OurTupelo

I just thought I’d share a painting I did this morning that honors the sacrifice our fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers made on June 6, 1944. Freedom truly isn’t free.

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TUPELO —  Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley on Thursday called for state leaders to reform Mississippi’s notoriously lax campaign finance laws and expand the role of the state’s Ethics Commission to enforce lobbying campaign contribution regulations. 

Speaking in Tupelo, Presley called on lawmakers to pass a law that transfers campaign finance filings from the Secretary of State’s Office, where it’s currently housed, to the Mississippi Ethics Commission, which only handles some aspects of the current rules. 

The Democratic candidate, currently north Mississippi’s utility regulator, also urged state leaders to give the commission power to conduct random audits of candidates’ campaign finance donations and expenditures to keep him and other politicians “on our toes.” 

“We’re going to propose this plan to restore pride, faith in state government,” Presley said, “to make sure that we’re not the laughingstock of the nation when it comes to campaign finance reports.” 

The current campaign finance laws are a confusing, often conflicting patchwork that requires three different state agencies to have some role in enforcing the regulations.

“It’s a mess,” state Ethics Commission Director Tom Hood recently told Mississippi Today of Mississippi’s campaign finance laws. “Changes have been made multiple times over multiple years, and it’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t fit.”

READ MORE: Reform, ethics, transparency, fighting political corruption — it must be election time in Mississippi

While confusing, most state leaders agree that candidates are currently supposed to file campaign finance reports with the Secretary of State’s office, but that agency mainly acts as a record-keeping entity. If candidates skirt the laws or fail to file a report, the agency forwards their name to the Ethics Commission for review. 

The commission can then vote to levy fines against a candidate, but if a candidate fails to pay that fine, the commission, in theory, eventually notifies the Attorney General to consider filing a civil suit against them to recover the unpaid fine. 

Mississippi also spends less money on ethics enforcement — $730,000 — than other surrounding states, such as Alabama, which spends more than $3 million a year on ethics accountability. 

But Presley said if he is elected, he would also urge legislators to appropriate more money and resources to allow the commission to handle more responsibilities. 

Other proposals Presley outlined are: 

• Establishing a task force to recommend how state government can strengthen ethics regulations.
• Supporting legislation to prohibit companies seeking a license, permit, or non-competitive contract from the state from donating more than $250 to political campaigns from the date of solicitation and for 12 months after the final award is made.
• Requiring the governor’s office and all state agencies to keep records of all meetings with lobbyists and companies and individuals lobbying the government for contracts or legislation that benefits them.
• Encouraging that campaign finance reports to be available, submitted online, easily accessible to the public, and due every 30 days in an election year and quarterly in non-election years.

The Democratic candidate has made ethics reform a central part of his statewide campaign, and he has called on lawmakers to pass laws that ban state officials from raising money while the Legislature is in session. 

The political discourse over ethics reform between Presley and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has devolved into a separate issue over who has donated to the two candidates campaigns for public office.

When asked recently about his presumptive Democratic opponent’s ethics reforms proposals, Reeves’ campaign did not substantively address Presley’s policies, but criticized the Democratic candidate for accepting campaign donations from Richard Scruggs, who pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge and a federal mail fraud charge in 2009.

Scruggs served a stint in prison, which he completed in 2014. He donated $10,000 to Presley’s campaign, according to the candidate’s most recent campaign finance report, and he regularly donates to political candidates in the state.

But Presley last week said he is complying with current campaign finance laws and pointed the finger back at Reeves for previously accepting donations from such Nancy and Zach New, who pleaded guilty to crimes related to the state’s welfare scandal and are waiting for a judge to determine their prison sentence.

Editor’s Note: Dickie Scruggs has been a donor of Mississippi Today. Donors do not influence Mississippi Today’s editorial decisions, and a list of our donors can be found here.

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Her daughter was working that March night at Chuck’s Dairy Bar, a staple of the small, south Delta town. Along with some customers, Jackson’s daughter, Natasha, nestled into one of the coolers in the restaurant. 

Hours later, once the storm blew by, Jackson headed to find her daughter, navigating through debris. She found Natasha shaking, in tears. While the tornado tore the rest of Chuck’s into shreds, the cooler and those inside it were safe. 

“I thank God that I called her and told her to get down,” Jackson told Mississippi Today. 

The tornado killed 14 people in Sharkey County, and left Rolling Fork with little resemblance of its prior self. While the Jacksons didn’t lose anyone or anything that night, the reason they were in Rolling Fork in the first place is because, three months prior, they lost everything. 

The first tornado the Jacksons survived wiped away their homes last December, tearing up a trailer park where they lived in Anguilla. Victoria, her sister, aunt, cousin and everyone in their families lost their homes, among five total that were destroyed. About 20 members of the family had to relocate a few miles down Highway 61 to a motel in Rolling Fork. Many of them, including Victoria, are still there. 

As is often the case for rural disaster survivors, the damages they endured were too small to trigger crucial federal aid. Victoria didn’t have home insurance and lost her job after the storm. Now, nearly six months later, her family hasn’t seen a cent of government disaster aid, and are instead counting on donations to put them in a real home again.  

When people think about disaster recovery, they often think of “FEMA” – the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the national hub of government disaster aid. In reality, though, a vast majority of the country’s disasters don’t receive any FEMA money. They’re what experts call “undeclared” events.

“If you were to aggregate all the losses tied to undeclared disasters, they actually are more costly than typically declared disasters,” said Gavin Smith, a professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University who has helped lead recovery efforts in multiple states.

In Mississippi, nearly a thousand homes have been damaged in undeclared disasters in just the last two years, state records show. 

FEMA aid, which comes when the president signs a disaster declaration, is reserved for the larger disasters that leave states needing additional resources. But when a disaster doesn’t meet that threshold, most states, including Mississippi, can’t replicate the kinds of services FEMA can offer. 

The programs states receive after a federal declaration include: paying for public infrastructure repairs, putting people in temporary housing, sending direct payments to survivors, expanding safety net programs like food stamps and uninsurance benefits, among others.

Since more often than not, FEMA money is unavailable, many disaster survivors rely on their home insurance to pay for repairs. 

But low-income, uninsured families like the Jacksons have to instead depend on the slow, complex network of volunteers and charities. Nonprofits and national religious groups help struggling communities recover all over the country, collecting donations to help rebuild homes, and providing otherwise costly labor for free. But that process takes time.  

“If they’re back and recovered within six months, that is like warp speed for these organizations,” said Michelle Annette Meyer, the director of the Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. “At best, they’re looking at a year-long process to get the donations in, confirm the paperwork, get the volunteers and get the materials donated.” 

For Sharkey County, where Anguilla and Rolling Fork are, the nonprofit Delta Force handles disaster recovery, finding new homes for survivors after undeclared events. Delta Force’s chairman, Martha Bray, wouldn’t comment on specific cases for privacy reasons, only saying that they’re waiting for enough donations to come in to buy new mobile homes for the Jacksons. 

“It’s going to be a long process, that’s all we hear,” Victoria Jackson said. 

Last December, just before Christmas and after the tornado destroyed her home, Jackson lost her retail job at a local shop. She said her boss didn’t let her come back despite giving her time off after the storm, and then listed her as having quit, which blocked her from unemployment benefits. 

Now, she’s sharing a two-bed room with her husband and six kids at the Rolling Fork Motel. 

Jackson said she received $2,500 in initial donations from local churches and charities. But expenses like food, gas, laundry, and taking care of her children quickly dried that money up. Since her daughter Natasha lost her job at Chuck’s Dairy Bar, the family’s relying on her husband’s truck-driving job to keep them afloat.

“I wrote all of them a letter,” Pearson said. “However, to no avail. We did not get anything.”

County officials, Pearson said, told her the damages didn’t meet the threshold for federal assistance. 

“I keep hearing we didn’t meet the threshold,” she said. “Well I asked somebody, ‘Will you tell me what the threshold is?’ No one could tell me what the threshold is.”  

For Individual Assistance, the FEMA program that includes housing and other direct support for survivors, there is no set threshold, officials told Mississippi Today.

“It is kind of subjective,” FEMA spokesperson Mike Wade said. 

FEMA weighs several factors, such as the degree of damages and the amount of uninsured losses, when deciding if a declaration is justified. The agency categorizes damages into several categories, ranging from “affected” to “destroyed.”  

But to local and state officials, FEMA’s criteria is unclear. 

In the summer of 2021, for instance, heavy rain flooded 284 homes in the Delta. While local officials pleaded for federal support, the state informed them that not enough of the homes received “major damage,” which FEMA defines as needing “extensive repairs.”

Last March, 33 tornadoes touched down in Mississippi, destroying 42 homes across a dozen counties. The state applied for a federal declaration, but was denied.  

While there’s no set threshold, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency estimated that at least 50 homes need major damage to earn a federal declaration.   

But the damages from undeclared disasters in just the last couple years dwarf that number. 

Since 2021, 982 homes in the state received some damage from an undeclared natural disaster, according to records from MEMA; 81 of those homes were completely destroyed, and another 203 received major damage.

“When you look at only one of (the undeclared disasters), the damage may be relatively small,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute whose research focuses on rural recovery efforts. “But when you add all those up across the state, it actually cumulatively could be much more important than some of those big events that do get that support.” 

Anguilla has just 250 households, according to the Census. Sharkey County Supervisor Jesse Mason, who represents Anguilla, wondered how such a small place could reach the amount of damages that FEMA looks for. 

“I don’t know what the magic number is,” Mason said. “I guess maybe it had to tear the whole town up.” 

“The more rural you are and the more scattered your population and assets are, sometimes those kind of events are the ones that slip under the radar compared to the events where there’s media, for example, to immediately cover it, or there’s political pressure to immediately make declarations,” Rumbach said.

Mississippi has a program that sends money to counties after undeclared disasters. The Disaster Assistance Repair Program, or DARP, works with local nonprofits, and sends up to $250,000 for materials to rebuild homes. Meyer, the Texas A&M professor, said that’s more than what most states do after undeclared events. 

Since 2018, DARP has helped rebuild 850 homes in 22 counties. But Sharkey County hasn’t applied for DARP funds to help the Anguilla survivors, and officials couldn't be reached to explain why.  

Every county in the state has emergency management officials. But in Sharkey County, there are only two such employees, and both work part-time. Counties with lower tax bases and less capacity to do damage assessments struggle to make the case for disaster declarations, Rumbach said. 

One of those two employees, Natalie Perkins, also runs the local weekly newspaper. After the Rolling Fork disaster, which President Joe Biden approved for federal aid, Perkins saw firsthand the difference a declaration makes. 

“When you have a declared disaster, everyone comes out of the woodwork to help,” she said. “But when you have an undeclared (event), you don’t get the attention, you don’t get the donations, you don’t get the federal and state funding that you do in a declared disaster. That’s just the bottom line.”

Pearson sat down with Mississippi Today to talk about the December tornado, the one that displaced the Jacksons. She emphasized that she didn’t want to take away attention from what happened in Rolling Fork. But she couldn’t hold back frustration over the lack of help Victoria Jackson and her family received. 

“These people just three months ago lost their homes,” the mayor said. “I can’t equate Rolling Fork with Anguilla. But come on now, people are people, humans are humans. The (Jacksons) left Anguilla and came to Rolling Fork. Now a tornado hit Rolling Fork. These people don’t have anything, and you’re telling them they can’t qualify (for FEMA aid)?”

At the motel, the Jacksons accused the owner of poor treatment, saying he recently raised their weekly rent to $400, and charges extra to wash their sheets. When reached for comment, the motel staff said the owner was out of the country and couldn’t comment. Meanwhile, the Jacksons don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to afford the room. 

That Wednesday, while federal officials were in Anguilla, Victoria tried to apply for FEMA aid. They called back later, she said, telling her she’d been denied. While the agency won’t comment on specific cases, FEMA confirmed that aid wasn’t available for people in her situation. 

“We just need the help that they’re giving other people,” Jackson said, wondering why she and her family had been left out. “Anguilla is Sharkey County, Rolling Fork is Sharkey County, so all this should be combined together, right? Help for everybody, right?”

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AUBURN, Ala. — The Southern Miss Golden Eagles lost eight front-line pitchers from last season — six to the MLB draft, one to the transfer portal and one to injury. They found some others.

The Eagles weren’t really playing to their potential in February, March and much of April. They kept battling.

They lost the regular season Sun Belt Championship by one game to powerhouse Coastal Carolina. They came back and won the Sun Belt Tournament.

They lost the first game of the Auburn Regional. They came back and won their next three and set up Monday’s regional championship game.

With a pitching staff running on fumes, they fell behind Penn 5-1 in the fourth inning Monday. They immediately tied it up in the bottom of that inning and went on to an 11-7 championship victory, cheered wildly by a mostly gold-clad throng that made Plainsman Park seems like Pete Taylor Park East.

Do you notice a theme here? No matter what, don’t count Southern Miss out. As Penn coach John Yurkow said of USM, “That’s a tough ball club over there, very well-coached, really talented. They fight you tooth and nail.”

In Scott Berry’s last season as head coach, the Golden Eagles have won 45 games, lost 18, won a conference championship, won a regional championship and now advance to a Super Regional for a second consecutive season.

“You’re always trying to check all the boxes,” a Gatorade-soaked Berry said in the postgame press conference. “The biggest box of all is to the win the national championship. That’s what we are trying to do.”

Of the 305 Division I teams that began this season, Southern Miss remains one of 16 in the hunt. As this is written, we don’t know whether the Eagles will be playing Tennessee at Knoxville or in Hattiesburg this weekend. Berry believes his team has earned the privilege of hosting.

“I definitely think we have earned the right,” Berry said. “I think we have the resume. I think we’ve done enough. I thought we had done enough to host a regional, but we didn’t get that and I know much of it is based on RPI. But I’m just really proud of our guys. They have done this the hard way.”

Berry said his wife, Laura, read him a passage Monday morning from a newspaper article written back in 1982. It was after Southern Miss had stunned Bear Bryant and Alabama, ending Bama’s 59-game football home winning streak. Mickey Spagnola, who covered Ole Miss for the old Jackson Daily News, wrote it. It went like this: “If you’re going to war, always choose Southern Mississippi. Don’t fight Southern Mississippi. No matter how hard you fight, these folks will fight harder. These people know sweat. They know hard work and they know nothing ever comes easy. They are hard, I’m telling you, they are hard.”

Berry said he read the quote to his team in the team’s pregame huddle. They then went out and performed just as Spagnola described 41 years ago.

So many Southern Miss heroes came through when it counted most:

• Shortstop Dustin Dickerson, the regional MVP, slammed his fourth home run of the regional and knocked in four runs, precisely the margin of victory.
• Tate Parker hit safely three times, walked once, was hit by a pitch and scored three runs.
• Carson Paetow slammed a double and a single and batted in two runs.
• Rodrigo Montenegro, catching his third game in a 27-hour span, added a double and a single and knocked in two runs.
• All American pitcher Tanner Hall gutted out two innings to start and gave up no earned runs.
• Billy Oldham, the winning pitcher against Auburn on Saturday when he threw 81 pitches, came back on a day’s rest and three scoreless innings to pick up his eighth win of the year against three defeats.
• Will Armistead, the last of five USM pitchers, threw 2.2 scoreless innings, striking out five and allowing only one hit for his first career save.

And there were more. Hall, Montenegro, Dickerson, Paetow, second baseman Nick Monistere and third baseman Danny Lynch all made the All-Regional team. But, obviously, much of the focus remains on Scott Berry, although he wishes that was not the case. Tears welled in his eyes a couple of times during the postgame press conference when he talked about how his team’s late-season run – the Eagles have now won 23 of their last 26 games – should be about the players, not him.

His players, to a man, say otherwise. Said Dickerson, “Our goal from day one was to win the national championship. This being his last season gives us that much more to play for. Everybody wants to win for him. He doesn’t want any of the credit, and that’s just the man he is. But we’re all pushing for him.”

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A federal lawsuit is challenging restrictions on protests held on public ways next to state government buildings in Jackson. 

The restrictions are under Senate Bill 2343, which is set to go into effect July 1. Under that law, any event on the sidewalk or streets next to state-owned or -occupied buildings would require prior written authorization from Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell or Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey. 

“We have spoken, and the state has responded with a sweeping prohibition of speech next to properties in Jackson occupied by state officials absent prior authorization,” the JXN Undivided Coalition said in a Monday statement. “We should not have to risk arrest and imprisonment for exercising our constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and equal protection under the law.”

The lawsuit was filed Saturday by local community organizers and groups such as the JXN Undivided Coalition, Mississippi Votes, People’s Advocacy Institute, Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign and  Black Voters Matter. They are represented by the Mississippi Center for Justice and the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law. 

Attorneys for the plaintiffs argue that the law’s requirement for written permission from the state officials is unlawful prior restraint under the First Amendment and it also violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

The plaintiffs are also asking for declaratory relief and a preliminary and permanent injunction to prevent SB 2343 from going into effect.

Tindell and Luckey are defendants in the lawsuit. Under the law, they are designated as the ones to approve events because they are in charge of the Capitol Complex Improvement District, which is where the governmental buildings are located. 

A spokesperson from the Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond for comment Monday and did not say whether the department has reviewed the lawsuit. 

MacArthur Justice Center Director Cliff Johnson, who is representing the plaintiffs, said the city of Jackson already requires permits for events held on city sidewalks and streets that might affect access to public space, and those ordinances already carry penalties for failure to comply. 

Additional permission is another example of lawmakers disregarding Jackson’s autonomy, he said. 

If SB 2343 goes into effect, Tindell and Luckey will have the ability to veto protests, including those against the actions of state government and officials, according to the JXN Undivided Coalition.

“This chills protected speech,” said Paloma Wu, who is representing the plaintiffs from the Mississippi Center for Justice, in a statement. 

State-run institutions – Capitol Police and the Capitol Complex Improvement District court – rather than local institutions would be responsible for arrests, prosecution and conviction of people who protest by any state-owned or occupied property without prior permission, according to the lawsuit complaint. 

A misdemeanor conviction within the district would carry prison time at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility rather than jail time, which is possible through House Bill 1020 – a piece of legislation also being challenged in court. 

During recent protests, community members have spoken out about that law’s creation of a separate court system within Jackson and the expansion of authority of the Department of Public Safety and Capitol Police. 

Organizers said they plan to hold protests at the Capitol, Mississippi Supreme Court, the Governor’s Mansion and near other government buildings next month, according to the complaint. 

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St. Dominic Memorial Hospital in Jackson is laying off 157 employees, or 5.5% of its total workforce, and closing all of its behavioral health services.

The employees range from full-time, part-time and PRN (as needed) roles. A spokesperson did not immediately answer how many of the positions are involved in direct patient care.

This is the third health system to announce significant layoffs in Mississippi recently. Both Ochsner Health System and Gulfport Memorial reduced their workforces last month.

The hospital’s geriatric psychiatric and inpatient mental health facilities will stop accepting new admissions on Tuesday at 7 a.m., according to a press release.

The release cited “substantial financial challenges” and losses of several million dollars in the last three to five years.

“Throughout its 77-year history, the St. Dominic’s ministry has evolved to meet the everchanging needs of the community it serves with a steadfast focus on quality, safety, patient experience and stewardship,” said Scott Kashman, market president and CEO of St. Dominic Health Services and St. Dominic Hospital.

“After thorough discernment and prayerful consideration, we must again adapt and evolve to preserve the ministry in the face of these economic realities and better ensure the long-term health of the organization. Ultimately, these decisions were made in faithfulness to good stewardship of our mission and the ministries we support.” 

Hospitals in Mississippi and across the country are in dire straits: First-quarter cuts among health care companies in the U.S. were up 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to Fierce Healthcare.

Hospital officials in Mississippi told lawmakers they would need a total of $230 million in extra funds to stay afloat, but a grant program the Legislature passed only awarded about $100 million. In addition, some hospitals are having trouble accessing the funds they were allocated because of regulations with federal COVID-19 relief money.

St. Dominic was allocated $2.12 million under that program.

Baton Rouge-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System bought St. Dominic in 2019.

Employees who have been laid off will continue in their current employment status with regular salary and benefits for at least 60 days following notice. Severance opportunities will also be offered to full-time and part-time team members who are unable to secure other similar roles in the organization, the release said.

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AUBURN, Ala. — Southern Miss’ Justin Storm thrives in this NCAA Regional thing. After pitching himself into the spotlight last season with a memorable performance against LSU in the Hattiesburg Regional, Storm was even better late Sunday night against Penn in an 11-2 Southern Miss victory.

The 6-foot, 7-inch former Madison Central Jaguar simply overpowered the Ivy League Quakers, pitching the last 5.2 innings, allowing only one hit, while striking out 10 and walking none. He filled the strike zone up with fastballs and hard sliders that Penn simply could not handle. Don’t let the final score fool you. Southern Miss trailed 2-1 when Storm entered the game and did not break it open until an eight-run ninth inning.

“That’s some of the best stuff I’ve seen in a long, long time,” USM coach Scott Berry said of Storm. “That was total dominance. That’s the kind of stuff you see on TV in the Big Leagues.”

Berry saw the same thing precisely one year ago against LSU in the same do-or-die situation when Storm pitched the last 5.1 innings of an 8-4 victory over the high-powered Tigers.

“A star was born tonight,” Berry said at the time.

The star turned one with a bang Sunday night, entering the game in the fourth inning with one out and the bases loaded and the Eagles down 2-1. He struck out Penn batters for the second and third outs. Those were the first two of 16 Penn batters he would retire consecutively.

Asked what Storm was doing to bamboozle his batters, Penn coach John Yurkow said, “I’m trying to figure that out. I think he was throwing invisi-balls.”

Actually, Storm was mixing 91-mph fastballs and hard-breaking sliders, moving the ball in and out and up and down. “My best pitch tonight was my slider,” Storm said. “I could use it at any time in the count and I just kept mixing that with my fastball.”

Storm, a polite young man, is nonetheless intimidating on the mound. “He’s so tall it’s like he’s right on top of you when he lets go,” Yurkow said. “He’s throwing downhill … He really chewed us up.”

If there’s a rainbow after the Storm for Penn, it’s that the big lefty threw 61 pitches. It is highly unlikely he will pitch in the 2 p.m. championship game on Monday. Indeed, both coaches will have to piece their pitching together, dipping deep into their staffs.

That might not seem like such a daunting task for the Golden Eagles, considering what they’ve achieved the past two days. After losing in the opening round to Samford, they have come back to knock off top seed and Regional host Auburn 7-2 on Saturday, then defeated Samford 9-4 Saturday afternoon, exacting some revenge. It was a 12-hour day at the ballpark for the Eagles, who also endured a two-hour-plus rain delay in the Samford game.

Freshman second baseman Nick Monistere, the former Northwest Rankin standout, led the Eagles at the plate with three hits and three RBI against Penn after slamming two doubles and knocking in two runs against Samford.

Asked about his performance, Monistere beamed. “It was the bat,” he said. “I borrowed Dustin’s (Dickerson) bat. Now I want to keep it.”

This time last year, Monistere was helping Northwest Rankin win a State 6A Championship, as the Gatorade Player of the Year. “This is so much bigger,” he said postgame. “This is so much fun.”

Since he entered the starting lineup in April, no moment has seemed too big for Monistere. The more pressure, it seems, the better he is. 

The bat worked OK for Dickerson, too. His three-run blast over the center field wall highlighted the eight-run ninth.

With 10 strikeouts, Storm didn’t need all that much help in the field, but third baseman Danny Lynch provided plenty, snaring balls and making perfect throws for all three outs in the eighth inning. Lynch has put on a spectacular defensive exhibition this entire regional.

Against Samford, Southern Miss trailed 4-3 through five innings but then plated four runs in the sixth to change the game. Lynch homered among his three hits and Monistere provided the two doubles, two RBI and scored twice.

USM pitchers Matthew Adams (three innings), Kros Sivley (four innings) and Chandler Dawson (two innings) got it done on the mound, thanks to some sparkling outfield play. Left fielder Reece Ewing made two spectacular catches, including a leaping catch against the left field wall, and right fielder Carson Paetow made a diving, runs-saving catch, as well.

Southern Miss must still beat Penn again again today to advance to a Super Regional against the Tennessee Vols.

“Our biggest ally is our minds,” Berry said. “These guys believe in themselves.”

The post Deja vu? Justin Storm pitches Southern Miss into regional final appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Marshall Ramsey sits down with Fit Chef founder and entrepreneur Kevin Roberts. Fit Chef was founded in 2016 by Kevin, who has lived across the country from California to Alaska to Florida and many states in between. His 15-year-career in the food business and a passion for fitness led to a small business that began with cooking for a handful of clients and delivering barely 40 meals a week.

Kevin shares his thoughts on entrepreneurship and what it takes to start and run a small business. He also shares details about his upcoming RockBox location in Jackson.

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JUNE 4, 1899

The Rev. D.A. Graham stepped to his A.M.E. pulpit in Indianapolis. He often read from the Gospels or spoke about the love of Jesus, but on this day, he decried the mistreatment of Black Americans. 

Over the past seven years, there had been more than 1,200 lynchings of Black Americans, but nothing had been done to halt them, he said. The newly formed Afro-American Council had just held a National Day of Fasting and Prayer to protest the lynchings of Black Americans: 

“We are arrested and lodged in jails on the most frivolous suspicion of being the perpetrators of most hideous and revolting crimes, and, regardless of established guilt, mobs are formed of ignorant, vicious, whiskey-besotted men, at whose approach the keys of these jails and prisons are surrendered and the suspicioned party is ruthlessly forced from the custody of the law and tortured, hanged, shot, butchered, dismembered, and burned in the most fiendish manner.” 

In some lynchings, mob members collected charred body parts as souvenirs, Graham said. 

“How many of them are guilty? What is the proof against them?” 

In Georgia, a white girl met a young Black man “coming down a path and as he did not get out of the path she was afraid and ran. She swore that he did not speak to her and did not follow her,” Graham said.

Despite the utter lack of evidence, 19-year-old Ed Aikin served 10 years on a prison chain gang for attempted assault, Graham said. 

“How can the colored youth ever learn to look upon himself as a man when he is constantly treated as a brute?” Graham asked.

In March 2022, after more than a century of lobbying, lynching finally became a federal crime.

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