For nearly nine years, Mississippi Today’s team of dedicated journalists has provided impactful, nationally-renowned accountability journalism at the statewide level on behalf of every Mississippian.
We’re proud to announce this week that we’re adding a new aim to our newsroom’s mission: We’re launching a team of journalists focused solely on the city of Jackson.
For the past several months, we’ve been meeting with and listening to stakeholders across Jackson to determine how, exactly, we can best serve. It has become clear to us during this process that our capital city needs responsible and focused journalism now more than ever, and our journey officially begins today.
Depending on who you know, your personal experiences, the classes or churches you attend, the media you consume, or the route you take to work, Jacksonians carry very different perceptions of this wonderfully weird city. In this way, there become multiple — all very real — Jacksons. Ideally, the storytelling by Mississippi Today’s new desk will help readers understand one Jackson, in all its complexities.
When we’re doing it well, our reporting presents solutions and results in tangible impact — every proper journalist’s goal. Just as worthy is our mission to produce stories that delight, astound, inspire, haunt, instruct, excite, gobsmack, galvanize and advance more social connectedness in our city.
Rarely in our city’s 203-year existence has there been a more critical time to launch such an endeavor.
In the coming weeks and months, Jacksonians will be hiring a mayor, the executive in charge of managing the city and its $335 million budget, as well as seven city council members tasked with representing the interests of their wards. We hope the comprehensive 2025 Jackson Election Guide we published today, with words directly from all of the 54 candidates vying for public office, encourages better-informed civic engagement across the city during this historic election.
We’ll also be watching how Jackson’s interests play out during the legislative session — where funding requests for needs across the city are often overlooked by state leaders. And with so much tumult in Washington, we will closely cover the effects of the new administration on the critical federal resources Jackson is able to access.
Jacksonians deserve strong storytelling and deeper accountability reporting, and we are ready to provide just that.
This will include person-centered stories about housing, like Jackson Reporter Maya Miller’s report published today about the challenges facing homeless Jacksonians and efforts from state leaders to penalize them. (It’s the very definition of shoe leather reporting… she came back to the office recently with debris on her combat boots and the knees of her blue jeans.)
And tomorrow, a piece from me about predatory unlicensed care homes that have long plagued the city — a situation that has rattled me since my earliest days of reporting in 2014 when I first arrived in Jackson.
Our team’s coverage of safety will include stories on policing, of course, but as my reporter colleague Molly Minta sharply observed to me recently, examining the safety of Jacksonians can take many forms: taking stock of the public parks where our children play; code enforcement in the apartment buildings and houses where we live; accessibility to things like energy and rental assistance for those homes; and the care and regard that Jackson schools offer to our young people, many of whom are affected by trauma.
Other areas of focus for our team will include public education and schools, economic opportunities and civic engagement, and the effects of distrust in institutions.
Expect to see pieces that highlight Jacksonians, some in government, business, or one of thousands of registered nonprofits across the city, and some working independently, often creatively with few resources, to affect positive change in their communities.
And we will, of course, bring you stories about what your leaders are up to at City Hall (and elsewhere), always asking how their actions affect you.
We’ll be asking ourselves a lot of questions, too, about our role in helping Jacksonians stay informed and about the value and ramifications of the stories we choose to tackle.
Firstly, we want to continue to hear from you. Tell us what questions you need answered, which stories have been overlooked or deserve deeper coverage, and what information you need to feel empowered and more connected.
Maya Miller joins the Mississippi Today team as a reporter on the Jackson desk. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Mississippi Today is pleased to announce that Maya Miller has joined the newsroom as a Jackson reporter.
Miller, who started in the newsroom in January, was the first reporter hired for Mississippi Today’s new Jackson team, which formally launched its coverage this week.
“As a lifelong Mississippian, I’m thrilled to be able to cover our state’s capital city and report on topics that are impactful to Jacksonian’s lives,” Miller said. “I’m excited to dive into issues of inequity and poverty, while also telling stories of community and Jackson’s immense potential.”
Miller, a Florence native and alumna of Jackson State University, joins the staff from The Gulf States Newsroom, where she reported on reproductive health, poverty and Black communities across three states. Previously, she was the managing editor for The Lighthouse, covering racial inequity, and deputy news editor for the Jackson Free Press, where she covered the criminal justice beat.
Her work has been featured on NPR and in Scalawag Magazine, where she wrote a piece in 2023 about the loss of her grandmother and the inheritance of her home. She’s been awarded a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Hard News and a National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award for her stories on Emmett Till and the Mississippi Delta.
“Maya is a classic storyteller. This reporting team and all Jacksonians are going to benefit enormously from her gifts. She has deep Mississippi roots and her commitment to home inspires me,” Jackson Editor Anna Wolfe said. “Simply put, I can’t wait to see what stories get brought to life only because she’s finding and telling them.”
Mississippi’s largest hospital quietly left the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative less than four months after it joined the group as a founding member.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center no longer appears on the collaborative’s website.
It is unclear if other hospital members will follow suit as they did in 2023 when UMMC terminated its membership with the Mississippi Hospital Association.
UMMC and the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative both declined to comment for this story.
The change comes on the heels of the departure of Drew Snyder, the collaborative’s chief health policy officer, for a position as deputy administrator of the federal Medicaid program.
The Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative has not announced a replacement.
The new health care group was announced in November and united the hospitals that left the Mississippi Hospital Association, along with the state’s community health centers and several other hospital systems.
The trade association splintered after the UMMC left in May 2023, with seven other hospitals following soon after. Four additional hospitals, all led by Gregg Gibbes, left the association in 2024.
UMMC cited concerns about transparency and communication in a letter to Mississippi Hospital Association announcing the medical center would be leaving. But many saw the exodus of hospitals as a rebuke of the association’s support for Medicaid expansion.
The departure came just days after Mississippi Hospital Association’s political action committee made its largest-ever donation to then-gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, a strong supporter of Medicaid expansion.
The Mississippi Health Collaborative’s advocacy agenda for this year’s legislative session includes closing Mississippi’s health care coverage gap as a legislative priority, according to a document obtained by Mississippi Today.
“Like most healthcare providers, Collaborative members support pathways to close the healthcare coverage gap, from traditional Medicaid expansion to other hybrid models,” it reads.
Its agenda also includes increased trauma care system funding, certificate of need reforms and changes to health care provider taxes.
The collaborative contracts with Jackson-based lobbying firm Capitol Resources’ health policy wing, Health Resources for lobbying and consulting services.
Capitol Resources is a strong supporter of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. The firm’s political action committee has contributed over $70,000 to Reeves since 2018.
Correction: An earlier version ofthis story mischaracterized UMMC’s membership in a hospital association. That reference has been removed.
A bill to legalize direct shipment of some wines to Mississippians’ homes will soon be considered by Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.
After supporters fought for over a decade to get the Legislature to agree to the proposal, both chambers finally approved Senate Bill 2145. This bill allows citizens to order specialty or rare wines that cannot be purchased at Mississippi package stores.
Mississippi is one of only a handful of states that doesn’t allow direct shipment. House State Affairs Chairman Hank Zuber, R-Ocean Springs, told House members on Tuesday that some Mississippians circumvent state law by ordering wine from other states or countries, having it shipped to a friend’s house in another state and driving over to pick it up.
“Make no mistake, this is happening now, and we are not collecting the tax revenue,” Zuber said.
The House approved the measure 79-29 on Tuesday, and the Senate approved the measure 24-14 last week.
If signed into law by Reeves, the legislation would enact a 15.5% tax on direct wine shipments and put a cap of 12 cases per year that a person can order.
To ship wine directly to a Mississippian, a person must purchase a direct wine manufacturer’s permit from the Mississippi Department of Revenue.
by Samuel Hughes with contributions from Miracle Jennings, Rowan Luke, Mallory Strickland, Srividya Karuturi, Gretta Graves, Gerome Webster
GULFPORT — Tall grass creeps up boarded windows. Overgrown lots hold little but broken glass and flat tires. Rotten porches sag under the weight of years of neglect. These sights of urban decay are common in Mississippi – and cleaning them up is not a simple job.
State leaders explain fixing the problem requires more than cutting the grass or tearing down crumbling homes. Many of these properties are caught in legal and financial gridlock, leaving cities without the resources to maintain or clear them for redevelopment.
How properties fall into disrepair
In neighborhoods across Mississippi, abandoned properties aren’t just neglected — they’re stuck in a cycle that keeps them from being restored.
Rev. John Whitfield has seen it firsthand in Gulfport. As pastor of Morning Star Baptist Church, he has watched homes deteriorate as families move away, taxes go unpaid and legal complications pile up.
“A lot of these properties become the way they are because parents will die, the children will not follow through with probating an estate, back taxes become due and they go unpaid,” Whitfield said. “The properties are then purchased at an auction, or they will lapse back to the state, and the state will take them for these back taxes.”
Rev. John Whitfield spoke with RHCJC about the impact of abandoned properties on Gulfport. (RHCJC News)
But many of these properties don’t get fixed. Buyers at tax auctions often don’t live in the community — and sometimes, they never intend to fix the property at all. ; others walk away once they realize the cost of repairs exceeds potential returns, leaving properties to sit untouched for years.
“As a consequence, it’s just a matter of neglect. It’s neglect on the part of families; it’s neglect on the part of heirs; it’s neglect on the part of elected officials,” Whitfield said. “It’s neglect on the part of those people who come into possession of these blighted and dilapidated properties; it’s neglect on the part of the State of Mississippi – the Secretary of State’s Office – who may come into possession or ownership of these properties.”
Whitfield believes systemic change is needed — not just in how the state handles abandoned properties, but also in how much financial support is available for communities struggling to clean them up.
The challenge for cities
While abandoned residences and empty lots look similar from the street, the cleanup process is different between properties owned privately and those owned by the state.
Under the current system, when a privately owned property is reported for disrepair, code enforcement officers are sent to do an assessment. If the property meets the legal definition of blight, they can issue warnings or order the property owners to make repairs.
For abandoned private properties, a public hearing is scheduled – typically with a two-week notice – to determine the next steps. However, many of these properties are owned by out-of-state investors or heirs who fail to show up, leaving cities with limited options.
At that point, cities can clean the property and bill the owner, but many local governments lack the revenue to pay for the cost on the front end, especially without a guarantee the owners will pay.
When it comes to properties already under state control, limitations increase. Rep. Shanda Yates, an Independent from Jackson, said part of the problem is the way the rules are set up when it comes to buying property through a tax sale.
“Right now, the way that properties are sold at tax sale is: you have your tax sale, if someone purchases the property or taxes, there’s a two-year redemption period,” Yates said. “During that two-year redemption period, nothing can be done to the property. Nobody can go in and clean it up or maintain it, tear down any dilapidated structure – essentially nothing.”
Yates explained if someone buys delinquent property taxes, the property owner must pay those taxes back at 18% interest to that buyer or lose their property.
“It’s stuck as sort of a holding period waiting to see if the original owner who did not pay the taxes is going to come forward, pay the taxes and reclaim their property,” Yates said.
After the redemption period, Yates explained, the person who bought the taxes can take the deed and own the property – or, more often than not – they refuse the deed and the property ownership goes back to the local governments to be sold again.
“There’s no end to how many times a property can be stuck in that cycle,” Yates said.
Ending the tax cycle
Yates sponsored two bills in the House to prevent properties from falling into the tax-sale cycle for decades and slowly falling into further disrepair.
Under House Bill 1198, after the end of the first cycle, if the purchaser of the delinquent taxes does not accept the deed, the property would go to the state and fall under the management of the Secretary of State’s Office.
An abandoned property fell into disrepair in Gulfport. (RHCJC News)
Then, if enacted, House Bill 1199 would allow the Secretary of State’s Office to utilize any proceeds from selling tax-forfeited properties to maintain other state-owned, previously forfeited properties, to lessen the burden of maintenance on cities and counties.
The Mississippi Municipal League is also pushing for a Property Cleanup Revolving Fund. As outlined in House Bill 733 and Senate Bill 2023, the fund would establish a $5 million fund for low-interest loans for larger cities and grant opportunities for smaller ones to clean up blighted properties.
Rep. Randy Rushing, R-Decatur who sponsors House Bill 733, called it a base for building a much-needed support system.
“Having been a mayor of a small town, your funds are limited, and you have to prioritize your funds. So, when it comes down to the pecking order, cleaning up a dilapidated old structure or cleaning up a lot that is an eyesore is way down on the list when it comes time to do your budget every year. In a lot of municipalities and cities, it just doesn’t get done,” Rushing said.
“By creating this fund that strictly can only be used for that particular purpose, it allows a tool for our municipal government officials to reach in and borrow that money, or in your small towns’ case, it would be a grant to clean up a specific problem area,” Rushing continued.
Offsetting the burden with investors
Several lawmakers, including Rep. Jeffrey Hulum, D-Gulfport sponsored bills in the 2025 legislative session aimed at addressing blight and soothing cities’ financial roadblocks. One of the key measures Hulum outlines is $350,000 in state appropriations for West Gulfport.
Rep. Jeffrey Hulum, D-Gulfport, talked with RHCJC at the state capitol about efforts in the 2025 legislative session aimed at addressing blight. (RHCJC News)
For Hulum, it’s an issue of public safety, public health and economic vitality.
“When I drive around my city, when I drive around my district, and I see all the blighted properties, the rundown housing, the overgrown lots; You start to think, ‘As an investor, would you invest in that area?’ And when the answer is no, you say, ‘What can I do to help the people?’ … You’ve got to go above and beyond the municipality to the state level and try to bring monies to the municipalities to improve that area,” Hulum said.
Yates believes, while using state funds for special projects can be effective in clearing blighted areas, providing developers incentives to develop state-owned property offers a long-term solution to improving state-owned blighted property.
Yates said House Bill 1201 could be the solution. The legislation proposes tax credits for developers who purchase state-owned, tax-forfeited property. In her district of Jackson, she’s seen first-hand the cost conundrum investors face.
“We know that there are housing developers that would be interested in coming in and buying chunks of property and building affordable housing,” Yates said. “An average house, from what we’ve been told, would cost about $150,000 to build. Unfortunately, in the current market and in the current areas where the housing is needed, it’s not going to sell for $150,000 – probably closer to $95,000 … So, the tax incentives would allow the developer to remain whole.”
Currently, there are solutions to making the numbers work for developers, according to David Perkes, director at Mississippi State University’s Gulf Coast Community Design Studio. Gulfport, for example, receives U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grants and federal HOME funds that can be used as grants to help cover the cost of construction, to fill the gap in neighborhoods that suffer from low property value.
Perkes said these federal programs, along with other community development efforts, can help to raise property values in communities, enabling property owners the assurance and ability to invest in their property.
“I would love for our elected officials to take serious: renovating, removing, improving blighted properties and dilapidated homes within our communities, to provide grants for those people on fixed incomes to make the improvements necessary for their houses to become not an eyesore, but to become the primary attraction on that block,” Whitfield said.
“If we invested in people through community development corporations, and had the very people who live in those communities to help bring about this change, then you have ownership, where people feel like they have invested something in it — whether sweat equity or money out of their pocket — then they will protect it and they will begin to police themselves.”
Outlook for state-owned lots
Assistant Secretary of State Lands William Cheney believes, regardless of what legislation is passed, any funding to the Secretary of State for maintenance will give cities more options for reimbursement if they look to maintain state-owned lots.
“Before the legislature changed the funding in 2016, we had a couple hundred thousand dollars. It was never a huge amount, but it was enough to help keep the grass cut twice a year,” Cheney said. “But what they’re now talking about is like a couple million. Now, if it is a couple million, that’s cutting grass, that is demolishing some of these homes.”
State-owned properties in Southeast Mississippi
Forrest: 249
George: 11
Greene: 2
Hancock: 273
Harrison: 126
Jackson: 238
Lamar: 21
Pearl River: 114
Perry: 0
Stone: 2
Following a housing market crash in 2013, the Secretary of State had an inventory of 20,000 properties statewide in 2014. Now, through aggressive efforts to auction these properties, it has an inventory of about 6,800 properties, about 2,000 of which are in Hinds County.
Cheney said in many areas, such as those with poor infrastructure or a lack of civil services, a holistic approach is required to sell state-owned lots back onto the tax roll.
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, give the state some money to cut the grass.’ Well, if it’s got a bad road, you’re still not going to sell it. It doesn’t matter whether that piece of property is in the city limits of Jackson, on the Coast, or anywhere; if you don’t want to live on it, I’m going to have a hard time selling it,” Cheney said.
Former U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo will pay $30,000 to settle with the Federal Election Commission, which found he used campaign money for personal expenses.
Palazzo, a certified public accountant and former state legislator who lost his congressional reelection bid in 2023 to now U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell, faced ethics and campaign finance scrutiny for several years while in office.
The FEC found he paid $3,000 a month from his campaign to a company he owned for rent of a river house in D’Iberville he alleged was a campaign office despite “almost no campaign activity” being done there, a report said. In his settlement with the FEC, he agreed to pay a civil penalty of $13,500 and cover outstanding campaign debt of $16,500. The FEC noted Palazzo had already reimbursed his campaign $23,000 for personal use of a vehicle the campaign leased.
The FEC investigated Palazzo after Republican primary opponent Carl Boyanton filed a complaint.
Palazzo, who held the District 4 Mississippi U.S. House Seat from 2011 to 2023, also faced probes by the Office of Congressional Ethics and the House Ethics Committee. The OCE, in a 2021 report, claimed that Palazzo misspent campaign and congressional funds and said it found evidence he used his office to help his brother and used staff for personal errands and services. After its investigation, the OCE handed the matter off to the House Ethics Committee.
But the House Ethics Committee, after a year-and-a-half long probe, did not take any action on the issue and let the matter drop when a new Congress took office.
The allegations in the OCE report included that Palazzo used campaign funds to pay himself and his erstwhile wife nearly $200,000 through companies they own, including thousands to cover the mortgage, maintenance and upgrades to a riverfront home Palazzo owned and wanted to sell. But Palazzo said that the payments were legally made for the campaign’s rent of the home for a campaign office.
A Mississippi Today investigation in 2020 also questioned thousands of dollars in Palazzo campaign spending on swanky restaurants, sporting events, resort hotels, golfing and gifts. Federal law and House rules prohibit using campaign money for personal expenses. The Palazzo campaign at the time said it had found a few mistaken, non-permissible purchases and the Palazzo had repaid the campaign.
The OCE report also claimed Palazzo had used congressional staffers for personal errands and campaign work. It said former staffers it interviewed said Palazzo’s office failed to separate official work from campaign and personal activities, including shopping for his kids. In 2011, during his first term in office, Palazzo had also faced allegations that he and his wife used congressional staffers for babysitting, chauffeuring kids around and moving.
Palazzo on Tuesday responded with written statements about the case.
“It’s not the complete exoneration we had hoped for, but I’ll take it,” Palazzo said. “My family, friends, and loyal supporters have endured 5 years of lies and half-truths created by my 2020 political opponents. They couldn’t beat me at the ballot box, so they had to resort to malicious allegations and distortions. They may have taken the seat from me, but they cannot take 12 years of successful service for our military, veterans, and families in South Mississippi. I delivered on my promise to make Mississippi stronger and more prosperous for future generations, and I’m glad President Trump is continuing what we started in 2011.”
Palazzo said: “At no time were campaign funds converted to personal income. All expenditures were approved by my campaign treasurer for ordinary and necessary campaign expenditures … “$13,500 is not a hefty fine, but it is a lot of money to me. To see this finally resolved and to be fined for technical violations is a huge win. The other money will pay off some outstanding campaign debt which is normal for all campaigns.”
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday morning threw cold water on a Senate plan to trim state taxes because the proposal does not fully eliminate the state’s individual income tax, injecting more tension in an already contentious debate at the Capitol.
“It doesn’t get anywhere near eliminating the income tax so it is a non-starter for me!” Reeves wrote on X. “I’m beginning to believe that there is someone in the Senate that is philosophically opposed to eliminating the income tax.”
If the House and Senate cannot agree on a plan to eliminate the income tax, Reeves could force lawmakers into a special session to debate the issue again and use his bully pulpit to try to sway public opinion.
Though they haven’t introduced actual legislation, Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Senate leaders unveiled a net $326 million tax cut plan last week that reduces the state income tax and the sales tax on groceries and raises the gasoline tax to fund road work.
Hosemann and Senate leaders described the plan as a “measured, careful, cautious and responsible” way to deliver tax cuts.
The House, on the other hand, passed a more sweeping $1.1 billion net tax cut plan that eliminates the income tax over a decade, cuts the state grocery tax and raises sales taxes and gasoline taxes.
House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today that House leadership likely wouldn’t dig its heels in on one particular component of its tax cut plan. Still, the speaker wants a final agreement with the Senate that puts the state on a “path to total elimination over a reasonable and doable amount of time.”
“I would say we don’t have a hard line on anything, but I’m not interested in doing some small piece of a tax cut while not addressing our other issues that nobody disagrees are plaguing us right now,” White said.
A similar debate raged during the 2022 session when former House Speaker Philip Gunn pushed the Senate to eliminate the income tax, but Hosemann, at the time, pushed for more austere tax cuts that didn’t abolish the tax.
While the two legislative leaders were deadlocked, Reeves called a press conference late in the session and urged Hosemann and Gunn to adopt a compromise plan to eliminate the tax over a period of time.
The two leaders ended up agreeing on a plan that made drastic cuts to the income tax but didn’t entirely do away with it. Reeves ended up signing the measure into law.
Note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a new platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.
Like many women in the workforce, my wife faced a gut-wrenching choice: whether to tell her boss she was pregnant.
A postdoctoral researcher in science at a major university in the northern United States, she summoned the courage and was told that if she requested parental leave, her employment would end. She had our child and continued. She never filed a complaint.
Joshua Bernstein
Like many postdocs, my wife depended on her supervisor to advance in her career and feared the risks in speaking up.
This was about 10 years ago. Yet her situation is hardly unique, particularly for women in academia.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world where federal law does not give workers paid time off for parental leave.
Across the U.S., at least 13 states and the District of Columbia have instated mandatory paid family leave policies. Nine more have a voluntary version. A growing number of colleges and university systems offer it, as well.
Even in our region, schools like the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Clemson and South Carolina have begun offering paid parental leave to some faculty and employees, as have the University of Louisiana and the Tennessee System, among others.
Although our state, Mississippi, does not yet offer paid parental leave to state employees, a broad coalition has sprung up among those seeking its implementation.
On Jan. 31, the Mississippi House unanimously approved a bill authored by Rep. Kevin Felsher, R-Biloxi, that would give state employees eight weeks of paid maternity leave. Speaker of the House Jason White and Attorney General Lynn Fitch have publicly backed the policy as part of a pro-life agenda. The Senate recently passed a similar bill, authored by Sen. Jeremy England, R-Ocean Springs. Now the House and Senate must agree on the same bill.
Whether Republicans nationally will embrace these efforts, especially under President Trump, remains to be seen. Neither he nor Kamala Harris campaigned extensively around paid family leave. Yet during his first administration, Trump became the first Republican to call for family leave in his State of the Union Address. He also approved a defense bill guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid parental leave to the nation’s two million federal employees.
Parental leave policies are popular across the political spectrum. Although polling data in Mississippi is limited, one national poll last year found that 76% of Americans support a national paid family and medical leave program, including 90% of Democrats, 71% of independents and 62% of Republicans.
Another poll, commissioned ahead of the 2024 U.S. Elections by an advocacy group called Paid Leave for All, found that 85% of voters in battleground states favor paid parental, family and medical leave, including 76% of Republican voters.
Attorney General Fitch said in January that “it is certainly time to have paid maternity leave in the state of Mississippi for our state employees,” adding: “I think it’s so important to say to our women again, we’d like for you to be here. That helps us with our retention and our recruitment for women in state government.”
Recognizing these needs, especially at universities in Mississippi, the United Faculty Senates Association of Mississippi, a group representing the faculty senates of the state’s public universities, has launched a petition requesting 12 weeks of paid parental leave for the universities’ employees.
The petition follows a parental leave proposal that was drafted and approved by the faculty senate of each university and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Drawing on the World Health Organization, which recommends at least 18 weeks of paid leave for new mothers, the proposal has garnered the support of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable and the American Heart Association, among others.
Some ask why existing policies, such as the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), aren’t sufficient, or why men should be eligible.
While helpful for some, FMLA leave is unpaid and thus unaffordable for a lot of working parents, especially in Mississippi, which confronts the lowest median household income of any state in the U.S. Many parents, especially early-career academics, also fail to qualify for FMLA upon giving birth, since they have not accrued enough time with their employers.
Although universities like mine, Southern Miss, often go out of their way to try to accommodate new parents, there are limits to that flexibility, and one can’t depend on supervisors to make allowances. Moreover, while most caregivers for newborns are women, a growing number aren’t, and parents need the flexibility of choosing which parent will go on leave.
Others ask where the money for paid parental leave will come from in Mississippi. Although state coffers are likely to shrink as pandemic relief funds dry up and the economy cools, Mississippi enjoys a reported $700 million in state surplus funds, which some lawmakers have invoked in proposing to eliminate the state income tax. Perhaps the deeper pro-life investment, however, would be in a policy of paid parental leave.
After all, parental leave prioritizes the health of newborns. A study published in JAMAPediatrics found that after New York state implemented mandatory paid family leave, hospitals witnessed an18% drop in respiratory infection cases among infants. Another study found that paid family leave helps reduce child abuse. The findings join a growing chorus of research linking paid family leave policies to improved infant health.
Children in Mississippi, which is the state with the highest infant mortality and pre-term birth rates in the U.S., would likely benefit the most from these changes.
My wife was fortunate. Another supervisor took her under her wing and fostered her career. I was also lucky in that my university allowed me the flexibility to have time with our child.
But too many parents, especially women, have had to choose between nurturing their careers and their newborns.
If politicians are serious about protecting life and families, they can affirm that commitment by implementing paid parental leave policies.
After all, everyone deserves the chance to spend a little time with their kids.
Joshua Bernstein is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi and president of the United Faculty Senates Association of Mississippi. The views expressed here are his own. In his free time, he enjoys playing with and coaching his three children in soccer, baseball and tennis, though he hasn’t warmed to pickleball yet.
Book cover of Preston’s Lauterback’s book “Elvis Before: The African American Musicians Who Made the King.”
The notion that Elvis derived much of his musical, performative and sartorial style from African Americans is hardly new, and neither are the debates about whether this involved inspiration, borrowing or appropriation.
Issued on the 90th anniversary of Elvis’s birth on Jan. 8, Preston Lauterbach’s “Before Elvis: The African Americans Who Made the King” engages with these contentious issues though his central argument is that in the voluminous literature on the King the influences from African-American culture have simply not received their “due attention.”
“In debating good and evil,” Lauterbach writes, “we can lose sight of what happened in real time.”
Lauterbach came well prepared for the task, having written three books on African-American life and culture in Memphis [“Beale Street Dynasty,” “Bluff City” and “Timekeeper”] and the groundbreaking “The Chitlin’ Circuit: The Road to Rock’n’Roll.” The latter addresses how a national network emerged in the ‘30s and ‘40s connecting regional African American entertainment districts, including Beale Street, facilitating greater professional opportunities for Black artists.
Thirteen-year-old Elvis and his family left Tupelo for Memphis in late 1948, a time when the music industry was undergoing other radical changes that contributed to a vibrant rhythm and blues scene and, ultimately, the emergence of rock’n’roll.
In 1947 Memphis’ WDIA became the first station in the country to feature all African American programming and on-air staff, including deejays B.B. King and Rufus Thomas. And it’s likely that Elvis first heard the blues in Tupelo via Nashville’s 50,000-watt powerhouse WLAC, where white deejay Gene Nobles started a rhythm and blues show aimed at Black listeners in 1946.
The Birthplace of Elvis Presley in Tupelo Credit: Photo by Anna McCollum / The ‘Sip Magazine
The growth of Black radio programming was spurred by changes in FCC regulations that doubled the number of stations, which turned them away from national networks to concentrate on niche audiences, notably blues and country. This in turn aided upstart independent record labels that were capturing the new sounds being created in cities across the country. Memphis’ Sam Phillips, who discovered Elvis, started his career by producing recordings of local artists, such as Howlin’ Wolf, that he sold to L.A.’s Modern and Chicago’s Chess labels before founding Sun Records in 1952.
Did Elvis steal music from Black artists?
Rather than inventorying the many artists who influenced Elvis, Lauterbach focuses instead on a select group, including two Mississippians. Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup from Forest was the source of Elvis’s initial Sun single “That’s All Right,” issued in July 1954, while Clarksdale native Herman “Junior” Parker recorded “Mystery Train” for Sun two years before Elvis’s cover version for the label.
He also devotes considerable space to Willie Mae “Big Mama“ Thornton, an Alabama native who had a 1953 hit with “Hound Dog” on Houston’s Duke Records. Elvis’s considerably less raucous take was a smash on RCA Victor in 1956, reaching No. 1 on the pop, country and rhythm and blues charts. Thornton famously claimed that she only ever earned $500 off of the record. But did Elvis steal from her?
This is an oft-repeated charge, but an answer requires looking into the way that money flows in the recording industry, where most money stems from copyright rather than recorded performances. “Hound Dog” was written by two young white songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who sold the publishing for $1,200 to Duke’s owner, Don Robey, an African American Houstonian. The $500 Thornton earned was likely an advance on royalties.
Robey claimed the record sold 500,000 copies, very likely a lowball , and at the going royalty rate of .5 cents per copy those sales should have yielded Thornton at least $2,500. Any earnings from Elvis’s successful single and the song’s subsequent appearances on albums would have gone to Robey. It’s notable that considerable royalties for the flip side of the record, “Don’t Be Cruel,” went to African-American songwriter Otis Blackwell, who wrote multiple songs recorded by Elvis including “All Shook Up” and “Return to Sender.”
Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, performing at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, Ann Arbor, Michigan, August, 1969. Credit: Photo by Jeff Titon./Wikipedia
The case of Crudup is equally sad. Between 1941 to 1954 Crudup recorded prolifically for RCA associated labels, and Elvis no doubt heard his records on the radio and jukeboxes. In 1956 Elvis told reporters “Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now.”
Crudup was paid for his recording sessions, but yielded little or nothing in royalties for his compositions at the time or after Elvis covered his songs—in addition to “That’s All Right” Elvis recorded “My Baby Left Me” and “So Glad You’re Mine.” RCA was likely prompt in paying the royalties to the large publishing firm Hill & Range for Elvis’s versions, but it wasn’t until after his death in the early ‘70s that Crudup’s family began to receive what turned out to be millions.
What happened to Black artists ‘after Elvis’?
These stories are generally known, though Lauterbach provides considerably more detail on the artists’ lives and careers than in previous works. And despite the title of the book, he also devotes a third of the book addressing what happened to his subjects “after Elvis.”
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton belts out a song in concert. Credit: Public domain
Thornton drew upon her association with Elvis in trying to reestablish a career, but experienced bouts of poverty before becoming a popular act on the blues revival circuit in the late ‘60s. Crudup had retired from music by the time Elvis debuted, and likewise enjoyed some success on the ‘60s revival circuit, but made much of his meager living transporting migrant workers along the East Coast.
The book also spends considerable space addressing less known influences. The Presley family attended church just blocks from the East Trigg Missionary Baptist Church, whose leader, the Rev. W. Herbert Brewster was a pioneer in gospel songwriting. He used his pulpit and a popular WDIA radio show to denounce segregation, and in 1953 Brewster openly invited white visitors to East Trigg, and Elvis was a regular.
Elvis earned the nickname “the hillbilly cat” from his fresh mix of the sounds of country and the blues, and Lauterbach argues that an overlooked element in his appeal was Black gospel, which Presley acknowledged was his “first love” in music. At Sunday night gospel shows at East Trigg he learned powerful lessons in “working the house” from masters of bringing the audience to ecstasy.
Calvin Newborn was an American jazz guitarist Credit: The Harmony Company – DownBeat Magazine
A key to understanding Elvis’ seemingly revolutionary arrival on the Memphis scene in the summer of 1954 was the African-American guitarist Calvin Newborn. His family band, led by drummer father Phineas Sr. and including brother Phineas Jr., later a jazz piano legend, was the hottest group in the area, playing largely for white audiences in the wide-open nightlife scene across the river in West Memphis.
They backed B.B. King on his first recordings in 1948 and toured with Jackie Brenston following the 1951 release of the Sam Phillips-recorded “Rocket 88,” often described as the first rock-‘n’roll record. Elvis befriended Calvin, who referred to the band’s musical approach as one of “boogiefication.” Elvis became a frequent witness to their power in May 1954, when white patrons were invited to attend Beale Street’s Flamingo Club, where the Newborns were the house band.
Elvis was enthralled with Calvin’s electric stage routine, perhaps adopting his leg-shaking, and was invited to participate with the band. Musician Honeymoon Garner recalled that a song that Elvis chose to perform was Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” which months later was featured on Elvis’ second single.
“Before Elvis” is stunning in how it intricately weaves stories about the five main characters in a manner that captures both the singularity of what Elvis accomplished and how he reflected burgeoning forces that revolutionized music-making.
