Aaron Lochmann’s mom was driving him home from surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center when he looked at his phone and got what was perhaps the most poorly timed news of his 19-year-old life. The LGBTQ+ clinic where Lochmann saw a primary care provider and got a prescription for testosterone — and which had recently referred him for the chest surgery he had just undergone — was being shut down by hospital leadership.
Too sleepy from the anesthesia, he didn’t know what to think.
Aaron Lochmann and his mother Tammy Lochmann were among a group of demonstrators protesting the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s decision to close TEAM Clinic that provided care for the LGBTQ+ community, Tuesday, June 6, 2023 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
But on Tuesday afternoon, Lochmann, still wearing bandages, joined about a dozen other people who protested UMMC’s decision to close the TEAM clinic, which stands for “Trustworthy, Evidence-based, Affirming, Multidisciplinary.”
“I’m just appalled and really upset, because I don’t have access to basic health care anymore,” he said.
The pioneering clinic, founded in 2015, had been subject to political pressure. A legislative investigation was launched after conservative lawmakers learned the clinic was providing gender-affirming care, like hormone therapy and puberty blockers, to transgender kids. At that point, UMMC executives worked with the clinic’s leadership to create a plan to stop treating trans kids at the clinic, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today.
But last week’s decision was made unilaterally. The co-director of the center that oversees the clinic, Alex Mills, was not consulted. And many patients found out they were losing access to health care that aimed to be safe and affirming for the LGBTQ+ community in the same way Lochmann did — from an article in Mississippi Today.
Some patients still have not received a call from UMMC, said Jason McCarty, the executive director of Capital City Pride, a Jackson-based nonprofit that organized Tuesday’s protest along with several other LGTBQ+ organizations.
At the start of the protest, held by the intersection on State Street that UMMC employees regularly cross, McCarty was passing out rainbow flags that he purchased with the intention of celebrating Pride Month.
“You want to throw this shit on me during Pride Month?” he said. “We’re not gonna allow nonsense like this to rain on our parade.”
The protest’s main request, McCarty said, was for UMMC to notify all existing patients that the TEAM clinic was closing and to help them find a new provider that would continue all aspects of their care.
“We understand the clinic is closed,” he said. “We get it. It’s not coming back. But we want to make sure people don’t get lost in the already bad system that is health care in Mississippi. Is that too much to ask?”
Since Friday, he said he has emailed Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine, with that request. Woodward hasn’t responded.
Jason McCarty, Capital City Pride Executive Director, joined a group of demonstrators protesting the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s decision to close its TEAM Clinic that provided care for the LGBTQ+ community, Tuesday, June 6, 2023 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Much of the protest focused on holding Woodward accountable as the leader of UMMC.
As UMMC employees walked past the protest to their cars — some smiled and waved, others refused to make eye contact — McCarty turned to the group.
“Help me come up with something,” he said. “We need to call her out.”
That’s when they began to chant: “Dr. Woodward make it right, health care is a human right.”
“She is part of an organization that believes in creating safe spaces for LGBTQ people yet a decision was made recently to take away a safe space for those people — in her own hospital?” said Wiley Smith, who is on Capital City Pride’s board of directors. “That’s backward.”
The TEAM clinic’s closure leaves LGBTQ+ Mississippians with few options in an already deserted health care landscape. The protesters knew of just two clinics — Open Arms in Jackson and Spectrum: The Other Clinic in Hattiesburg — that openly provide gender-affirming care.
Though Spectrum provides telehealth, it’s a nearly two hour drive from Jackson, where many former TEAM Clinic patients live. And Open Arms doesn’t advertise on its website that it offers gender-affirming care.
“This clinic is where people felt safe,” said Valencia Robinson, the executive director of Mississippi in Action.
Love Latonia, an advocate for trans health care, said that the people who will be most affected by UMMC’s closure of the TEAM clinic are Black trans women in part because they lack the financial resources to seek care far away from where they live.
“It’s a way to control and to target the most marginalized, because they’re an easy target,” she said, adding that lawmakers and other powerful officials in Mississippi “should focus on things that are more serious than people’s sexual orientation.”
Demonstrators gathered across from the Unversity of Mississippi Medical Center to protest UMMC’s decision to close its TEAM Clinic that provided care for the LGBTQ+ community, Tuesday, June 6, 2023 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
LGBTQ+ clinics in other states have faced a similar backlash. In Tennessee, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee paused gender-affirming care for minors last October following pressure from Republican lawmakers. Last month, the Texas Attorney General investigated two hospitals that provided gender-transition services to trans youth.
Lochmann, who had been a patient at TEAM clinic since he was 16, said lawmakers don’t understand gender-affirming care. He had to wait a year before he could start hormone therapy.
“It’s not like they’re just giving this care to children just because they asked,” he said.
The clinic’s closure, Lochmann added, is yet another blow that is making it really hard to be a trans person in Mississippi right now.
“The clinic didn’t get a say in it,” he said. “The patients didn’t get a say in it. The fact that it happened out of the blue — it just feels like a huge loss for everything. It’s just very hard to exist and feel safe as a trans person in this moment.”
Scientists have released their 2023 forecast for the so-called “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico — predicting it will be around 4,100 square miles this summer. That’s much bigger than last year, but still smaller than average.
The dead zone is a hypoxic area where low oxygen can kill fish and other marine life. It’s caused by excessive nutrient runoff, largely from fertilizer used on farm fields in the Midwest, which ends up in the Mississippi River and flows south to the Gulf.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses models and data from the U.S. Geological Survey to forecast the size of the dead zone each year. Data from river and stream gauges showed that nitrate and phosphorus discharges were below average in the Mississippi River and Atchafalaya River, which splits off in south Louisiana.
While some see this season’s forecast as good news, it is still well above the federal Hypoxia Task Force’s goal of shrinking the dead zone to 1,900 square miles or smaller by 2035. The area’s five-year average size is 4,280 square miles, more than double that target, and has trended mostly larger over time.
Don Scavia is an emeritus professor at the University of Michigan and leads one of several research teams partnering with the federal government on the annual forecast.
“Lack of a downward trend in the dead zone illustrates that current efforts to reduce those loads have not been effective,” he said. “Clearly, the federal and state agencies and Congress continue to prioritize industrial agriculture over water quality.”
Lauren Salvato, policy and program director at the Upper Mississippi River Basin Association, said she’s hopeful about the projections. “It’s certainly positive,” she said. “Our states are working hard and they want to meet their nutrient reduction goals.”
Most states within the Mississippi River basin have developed their own plans, in concert with the Hypoxia Task Force, to reduce nutrient runoff.
Salvato said new funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help advance those goals. The task force has received $60 million for its action plan, $12 million per year for five years. Some states are using their portion of the funds to institute more sustainable farming practices, like cover crops, others are beefing up staffing, Salvato said.
“It’s monumental,” she said. “We’ve never had this program authorized, we’ve never had this kind of money put towards nutrient reduction strategies.”
However, she said the results of those new efforts won’t be measurable for years, maybe even decades.
NOAA’s press release about this year’s forecast touted it as being “below-average.” But Matt Rota, senior policy director at the environmental advocacy group Healthy Gulf, remained disappointed in the results and called NOAA’s description “misleading.”
“It’s twice the size of the goal,” he said. “It’s too big. It’s not smaller than anything.”
He said reducing the size of the dead zone will require either enforceable regulatory actions – rather than the opt-in programs on which most states have relied to reduce farm runoff – or billions of dollars of federal investment. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding is a great start, Rota said, but it’s nowhere close to enough to solve the ongoing problem.
And he said dead zone forecasts aren’t just a numbers game. The livelihoods of thousands of people on the Gulf Coast are tied to fisheries, which are imperiled by the dead zone.
“It isn’t just about these numbers and these models – but how do we create a livable ecosystem?” he said.
One of the victims of the recent St. Dominic’s layoffs was its mental health services — at a time when Mississippi needs all of the mental health services it can get.
Portrait of Sheriff Peter Crosby by high school student Michael Neal, winner of a Black History Month Art contest, May 21, 2015. Credit: Courtesy Warren County Sheriff
Peter Crosby, a Black sheriff, was shot in the head in the wake of the Vicksburg Massacre in which armed White Leagues overthrew the Reconstruction government in Mississippi, killing as many as 300 Black Americans they regarded as a threat, including some of Crosby’s deputies.
President Ulysses S. Grant had sent troops to quell the violence and enable the sheriff’s safe return. After Crosby returned, a white deputy shot him in the head. Although the sheriff survived, he never recovered, and the deputy who shot him was never prosecuted.
The event became part of the Mississippi Plan —violence, terror and corruption to restore white supremacy. Grant decided against sending in any more troops and whatever hope Reconstruction offered Black Mississippians was soon dashed.
PASCAGOULA — Massive tree branches stretch overhead, shading the small brick house decades past its prime.
Rundown with a rotting carport, it shows every bit of the some 100 years it’s spent on its patch of Midway Avenue. An aged board blocks off the front door. Shutters are missing; windows busted. The inside is an 897-square-foot shell.
The walls are solid brick; the house sits on a concrete slab. Through the overgrown weeds and algae-seeped walls of the screened-in porch, Rony Hernandez saw his family’s dream home. He grew up doing construction with his father. He was confident he could handle the renovation.
But those dreams came to a halt during Hernandez’s first trip to the city for building permits. The Ingalls Shipbuilding employee wanted to live where he worked — but fixing up the old home is going to take more than sweat equity.
It might take a miracle.
FEMA’s 50% rule does not allow homeowners to spend more than 50% of the structure’s value to improve their homes unless they elevate their property. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Not because of the home itself, but because of the Hurricane Katrina-era regulations that residents say hang over Pascagoula like a dark cloud. In order for a municipality to take part in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), it has to agree to adopt certain building codes for flood zones recommended by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That’s where the “50% rule” comes into play.
Hernandez’s fixer-upper is valued at just $36,000 and sits about 2 feet below the Pascagoula’s base flood level. Under the current building code, the city can only permit Hernandez half the home’s value in repairs over a 10-year period.
That leaves just $18,000 for a complete makeover, labor costs included. More than 90% of the city is in a flood zone, beholden to the same set of rules. Before the flood maps were redone in 2009, only about 15% of the city was in designated flood zones.
“We are in a situation with the city that we cannot issue permits for those people needing and wanting to do improvements over 50%,” said Pascagoula Mayor Jay Willis. “So, in many cases, we are condemning these properties, and they are in the process of being demolished when, if this rule didn’t exist, they could very well be brought back into code.”
Nearby cities on the Gulf Coast have had an explosive housing market with skyrocketing property values and a surge in new builds. Even as investments in Pascagoula’s downtown mean new apartments, and a $6.8 million hotel, much of the city’s residential neighborhoods are lagging well behind the surrounding cities.
FEMA officials explained that the NFIP rules about making improvements, which Congress enacted decades ago, are meant to deter over-investing in properties that are vulnerable to flooding.
“We, as public servants – FEMA, the state and local officials, owe it to the residents and businesses to work together to take actions that will help keep us safer,” FEMA spokesperson Crystal Paulk-Buchanan said in a written response to Mississippi Today. “When communities adopt and enforce floodplain management regulations that include strong building codes, disaster impacts are less severe, and recovery is faster.”
But to those in Pascagoula, it feels like they got slammed twice. First from Katrina, and then with building permit regulations that have crippled the city from making a meaningful comeback over the last decade.
“We’ve got more going on in construction and development in this town than we’ve had in 30 years,” said Josh Church, the city’s planning and building director. “But it has been a battle from day one.”
The only way Pascagoula’s homeowners in the city’s flood zones can spend more than 50% of a home’s value on renovations is if they elevate the structure above the base flood level. But many older homes are attached to concrete slabs, making them much more expensive to raise.
Raising an existing house is costly, as is building a new house higher up. As a result, Pascagoula neighborhoods sit as a stark divide between the have and have-nots: New luxury homes high on stilts and old homes falling deeper and deeper into disrepair until the city has no choice but to declare them condemned.
And more and more, the working class — people like Hernandez — say they’re being squeezed out of affording a safe place to live that can help build wealth for their families. Hernandez saved up to redo an old home, but he doesn’t have the income to build a new one from scratch.
The abandoned homes and overgrown lots that litter Pascagoula are a constant reminder of how much Katrina changed the trajectory of a city known for its major economic contributions to the state. It is home to Chevron, an oil refinery, and Ingalls Shipbuilding, which employs more than 11,000 people.
Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Every weekday the city’s population of 20,000 doubles to 40,000 when workers commute in, but shrinks back down once they clock out, according to estimates from the mayor’s office.
Hernandez, 32, wants to live in Pascagoula, but he and most of his coworkers are spread out across nearby cities such as Moss Point and Ocean Springs or out of state in Alabama — their paychecks, made in Pascagoula, rarely circulate much in the city’s economy. They can’t find homes available in Pascagoula: they’re typically run down or elevated seaside mansions.
“I feel like part of the community already and, as part of the community, I see what’s going on, I see how these types of regulations hurt the community,” Hernandez said in front of the old house on Midway. “Because, look, we got a vacant house over here. Hopefully, hopefully, I will be able to fix it. But a lot of people they’re not even trying. They buy properties, they can’t fix them. And then they become trash.”
On the first Tuesday of every month, Church, the building director, gives a short presentation before Pascagoula’s city council, pinpointing nuisance properties.
He and his team of code enforcement agents have a list of about 150 properties they’ve flagged as derelict or dangerous. Property by property, they work through the list by calling the owners, sending warning letters and posting notices. Going before the city or to court is the last-ditch effort to clean up the city.
Property owners have a chance to speak at a public hearing before the board votes on whether the property should be torn down.
Most don’t show. The ones who do are regularly facing an unfortunate reality: Their properties are too far gone to fix, especially with the 50% rule looming overhead.
The problem properties range from overgrown vacant lots where houses were long ago torn down to abandoned retail spots to dozens of dilapidated houses that have been empty for years, many since 2005, when Katrina flooded the city.
“If they don’t live here 75 to 80% of them don’t care,” Church said. “You can send them letters all you want. It’s just like talking to that wall. They don’t see it, they don’t care about it.”
The nuisance property problem isn’t a coast-wide problem. It’s a Pascagoula problem that most agree traces back to Katrina’s damages, the regulations that followed, and increasing flood insurance costs that make it more and more difficult to justify investing in existing structures.
Some of the properties were passed down to relatives after a death. Many wind up in the hands of out-of-state owners who wanted to turn a quick buck after winning a tax lien certificate in an auction with the city but don’t bother investing in the parcel or old home’s upkeep.
Once the nuisance properties are gone, city leaders hope it will attract more new builds.
Pascagoula Mayor Dr. Jay Willis stands next to a home that has been affected by by FEMA’s 50 percent rule in Pascagoula, Miss., Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“We have people coming in that are recognizing the great things that are happening in Pascagoula and wanting to be part of it,” said Willis, the Pascagoula mayor. “The next step of that is to get into the residential housing area, and have some of these investors building houses here, and hopefully that’s where we’re going.”
In the interim, there is some risk: Once a house — even a derelict house — is gone, the property taxes may go from $1,000 a year down to $30. It’s an immediate impact on the city’s tax base.
Meanwhile, builders and investors are struggling to turn the profits needed to justify Pascagoula builds in residential neighborhoods.
Brandi and Brandon Busby scurried around a brand-new three bedroom home they built from the ground up in Pascagoula, checking items off their “to do’s” before handing the keys over to the house’s new owner.
The Busbys just built Pascagoula’s first new housing development since 2001. Six homes total.
“We had planned to build 11,” Brandi said, leaning over the kitchen’s glossy marble counters. “But we had to stop. The problem with construction in Pascagoula versus, say, Ocean Springs, is we are paying $26,000 more here to raise the house up, and it eats our profit margin.”
The Busbys bought a parcel of land on Mantou Street that once held three dilapidated homes the couple described as shacks. The land was slightly higher than in much of the rest of the city, so while the homes needed to be raised some to meet the regulations of new construction, they’re not towering over the neighborhood.
The homes are elevated on brick foundation, with stairs leading to a porch. They have sleek siding in neutral colors. The ceilings are high and the kitchen and living areas are bright and open.
With the cost of building materials, the Busbys said it’s impossible to build a new home for under $200,000 and turn a profit. Add in the extra costs of elevating in Pascagoula and high homeowners’ and flood insurance rates, it’s easy to quickly be priced out.
“There’s no in between anymore,” Brandi said, referring to Pascagoula’s makeup. “It’s either 800-square-foot little Navy houses (built during World War II) or a mansion on Washington Avenue.”
The Busbys have a history of turning down Pascagoula remodel requests. In the city’s flood zones, new construction needs to be elevated — even if it’s a room addition on a lower-lying home.
They wanted to improve Pascagoula but had to stop short of their goal. The costs just didn’t make sense. Pascagoula houses already sit on the market longer than in competing coast cities. Not only are they more expensive to build, but also the flood zones in the county’s lowest lying areas make them less valuable to sell. One misstep could mean losing money on a build.
“At the end of the day, we’re a business,” Brandi said, “and we have to keep food on our own table.”
Brandon, Brandi’s husband, worries about Pascaogula’s long-term future — beyond just the 50% rule that keeps him from even attempting to flip the city’s older homes.
A home undergoes construction in a neighborhood in Pascagoula, Miss., Wednesday, May 17, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Homeowner insurance is skyrocketing along the state’s coastal cities, with one insurance agent seeing increases of 15-70%. Inflation and the overall risk of natural disasters are all contributing to the growing costs. Flood insurance prices are getting steeper on much of the coast, too.
In 2021, FEMA began using new metrics to determine the costs of the National Flood Insurance Program by assessing a property’s risk, especially its proximity to water.
At first, the rule change only affected new policies. Existing policies didn’t increase until the following year. While some folks may be grandfathered in to lower rates, they will increase each year — usually at 18%.
“The $1,800 you’re paying now won’t stay $1,800,” Brandon said. “People don’t seem to understand the magnitude of that. In three to four years, Pascagoula is going to be a ghost town for that reason.”
Realtor Lazaro Rovira primarily sells homes to Hispanic families who work at Ingalls and Chevron.
“They want to live in Pascagoula,” he said. “It’s convenient because you already have the Hispanic population here, the Hispanic supermarkets and the restaurants.”
But he sees how many of them are opting out of the headache of homeownership in Pascagoula because there’s a shortage of reasonable homes. He also sees potential homeowners running the numbers and opting for properties they think may be a better, long-term investment.
He recalls one recent Pascagoula home he sold for $135,000.
“When you add the flood insurance and everything, her payments were $1,400 a month, which is a lot of money,” he said. “If you’re going to pay that much, you might as well go to newer construction in Ocean Springs. It just makes more sense for a lot of people.”
Rovira applauds the mayor’s office for attacking the nuisance property problem and for standing up against the 50% rule. But he’s worried about what could actually be done.
“We’ve been complaining about this for a long time,” he said of those in real estate. “And this is literally the first administration to actually notice and take action to do something about it … Even for them just to try, really speaks volumes.”
If the 50% rule were to be lifted, or changed, Rovira said “it’s going to open up the floodgates to Pascagoula” renovations.
Like Rovira, resident Bernie O’Sullivan has a soft spot for Pascagoula’s historic properties at risk of being torn down.
She and her husband bought a large Victorian built in the late 1800s for $85,000 in 2017 with plans to flip it. But it wound up costing $50,000 just to raise it 3-and-a-half feet to make the home no longer subject to the 50% rule.
“If we would have done the renovations under the 50% rule, in the next 10 years we couldn’t do anything to fix the house if anything happened,” she said. “A little kitchen fire, anything … (the city) would have shut us down when we asked for more permits.”
She said friends and city workers were skeptical if she could pull off the project. Once the home was finished, she couldn’t let it go. She and her husband moved in.
She knows what she did is the exception. Most people don’t have the means to save an old house the way she did.
“And that’s why so many people in Pascagoula just walk away from their properties,” she said.
Asked about criticism of the 50% rule from Coast locals, FEMA called the policy a compromise: the rule allows investment in flood zones while taking into account the risk of repeated damages.
Officials told to Mississippi Today that they’re working with local and state officials to address concerns.
But Clayton French, the deputy director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said he understood where Pascagoula homeowners were coming from, saying that those looking to make improvements are “trapped.”
“I think the real answer is Congress needs to relook this again,” French said, explaining what it would take to change the policy. “They probably made some choices, just guessing, years ago, and now they’re seeing the fruits of some of those choices.
Pascagoula is low lying. The Gulf waters near Pascagoula are shallow. That means there’s not a lot of room for it to absorb storm surge. Unlike New Orleans, there isn’t a levy built to control it.
Most Pascagoula locals view Katrina as a 100-year storm. They’re not worried about it happening again.
According to NFIP data, the program saw an average of 51 flood insurance claims from Pascagoula between 1977 and 2004, the year before Katrina. Since Katrina, that number’s dropped to 33 per year.
“When you look at the number of flood claims, it’s not the issue,” said Pascagoula resident Jimmy Fondren, a Republican candidate for the Mississippi House. “The issue is the mapping … People shouldn’t be told by the federal government what they can and can’t do with their own homes.”
Pascagoula leadership is figuring out what next steps could help the city.
It could opt out of FEMA’s flood insurance program altogether to avoid the building requirements it has to impose to be in the program.
Mayor Willis said the city would have to carefully consider making such a move and would only do it if a private insurer was able to step up and back the city in FEMA’s place.
Willis and other local leaders say they’ve spoken to Congress members about altering the FEMA requirements so Pascagoula wouldn’t have to adopt a 50% rule — but maybe a 100% percent rule — that would allow homeowners in the city to at least make improvements up to the full value of what the house is worth.
Republican 4th District U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell said he has “made it a priority to work with other members, especially our neighbors from other Gulf Coast districts, to address these problems and provide much-needed relief to our coastal communities.”
“As a Pascagoula native and a lifelong resident of the Gulf Coast, I’ve witnessed the negative impacts of the 50% rule on Pascagoula, especially on young families who can’t afford to live in my hometown. I’ve also seen how cities and towns across the Gulf Coast struggle because of delays in reimbursements and other FEMA programs.”
If a 100% rule went into effect, Hernandez would have enough room to fix his home and have enough wiggle room should he need to add in other repairs over the next 10 years. Before he knew about the 50% rule, he planned to spend about $20,000 in home improvements.
For now, he’s stuck. He’s struggling to find a contractor willing to come give the estimate he needs to give to the city before the planning office can even consider issuing a building permit.
The longer the house sits, the more likely it could one day end up on the city’s list of homes it has no choice but to condemn and knock down.
Hernandez saw a future in the one-story home. He got it for a low price, but has already spent several thousands of dollars renting dumpsters just to clear our trash from the house’s yard.
He grew up in New Orleans. He understands the risk of living in a low-lying area.
He purchased the house in 2017 with high hopes. It was supposed to become the perfect home for his three kids and his two sisters he’s helping raise.
“We bought it thinking that we were gonna be able to move here,” Hernandez said, looking at the little brick house.
He just wants that to be true.
Mississippi Today Reporter Alex Rozier contributed to this report.
When Hill Denson became the Southern Miss baseball coach, the USM program had never been to the post-season, had never charged for a ticket, didn’t have stadium lights and amenities such as luxury suites were a pipe dream. This weekend, Southern Miss will host Tennessee for a Super Regional at Pete Taylor Park/Hill Denson Field.
The president of Tougaloo College, a private historically Black institution in north Jackson, is leaving at the end of this month amid growing unhappiness with her leadership, notching another name in the growing list of college presidents in Mississippi who have resigned or been fired in the last year.
In an email, Carmen Walters mainly touted her accomplishments since she took the reins as Tougaloo’s 14th president in July 2019, including doubling the college’s endowment. Before she was president of Tougaloo, Walters held multiple administrative positions at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
“Our beloved Eagle Queen is magnificent to behold,” Walters wrote. “Tougaloo has a rich history and a promising future. I will always reflect on my tenure at the College with pride and root for its continued success as a passionate supporter.”
A press release posted shortly after Walters’ message said Tougaloo’s Board of Trustees will conduct a national search and has named Donzell Lee, who was in leadership at Alcorn State University, to serve as president in the interim.
It’s unclear if Walters’ contract with Tougaloo is up or whether she is receiving a payout.
While it’s not known what, exactly, prompted Walters’ step-down, the board’s chair, Edmond Hughes, wrote “We, along with the entire Tougaloo College family, wish her well in her future endeavors.”
But students, faculty and alumni have been dissatisfied with her leadership for years. They ratcheted up pressure on the board to act. In 2022, students voted no-confidence in Walters’ leadership. A group called the Tougaloo College Alumni Coalition for Change created an online petition calling for Walters’ removal that garnered more than 1,500 signatures.
The petition claimed the college had been without a full-time registrar for years. Faculty were leaving in a “mass exodus” and enrollment had fallen to its lowest point in 40 years. Federal data shows this is true; 687 students were enrolled in fall 2021.
“There is discontentment among our ranks directly related to low student enrollment, a decrease in campus morale, horrid student living conditions, and questionable financial practices that have negatively impacted the college,” the petition said.
A press release from the coalition said it was “underwhelmed” by Walters’ removal and noted that alumni had opposed her candidacy from the start.
“Tougaloo College is a private college and airing grievances was frowned upon, but it was our clarion call that accentuated the need for change,” the coalition’s press release said. “Tougaloo College should have never been placed in this precarious dilemma.”
Walters’ email did not reference any of that, and in interviews in recent months, she had fought against the movement to remove her. In April, she told WJTV that she had “no intention” of stepping down. In early May, she called the claims “false” in an interview with the Clarion Ledger, noting that “every alum is not part of the Tougaloo Alumni Association.”
“That group is seeking my removal, but the Tougaloo Committee Board and the Alumni of Tougaloo College directly are not seeking my removal,” she told the newspaper.
But about a week later, her tune changed. In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, Walters said she was setting up meetings with alumni.
Walters’ step-down makes her the seventh college or university president in Mississippi to vacate the role in the last year. The trend began last summer when the governing board for the state’s eight public universities suddenly announced it had let go William LaForge, who had served as the president of Delta State University in Cleveland for nine years.
Now, half of the eight public universities have seen a president leave, as have Millsaps College in Jackson and Rust College in Holly Springs.
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.
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.”
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.
Under a mystic blend of pink lightning and green sky, Victoria Jackson called her daughter in a panic, warning her of the news: A tornado was on a path towards Rolling Fork.
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.
Anguilla residents Timiesha Gowdy (center) and Victoria Jackson (right), are currently residing in a hotel after a recent tornado devastated the area. Both women were at the Anguilla town hall seeking assistance, and were able to pick up a few items volunteers dropped off, Wednesday, March 29, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
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.
Disaster recovery is already an often difficult and drawn-out process. But for rural, poor towns like Anguilla, a town of 496 people, it’s even tougher.
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.
Damages from a tornado that struck a mobile home park in Anguilla in December, 2022. Credit: Victoria Jackson
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.
After the December tornado, Anguilla Mayor Jan Pearson reached out to state and U.S. representatives, hoping that they could appeal for government assistance. The traces of the tornado were widespread in the small town, damaging businesses and even blowing the roof off the town’s middle school, forcing students to relocate.
“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.”
Anguilla Mayor Jan Pearson, coordinating relief efforts outside town hall for residents effected a recent tornado. FEMA representatives (right) assist residents with paperwork, Wednesday, March 29, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Rural areas have an especially hard time getting FEMA disaster aid, experts say. Mississippi was the fourth most rural state according to a 2010 Census survey, the latest with such data. Sharkey County, home to 3,488 people, is the second least populated county in the state. Neighboring Issaquena County is the first.
“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.”
Anguilla resident Victoria Jackson (right), was still seeking assistance after being displaced by an earlier storm before another tornado hit Sharkey County last Friday. She waited in line to fill out relief forms with a FEMA representative near Anguilla's town hall, Wednesday, March 29, 2023. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
On the morning of Mar. 29, five days after the tornado in Rolling Fork, which also damaged parts of Anguilla, Mayor Pearson scrambled to help FEMA officials set up a booth outside of the town hall.
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)?”
Damages from a tornado that struck a mobile home park in Anguilla in December, 2022. Credit: Victoria Jackson
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?”
