Left to right, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young attended the 1965 funeral of Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death inspired the Selma march to Montgomery. Credit: AP
An Alabama grand jury indicted former state trooper James Bonard Fowler for the Feb. 18, 1965, killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was trying to protect his mother from being beaten at Mack’s Café.
At Jackson’s funeral, Martin Luther King Jr. called him “a martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” As a society, he said, “we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.”
Authorities reopened the case after journalist John Fleming of the Anniston Star published an interview with Fowler in which he admitted, despite his claim of self-defense, that he had shot Jackson multiple times. And Fleming uncovered Fowler’s killing of another Black man, Nathan Johnson. In 2010, Fowler pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months behind bars.
State Rep. Earle Banks, a Democrat representing Jackson in the House since 1993, faces a federal criminal charge for allegedly evading payment of federal income taxes.
According to court documents unsealed this month, Banks reported $38,237 in income on his 2018 federal tax returns even though he “knew that he had received more than $500,000 in additional income in August 2018 from profits from the sale of real estate.”
Banks, the 68-year-old who was elected to the Legislature in 1992, is accused of “willfully making a false material statement on a federal income tax return.”
Jackson attorney Rob McDuff, who is representing Banks, said in a statement: “Mr. Banks made a mistake on his tax return in 2018 and failed to include a capital gain. We have cooperated with the IRS and the U.S. Attorney’s Office as they have looked into this matter, and we will continue that cooperation in moving toward a final resolution.”
The maximum penalty is three years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year supervised release, according to court documents.
Banks, an attorney and funeral home director, is an active member of the Mississippi Democratic Party. In 2020, he ran unsuccessfully for chairman of the state party after serving four years as second-in-command of the party’s executive committee.
In 2012, Banks ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Bill Waller Jr. for a seat on the state Supreme Court.
Banks is unopposed for reelection later this year to his Jackson House seat. It does not appear a conviction would keep Banks from serving in the Legislature. The Mississippi Constitution bars anyone convicted of most state or federal felonies from serving in the House or Senate, but Section 44 of the state constitution exempts federal tax crimes from being a disqualifying offense.
“This section shall not disqualify a person from holding office if he has been pardoned for the offense or if the offense of which the person was convicted was manslaughter, any violation of the United States Internal Revenue Code or any violation of the tax laws of this state unless such offense also involved misuse or abuse of his office or money coming into his hands by virtue of his office,” the Mississippi Constitution says.
Six words I have always believed would be spoken. Six words that a betting woman might have laughed off when we were getting started as the state’s first nonprofit, online-only newsroom. Six words made all the sweeter after seven years of indescribably hard work.
When people ask me about my path into nonprofit news, I share this story about my own days as a budding journalist.
I have always been a good writer, but I was a terrible reporter. I never had the guts to ask hard questions. I never had the confidence to walk into a room with powerful people to press them for truth and ask for answers. This is why I love my work. I champion the brave, dedicated journalists who put in long hours to walk into uncomfortable spaces armored with facts and data.
I have a front row seat to the grinding, complicated and nuanced research and reporting that takes place before an interview is scheduled. I am the proverbial fly on the wall to endless spreadsheets, dense public records and inches-thick case files. I have watched reporters like Anna Wolfe spend years, literally, becoming subject matter experts on the issues they cover. Always with curiosity, always with ethics, always at heart those impacted most by the story at hand.
This week’s Pulitzer Prize win speaks volumes to Anna’s dedication to shining light on why outcomes remain so poor for Mississippi’s impoverished when there are dedicated funds to give them a hand up. It also speaks to the power of nonprofit news, which by design, allows reporters to stay with a story, to dig in and continue coverage for as long as needed. Moreover, it puts an exclamation point on the value of local news, the impact it carries and the absolute necessity of a free, independent press.
This work is critical, and it comes with a price tag. Our newsroom has invested thousands of dollars on record requests, attorney fees and travel across the state to report this story.
To the thousands of readers who have supported our mission, thank you. To those of you who haven’t yet joined us in this powerful public service journalism, I invite you to become a part of our community by making a donation today.
Our journalists may be the ones with the grit and determination to see a story through, but without your support, those stories go untold.
Following a few hiccups, the federal government finalized Alliance Healthcare System’s rural emergency hospital status, according to the hospital’s leaders.
This makes Alliance the first in the state to receive such a designation.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) granted the hospital the special designation, aimed at increasing struggling small, rural hospitals’ financial viability, in March. Soon after, though, CMS asked hospital leadership for more information and placed the hospital’s status under review.
The issue was that the hospital was too close to Memphis, Tenn., which is about 50 miles away from Holly Springs where the hospital is based. According to the hospital’s chief operating officer and legal counsel Quentin Whitwell, CMS wanted further confirmation that the hospital was indeed rural, which is required to qualify for the designation.
After a letter from Dr. Dan Edney, Mississippi’s state health officer, confirming the hospital’s status as such, the rural emergency hospital designation was accepted, Whitwell said.
CMS did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The rural emergency hospital designation was just rolled out by the federal government a few months ago. To qualify, hospitals must end inpatient services and transfer emergency room patients who need further care to larger hospitals within 24 hours. In exchange, they receive monthly stipends from the federal government and higher reimbursement rates.
Alliance has been losing money for years, its CEO Dr. Kenneth Williams previously said.
He said the hospital’s survival was contingent on its approval as a rural emergency hospital.
Now that their status is finalized, Alliance joins four other hospitals as the first rural emergency hospitals in the country.
As for whether it’ll ease the hospital’s financial challenges, Whitwell is hopeful.
“We expect the new designation to improve both the financial and the outpatient capabilities for citizens of Marshall County,” he said.
Since 2020, the state has seen at least 27 overdose deaths from the animal tranquilizer xylazine, either alone or combined with fentanyl, said Col. Steven Maxwell, director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
“It’s a crisis,” he said. “We’re not experiencing the crisis as much as places like Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles, but we are experiencing a crisis with regard to the lacing of fentanyl with other drugs, such as xylazine.”
The number of drug overdose deaths in Mississippi have nearly tripled since 2018, reaching 754 in 2021, according to the most recent state Department of Health statistics. The overdose deaths of Black Mississippians have catapulted from 37 to 165.
Nationwide, drug overdose deaths have doubled between 2015 and 2022, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Synthetic drugs, such as fentanyl, now make up more than two-thirds of those fatalities.
At HMP Global’s recent RX Summit in Atlanta, Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, announced that his office had designated the fentanyl-xylazine mix as an emerging drug threat.
“If you thought fentanyl was dangerous and deadly before, it has become even more lethal and destructive now,” he said. “We all must act.”
Xylazine is a non-opioid animal tranquilizer, typically administered by veterinarians to horses, cattle, deer, elk and moose.
Illicit use of the sedative has been skyrocketing in recent years. In 2015, the drug was involved in 2% of overdose deaths in Pennsylvania; now it’s involved in more than a fourth of those deaths.
The biggest growth has come in the South, which saw the highest increase in seizures of xylazine (193%) between 2020 and 2021, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
“Xylazine is not safe for human consumption,” Gupta said, “and it has potentially deadly consequences when used.”
Advocacy groups such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education have called xylazine “worse than fentanyl,” which is already involved in more deaths of Americans under 50 than any cause of death, including heart disease, cancer, homicide, suicide and other accidents, according to the DEA.
Because xylazine is designated for use in animals that may weigh significantly more than the average American, the effects on the human body are far greater, said William Lynch, a New Jersey clinical pharmacist who spoke at the RX Summit.
Xylazine not only slows breathing and the heart rate, but can cause the blood pressure to plummet, especially when used in combination with fentanyl, he said. In addition, users injecting the drug can develop severe skin ulcers that can resemble horrific burns, leading to skin grafts, possible amputation or even death.
When someone overdoses on fentanyl, emergency responders can use naloxone to try and revive that person. But when someone overdoses on a combination of fentanyl and xylazine, the naloxone has no effect on the xylazine, Lynch said. But it should still be given to reverse the effects of fentanyl, he said.
If naloxone does revive someone, “they have to go to the hospital,” because they could suffer from what he called “flashback pulmonary edema. They could possibly stop breathing and essentially drown in their sleep from fluid that accumulates in the lungs.”
On the streets, xylazine alone is known as “tranq,” or “tranq dope” when it’s mixed with fentanyl, he said. Experts say both dealers and drug users may mix the pair to prolong the opioid high.
Fentanyl has virtually replaced heroin on the streets because of its price tag, he said. While heroin costs about $23,000 a pound, according to a 2020 study, fentanyl is 10 times cheaper. Xylazine can run less than $10 a pound, according to a DEA report.
With regard to the suspected heroin seized in New Jersey, he said, 98% tested positive for fentanyl; only 2% had heroin alone. In New Jersey in 2022, of the 98% drug seizures that tested positive for fentanyl, 36% of those samples tested positive for xylazine.
In nearby Philadelphia, xylazine is supplanting fentanyl. In seizures there, Lynch said, there are 24 parts of xylazine to every one part of fentanyl, and the purity of the xylazine has gone up while the purity of the fentanyl has gone down.
Xylazine has long been easy to obtain, he said, and anyone could have had it delivered to their homes, not just veterinarians. To combat this, the FDA recently started tracking xylazine shipments.
Because it can be purchased cheaply in a powder or liquid form, dealers can mix this sedative with other drugs, which makes fatal overdoses a real possibility, he said.
Unlike fentanyl, xylazine isn’t illegal, which means there are no laws that give police the power to arrest.
Making xylazine a controlled substance would enable authorities to arrest those possessing or trafficking xylazine, Maxwell said. “It would be treated like any illicit drug.”
Col. Steven Maxwell is director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
To attack this problem, governors in Ohio and Pennsylvania have declared xylazine a controlled substance. There is also a push in Congress to make it a controlled substance federally and also in some state legislatures, although not so far in Mississippi.
Asked if Gov. Tate Reeves supports the state making xylazine a controlled substance, Press Secretary Shelby Wilcher replied that there is currently legislation pending in Congress that would make the drug a Schedule 3 substance under federal schedules.
“The Office of the Governor works closely with the Mississippi Department of Health and Mississippi Department of Public Safety on an annual basis to update the state’s drug schedules,” she said. “Xylazine will certainly be part of the discussion.”
Lynch said one advantage to taking this step is veterinarians and their practices would be required to track the drug, just as they do with opioids and other controlled substances they use. “If you ever waste any of it,” he said, “you have to document the destruction with a witness.”
One concern about making xylazine a controlled substance is how it might affect veterinarians, who have used the sedative for half a century, said Bill Epperson, professor and head of the Department of Pathobiology and Population Medicine at Mississippi State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
The drug is typically used for pain relief and to “calm fractious animals,” he said. “There is not a good substitute for xylazine in large animal general practice.”
Given that veterinarians have used xylazine responsibly for decades, the drug should still be used “to support the legitimate practice of veterinary medicine,” he said. “We are strongly in favor of harsh penalties for those suppliers engaged in illicit activity.”
In March, Congress introduced the Combating Illicit Xylazine Act, which would make illicit use of xylazine fall under Schedule III penalties and allow legitimate veterinary use to continue. The American Veterinary Medical Association supports the bill.
Lynch warned that xylazine “is just the drug de jure,” and others are certain to follow. For example, he said, the synthetic opioid isotonitazene (known as “ISO”) “is approximately three times more potent than fentanyl and has already been seen in New Jersey and other parts of the country.”
This ever-changing chemistry puts authorities “in the position of playing whack-a-mole,” with new synthetic drugs certain to follow, Maxwell said. “We’ve got to find a way to loop in any lethal cocktail or any drug that’s enhanced beyond its potency.”
Wilson Furr, shown her during the 2022 Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Twenty-four-year-old professional golfer Wilson Furr, from Jackson, made national news two times recently for all together different reasons.
Stay with me here. As so often happens in the perplexing sport of golf, this gets complicated.
Rick Cleveland
Furr plays on the Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA’s Class AAA, which means he plays golf better than 99.99% of people who ever take up the sport. But it also means he is trying to perfect his game to an elite level where he can join that .01 percent that play for millions upon millions on the PGA Tour.
On April 21, Furr was playing and playing well in the second round of the Lecom Suncoast Classic at Lakewood Ranch, Fla. It was an ultra-important round for Furr who needed to make the cut and make some money in order to retain his exempt status on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Furr and his two playing partners played the back nine first that day. They finished the 18th hole and began a long walk to the first tee.
“There was a shuttle waiting just behind the bleachers and skyboxes on the 18th green, the same exact kind of shuttle that took us from the driving range to the 10th tee,” Furr said.
One of Furr’s partners asked if the driver if he was going to the first tee, and he said, “Sure, jump in.”
They did. Furr was playing well, in good shape to make the cut. After 12 holes, he was four under par. The trio hit their drives on the fourth hole when a rules official showed up and asked if they had taken a ride from the 18th green to the first tee. Yes, they said, they had.
“That’s a two-shot penalty,” they were told.
Making a cruel and long story short, the two-shot penalty turned a 67 into a second straight 69 for Furr. He missed the cut.
He was hurt. He was angry. He felt almost as if he (and five other golfers) had been set up or almost framed. The penalized golfers pleaded their case to rules officials but to no avail. Instead of being exempt for all Korn Ferry events, Furr thought missing the cut meant that he would have to Monday qualify to get into tournaments for the rest of the year. That’s next to impossible. For example, for the next week’s Home Town Lenders Championship at Huntsville, Ala., 150 golfers teed up on Monday, playing for only four spots.
Surprisingly, Furr wasn’t in that number. Several exempt players, for whatever reason, decided not to play in Huntsville. Furr got in. He shot even-par 70 amid difficult conditions in the first round. Rain shortened the tournament to 54 holes. Furr found himself in the same position as the week before. He needed a really good second round to make the cut. And, frankly, his job was on the line.
Anyone who plays golf knows that pressure mounts as the stakes go up. Just imagine playing for your livelihood. That’s essentially what Furr was doing.
Because of all the bad weather, Furr didn’t tee off for the second round until mid-afternoon on Saturday. He badly needed to make some birdies. Boy, did he.
Furr was six under par through 10 holes when it became too dark to continue. On Sunday morning, he took up where he left off and eventually shot a nine-under-par 61, a course record, to make the cut. Later Sunday, he shot a solid, even par 70 to finish in a tie for seventh and secure his playing privileges for the remainder of the year.
Yes, he still needs to play extremely well to graduate from the Korn Ferry to the PGA Tour. At least now, he has a fighting chance.
The Korn Ferry’s next tournament will be this weekend at Kansas City. Furr will tee off almost as if he has a new lease on life. While he plays the Korn Ferry Tour, he keeps up with his Mississippi buddies on the PGA Tour. Davis Riley, his former Alabama teammate from Hattiesburg, recently got his first win. Hayden Buckley of Belden has won more than $2.6 million this year. Chad Ramey of Tupelo has won more than $780,000.
“They’re doing great, and I’m pulling for them,” Furr said. At the same time, he wants to join them and seeing what they’re doing gives him confidence – and motivation.
“I’ve played a lot of golf with them,” Furr said. “I know their games and I know mine. It lets me know where I stand, makes it seem all the more possible that I can play out there and be successful.”
Yes, but he’s got to get there first. Shooting 61, essentially with his career on the line, was a start. Given all the circumstances, it shows he has the right stuff.
First NFL game with an all-Black officiating crew on Nov. 23, 2020. Burl Toler, pictured far right, was remembered. Credit: NBC Sports
Burl Toler was born in Memphis. The first Black official in any major sport in the U.S., he defeated prejudice at each turn.
In 1951, Toler starred for the legendary undefeated University of San Francisco Dons. Prejudice kept the integrated team from playing in the Gator Bowl, but the team found success anyway. Nine players went to the NFL, three of them later inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Their best player may have been Toler, who was drafted by Cleveland but suffered a severe knee injury in a college all-star game that ended his playing days.
Toler decided to make his way into professional football through officiating. The NFL hired him in 1965 — a year before Emmett Ashford became the first Black umpire in Major League Baseball and three years before Jackie White broke the color barrier in the NBA.
He rose above the racism he encountered, working as a head linesman and field judge for a quarter-century. He officiated Super Bowl XIV, where the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Los Angeles Rams in 1980. Two years later, he officiated the “Freezer Bowl,” where the Cincinnati Bengals defeated the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship Game. The game marked the coldest temperatures of any game in NFL history — minus 59 degrees wind chill — and Toler suffered frostbite.
In addition to his NFL work, he worked as an educator, becoming the first Black secondary school principal in the San Francisco district. He died in 2009. Two area schools and a hall on the University of San Francisco campus have been renamed in his honor. On Nov. 23, 2020, Toler was remembered again when the NFL had its first all-Black officiating crew.
Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for her remarkable investigation “The Backchannel,” which uncovered the depth of the sprawling $77 million welfare scandal, the largest embezzlement of federal funds in the state’s history.
The investigation, published in a multi-part series in 2022, revealed for the first time how former Gov. Phil Bryant used his office to steer the spending of millions of federal welfare dollars — money intended to help the state’s poorest residents — to benefit his family and friends, including NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre.
Mississippi Today’s entire staff and several supporters gathered at Hal & Mal’s in downtown Jackson for the announcement on Monday afternoon and erupted in celebration when the news was announced.
“Anna Wolfe deserves this for so many reasons,” said Adam Ganucheau, editor-in-chief at Mississippi Today. “The late nights she spent poring through spreadsheets, the sheer number of roadblocks she faced from state officials, the thoughtfulness and care she put into her writing, the passion she always has for helping Mississippians — it’s been the absolute honor of my life to get an up-close look at how hard she works and how much she cares about our state.”
Wolfe, a 28-year-old Washington state native who has worked her entire professional journalism career in Mississippi, reported for more than five years on what would become “The Backchannel,” logging thousands of hours of source work and interviewing for the project. When she heard that she’d won the Pulitzer — broadly considered the nation’s top journalistic achievement — she focused her thoughts on the Mississippians she’s covered.
“This award not only recognizes underdog reporting in an under-resourced part of the country,” Wolfe said. “It says to Mississippians who have long been subjected to systemic government corruption that their experiences are valid and they deserve better.”
Before national news covered the welfare scandal, Mississippi Today exposed it first.
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Mississippi Today joins a growing number of nonprofit, online newsrooms to win the award over the past decade. Notably, Mississippi Today’s Pulitzer Prize this year is just one of a handful of Pulitzers awarded to a nonprofit newsroom focused on local news as compared to outlets focused on single-topic or national issues.
“Today’s win belongs to everyone who has supported our nonprofit newsroom since our 2016 launch,” said Mary Margaret White, CEO at Mississippi Today. “We would not be celebrating a Pulitzer Prize without the support of thousands of Mississippians who share our belief that an informed Mississippi is a stronger Mississippi. My sincere gratitude and respect goes to Anna Wolfe and the team at Mississippi Today for their dedication to truth and accountability, and to all of the grant makers and donors who steadfastly champion the impact of local journalism.”
The 2023 Pulitzer for Mississippi Today is the seventh awarded to a Mississippi news outlet in the history of the prizes. It is the first awarded to an online-only newsroom in the state’s history.
The Sun Herald won a Pulitzer in 2006 for its coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; the Clarion Ledger won in 1983 for its successful campaign supporting Gov. William Winter in his legislative battle for public education reform; Hazel Brannon Smith of the Lexington Advertiser won in 1964 for a series of powerful local editorials; Ira B. Harkey of the Pascagoula Chronicle won in 1963 for a series of editorials about the state’s school integration crisis; the Vicksburg Sunday Post-Herald won in 1954 for its coverage of a devastating tornado; and Hodding Carter II, esteemed editor of The Delta Democrat-Times, won in 1946 for a group of editorials published on the subject of racial, religious and economic intolerance.
“I hope this Pulitzer Prize recognition serves as a reminder that we at Mississippi Today are here to serve this state for years and years to come,” Ganucheau said. “We are Mississippians who love this beautiful, complicated state and care deeply about its future. We’re proud to champion all the good of our state, and we’re emboldened to provide the accountability journalism that our state needs and deserves. We take seriously our responsibility to be the eyes and ears of taxpayers who may not have the ability or access to ask big, critical questions. We will always press our elected officials to ensure they’re living up to their responsibilities and using their platforms for good and not for corruption. We’re fearless, we’re resilient, and we’re here for the long, long haul.”
The Pulitzer Prize is the most prominent award earned by Mississippi Today, the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom that was founded in 2016. The newsroom and its journalists have won several national awards in recent years, including: two Goldsmith Prizes for Investigative Reporting; a 2022 Sidney Award for its thorough coverage of the Jackson water crisis; a Collier Prize for State Government Accountability; and the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.
Mississippi Today and its staff have also won dozens of regional and statewide prizes, including dozens of Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Awards; several Mississippi Press Association awards for excellence, including a Bill Minor Prizes for Investigative Reporting; and the 2023 Silver Em Award at University of Mississippi.
