Neshoba County native Dick Molpus, who served three terms as Secretary of State, discusses the importance of the Neshoba County Fair on Mississippi politics. Molpus, who has attended 70 fairs, shares some of his favorite memories from over the years.
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The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame will induct eight new members in ceremonies Saturday night at the Jackson Convention Center. The MSHOF Class of 2023 is a diverse one, which, as usual, includes high achieving athletes and coaches.
Below, the eight inductees are profiled, in alphabetical order.
Jeff Herrod, football
Full name: Jeff Sylvester Herrod
Age: 57
Birthplace: Birmingham
College: Ole Miss (1984-87), All-SEC linebacker 1986-87, Ole Miss Team of the Century. Leading tackler in Ole Miss history.
Professional: 11 years in NFL, 10 with Indianapolis Colts. Led Colts in tackles for seven seasons.
Did you know: Herrod was lightly recruited out of high school and Ole Miss was his only Division I offer. He planned to enlist in the U.S. Marines until receiving a late scholarship offer from Ole Miss coach Billy Brewer. He was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 2017.
Crowning achievement: Herrod, with 528 tackles in his Ole Miss career, is the second leading tackler in Southeastern Conference history behind Tennessee’s Andy Spiva.
Paul Maholm, baseball
Full name: Paul Gurner Maholm
Age: 43
Birthplace: Greenwood (grew up in Holly Springs)
Lives: Hattiesburg
College: Mississippi State (2001-03). A left-handed pitcher, Maholm is one of the most accomplished pitchers in Diamond Dog history with a 27-10 record and 273 strikeouts in 312 innings. Made 46 appearances, 44 starts. Was a freshman All American and All SEC as a sophomore and junior.
Professional: Maholm was the eighth overall pick of the 2003 MLB Draft. Drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates, Maholm remains the third highest draft pick in MSU baseball history. Played for four Major League teams (Pirates, Cubs, Braves and Dodgers) over 10 seasons at baseball’s highest level, earning $27 million over that period.
Did you know? Maholm declined a signing bonus from the Minnesota Twins to attend Mississippi State, then signed a $2.2 million bonus after three years as a Bulldog. An avid golfer, Maholm is formerly the part owner of the Hattiesburg Country Club and competes at the amateur level.
Crowning achievement: The ace of State’s staff for all three of his Bulldog seasons, Maholm was inducted into the Ron Polk Ring of Honor in 2021.
John Mangum, football
Full name: John Wayne Mangum Jr.
Age: 56
Birthplace: Jackson (grew up in Magee)
Lives: Flowood
College: Alabama (1986-89). Hard-hitting defensive back recruited to Alabama after being named Mississippi’s high school player of the year at Magee. Recruited by Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Ray Perkins. Mangum holds the Crimson Tide career record for passes broken up. His 16 career pass interceptions rank second in Alabama history.
Professional: Drafted in the sixth round by the Chicago Bears, Mangum played nine seasons in the Windy City, totaling 306 career tackles, 4.5 sacks and five interceptions.
Did you know: Mangum is part of one of Mississippi’s most athletic families. His father, John Wayne Mangum Sr., was a standout defensive tackle for some of the bet defenses in Southern Miss history and then played for the Boston Patriots in the American Football League. His younger brother Kris was an outstanding tight end at Ole Miss and in the NFL. His son, Jake, is one of the all-time baseball heroes at Mississippi State and currently plays for at the Class AAA level in the Miami Marlins organization.
Crowning achievement: Listed at a smallish 5 feet, 10 inches and 190 pounds, Mangum nevertheless was one of the most productive defensive backs in Alabama’s proud football history and a highly productive NFL cornerback and safety for nine seasons.
Jim Page, baseball (player and coach)
Full name: James Jeffrey Page
Age: 60
Birthplace: Woodbridge, Va.
Lives: Flowood
College: Millsaps
Player: Pitched and played third base for the Millsaps Majors (1981-85). In his senior season, Page batted a school record .487. He was his team’s MVP both as a sophomore and as a senior.
Coach: In 34 seasons at Millsaps, Page has achieved a record of 837-577-3 and has been named conference coach of the year eight times. His teams have won multiple conference championships, were ranked No. 1 in the nation in 2009, and reached the NCAA D-III World Series in 2013. During Page’s tenure, he has also coached 30 All-South Region players, 11 Conference Players of the Year, 10 American Baseball Coaches’ All-Americans, seven D-3baseball.com All-Americans and five Conference Pitchers of the Year. In total, eight of his players have gone on to play professionally.
Did you know: Nationally renowned as a hitting instructor, Page has contributed greatly to youth baseball in the mid-Mississippi area with his annual baseball camps that have provided training for literally thousands of Jackson-area youngsters.
Crowning achievement: Page would tell you it comes with his induction into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Said Page: “I am beyond humbled to join the greats like Will Clark, Harper Davis, Claude Passeau, Walter Payton, Jerry Rice and so many others. It’s beyond special, I can’t even begin to describe what it means to me.”
Tony Rosetti, world champion marksman
Full name: Tony J. Rosetti, Jr.
Age: 77
Birthplace: Biloxi
Lives: West Point
College: Ole Miss, competed and won national intercollegiate championships for the Ole Miss ROTC rifle team.
Military: When he wasn’t serving in Vietnam, Rosetti won several international shooting championships while in the U.S. Army (1964-71).
Team USA: Competing for Team USA in skeet shooting in the 1971 Pan American Games, Rosetti won a gold medal in team competition and a silver medal in the individual competition. In 1972, Rosetti competed in the Munich Olympics.
Did you know: Rosetti, who began shooting at age 11, is the first marksman selected for induction into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. Also an expert golfer, Rosetti inherited his hand-eye coordination from his parents. His father played baseball at Ole Miss and his mother won championships as an amateur golfer.
Crowning achievement: Hard to say, Rosetti has achieved so much in shooting sports, winning international skeet shooting championships and setting national records. Perhaps this: In making the U.S. Olympic team in 1972, Rosetti set a national record, hitting 294 out of a possible 300 targets during the pressure-packed, three-day competition.
Carol Ross, basketball (player and coach)
Full name: Carol Ross
Age: 64
Birthplace: Oakland, MS
Lives: Oxford
College player: When she finished her four-year Ole Miss career (1977-81), she was one of only two players to have achieved more than 1,000 points, 500 assists and 250 steals. When the Southeastern Conference held its first-ever SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament, Ross made the first-ever SEC All-Tournament team. Helped Ole Miss to 97 victories over her four seasons, the last three of which she played for Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Van Chancellor.
College coach: Ross remains the winningest coach in school history at Florida with a 247-121 (.671) record. During her four-year run at Ole Miss, Ross compiled a 77-50 (.606) record and guided the Lady Rebels to three NCAA Tournaments and a WNIT appearance. At Florida and Ole Miss combined, Ross coached a total of 27 All-SEC first team players.
Professional coach: Ross spent three seasons from 2012-14 as head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA. Her teams won 58 games and won 32. In 2012, she was voted WNBA Coach of the Year.
Did you know: Ross has served on the Board of Directors of the American Cancer Society and Coaches Against Cancer.
Crowning achievement: In 2012 Ross took over a Los Angeles Sparks team that had finished 15-19 the year before. Under Ross, the Sparks improved to 24-10, made the playoffs and she was named WNBA Coach of the Year in her first season as a WNBA head coach.
Patrick Surtain, football
Full name: Patrick Frank Surtain Sr.
Age: 47
Birthplace: New Orleans
Lives: Tallahassee, Fla.
College: A high school quarterback at Edna Karr High School in New Orleans, Surtain became one of the greatest defensive backs in Southern Miss history, a true shut-down cornerback (1994-97). Surtain led Conference USA in interceptions with six in both his junior and senior seasons when he was first-team all-conference. As a senior, he was named CUSA Defensive Player of the Year, helping the Golden Eagles to a 9-3 record (6-0 in the league) and a 41-7 victory over Pittsburgh in the Liberty Bowl.
Professional: Drafted in the second round (44th overall pick) by the Miami Dolphins, Surtain became a three-time Pro Bowler and a first team All-Pro in 2002. After seven seasons with the Dolphins, he played four more for the Kansas City Chiefs before retiring in 2008. He finished his NFL career with 37 pass interceptions.
Did you know: In 2016, Surtain became the coach at American Heritage High School in Plantation, Fla., where he coached his son, Patrick Surtain II, one of the nation’s most highly recruited high school players, who went on to become an All American at Alabama and the ninth overall pick of the 2021 NFL Draft by the Denver Broncos. Patrick Surtain Sr. now coaches defensive backs at Florida State.
Crowning achievement: As a college player, he will remembered as one of the greatest defensive players in Southern Miss history. As a pro, in 2002, Surtain made first team All Pro, meaning that he was judged one of the best two cornerbacks in all of professional football.
Lewis Tillman, football
Full name: Lewis Darnell Tillman
Age: 57
Birthplace: Oklahoma City (grew up in Hazlehurst)
Lives: Dallas
College: At Jackson State (1985-88), Tillman was the offensive star on four consecutive SWAC championship teams and a two-time All-American who broke several of Walter Payton’s college rushing records. Tillman was a three-time All-SWAC running back and the 1987 SWAC Player of the Year. He played in 43 career games, running for 3,989 yards and 30 touchdowns.
Professional: Drafted in the fourth round by the New York Giants, Tillman played five years for the Giants and two more for the Chicago Bears. He won a Super Bowl ring in 1991 with the Giants and was later teammates with fellow Class of 2023 MSHOF inductee John Mangum with the Bears. For his NFL career, Tillman ran for 2,383 yards and 12 touchdowns.
Did you know: In the famous Jackson State-Southern Miss game of 1987, Tillman’s Tigers lost 17-7 but Tillman out-gained the entire Golden Eagle team. He rushed for 177 yards, more than USM gained with a freshman named Brett Favre at quarterback.
Crowning achievement: Tillman broke both the single season and career rushing records of Walter Payton at Jackson State. What more can you say?
The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame will host events Friday and Saturday at various sites in the Jackson area. All information, including how to obtain tickets, can be found by clicking here.
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In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large and Cartoonist Marshall Ramsey begins 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 The Yorkie Who Sings At Midnight by Janne P. Swearengen. The Yorkie Who Sings At Midnight is the story of Angela Thumbelina, a tiny Yorkie rescued from a hoarding situation as an elder lady. Told through her eyes and heart and the eyes and heart of her adopted family, you will feel her pain and her joy. Adopted around the age of 12, Angela has shown the resilience and strength of a rescue. It’s a charming and moving tale about how love can make the difference for all.
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A half-dozen white men assassinated F.M.B. “Marsh” Cook after he criticized the pending Constitutional Convention for its plot to “restore” white supremacy and strip Black Mississippians of the right to vote. He had announced that he would run as a white Republican candidate for that convention and had urged Black voters to unite against this evil plot when he was gunned down.
The Cleveland Gazette hoped his killing would cause the federal government to intervene, but that never happened. The convention continued, and no one was ever tried for his killing. The new constitution and new laws did exactly what Cook had claimed — removed Black Mississippians from voting rolls and then kept them from regaining the right to vote through poll taxes and constitutional tests.
Other Southern states soon followed Mississippi’s lead, plunging the South into a legacy of disenfranchisement and discrimination. The measures proved so successful in barring African Americans that when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, less than 7% of Black Mississippians were allowed to vote.
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Gov. Tate Reeves’ most recent television commercial features him standing alone on a field intently cheering as his teenage daughter and her teammates run through their soccer drills.
“I love watching my daughter compete in soccer with and against some of the best female athletes around the country,” Reeves says in the ad. “I never thought I’d see the day where radical Democrats are working to give boys opportunities meant for girls, but here we are. As governor, I’ll hold the line against this insanity in Mississippi.”
Recently the Republican governor posted on social media: “Madison is hopping with activity this beautiful summer morning. So many young females — like Maddie — working on their game. Mississippi has to have leaders that will protect our kids. As your governor, you know I will.”
Based on the time Reeves devotes to talking about transgender women and girls competing in sports, it sure looks like he believes it is the No. 1 issue of this campaign season.
What is the impact of the issue on Mississippians?
According to research done by the UCLA’s Williams Institute, there are an estimated 9,600 transgender adults in Mississippi, comprising 0.41% of the population. The study estimates there are 2,400 trans children between the ages of 13 and 18 in Mississippi, comprising 1.2% of that population.
And how many of those Mississippians are trans females who are competing in girls’ or women’s sports in the state? Nobody — not the governor, not lawmakers who have passed legislation about the matter, not the Human Rights Campaign that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights — can name one trans athlete competing in sports that align with the athlete’s gender identity.
A Newsweek article quotes Joanna Harper, a medical physicist who has written extensively about the issue of sports and trans athletes, as saying, “While we don’t know the exact number of trans women competing in NCAA sports, I would be very surprised if there were more than 100 of them in the women’s category.”
As a point of reference, the NCAA reported 226,212 females competed in college sports in 2021-22.
As the Newsweek article pointed out, based on the UCLA study, there are 1.3 million trans adults (0.5%) and 300,000 trans minors (1.4%) nationwide. Not all of those are trans women, and even a smaller, unknown percentage compete in women’s sports.
In Mississippi, there have been instances of girls competing against boys in youth sports, but there are no examples of trans girls competing on girl’s teams. It is not uncommon for boy’s and girl’s select soccer teams to compete against each other in “friendly” matches in preteen or early teen years. Such games, no doubt, have occurred throughout the state. But no one can account for the problem Reeves has focused so much time on.
“Gov. Reeves is desperate,” said Rob Hill, the state director of the Human Rights Campaign. “In the face of his plummeting poll numbers, he’s going to do everything he can to avoid talking about his failed tenure as governor and his lack of vision and leadership for our future. Voters will see through these pathetic attacks on LGBTQ+ Mississippians and reject his attempt to marginalize transgender young people.”
Speaking of polls, according to a Siena College/Mississippi Today poll conducted earlier this year, 55% of respondents said they would only vote for a candidate who would expand Medicaid if elected. A strong majority 58% would only vote for a candidate who supports fully funding the Adequate Education Program to fund local school districts, and 58% would only vote for the candidate who supports eliminating the state’s grocery tax.
Reeves is on the wrong side of those issues, based on the poll numbers. Siena did poll one trans-related policy issue in Mississippi and found about 35% said they would only vote for a candidate who supports “maintaining the ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth,” as signed into law by the governor, while 31% would only vote for a candidate opposed to maintaining the ban. The governor also talks extensively about that ban.
There are no public polls available of Mississippians’ views on trans females competing in women’s sports. But a recent national poll indicates strong opposition — around 70% — to trans females competing in women’s sports. But other polls lower that number dramatically when people are told sports governing authorities are placing regulations on when trans females can compete.
It makes sense that poll results in Mississippi would be similar, if not even more one-sided.
At any rate, Reeves is spending an inordinate amount of time on an issue with an impact in the state that is, according to the numbers, hard to identify.
The post Gov. Tate Reeves is hyper-focused on trans issues, but what’s the real impact on Mississippi? appeared first on Mississippi Today.
The new interim band director at Delta State University co-hosted a conservative commentary podcast in which he mocked people who choose to be childless, agreed pro-LGBTQ religious leaders should be stoned and misgendered notable transgender people.
In one instance on “Always Right,” the podcast that Steven Hugley co-hosted, he gagged at a photo of Jamie Lee Henry, the first openly trans active-duty military officer who was charged last year with providing confidential medical records to an FBI agent posing as Russian intelligence.
“I do take a little joy in the fact that it’s the first openly trans person, I’m not even gonna lie,” Hugley said to his co-host, Jeff Dotson, in a clip captioned “Man With No Loyalty to His Genitals Also Has No Loyalty to His Country.”
“And oh man, that picture, it’s haunting. Like, oh, I’m going to see that in my nightmares,” he said, and gagged again.
Hugley’s June 29 Facebook post celebrating his new role, made the day before it was announced internally, caught the eye of Jonathan Szot, a library assistant at Delta State who has helped organize on-campus Pride events. Szot, whose pronouns are they/ them, had known Hugley ever since they were in a music fraternity in undergrad at Delta State.
That day, Szot helped put together a Google Drive of recordings of Hugley’s podcast, which they reported to the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator.
“Imagine you’re an 18-year-old band kid, probably one of the queerer groups in Mississippi — not to stereotype the whole group but a lot of band kids end up somewhere in that alphabet — and now you’re going to college and you’re like ‘I’m gonna be free for once’ and you wind up with this,” Szot said.
Now, they’re calling on the university to rescind Hugley’s hiring. Hugley and Dotson have not uploaded a new episode since March, but Szot said they are concerned Hugley’s beliefs could show up in the classroom.
“If Steven wants to govern his own life by those rules, fine by me. It doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t bother me,” Szot said. “But he should not tell our students how they should behave, and based on his own podcast, I do not feel confident in his ability to separate his role as an educator in a university and as an evangelist.”
What’s at stake for Szot goes beyond Hugley’s comments; they say the university’s action or inaction is a litmus test. With support from the prior administration, the LGBTQ community has grown at Delta State despite backlash from some locals in Cleveland, the small town in the Mississippi Delta that plays host to the university. Will the new president, Daniel Ennis, make inclusivity a priority too ?
“If they don’t address his views — his outspoken, public views — in some way, then yeah, it definitely will feel like a step back,” Szot said.
Delta State declined to comment for this story or to say what steps, if any, the administration plans to take to ensure future band students feel safe training under Hugley. The university also did not confirm if Dotson, who used to work in the registrar’s office, is still employed at Delta State.
Experts who study civil liberties in higher education told Mississippi Today that even though Hugley hosted his podcast as a private citizen, the university could still condemn his speech.
Hugley told a Mississippi Today reporter on Tuesday that he could not talk for long because he was arriving at a recruitment event for the band. He added that he had not heard anything from the university. Shortly after, he locked his Twitter account. All the videos on the podcast’s YouTube channel, which has five subscribers, were deleted.
The next day, Hugley declined to comment or provide additional context for his statements on the show. His co-host, Dotson, did not return a request for comment, but in the first episode, he articulated the premise of the show: “We felt that our opinions were just too important to keep them to ourselves — that, and our wives got tired of listening to us.”
The controversy is a test for Ennis, the university’s new president and an outsider to the Delta who took his post earlier this summer after a split vote from the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees. It remains to be seen how he will respond to Szot’s report.
“We’re still reading the tea leaves in his every gesture and mannerism,” Szot said. “A lot of the staff feels fairly optimistic about him. He seems like one of us. We’re all giant nerds.”
It’s unclear when university officials first learned about Hugley’s podcast. Last week, the provost, Andy Novobilski, emailed Szot’s superior to confirm “that the ‘steve’ on the Steve And Jeff podcast is actually Steve Hugley,” according to a copy of the email.
The interim chair of the music department, Kent Wessinger, couldn’t say if he knew about the podcast before interviewing Hugley for the interim band director position earlier this year.
“There was so much going on in that moment, I don’t really recall,” Wessinger said.
Wessinger added that Hugley, who graduated from Delta State in 2012, is a dedicated alumnus who is deeply involved in the community. Hugley is a minister at the Bolivar Church of Christ. His Twitter username is a reference to the university’s okra mascot. He’s on the alumni board of directors.
And in his Facebook post, Hugley wrote that it had been his 12-year dream to become the band director — a passion that has gained him sympathy with Wessinger.
“I happen to believe that he can rise above and he can do something significant, not for himself, and not just for the university, but for every student that comes here that wants to major in music and be in the band,” Wessinger said. “And so I’m not going to be the person that judges him for the positions that he takes, because everybody has positions that are adverse to other people.”
This is more than a dream for Szot. They want to live in a safe community, but instead, they’re used to backlash. And in a small town where Szot knows everyone, politics are inherently personal.
In fall 2019, a university marquee advertising a drag show as “family friendly” was shared in a Facebook group. Outraged community members left comments suggesting they would protest the show, which was going to be held on the library steps. As a precautionary measure, Okra OUT, the on-campus organization that hosted the show, relocated inside the Jobe Auditorium.
Szot and other Okra OUT members were heartened to see Bill LaForge, the university’s former president, and other upper-level administrators attend. But that doesn’t change the wider context in Mississippi, they said, where the state government is hostile to LGBTQ+ rights.
“It’s the whole paradox of tolerance,” they said. “To have a tolerant society, you cannot tolerate the intolerant. That is simply how that works.”
While Hugley’s statements on the podcast are protected free speech, experts who study civil liberties in higher education say that doesn’t prevent Delta State from taking steps to ensure queer students and faculty members feel safe on campus.
“The First Amendment doesn’t stop the university from putting out its own statement criticizing what the band director said,” said Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “The university can use its bully pulpit in that way, if it chooses to.”
There’s precedent for this, Terr noted, most notably in 2019, when the University of Mississippi condemned social media posts by sociology professor James Thomas. While nationally, conservative professors often find themselves at odds with university administration for controversial speech, Terr said in Mississippi, the reverse tends to be true.
Kristen Shahverdian, a program coordinator with PEN America, a nonprofit that promotes free expression, said Delta State could also hire a second band instructor so that students who don’t want to interact with Hugley could still participate in band.
“I would say what the university should do is not ignore this and address the community by reaching out to the communities most impacted by the speech first,” she said.
The 24 episodes of “Always Right” cover a range of newsy and at-time philosophical topics, including the police shooting of Tyre Nichols; the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio; Christmas (the only holiday Dotson likes); a TikTok made by the comedian Chelsea Handler about being a childless woman and even the nature of civic disagreement.
Toward the end of episode 22, Hugley called Dylan Mulvaney, a trans female actress who received online abuse after she partnered with Bud Light on TikTok, a “flaccid man at best.” He added that since Mulvaney documented her transition online, she doesn’t “get to cry when people make comments and mean things about you.”
Then he addressed Dotson.
“When you and I decided to start this podcast — we don’t care if we have one viewer, we don’t care if we have a million viewers — we knew we were putting ourselves out there and that ridicule comes with it,” he says. “That’s part of the game, you know? If you don’t like it, go somewhere else. You don’t get to be a public figure and then cry about people who disagree with you. It doesn’t work that way.”
In the most recent episode, Hugley refers to Dr. Rachel Levine, the United States assistant secretary for health and the first openly trans federal official, as “a dude.” He said transitioning — the process of changing one’s physical appearance to align with gender identity — should be illegal not just for trans kids, but for trans adults too.
“If you do, not only are we gonna lock you up, we’re also gonna lock up the doctor,” Hugley said in reference to parents who seek gender-affirming care for trans kids, “and then we take it the next step.”
Hugley doesn’t “hate” trans people either, he said in one episode. It is not “mean and evil” to misgender them, he said in another.
“I’m concerned about these people,” he said. “I know that lying to them and feeding into their fantasy is not going to help them.”
On the show, Hugley and Dotson watch multiple viral videos of religious leaders who support or are members of the LGBTQ+ community. In episode 21, they play a viral TikTok from an associate pastor in the United Methodist Church who preaches in drag, which prompts Dotson to say “every man in that building should have been talking over him and should have been pelting him with song books.”
“We are so soft, we are so weak, we are so tolerant,” Dotson added.
Another TikTok they watch, in a clip titled “Christians Need to Play Offense,” shows a progressive reverend wearing a rainbow stole and delivering a sermon that begins “God is gay, God is lesbian, God is trans.”
“These people should be afraid to say these kinds of things in public,” Dotson said after referencing Biblical scripture. “Except, then we go back to the thing where there’s not really free speech in public, because we’re afraid to speak our mind, because we’re afraid to get fired.
“They should be afraid to be stoned spouting this kind of nonsense,” Dotson said.
Hugley nodded.
“When all the institutions of power are on your side, we’re not punching down,” Hugley said. “The administration? They’re on your side. The media? They’re on your side. Hollywood and all entertainment? They’re on your side.”
Dotson concludes that if he lives to see his “dream” of communism becoming illegal in the U.S., he wouldn’t care about the institutions.
“Oh, Jeff, that sounds like McCarthyism,” Hugley jokes, referencing the period in the 20th century when U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy accused hundreds of government employees of being communist spies.
Dotson replies, deadpan: “McCarthyism was good. It didn’t go far enough.”
“McCarthyism was highly underrated,” Hugley agrees.
The post ‘If you don’t like it, go somewhere else’: New band director at Delta State mocked trans people, women and other groups on podcast appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Delbert’s charming Dorothy ad from so many years ago has morphed into something darker to deal with the current realities of modern politics.
The post Marshall Ramsey: Dilbert appeared first on Mississippi Today.
One year after air conditioning installation began at Mississippi’s oldest and largest prison, incarcerated people in the State Penitentiary at Parchman’s Unit 29 and other prisons are still without relief from sweltering heat as funding dictates when air conditioning can be installed.
“You got to picture how hot it is. We’re in nothing but brick and steel,” Andrico Pegues, who is incarcerated in Unit 29, said by phone. “Everything outside is double in here.”
This comes as the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency issued an extreme heat warning that will last through Friday. The heat index – how the combined air temperature and humidity feels to the human body – is expected to reach up to 115 degrees in the Delta, Jackson area and parts of south Mississippi.
Mississippi Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain estimated in April that it would take a year and a half to bring air conditioning to Unit 29, parts of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, South Mississippi Correctional Institute and other facilities.
He said much of that work is connected to funding. Installation of 48 AC units to cover 75% of Parchman was done using federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“We’re doing everything humanly possible to protect both inmates and corrections officers and we’re using the same options people in the free world have who don’t have air conditioning or can’t afford air conditioning,” Cain said in a Tuesday statement.
The department’s plan is to use industrial fans in housing units and give ice, ice water and electrolyte drinks to inmates and prison staff to provide relief from the heat, an MDOC spokesperson said.
Pegues said those in Unit 29 have been told they will get ice coolers three times a day, but he said that doesn’t always happen. People can also use fans available for purchase from the commissary, but those can be expensive.
A 2022 U.S. Department of Justice report about unconstitutional conditions at Parchman found the highest temperature recorded in Unit 29 was 145.1 degrees. Temperature logs showed temperatures over 100 degrees every day during a period of reported complaints and during two-thirds of all the dates logged, according to the report.
Nicole Montagano, Pegues’s fiance, has connected with people who also have loved ones in the state’s prisons through the group Mississippi Prison Reform Advocates.
“Not having air conditioning isn’t inhumane, but the inability to regulate temperature is,” she said.
Extreme heat can have health consequences.
Those with chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, mental illness, poor blood circulation and obesity are more vulnerable to extreme heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some medications and old age can also affect a person’s ability to regulate their body temperature.
If untreated, heat related illnesses can result in potentially fatal conditions such as heat stroke and dehydration, according to the CDC. Heat stroke can occur when internal body temperature reaches 106 degrees.
A report by the Prison Policy Initiative found associations between the number of prison deaths following days of high temperatures during the summer. In the South, there was a 1.3% increase in the number of deaths in state prisons as a result of exposure to extreme days of heat between 2001 and 2019.
Within a week’s span in 2020, five inmates were killed during a string of violent outbreaks at Unit 29 and other MDOC facilities. Gov. Tate Reeves vowed in his first State of the State to close the entire unit.
But at least half of Unit 29’s 12 buildings have remained open, and Cain said in a previous interview that remaining buildings have been renovated and are now being used for housing. Because some buildings were closed, inmates were moved to other facilities.
Pegues, who has been at Unit 29 since November, was sent there from another facility due to a rules violation. He looks forward to leaving within the coming weeks. He’s serving an 18-year sentence for armed robbery and will be eligible for parole in 2027, according to Montagano.
During hot days in Unit 29, Pegues feels irritable and said the heat affects him mentally, too. There’s also the smell of sweat and body odor, especially if people aren’t able to take frequent showers.
There have already been 100-degree days in Unit 29, he said, and on one of those days he remembers seeing the temperature high on the television.
“No way, we’re going to die in here,” Pegues recalls thinking.
The post A year after air conditioning came to Parchman, most of Mississippi’s prisons are still without relief from the heat appeared first on Mississippi Today.
