At the U.S. District Court in downtown Jackson Monday, Judge Henry Wingate approved putting even more of the city’s aging and broken infrastructure under the control of a third-party manager.
Ted Henifin, who is already overseeing the drinking water rehabilitation for Jackson, will now also take the reins of fixing the city’s wastewater system, which for years has plagued both residents and the local ecosystem with sewer overflows and under-treated discharges. In recent years, city officials estimated that the water and wastewater systems would each require about $1 billion to fix.
The parties in the city’s sewer case, which traces back to a 2013 consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency, submitted a proposed agreement days ago. Mississippi Today reported details on the agreement last week. Wingate approved the agreement at Monday’s status conference, putting the sewer system in Henifin’s control for four years.
Before doing so, the judge asked Henifin if managing the sewer infrastructure would interfere with his work fixing the drinking water system, to which Henifin said no.
The biggest challenge, Henifin noted, will be procuring funds for the sewer system. As he took over the drinking water system, the federal government agreed to invest about $600 million into those fixes. For the sewer system, there’s roughly $140 million in available funds that was mentioned in the now-signed order. Officials Monday also mentioned roughly $600,000 that could be used to help Jackson homeowners make sewer repairs on their private property.
Henifin said a key step will be getting consistent revenue from water bills. He said the city’s current collection rate stands at just 56% as far as connections with accounts in the city’s billing system, adding that there are about 7,000 connections without accounts.
Henifin reiterated that his company, JXN Water, will soon shut off water to people who don’t pay their bills. He said that process will start with a 30-day notice for those “delinquent” on their bills, and then another seven-day notice before actually turning the water off. He added residents can negotiate a payment plan if they’re having trouble affording their bills.
The public has until Aug. 31 to submit comments on the sewer order, and Wingate, as WLBT reported, will consider changes to the order based on that input. Information on public meetings and how to submit comments can be found here.
Mississippi received over $2.5 billion from the federal government in pandemic relief money in 2020 and 2021 to improve education and to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a little over a year left to use the money, schools have made progress but still have over a billion dollars left to spend.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund was created initially by the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in 2020 and then subsequently replenished in two other pieces of federal legislation, creating three separate pots of money for states and districts to spend.
Each pot of money has its own spending deadline – Sept. 30 of 2022, 2023, and 2024 respectively. A built-in grace period gives schools a few extra months to disburse final payments, but the U.S. Department of Education also allowed states to request extensions. The Mississippi Department of Education confirmed it received an extension for ESSER I, the first pot of money, with a new deadline of March 30, 2024.Extensions on the second pot are also available, but a state education agency spokesperson said Mississippi has not applied yet.
School districts in Mississippi have spent nearly all of the funds from the first pot, but progress spending ESSER II and III varies significantly by district.
There are a wide variety of allowable expenses under the ESSER guidelines, but the U.S. Department of Education instructs school districts to prioritize efforts to “safely reopen schools for full-time instruction for all students, maintain safe in-person operations, advance educational equity, and build capacity.”
A Mississippi Today analysis of the spending plans in three school districts found that ESSER I funds went primarily to reopening schools — covering sanitation, masks and new technology. Districts focused on addressing learning loss and infrastructure investments when budgeting ESSER II and III.
FutureEd, an education policy think tank at Georgetown University, found that the higher the poverty rate in a district, the more likely administrators were to allocate money to heating, venting and air conditioning (HVAC) updates and to purchase new instructional materials.
Patrick F. Healy was inaugurated as president of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Healy was the first African American to become president of a predominantly white university.
In 1834, he was born into slavery in Macon, Georgia, the son of a slave owner and an African-American woman named Mary Eliza Smith, who became the owner’s common-law wife. He fought discrimination as an elementary school student, both for his African-American and Irish Catholic roots.
In 1850, he became the first African American to enter the Jesuit order and, eight years later, was sent to Europe to study, earning a doctorate at Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.
In a letter, he referred to the racist remarks, “which wound my heart. You know to what I refer.”
After the Civil War ended, he returned to the U.S. and taught philosophy at Georgetown before becoming president. He helped transform the small college into a major university, upgrading the law school and modernizing the sciences. His influence became so profound that many refer to him as the institution’s “second founder.” He was buried in the Jesuit cemetery on the university grounds, and Georgetown’s Alumni Association now has an award in his name.
Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison and Taylor Vance break down the candidates’ strategy, presentation of their speeches and the crowd’s reaction to those speeches at the just-completed the Neshoba County Fair.
Mississippi continues to rank first in the nation in fetal deaths, according to 2021 data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week.
The report examined deaths of fetuses in utero that occurred after 20 weeks’ gestation, also known as stillbirths, in the United States. Mississippi led the nation with a rate of 10 deaths per 1,000 live births, almost twice the national rate of 5.73.
Mississippi has also long led the nation in infant mortality, or the death of babies up to one year of age.
State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said “the time for study and evaluation has passed,” and it is time for action.
“We’ve been working for the past year to implement the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies program for high-risk moms and babies on Medicaid,” Edney continued. “We’ve also just been given the endorsement of the state Board of Health to develop the best OB system of care that we possibly can, following the models of national organizations and the other 10 states that have mandatory maternal levels of care for hospitals.”
Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies is a partnership between the state’s Health Department and the state Division of Medicaid that places registered nurse case managers in the homes of mothers undergoing high-risk pregnancies and who have recently given birth.
Similar to the Mississippi State Department of Health’s trauma, ST-Elevation Myocardial Infarction, and stroke systems of care, the OB system will facilitate transferring high-risk pregnant women and their babies to the right level of care at the right time. The system of care is not yet in place — the state Board of Health just authorized staff to start working on it at its board meeting earlier this month.
Nationally, more than 21,000 stillbirths occurred in 2021, or about six for every 1,000 live births.
For Black women nationally, the fetal mortality rate declined by 4% from 10.34 (2020) to 9.89 (2021). However, Black women still had the highest fetal mortality rate compared to other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S – nearly double the national rate of 5.74 per 1,000 live births.
According to the report, most fetal deaths were associated with an “unspecified cause.” Other common causes were complications of the placenta, cord and membranes; maternal conditions unrelated to pregnancy; maternal complications of pregnancy and congenital malformations.
The fetal mortality rate for women who smoked during pregnancy was almost twice that of nonsmokers – 9.62 compared to 5.08, respectively.
“The latest data from the National Center for Health Statistics confirms what we currently know, stillbirth prevention needs to remain a priority. While the stillbirth rate from 2020 to 2021 essentially remained unchanged, any fetal deaths that could have been prevented are unacceptable,” Dr. Christopher Zahn, interim CEO and chief of clinical practice and health equity and quality for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told Mississippi Today.
Samantha Banerjee, executive director of PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy and a mom whose daughter Alana was born still in 2013, said the “numbers are shameful” but “not shocking to those of us in the stillbirth community.”
“We have fallen far behind our international peers when it comes to ending preventable stillbirth, and averting these tragedies has never been made a priority in the U.S. It is beyond time for change, and we hope that the recent CDC report serves as a wake-up call to our medical and public health leaders,” Banerjee told Mississippi Today.
PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy, a national nonprofit dedicated to reducing the rate of stillbirth in the U.S., empowers pregnant women and their providers to recognize warning signs of stillbirth. PUSH also closely coordinates with Black maternal health and maternal mortality communities on patient-centered solutions addressing stillbirth.
Ana Lepe Vick, co-director of communications at PUSH and the mother of Owen, who was stillborn in 2015, told Mississippi Today that it is critical that the organization raise awareness about stillbirth and share known preventive methods.
“Unacceptably, the rate of stillbirth remains stagnant because there has been no national sense of urgency or investment in addressing the failures of our healthcare system which allows even healthy, ‘low risk’ pregnancies to end is this catastrophic outcome,” Vick said.
Several years ago, the South Jackson native, a registered dietitian, was working a traditional job in her field and realizing that there was a disconnect between the information she wanted and needed to provide to patients and their receptiveness to it.
One day she and her grandmother, who is now 101 years old, were eating grits at her grandmother’s kitchen table in Yazoo City when her grandmother began to fondly tell Meeks about her garden. Meeks’ grandmother grew everything she needed in her own garden and fed her eight children in the process.
Her grandmother’s story served as a contrast to the narrative she learned in school about Black people’s relationship with food, and it encouraged her to create GRITS. Instead of combating the rise in food-related chronic disease through opaque materials, Meeks realized she can do so by connecting people and their communities to “food, improving their food literacy skills and bridging the gap between culture and nutrition.”
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Mississippi Today: What led you to create GRITS?
Meeks: I was working a traditional role at the public health department, and I felt limited and boxed in, like I couldn’t really reach people in the way that I wanted to … My grandmother had eight kids, so they grew a lot of their foods. The thing that got me was how positively (my grandmother) talked about food — cultural foods, at that. In research and in the media, I always saw Black people associated with bad eating habits, and that’s not our story. That might be part of someone’s story, but that’s not our whole story.
I kept seeing this one-sided story about what Black foods are to us. Hearing her talk was a lightbulb moment because I felt so empowered by her story. It was like, ‘These stories that I’m hearing aren’t true because my grandmother is sitting here, almost 100 years old, telling me all these things about food.’ It was empowering and refreshing to hear her talk about food in that way. I wanted to continue to tell stories about Black food and Black foodways, but also have them connected to our health, as well. That’s why I started GRITS, Growing Resilience in the South, to connect people to these stories. I also say the South is a metaphor because … the South is the genesis of Black America. I really want to connect all Black people to help them connect to food in a different way, but also a way that helps them improve their health.
MT: What programming are you most excited by?
Meeks: The book club … The book club wasn’t something I had been planning to do for a while. I’ve been reading so much since I became a dietitian. Before I became a dietitian, I got interested in books about food and foodways, and that’s how I began to dismantle narratives about Black food stereotypes — it was by reading. I kind of built this library, and I posted some of my books on Instagram. Someone asked me if I was starting a book club. I was like no, but that’s a good idea and I went with it … I was surprised by the feedback and the response I got.
The first day I posted about it, I had 40 people sign up and I didn’t do much promotion. It’s (up to), like, 70 people now. I got the mini grant right before I made the announcement, so I was able to help purchase books for people who couldn’t afford it. It’s just been a really great experience, the response and also the conversations. Sometimes I’ll read books and just want to talk about these things, but I don’t have anybody to talk about it with. Now we’re having these discussions about food equity, food sovereignty and reconnecting with foods. These are really valuable conversations that are part of the work. Part of GRITS’ work is narrative change, so when we’re having these conversations about changing the narrative with food and helping people connect with food, that’s helping the community do the work for themselves as well.
MT: What has been the most interesting or exciting text you all have read so far?
Meeks: Our first book was called “Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America” by Psyche A. Williams-Forson. She recently won the James Beard Award for food issues and advocacy for that book. I’m glad we started the book club off with that book because it requires you to really unlearn some things about anti-Black racism, especially when it comes to what we eat. The book mentions how so many cultural foods have these ‘unhealthy’ parts of their food, but Black foods are the only foods that really get surveilled and criticized, and it’s not because of the food, it’s because of our race. It was really helping us unpack a lot of things about food and food shaming. Sometimes as Black people, we might food shame and not even realize it, so it was a very informative book that made you be more aware of how you think. Sometimes that can be hard conversations to have, so I’m happy GRITS was able to cultivate this safe space to have these hard conversations.
No one wants to think that the way they think is wrong or biased or anti-Black, but in reality, we all can fall victim to that in some sense. Creating a space where we can talk about that and unlearn some things has been really good. The next book is ‘Catfish Dream,’ about a farmer in the Mississippi Delta’s fight to save his family farm.
MT: Why do you think an organization like GRITS is important, specifically in Mississippi?
Meeks: I know we hear a lot about health sometimes. I didn’t want to just preach health because a lot of times when people hear health, the two things they may do are kind of shut down because they don’t feel like they can be or fit that idea of ‘healthy,’ or, two, they go to an extreme … I feel like health can look so many different ways, and GRITS’ approach to health and nutrition education is so different. Even though I am a dietitian and I do promote healthy ways, I don’t approach it with nutrition education; I approach it with stories and connecting people with culture. I think the way that I use stories and cultures as a bridge to understanding our health is unique, and I think that that’s important because of the connection it’s building.
I would be in the health department and sometimes I felt like what I was doing wasn’t as effective because the patient wasn’t connecting to what I was saying. You can preach and you can give someone all this nutrition information, but if they’re not connected to what you’re talking about, it’s not effective. Being in Mississippi is a powerful thing for me. I feel more connected to my state and to the people here than I ever have … and I think it’s because I built connections with people and there’s something powerful about that. Through GRITS, I want to help people not just build connections with food, but build connections with their community, with Mississippi, and be proud of their roots. There’s so much culture, there’s so much history, there are so many things about where we live that can empower us and I want people to feel that.
I want people to hear Mississippi and be proud because they know their history, they know how connected they are to this place. I can say I am proud. Growing up, I don’t know if I would’ve gone somewhere else and be proud to tell someone I’m from Mississippi. But I love telling people I’m from here because I know what this place has. I know how valuable Mississippi is, and I think GRITS is just another way to connect people to the state and connect them to different parts of their heritage and culture.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large and Cartoonist Marshall Ramsey continues his series of author interviews leading up to the Mississippi Book Festival on August 19, 2023 at the State Capitol.
This week’s book is Josiah’s Big Day by 2023 Miss Mississippi, Vivian O’Neal. Josiah’s Big Day, based on her brother, Josiah, is a book that teaches students and teachers acceptance of students with special needs. O’Neal, whose capABLE platform is an inclusion curriculum for kids with disabilities, talks about winning Miss Mississippi, her book, and how she is preparing for Miss America.
Every summer, the Mississippi State Capitol hosts thousands of people at a one-day, free festival to celebrate books, authors, and readers. The Mississippi Book Festival will return for its ninth year this August with over 150 authors, whose written words have inspired many readers. Booklovers can connect with authors and each other through a wide selection of panels, book signings, family-friendly activities, and more on August 19th, 2023, in downtown Jackson.
The Mississippi Book Festival is excited to host a plethora of talented authors, including children’s authors Lois Lowry, whose recent novel, The Windeby Puzzle, is a combination of strange history and compassionate reflection. She will join award-winning Mississippi author Margaret McMullan to discuss her book. Jackson native Richard Ford will sit down with the festival’s founding director Holly Lange in a conversation about his final novel in the world of Frank Bascombe, Be Mine. Readers of literary fiction will be eager to witness the conclusion of Ford’s “everyman” character.
There will be panels for every type of reader at the festival, including Cookbooks & Culture, Mississippi Culture, Author Biography, Book Club Picks, and more. Jackson author Mary Miller will lead the “Novel Women” panel featuring fellow Jackson author Katy Simpson Smith, Ramona Ausubel, Jenny Jackson, and Mona Simpson as they explore identity and relationships in their gripping narratives. In a panel on “Marriage, Memoir, & Misadventure,” Former Mississippi Poet Laureate Beth Ann Fennelly will moderate an honest and moving discussion with writers Harrison Scott Key, Helen Ellis, Maggie Smith, and Hannah Pittard.
Black men, many of them veterans of the Civil War, were killed in New Orleans when they paraded outside the Louisiana Constitutional Convention in favor of their right to vote. According to the official report, a total of 38 people were killed and 146 wounded. Other estimates put the numbers even higher.
“The whites stomped, kicked, and clubbed the black marchers mercilessly,” wrote Ulysses S. Grant’s biographer, Ron Chernow. “Policemen smashed the … windows and fired into it indiscriminately until the floor grew slick with blood. They emptied their revolvers on the convention delegates, who desperately sought to escape. Some leaped from windows and were shot dead when they landed. Those lying wounded on the ground were stabbed repeatedly, their skulls bashed in with brickbats. The sadism was so wanton that men who kneeled and prayed for mercy were killed instantly, while dead bodies were stabbed and mutilated.”
This massacre and similar violence helped fuel the Reconstruction Act, breaking the South into military districts in 1866. Martial law was imposed on New Orleans, and city officials were removed from office for the roles they played in the massacre. The violence also helped fuel the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
No one was ever tried or convicted in the massacre.
