a welcomed outsider, a native Floridian and Florida State All American who had spent little if any time in Mississippi before coming to Jackson. Taylor was born in McComb, played for the venerable Greg Wall at South Pike High in Magnolia and then at Jackson State for coaches James “Big Daddy” Carson and Robert “Judge” Hughes. He came to JSU as a quarterback, but switched over to wide receiver after passing master Robert Kent won the QB job. All Taylor did was catch a school record 84 passes for 1,234 yards and 12 touchdowns as a senior. He is a Tiger to his core. Put it this way: After games, when the coaches and players join together and sing the lovely JSU alma mater “Jackson Fair,” Taylor really knows the words and sings them proudly, hand over his heart.

Taylor is an old school coach who preaches blocking, tackling, sound special teams and protecting the football. The Tigers have been excellent in all phases under his leadership.

His success does not surprise Wall, who coached him for three seasons at South Pike. 

“T.C. was a good ol’ country boy who studied the game,” says Wall, who won 247 games and lost only 70 in 31 seasons as a high school head coach. “He was a smart kid who never made the same mistake twice. He had a good head for the game. He could have been a great safety or cornerback, too, but we couldn’t risk it. He was our offense.”

Taylor’s third Jackson State team will open the season Saturday at 2 p.m. at The Vet, before playing at Southern Miss the following week. After winning 10 straight and a national HBCU championship, what do the Tigers do for an encore?

“We are chasing greatness,” Taylor said Monday. ”We have a chance to go back-to-back as SWAC and national champions. That’s our goal. That would be great for the city of Jackson.”

The gun believed to have been used to kill Emmett Till is now in the hands of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

A news conference will take place at 10 a.m. Thursday, the 70th anniversary of Till’s murder, at the Two Mississippi Museums to announce the donation of the .45-caliber pistol that J.W. Milam is believed to have used to pistol-whip and shoot the Black Chicago youth, who had just turned 14.

It’s the second murder weapon in the department’s possession. The first is the .30-06 rifle used in 1963 to kill Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers, which can be seen at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

Unlike many stories plucked from history, fascination with the Till case has grown over time, said Dave Tell, author of “Remembering Emmett Till.”

He called the Till story “the ‘Ur-Story’ of American racism,” alluding to author Joseph Campbell’s reference to the archetypal plot in all major stories.

A year after Tell and other scholars launched the Emmett Till Memory Project in 2019, George Floyd died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Overnight, downloads quadrupled.

“In a moment when our country is on edge regarding race, the Till story is the story we keep going back to,” Tell said. “He’s the lens through which we understand race and what it means to be Black in America.”

In World War II, Milam served as a lieutenant in the Army Air Force and brought back the Ithaca Model M1911-A1 .45-caliber pistol, which has the serial number 2102279.

In Look magazine, Milam was quoted as saying, “Best weapon the Army’s got, either for shootin’ or sluggin’.”

A witness to Milam’s shooting prowess told the FBI, “I can tell ya how good he was with that old pistol. I seen him shoot bumble bees out of the air with it.”

Milam and his half-brother, Roy Bryant, abducted Till from his home in the wee hours of Aug. 28, 1955. The white men had heard that Till reportedly wolf-whistled at Bryant’s wife, Carolyn.

They took Till to a barn, where he was brutally beaten by Roy Bryant, Milam and others. Witnesses heard Till’s screams.

Till was beaten so badly there was talk of dropping him off at a hospital, but Milam reportedly killed him with a single bullet.

During the FBI’s 2005 investigation of the Till murder, authorities exhumed his body. X-rays revealed extensive skull fractures and metallic fragments in the skull. There were also fractures to the left femur and the left and right wrist bones. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office in Illinois concluded that Till died of a gunshot wound to the head.

During the autopsy, doctors found four lead fragments that experts determined were consistent with lead shot pellets. The size of those pellets matched the size of the lead shot manufactured for the Army Air Force.

An all-white jury acquitted Milam and Bryant of Till’s murder. Months later, they admitted their involvement to Look magazine.

The owner of the alleged murder weapon kept it in a safety deposit box in a Greenwood bank, according to Wright Thompson’s book, “The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi.”

While working on his 2005 documentary, “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” filmmaker Keith Beauchamp discovered the existence of the .45 pistol. “I received the email of where the gun could possibly be,” he said.

He shared the email with FBI agent Dale Killinger, who investigated the Till case.

“Keith got a lead and let me know who to go see, and I rolled out, and I was able to connect with the people who got it,” said Killinger, who wouldn’t divulge how the gun came into their possession.

Killinger said he turned in the gun, which was examined for fingerprints. 

He wouldn’t discuss who the owner is or what motivated that owner to donate the gun.

Beauchamp said he does have concerns about the gun being displayed in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. He doesn’t think Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, would have approved, he said, “but I don’t hold the keys of history to Emmett.”

The Emmett Till exhibit in the museum does have a pistol on display. That pistol belonged to a deputy at the trial.

The archives department’s announcement comes days after the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board’s release of more than 6,000 FBI files regarding the Till case. Most are from 1955, when then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said the agency lacked jurisdiction to pursue the case.

READ ALSO: Emmett Till lynching documents detail federal government’s response

Till’s cousin, Priscilla Williams Till, said she is anxious for the rest of the more than 30,000 pages to become public. “There’s a lot of unfinished documentation left out,” she said.

Devery Anderson, author of “Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement,” said he would like to see the release of all the documentation related to the FBI’s investigations on the case.

Beauchamp, too, is anxious to see all of the files released, he said. “That way people can see how the federal government, including the local authorities, dropped the ball in 2007 and 2017.”

In 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Bryant’s then-wife, Carolyn, who testified that Till had mauled her in the grocery store. Weeks earlier, she had told a defense lawyer that all Till did was ask for a date and whistle.

The FBI made the case active again after author Tim Tyson claimed in his 2017 book, “The Blood of Emmett Till,” that Carolyn Bryant Donham admitted to him that she lied when she said Till all but raped her, grabbing her around the waist and propositioning her.

In its renewed investigation, the FBI found no such reference in recordings of his conversations with her, in transcripts of those recordings, or in Bryant Donham’s memoir, which maintains she told the truth when she testified.

READ ALSO: The Emmett Till lynching has seen more than its share of liars. Is Tim Tyson one of them?

The lack of independent corroboration, the FBI found, “would prevent the government from proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Bryant-Donham recanted her testimony when she spoke with Tyson over a decade ago and, consequently, that she lied to FBI agents when she denied having done so.”

The 2021 report concluded that no one could be prosecuted.

Donham died in 2023.

Editor’s note: Mississippi Today Ideas is publishing guest essays from people impacted by Hurricane Katrina during the week of the 20th anniversary of the storm that hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

Speaking about Hurricane Katrina feels almost like speaking at a funeral. There’s grief, memory and the weight of honoring both those who survived and those who did not. The storm was not just another hurricane. It was a turning point in countless lives, mine included.

The day before Katrina made landfall was a Sunday. I told my mother Lorna Rose Daniels to be ready at noon to evacuate our homes only blocks from the beach in Pass Christian. As we prepared to leave, my father Harold Thomas Daniels was busy moving vehicles out to my grandmother’s house in DeLisle.

Around noon, my mother, son and I left together. I told my son not to pack anything in the car because I was certain we would be back the next day. At that point, it felt like just another evacuation as we already had done several times that season. Tired of packing and unpacking the car, we left with only the clothes on our backs and a set of pajamas.

When I arrived at my mother’s house, she wanted to bring more things. I still clearly see her walking through her house with a bottle of holy water, sprinkling it in every room. “Mama, they said we have to go,” I told her.

She resisted, saying my father had not left yet. But I reminded her he was only shuttling cars to DeLisle. Finally, she came with me.

The plan was simple.  We would drive up U.S. Highway 49 to Wiggins, stay with a friend and come back the next day like always. But as the day wore on, plans changed. By 4 that afternoon, while the northbound lanes of Highway 49 were jammed with evacuees, our car was the only one headed south.

My mother had broken down crying. She wanted to go to her elderly mother,  who refused to leave her home. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind at her home in DeLisle about 10 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, but surrounded by water from the Bay of St. Louis.

That drive south is something I will never forget. Highway 49 north was bumper to bumper, but we were alone heading the other way. We turned onto state Highway 53 and stopped at a gas station. I remember buying milk for my son and a bag of ice, telling myself not to buy too much because we would be home the next day.

We made it to my grandmother’s house, the place we called “on the hill”.  My grandmother was in her 90s, and my aunt lived nearby. Family began to gather, parking cars on the high ground. That night we sat on the back porch, talking in the heat of late August, waiting for my father to arrive. He never did.

The first sign of how dangerous this storm would be came from a phone call. My cousin in Henderson Point, which is located on the Gulf, called his mother, my aunt, as the water rose rapidly around his home. He had stayed behind with his dog while his family evacuated, believing the storm would not be that bad.

By the time my aunt handed me the phone, he was standing on top of his van, with his dog, crying, as the water climbed around him. I still remember my aunt’s voice as she handed me her cellphone, ‘Here, I can’t listen anymore,” she said. I stayed on the line until it went dead. We thought we would never see him again.

The next morning, Katrina revealed her strength. Tin peeled off my grandmother’s roof as we huddled on the porch. At first, we even tried to collect the flying sheets so they wouldn’t damage the cars, but soon we realized the danger was far greater than we understood. As the hours passed, we could hear the wind speaking to us – unimaginable devastation.

Then the word spread. Pass Christian was gone. Just 10 miles away, an entire community had been destroyed. News spread fast that those who stayed behind were gone.

My daddy, who stayed at our home on Davis Avenue, was not heard from… not my daddy! Harold Daniels stayed behind along with my two brothers and a nephew. Within 15 minutes of water rising, it had reached its peak of 34 feet. People were asking all over, You saw this one who stayed? Have you seen that one? Who made it? Who didn’t? Where’s my daddy?

He was on the back of my nephew’s truck. They tied themselves to each other, and then to a tree and then watched the rush of houses floating by, cars floating by, appliances, trees. My daddy said if it had hit at night, they wouldn’t have survived. 

My daddy had 10 kids. His will to live and his faith in God brought him back to us. He passed on last year at 89.

For many people, anniversaries are a celebration of momentous occasions. Hurricane Katrina, however, is not something I celebrate.

What I celebrate is resilience, the strength to survive and rebuild. I celebrate Pass Christian and my father, who lived for almost 20 years after Katrina. I celebrate doing hard things, and the rebuilding of our close-knit community along the Gulf Coast. I celebrate the opportunity to rebuild.

The Coast is a state of mind. We love it here. It’s home.

Life in this community is centered around family. I’m very close to my family, and while disaster relief was not perfect, we were not overlooked. I remember people like Robin Roberts, the ABC personality, coming to the Pass not knowing if her family was safe. I remember the raw emotion of relief as she spoke on air. I still hear the tremble in her voice. 

The storm was catastrophic. Many families were destroyed by it, including my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Lang, and her husband, who stayed and died. My cousin, who had been stranded on a roof with his dog, was found a day or two later on his brother’s porch.

I still get panic attacks when the weather gets severe or hurricanes are mentioned. I am not the only one with this fear. Plenty of people left the Coast, but I stayed because my parents did.

After Katrina, the community came together. People leaned on each other. Our town, Pass Christian, is small but resilient. I celebrate the strength of our community, and the role of faith in our recovery.

Even now, I keep holy water in my nightstand as a reminder that we can survive and do without many of the things we once thought we needed. Katrina taught us that we can live with less and still thrive.

The Gulf Coast is thriving. Streets like Davis Avenue, North Street and Scenic Drive are full of life. Survivors of Katrina continue to show love and care for their community.

While some people may mourn the anniversary of Katrina, I celebrate the resilience, faith, and unity that allowed us to recover. I celebrate the churches rebuilt, and I celebrate knowing that if something like Katrina comes again, we can survive it. We did once, and by God’s grace, we can do it again.

Franchelle Daniels, daughter of Harold and Lorna Rose Daniels, has served for 25 years as the victims assistance coordinator for the 2nd Circuit Court District of Mississippi  She is the vice president of the Pass Christian School District Board of Trustees and has taught victim-based classes at William Carey University, where she earned a master’s degree. She has one son, Jordan Daniels, and his fiancée, Megan. Jordan has a son, Jackson Thomas Daniels, who is age 8  and has just started 3rd grade.

A panel of lawmakers on Monday heard from national education officials who whole-heartedly encouraged them to expand school choice in Mississippi, signaling the Trump administration’s support of passing such legislation.

There was standing room only at the first meeting of the “Education Freedom” select committee, formed by House Speaker Jason White to weigh the pros and cons of implementing a robust school choice program in Mississippi, ahead of the upcoming legislative session. 

Advocates, lobbyists and top education officials, including State Superintendent Lance Evans, were in attendance.

School choice — or “education freedom,” as White and other proponents of the legislation call it — refers to a plethora of policies that, in varying degrees, either give money to families to spend on their child’s K-12 education or allow families to move their children to different schools, regardless of their location or whether the schools are public or private. White has indicated repeatedly in recent months that it will be a key issue during the 2026 session.

Those skeptical of the policy, though, say that the state’s hard-fought academic wins hang in the balance. 

Rep. Rob Roberson of Starkville, who chairs the House Education Committee and the Education Freedom committee, opened the meeting by asking attendees not to get too “emotional” and stressed that “this isn’t about politics.”

But the only two speakers at the committee’s first meeting were officials appointed to top U.S. Department of Education positions by President Donald Trump — Lindsey Burke, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, and Laurie Todd-Smith, who currently leads the federal office that oversees head start and child care. She previously served as former Gov. Phil Bryant’s senior education and workforce policy advisor.

Mississippi’s decision to hold out on expanding school choice was emphasized by Burke, who said it was “time to think differently” about how the state delivers K-12 education, given the uptake of surrounding states.  

Burke pushed legislators to consider adopting a universal education savings account, or ESA, program, though White has conceded that option may not be popular enough to pass the Legislature.

A universal ESA program would allow parents to spend the money the state allocates toward educating their child on whatever educational expenses they’d like, whether that’s private school tuition, a tutor or another option. Nineteen states have some sort of ESA model in place, including Mississippi — where only students with disabilities currently qualify. 

Burke encouraged the adoption of that kind of program because of Mississippi’s rurality, for one. She said a slow adoption would encourage the growth of private schools and allow parents to choose other options if there wasn’t a nearby private school. 

A voucher program, on the other hand, is a sort of coupon that parents can spend on tuition at a private school of their choice, including faith-based schools.

Burke also gave a detailed explanation of the new federal tax credit program, a different sort of school choice model altogether. If Mississippi opts in, which is likely, the program will allow Mississippians to contribute up to $1,700 to an organization that awards scholarships to private school students starting in 2027 in exchange for a tax break of equal amount. 

Burke said expanding these types of programs would incentivize public schools to better serve students in order to avoid declining enrollment. But opponents of school choice say that public schools who struggle to meet the needs of their students are chronically under-resourced — any loss of funds would only exacerbate that problem. 

Mississippi has only fully funded its education formula — both the old version and the newer version established last year — four times since 2003, Democratic legislators noted at the meeting. 

Rep. Jeffrey Hulum III, a Democrat from Gulfport, said the state should wait to see how the new funding formula impacts education before “giving up public funds.” But Republican Rep. Jansen Owen of Poplarville, co-chair of the committee, argued the only way to extend the state’s education gains involves “continuous efforts and reforms to the system.”

If Mississippi’s academic gains are now a model for the country, some legislators wondered why they’d rock the boat by funneling money away from public schools. 

Rep. Kevin Felsher, a Republican from Biloxi, said that only two Mississippi school districts are considered failing by the state education department. 

“We’re having really great results,” he said. “What do you say to public school advocates who would say, ‘Why do we need to come in and do this?’”

Burke responded that “even the best school is not the best school for everybody” and that “not failing” was a low bar for the state to hold itself to. 

There’s practically no evidence to show that low-income students, who Burke said the programs would be aimed toward, see improved test scores from attending private schools. Some legislators also acknowledged that private schools have less oversight than public schools and have no requirement to admit a child. 

Todd-Smith, the other speaker, framed her comments on school choice around early education. The state’s early education model is already choice-based, she said — parents can send their child to a pre-K program associated with a school or a child care center of their choosing. She encouraged legislators to expand the state’s existing early education infrastructure, especially child care, to give parents even more choices.

Owens, a proponent of school choice, said he didn’t hear anything in the meeting that swayed him, but the Trump administration’s support came through loud and clear. 

Republican Rep. Kent McCarty of Hattiesburg, vice chair of the House Education Committee, said after the meeting that he appreciated the discussion but wants to see more data that supports expanded school choice. 

“We’ve heard a lot about all of the academic gains we’ve seen in Mississippi,” he said. “I don’t think this is a silver bullet to extend those gains. 

“We’ve come too far to regress.”

The committee is tentatively planning to meet again on Sept. 25. 

Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay counties’ economic development group announced the departure of its longtime chief on Sunday, with little explanation.

In a statement, the group’s executive committee said that it had “determined that a leadership transition is in the best long-term interest of the organization and the region we serve.”

CEO Joe Max Higgins had been with the Golden Triangle Development LINK for over 20 years. The organization is contracted by the three counties to lead economic development efforts.

Under Higgins’ leadership, the counties have seen $10 billion in investment from companies such as PACCAR, Airbus, Steel Dynamics and more. The successful growth of manufacturing, which had shifted overseas, has gained national attention. Higgins and his organization have been credited with much of the region’s economic growth.

“The Golden Triangle is booming – ‘@gtr_link’ and Joe Max Higgins are a big reason why,” Gov. Tate Reeves wrote on social media on Aug. 7.

Higgins’ economic development efforts have in the past drawn national media attention. This has included profiles on 60 Minutes and in The Atlantic. 

At an event last week, the organization celebrated the opening of its new headquarters that Higgins described as “in the middle of the kingdom.”

The executive committee said it will start looking for a new CEO and that “day-to-day operations remain under management of our dedicated and capable team.”

Mississippi Today reached out to Higgins for comment but did not receive a response.