Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sat down with Laurel-based couple Ben and Erin Napier of HGTV’s “Home Town” on Zoom as part of a Mississippi Today member event on July 1. You can gain access to exclusive events, interviews with great Mississippians like artist Adam Trest, and more by joining our member community through a donation of any amount today.
Answering questions submitted by members prior to the event, the Napiers discussed everything from how they have maintained family time during filming to Ben’s enthusiasm for old cars.
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Q: What other medical procedures will be impacted by the change (examples being miscarriages or IVF), and how will they be affected?
A: It’s not completely clear.
Right now, IVF is going on as usual in Mississippi, but I spoke with a doctor earlier this month who is concerned about the future. Defining fertilization as the beginning of life, which the personhood amendment the state voted down in 2011 would have done, would create big legal challenges for IVF, which often involves the creation of excess embryos. But Sen. Joey Fillingane, one of the main architects of anti-abortion laws in the state and the author of the abortion trigger ban, told me that enshrining legal protections for IVF and surrogacy is one of his priorities in this area for the next legislative session.
When it comes to miscarriages, I think there will be more consequences. Doctors have told us they’re worried about situations where someone is miscarrying but maybe the fetus still has a heartbeat. Pre-Dobbs, they would perform a D&C to finish the process and stop hemorrhaging. Now, that may be seen as an unnecessary legal risk and you could see hospitals sending people home to wait. (There’s been a lot of reporting about this happening in Texas, for example, which effectively banned abortion in 2021.)
Nationally there’s also been a lot of reporting about people being denied miscarriage management drugs mifepristone and misoprostol by pharmacists because these are also used in medication abortions. I’ve spoken with pharmacists and doctors about this in Mississippi, and anecdotally no one reported a patient being denied a prescription after Dobbs. (Also important to note that we’re not aware of anyone who was prescribing abortion pills in Mississippi before Dobbs besides the Pink House, where more than half of all abortions were medication abortions.)
And a natural miscarriage is not distinguishable from a miscarriage induced by abortion pills. So one possibility is that people who are miscarrying will be more reluctant to go to the hospital if they have complications, because they could be concerned about intrusive questioning and even law enforcement involvement. (I think people’s experiences with this are going to vary drastically based on where they live, the hospital they go to, even who happens to be on shift at a given time.)
Q: What will happen in the case of ectopic pregnancy where the mother will die without an abortion? Asking for both the letter of the law and what you believe will actually happen in practice.
A: In cases like an ectopic pregnancy where it is very clear that the mother could die without an abortion and there is no chance of a live birth, the law clearly allows Mississippi doctors to do what they have done before the ruling in Dobbs: Terminate the pregnancy. I spoke with a doctor in the Delta this week who did exactly that, without any additional calls to attorneys or hospital administrators.
In practice, pregnancy can involve situations that are dangerous or potentially dangerous for the pregnant person but not as clear-cut as an ectopic pregnancy. Those are the situations that doctors I’ve spoken with are more concerned and confused about. Some pre-existing conditions like pulmonary hypertension make pregnancy itself very risky, but the threat to the person’s life isn’t imminent. Before Dobbs, physicians could have a conversation with their patient about the best course of action and the pregnancy could be terminated in Mississippi. Now, those conversations and choices come with the possibility of up to a decade in prison of a doctor winds up being criminally investigated.
Q: Who determines if an abortion would save the life of the mother? Is it the state or would a doctor be able to determine that?
A: The state’s trigger law isn’t crystal clear on the point of who makes the decision that a person’s life is at risk, and how they’re supposed to make that decision. This is what it says: “No abortion shall be performed or induced in the State of Mississippi, except in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape.”
In practice, that determination is going to fall to doctors around the state, likely in some cases in consultation with hospital attorneys and ethics boards. In some cases, like ectopic pregnancies, the legal standard will be pretty clearly met. In others, it won’t be, and doctors may choose not to perform an abortion where previously they would had a conversation with the patient about what to do.
The lawsuit over Louisiana’s abortion ban is ongoing, but one physician filed an affidavit explaining how the ban affected their work when it was briefly in effect earlier in July. A patient’s water broke at 16 weeks, and the patient wanted the doctor to perform a dilation & evacuation (D&E) to quickly end the nonviable pregnancy. There was no chance that the pregnancy result in a live birth, but the hospital’s attorneys told the doctor she couldn’t perform an abortion. Instead, the patient delivered the fetus naturally, which took hours and also caused her to hemorrhage a liter of blood.
Unlike Mississippi’s ban, Louisiana law includes an exception for “medically futile” pregnancies, but the law also says the state health department is supposed to issue a list of what qualifies as “medically futile,” and it hasn’t done so yet. But that exception should give doctors there more discretion than in Mississippi, where terminating a nonviable pregnancy is legal only if not doing so threatens the pregnant person’s life.
Q: Can a pro-life activist sue a doctor or hospital for performing a life-saving abortion if they feel the mother wasn’t in mortal danger? And how would this threat affect the quality of healthcare across the state?
A: To your question about the possibility of lawsuits, I think it’s too early to say for sure what will happen in Mississippi because all of this is so new. Some OB/GYNs we’ve talked to expressed concern and confusion over the possibility of being sued by someone who believes an abortion wasn’t necessary to save the life of the mother. They don’t appear to be getting guidance on this from any agency or their employers.
Q: Can police legally force a pregnancy test on a woman they suspect is traveling to have an abortion? Can they detain that woman until she gives birth or dies?
Can state law enforcement legally use data from mobile devices to extrapolate if a woman might be seeking an abortion, then target that woman for investigation? Would a compiled list of these women be used legally as a function of abortion law enforcement?
A: I’m going to group your questions about police forcing pregnancy tests and using mobile data because they’re related to the broader uncertainty over how these laws will actually be enforced.
Mississippi law doesn’t have any provision saying a person may not travel out of state to seek an abortion, and the trigger ban specifies that police can’t prosecute a woman for her own abortion. So it would not be legal to detain someone on the suspicion that they were going to travel out of state for an abortion.
I think it’s pretty unlikely that law enforcement would use mobile data proactively to try to surveil for a potential abortion attempt in this way, especially because the trigger law says you can’t prosecute a woman for her own abortion. I do think that when police get a report of a possible illegal abortion (say if a woman comes to a local hospital with complications), we’re likely to see search warrants for mobile data as part of their investigation. This notably happened in the Latice Fisher case in Starkville a few years ago. She said she gave birth to a stillborn baby, and police found that she had searched for abortion pills and used that as part of the murder case against her, even though there was no evidence she had actually taken them. Charges were dropped after local and national advocates raised questions about the dubious test that had been used to claim her baby was born alive. Here’s a Washington Post story about the case and its national implications post-Roe.
Q: Hello Isabelle, do you expect the Mississippi Legislature to continue to restrict abortions in Mississippi (as in removing the exception for rape or life of the mother)? Additionally, has [Philip] Gunn clarified his thoughts on IVF and its continued legal status considering his belief that life begins at conception?
A: I don’t want to make any overconfident predictions but I do expect there will be discussion of further abortion restrictions next session. I think there is going to be appetite for strengthening laws against abortion pills, though I’m not sure what that will look like in practice because the state can’t police people’s mail and the pills are easy enough to order online from places where they are legal. That issue is clearly front of mind for anti-abortion folks in Mississippi, especially after billboards advertising abortion pills went up around Jackson. This is from an email that Pro-Life Mississippi sent out yesterday:
“Billboards are becoming the new battleground against the abortion industry. New billboards promoting abortion pills have appeared in Richland and Jackson… The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office is working on a coordinated response to these types of deceptive advertisements that could result in harming women with dangerous medication.”
I don’t know if there will be a push to remove the exceptions but I haven’t heard anything to that effect. It’s worth noting that doctors told us that they don’t expect anyone in Mississippi will be willing to perform abortions in cases of rape, given the legal risks, so that exception may effectively already be moot.
To my knowledge, Gunn hasn’t clarified his stance on IVF. I would be surprised if there is any effort to do anything that would affect IVF: Sen. Fillingane, who authored the abortion ban, actually wants to pass legislation to make clear that IVF and surrogacy are protected in Mississippi. (He fathered twin sons via surrogacy last year so this issue is close to him.) And I think it’s important to note that people who use IVF are generally people with means and access to channels of political influence. I don’t see commitment to the idea of life beginning at fertilization leading lawmakers to pursue laws that would constrain IVF.
Q: Do you think there is any risk of people getting arrested for using drugs off-label for abortion? What precautions can they take? What are good resources for them?
Also, is it a legitimate worry that MS residents may not be able to travel out of state to get an abortion?
A: To your first set of questions, I don’t want to make too many predictions because I think it’s still unclear how law enforcement will seek to carry out these new laws. With 82 different counties, I think we’re going to see a lot of variability in how police and DAs operate and how aggressive they are in investigating and punishing abortions. The trigger ban says a person can’t be prosecuted for their own abortion. In pre-Roe Mississippi, women were not often prosecuted for their abortions but were frequently pressured to testify against doctors and others who had been involved in the abortion. The use of abortion pills is going to be really tough for state authorities to regulate because it’s so easy to obtain them from overseas providers like Aid Access– who would Mississippi authorities prosecute?
This story looks at abortions and prosecutions in MS before Roe:
I don’t know what we might see in the next legislative session. I do know the pro-life lawmakers I have spoken with have said they’re not interested in trying to restrict Mississippians’ travel out of state, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh – who joined the majority to overturn Roe – wrote that he would find such a law unconstitutional. But it’s definitely true that many Mississippians won’t be able to travel to obtain an abortion for logistical reasons. Advocates expect the closest clinic will ultimately be in Carbondale, Illinois, a six to seven-hour drive from Jackson. (Currently, clinics in Louisiana and Florida are providing abortions.)
Q: Concerning reproductive health: do you think the state government will now create/enact legislation to make it harder for people to obtain birth control (specifically Plan B or any other estrogen-type pill form of birth control obtained via prescription)?
A: From what I have heard from lawmakers and anti-abortion advocates, there are not plans to do this or push for it.
Q: As a woman who was considering children and is now leaning towards sterilization due to the unacceptable risk involved in Mississippi, do you foresee more Mississippi women making that choice instead of building families going forward? We already have a brain drain problem, so do you think we’ll see even more of us younger folks moving to states with safer healthcare access?
All I have are anecdotal experiences on this, but a lot of my female friends have been pursuing sterilization and long-term contraceptive methods much more actively since the ruling–one has already scheduled a hysterectomy out of state by a doctor willing to perform it (notoriously hard to get when you’re a young woman with no children).
So along those lines, do you think we will be seeing bans on women’s contraceptives? I doubt we’ll see bans on condoms, but plan B and birth control pills could end up on the chopping block given how uneducated people tend to be on how those actually work.
A: One OB/GYN we spoke with mentioned she’s experienced an uptick in requests for tubal ligations since the Dobbs ruling. She also has concerns about the fate of certain emergency contraception, including IUDs, and it’s only reasonable to think other Mississippians might share that concern. Gov. Tate Reeves and other state leaders have said publicly they will not be targeting contraception, but have not specified what they do and do not consider contraception – despite our repeated questioning.
I also spoke recently with Terri Herring, the head of Choose Life Mississippi and a powerful anti-abortion advocate in the state. She said she doesn’t plan to advocate for restrictions on any pregnancy prevention measures, and she includes IUDs in there.
Q: I’ve seen that Google can help police track internet searches for abortions and how to get one. What safety factors do Mississippians need to consider when trying to figure out how to access abortion?
Q: Is Mississippi one of the states that are not allowing women with certain diagnoses, for example, rheumatoid arthritis to be able to obtain prescriptions such as methotrexate for their health? (I’ve read Methotrexate and a few other prescriptions have been denied in some states since the overturn because the medication can potentially be used for abortion.)
A: I have not talked to a lot of pharmacists, but the handful I’ve spoken to have said they haven’t heard of this happening in our state. I haven’t heard from any doctors about patients being denied their prescriptions either. If anyone has direct experience with this please send me an email (itaft@mississippitoday.org)!
Q: Also if you do cross state lines for abortion care what will happen if you come back into the state?
A: This is a great question. Abortion complications are rare so for most people, nothing will happen.
If you do have a complication and go to a hospital to get treatment, the hospital is legally required to report the complication to the Health Department. (We recently obtained the annual reports on these complications for 2015-2020, and most years 0 complications were reported. In two years, there were four complications each, all non-fatal.) The complication reporting form doesn’t ask for the patient’s name, SSN, DOB or anything like that, but it does ask for details like age, race, marital status and previous pregnancy outcomes.
After the ruling in Dobbs, Ochsner, which operates some hospitals in South Mississippi, reminded staff that they are required to report abortion complications to the health department.
This week, a source sent me an email that @OchsnerHealth sent to doctors.
It reminds them: state law requires they report all abortion complications to the health department.
That includes complications from illegal abortions, now that most abortions are banned in Louisiana. pic.twitter.com/UeoQRqJZQi
Gov. Tate Reeves explained on Thursday that his office, not the independent attorney hired to take the case, used an “objective process” to select who would face charges in the state’s massive civil lawsuit that attempts to claw back millions in misspent welfare funds.
The stated process, with its many caveats, happened to exclude University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, which the head of the welfare department and its attorney had initially intended on suing.
Reeves, who has been accused of a political cover-up in recent days for firing the private attorney bringing the lawsuit, said the state limited its complaint to people and companies who received payments that a third-party forensic auditing firm labeled as “waste, fraud and abuse” in a narrow October 2021 report or who were the subject of criminal charges.
“We’ve got to have an objective process by which we determine who gets sued. Knowing that, we can add any party in the future,” Reeves said Thursday during a press gaggle at the Neshoba County Fair — his first public comments since he was accused of firing the attorney to protect USM Athletic Foundation and other politically connected players. “… The only exception in the suit that we currently have that was not listed in that ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ category that we have sued is Prevacus. And the reason for that is because at the time the lawsuit was filed, it was the subject of the criminal indictment from one of the co-conspirators.”
But like Prevacus, the pharmaceutical company backed by retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, payments to the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation were also the subject of a criminal indictment and plea. The governor’s office directed the welfare department to remove the USM athletic foundation, whose board includes several Reeves donors, from its initial civil complaint before it was filed.
Reeves’ statement also doesn’t jibe with the fact that forensic auditors found $12.4 million in “waste, fraud and abuse,” but the civil suit seeks to recoup $24 million it says the defendants diverted “from the statutory purposes of that program and squandered by and for their enrichment.”
Nevertheless, the state has, at least to this point, decided against using the civil lawsuit to explore one of the most egregious schemes in the scandal: the use of $5 million in welfare money to build a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi.
In fact, the welfare department Reeves oversees removed the attorney who crafted the case, former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, for doing just that. Reeves initially approved of his welfare director, Bob Anderson, hiring Pigott on a year-long contract, which ends July 31.
Another paradox in Reeves’ explanation about how they chose which people and purchases to target in the suit is that retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre wasn’t included in the forensic audit report or criminal charges, but he was named as a defendant in the civil litigation.
Asked Thursday afternoon to clarify its process for selecting defendants, the governor’s office sent a statement saying, “It was decided at the time, based on the sheer amount of evidence surrounding Prevacus that was presented in the criminal indictment, that a limited exception would be made (for those entities and individuals connected to Prevacus) to the general policy of sticking to “fraud, waste, and abuse” as identified by the forensic audit. There were many other entities that were questioned and/or included in the indictments that may be added in the future.”
The lawsuit doesn’t limit its probe into Favre to the Prevacus deal; it also includes $1.1 million in welfare money he received for public appearances officials say he never gave – an expenditure never described in the “waste, fraud and abuse” report Reeves referenced.
Favre had been seeking funding from the state of Mississippi to prop up Prevacus. Just weeks after Favre and Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham first offered Gov. Phil Bryant stock in the company to get him “on the team” in late 2018, they began receiving stolen welfare funds for their experimental drug projects that eventually totaled more than $2 million. Text messages uncovered by Mississippi Today showed Bryant agreed to accept a company package two days after leaving office, but arrests caused him to back out of the deal.
“We also took into account sensitivities regarding the ongoing criminal investigations that would be improper to opine upon further,” the governor’s statement continued.
Forensic auditors also noted in reports that they were limited in what they could review, preventing them from making determinations in its “waste, fraud and abuse” report about roughly $40 million in spending from nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, including payments to the athletic foundation and Favre.
“There are certain entities that are in question that the forensic auditor opined that they didn’t have enough information to determine if it was waste, fraud and abuse or not,” Reeves said Thursday. “And the reason they didn’t have enough information to determine that is because some entities, for example MCEC, because of the criminal case, were unwilling to cooperate with the forensic audit. So, there are a lot of entities that are not in the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ that can be added in the future. This is the reason, by the way, that most of the time in situations such as this the civil case comes after the criminal case.”
The forensic auditors noted that they were limited in whose emails they could review and also unable to retrieve documents not just from Mississippi Community Education Center, but also from the State Auditor’s Office, which as the initial investigating agency possessed many of the pertinent documents.
Some defendants in the civil suit have requested a stay in the case to allow the criminal proceedings to wrap up before continuing the civil proceedings.
“The New Defendants have taken responsibility for their roles, yet they continue to be thrust into the crossfire by powerful forces fighting over political futures and tens of millions of dollars. The State wants to avoid liability and embarrassment, the Feds want their money back, and the public wants answers,” New’s attorney Gerry Bufkin wrote in a motion to stay on behalf of the New nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.
The hearing for this motion is set for August 17, and based on Reeves comments, it appears the state may be in support of this route.
Several other entities that received funds categorized as waste, fraud and abuse – such as Through the Fire Ministries, a Christian organization founded by a musician Deborah Bryant favored – were not included in the civil suit. The ministry received $25,000. The other entities named in the forensic audit report that were omitted from the lawsuit received under $25,000.
The Warren, Washington, Issaquena, Sharkey Community Action Agency (WWISCAA), a defendant in the civil suit, was sued for as little as $49,190.
Lobaki Inc., another company that criminal defendants have admitted to defrauding the government in order to lavish with hundreds of thousands of welfare dollars, is also omitted from the civil suit.
MDHS initially announced shortly after receiving the forensic audit that the agency would be suing both the athletic foundation and Lobaki – but then the governor’s office instituted its “objective process.”
When Pigott started seeking information about the volleyball scheme, the largest known purchase within the $77 million welfare scandal, the state abruptly removed him from the case.
The volleyball project began in 2017 when Favre began seeking support for a new athletic facility at his alma mater, where his daughter played volleyball. He had the ear of Bryant and welfare officials John Davis, then-director of MDHS, and Nancy New, operator of a nonprofit that had started receiving a windfall of federal grant funds from the department.
The federal government prohibits states from using this money, a block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, on brick and mortar, so officials devised a scheme to conceal the true nature of the payment by calling it a lease. The nonprofit pretended that the $5 million lease with the athletic foundation would enable it to provide services to needy people. Nancy New’s son Zach New pleaded guilty to fraud over this scheme. The deal was signed off on by Institutes of Higher Learning and the Attorney General’s Office, according to IHL board meeting minutes.
A separate report from the same forensic auditors described the $5 million payment from Mississippi Community Education Center to the USM athletic foundation as unallowed under federal rules.
To explore all involved, Pigott subpoenaed the athletic foundation for its communication with several key people, including Bryant, his wife Deborah Bryant, and Favre. At the same time, Pigott also subpoenaed conservative radio station Supertalk for its interviews with key defendants in the case who often appeared on the show to tout their work.
The administration didn’t like the direction Pigott was taking.
“There seemed to be a pattern by the lawyer that DHS originally hired to want to move beyond those that were in that (waste, fraud and abuse) category for purposes of this litigation,” Reeves said. “It was almost as if there was a political agenda from this particular lawyer.”
As for the volleyball scheme itself – which could send Zach New to prison – Reeves equivocated on the legality of the expenditure.
“…while they may not have been wise expenditures, or they may not have been expenditures that I would have approved, the question is were they legal, or were they waste, fraud, and abuse. If they were waste fraud and abuse, then we filed suit,” Reeves said. “…I don’t know all the details as to how that (volleyball stadium) came about, what I do know is that it doesn’t seem like an expense that I would personally support for TANF dollars.”
A federal receiver will be appointed to manage the Hinds County jail, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves wrote officials have received multiple chances to fix the Raymond jail, but they have been unable to. The court will appoint a receiver by Nov. 1.
“We can’t wait for continued destruction of the facilities,” Reeves wrote in his 26-page order. “We can’t wait for the proliferation of more contraband. We can’t wait for more assaults. We can’t wait for another death. The time to act is now. There is no other choice, unfortunately.”
Receivership, a form of intervention by the federal court to take an institution out of the hands of local or state management, was an option considered during three weeks of hearings at the federal courthouse in Jackson earlier this year. Hernandez Stroud, counsel for the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said receivership for county jails is uncommon, the Clarion Ledger reported.
The decision to appoint a receiver comes years after the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the jail and settled with the county to come up with a consent decree, whose goal was to help Hinds County address unconstitutional issues at the jail.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Credell Calhoun said Friday the county will work with its attorneys to come up with an action plan about receivership.
The county and U.S. Department of Justice can submit ideas for powers and duties of the receiver, but ultimately what the receiver can do will be up to the court.
Calhoun said despite the decision, current members of the board have made progress at the jail, including making plans to build a new one.
“We’ve done a lot to improve the facility since this board was sworn in, and we think we’ve made a lot of progress in the jail,” he said.
In his order, Reeves said the county has spent millions of dollars on the jail, but that hasn’t fixed conditions. He also said building a new jail won’t fix unconstitutional issues occurring now.
In April, Reeves issued an injunction to scale back the county’s consent decree. During a press conference at the time, Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said the lifted decree was “a step in the right direction.”
By May, the county indicated that it planned to appeal.
Attorneys for the county filed a motion for reconsideration for a March contempt order Reeves filed against officials for failing to fix problems at the jail, which Reeves denied in his Friday order.
A July 19 hearing was a last chance for the county to offer evidence that jail conditions were being addressed, Reeves said. Testimony and evidence showed a risk of harm remains at the Hinds County Detention Center, he wrote.
A team of court appointed monitors have visited the jail since 2016 and offered ways to help the county comply with the consent decree. Reeves said the monitoring team will stop its work once a receiver is appointed.
“After ample time and opportunity, regretfully, it is clear that the County is incapable, or unwilling, to handle its affairs,” Reeves wrote in his Friday order. “The County’s motion for reconsideration is denied. Additional intervention is required. It is time to appoint a receiver.”
Reeves offered two other extreme, less likely alternatives to receivership: the release of jail detainees into the public and closure of the jail. The other was to require the Hinds County Board of Supervisors and sheriff to spend at least a week detained in the jail to experience what life is like there.
“Experiencing life at the jail firsthand would surely motivate the County’s leaders to correct unconstitutional conditions therein. But this also seems an extreme remedy—at least, at present,” he wrote.
Through the eyes of Richard Etheridge, we travel the precarious path of his life in David Wright Faladé’s novel, “Black Cloud Rising.” It’s a fictional tale, interwoven with true-life events.
Black Cloud Rising is a novel by David Wright Faladé.
Etheridge was a real person, a member of the African Brigade, fighting in the Civil War. His strength carries him and those like him on their journey to be free from bondage in a land where they know they are necessary, but not wanted; declared free, but not truly.
Etheridge, called “Dick” by all those who know him, was born a slave on Roanoke Island, the son of a slave mother and their owner. He is taught to read and write by his half-sister, his owner’s abolitionist daughter.
His memories of being an “almost” member of his white owner’s family compared to his Freedman status as a fighting man leave him torn in his feelings of being conditioned to feeling he is a nobody to becoming and believing he is a somebody.
Etheridge sees and feels this as he eventually attains the rank of sergeant. The validity of the brigade’s existence is a constant specter. Black men in Union blue, Black men fighting and killing white men, Black men free; juxtaposed against duty to country, family, and oneself. He was a naive 21-year-old when he joined the brigade, their mission — track down Confederate guerrillas in the fall 1863.
Many brigade members like Etheridge fight on the very land where they were once enslaved, battling not only their own conditioned questioning of place as they face off against their former owners, and their sons and brothers, but the morality of it. A morality he comes face to face with on the battlefield, eye to eye with his own half-brother, who once told him he was “just like family.”
“Just like family? We are family!” is Etheridge’s reply. He knows deep in his soul too, that freedom is the rallying cry at any cost.
The book’s title, “Black Cloud Rising,” derives from a song of the era, sung about Black Union troops like Etheridge and his brigade comrades. Their leader is a ginger bearded abolitionist named Edward Wild. “Wild” in his eyes and carriage, he’s a General and John Brown type, a force to be reckoned with, who frees all slaves he, Etheridge, and the African Brigade encounter as they fight their way to securing the North Carolina coastal region and its backwaters. Etheridge and the others in the brigade respect and love him for it.
The brigade is glorious to the enslaved who lay eyes upon them and despised by the white Southerners who loathe and fear them. “When this country is retaken, you ni**ers who’ve betrayed it will not fare well,” Etheridge is admonished by his general’s chastised brother.
“I suspect you are right. Still, I’ll take my chances on freedom,” is Etheridge’s reply.
Faladé brings Etheridge’s “chance on freedom” to life in an arduous, frightening, and bloody journey to freedom; a tale of long ago and seldom talked about.
Faladé is a featured panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 20.
Willis Wright, who often coached wearing his fishing hat, won nearly 80 percent of his games as a head coach.
Editor’s note: On Saturday night, July 30, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2022. What follows is the final part of a series detailing the achievements of the eight inductees, today featuring high school football coaching legend Willis Wright.
Perhaps it will some day be the epitaph on Willis Wright’s tombstone: “Here lies the man who created the University of South Panola.”
Wright, who should be in the first sentence of any discussion about “Mississippi’s greatest ever high school football coach,” will be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Saturday night — despite his contention he doesn’t belong.
Rick Cleveland
“I got no business going into that Hall of Fame with those legends,” Wright, 76, said Wednesday. “I’ll just be honest with you. I feel unworthy of this honor. I appreciate it, but I feel unworthy.”
Wright is worthy. It’s not just that as a head coach his teams at eight different schools won nearly 80% of their games. It’s not just that he created the monster at South Panola. It’s not just that one of his schools (Saltillo) thought so much of him, they named the stadium after him. It’s not just that he was a coach on nine state championship teams. And it’s not just that he is widely liked and respected by his peers. It’s all that — and lots more.
Mike Justice, who also belongs in that “Mississippi’s greatest high school coach discussion,” puts it this way: “You can’t have that greatest coach discussion without Willis. He won at all different levels, little schools and big schools, public schools and private schools, Mississippi and Alabama. He won at eight different places. And I’ll tell you this much about him: Of all the great coaches who have come through Mississippi, Willis has the least amount of ego. Most really successful coaches have a huge ego. Willis has none.”
Justice speaks the truth. In fact, no telling how many games Wright would have won if he had remained a head coach throughout his career. He did not. In high school football, the head coach gets all the headlines. Wright didn’t care. In fact, Wright returned to South Panola at the end of his career and served two different head coaches as the defensive coordinator. Those South Panola teams, head-coached by Ricky Woods and Lance Pogue, won 75 games and lost one. You read right: 75-1.
“Yes sir, we had a run there,” Wright said. “Any coach who was a part of it will tell you, we had some out-of-this-world athletes.”
The stories are legion about the speed and power of those South Panola teams. And about how when the coaches showed up at the crack of dawn most summer mornings, the players were already waiting at the field house doors, ready to lift weights and run to get stronger and faster when they already were the strongest and fastest. Wright created that atmosphere as head coach in the early 1990s. He left South Panola in 1993 after his team finished 15-0 and out-scored opponents by an average of 30 points per game. He returned as a defensive coordinator in 2001 for six seasons, during which the South Panola Tigers were nearly always ranked among the top 10 high school teams in the USA.
Willis Wright got a victory ride after South Panola won the State 5A Championship, the first of many, in 1993.
“To tell you the truth, I enjoyed that more,” Wright said of his days as a defensive coordinator. “That allowed me to just coach without all the other headaches a head coach has. I didn’t sleep much as a head coach, to tell you the truth. I was too intense. The part of coaching I really enjoyed was interacting with the kids, watching tape, coming up with a plan. I loved all that – just loved it.”
Wright’s last season in coaching was Pogue’s first as head coach at South Panola. Naturally, the Tigers finished 15-0 and won the state title.
“First of all, Willis had a big hand in hiring me there,” Pogue said. “Then, he agreed to stay on and help me that first season. I saw it first-hand. He had a unique ability to motivate kids in a quiet, humble way. When you get right down to it, he created the whole South Panola thing and then helped sustain it. Even after he retired, he was still a big part of it.”
Once, when this writer was covering a South Panola game during Wright’s time as defensive coordinator, he coached the entire game with a fishing lure hanging out of the pocket of his shirt.
Asked about it afterward, Wright looked down sheepishly to see the lure and said he had come straight from the lake to the football game and had forgotten about the lure.
Said Pogue, “Willis told me one time he was passionate about three things: crappie fishing, eating and coaching football. I’m here to tell you he was really, really good at all three.”
Wright grew up in Winona, where he well remembers watching Winona native and future Mississippi State and NFL star Billy Stacy play high school football. “Man, there was nothing that Billy Stacy couldn’t do,” Wright said. “He was my hero, and I was hooked on high school football.”
Wright later played for Winona and earned a football scholarship to Holmes Community College. But his father died about that time, “and I had Daddy’s cows to take care of,” he said. “There wasn’t time to play football.”
Still, he completed the two years of junior college at Holmes and then two years at Delta State, majoring in physical education. “I knew I wanted to coach and I knew I wanted to coach high school football,” he said.
And so he did. In the early 1980s, when he was winning state championships at Starkville, Wright was approached by Emory Bellard about joining his staff at Mississippi State. That never happened. Said Wright, “I think I knew down deep that I was a high school coach. I was just smart enough to realize I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing.”
One of the greatest parts of the Neshoba County Fair is eating lunch with friends in their cabin. This year’s fair speeches, which were tepid because of a slow political year, served little substance but plenty of red meat and a tater.
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi is suing several top University of Mississippi Medical Center employees, alleging defamation and civil conspiracy over the public relations campaign the hospital has been waging against the insurer due to their contract dispute.
Blue Cross filed a lawsuit in Rankin County’s circuit court on Thursday against UMMC employees LouAnn Woodward, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine, Alan Jones, Associate Vice Chancellor for Clinical Affairs, Marc Rolph, Executive Director of Communications and Marketing, and other unnamed UMMC employees.
Rolph declined to comment on the lawsuit.
UMMC itself is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit because state law grants UMMC immunity for defamation committed by its employees.
UMMC has been out of network with Blue Cross, the state’s largest insurer, since April 1 due to disagreements over reimbursement rates and Blue Cross’ quality care plan. Since then, UMMC has spent nearly $279,000 on digital ads, commercials and billboards attacking the insurer.
In the lawsuit, Blue Cross alleges that the public relations campaign was “designed to disseminate false and defamatory statements about Blue Cross to the public.”
Blue Cross’ major issue with the campaign’s advertisements and various public statements the defendant’s have made is that they allege Blue Cross ended its contract with UMMC and the insurer has “excluded” UMMC from its network of providers as a result. Since UMMC voluntarily ended its contracts with Blue Cross, the insurer claims UMMC’s campaign is defamatory and has harmed its reputation and business.
Blue Cross has continued to offer network level reimbursement rates for its customers that seek care at UMMC, but the hospital has refused to accept those payments. Due to this refusal and UMMC being the party that ended their relationship, Blue Cross says it is UMMC who is preventing the insurer’s customers from receiving care at the medical center.
The insurer also claims in the lawsuit that other public comments UMMC officials have made related to the contract dispute are false. One such claim is that Blue Cross has not increased its reimbursement rates to UMMC since 2018. While UMMC claims the only increase it has received in recent years is a 1% increase in 2018, Blue Cross claims it has increased reimbursement rates every year since then. Since all financial agreements between the two parties are confidential, Mississippi Today is unable to verify the claims of either party on this issue.
Another claim Blue Cross says is false is that UMMC was not responsible for removing transplant patients insured by Blue Cross from their transplant lists.
According to Blue Cross, a transplant patient was scheduled to have their surgery during this grace period, but the hospital canceled the procedure. In another instance, the parents of a pediatric transplant patient were advised to seek their child’s care out-of-state. Both patients eventually received that surgery “only after Blue Cross vigorously challenged UMMC’s actions.” The insurer claims that other instances like these have occurred.
Mississippi Today has previously reported on transplant patients who have been forced to seek their care out-of-state. Others have been unable to get estimates of how much their surgeries would cost from UMMC or Blue Cross as required by federal law.
Blue Cross is seeking an injunction against the continued publication and dissemination of the statements it considers defamatory as well as monetary damages from each of the defendants.
Read the full complaint here:
Editor’s note: UMMC, through an ad agency, has placed paid advertisements about the BCBS dispute on Mississippi Today’s website. Advertisers have no input in the editorial process.
Mississippi education leaders are largely planning to continue using their COVID policies from last school year, but some have dropped protections altogether.
Schools have been required to offer in-person learning as their primary method of instruction since the start of last school year. Local school boards are allowed to develop their own specific policies regarding virtual options, but are required to ensure that students receive direct instruction from a teacher for the same number of minutes each day that they would in-person. Any other decisions regarding masking, quarantining, sanitation, and vaccination have been made by districts at the local level for the last year.
The new school year begins as, COVID-19 cases are rising in Mississippi, with 1,705 positive cases on July 27 compared to 105 at the beginning of May. While high, they have not yet climbed to the levels seen during the delta and omicron waves. The Mississippi State Department of Health recently announced that families can receive eight rapid tests each month through their county health department.
Policies vary from district to district, but most appear to be relaxing or maintaining relaxed COVID safety protocols for the upcoming school year, which begins for most districts in early August.
Greg Ellis, spokesperson for the Tupelo School District, said the district is generally continuing to follow its 2021-2022 plan but has added cameras in classrooms so that students who are quarantining due to positivity or exposure can continue to participate remotely in instruction. The district’s quarantine policies say they follow CDC and MSDH guidance.
The Greenville School District is also maintaining its 2021-2022 policies, but it requires all students, staff, and visitors to wear masks, as well as temperature checks and socially distanced seating.
By contrast, the Jackson Public School District has dropped its mask mandate and vaccine mandate for employees but will continue contact tracing and sanitation efforts.
“COVID-19 seems to be another sickness we’re just going to have to deal with for the rest of our lives,” said Gulfport Superintendent Glen East. He elaborated that the district will require a doctor’s note to return to school.
The DeSoto County School District is also mostly returning to pre-pandemic norms, including regarding campus events and school lunch prices. Their plan instructs parents to contact the school nurse for instructions regarding the length of quarantine, and the district clarified that absences due to COVID are still excused.
The Lauderdale County and Vicksburg-Warren School Districts have not made any substantial changes to their plans, which do not require masking and say students should quarantine if they are exhibiting symptoms.
State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said MSDH will no longer be requiring weekly reporting from schools of positive cases or quarantined students as they “transition to more routine, sustainable surveillance.” Generally, the MSDH recommends that masks should be worn when community transmission is high, encourages parents to review Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, and can provide testing and vaccination support to districts.
Dr. Anita Henderson, president of the Mississippi Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that vaccinations are going to be the most effective way of slowing down transmission and encouraged parents to get their children vaccinated, as well as staff to get boosted if they are eligible. Children ages 6 months and older are also now eligible for vaccines, which can be scheduled through MSDH.
She also encouraged families to pick up at-home tests and double-check before attending group events, visiting immunocompromised family, or if they are showing any cold symptoms.
“We are very concerned, just like when school started back last year and we saw that huge surge of delta in the fall,” Henderson said. “We’re already in the middle of a big omicron surge now, and we’re concerned that it’s going to also happen in schools. We already know that school teachers are out in our area, we know children who have tested positive have missed their first week of school … These are things that are going to continue to happen unless we do everything we can to slow down transmission in schools.”
Mississippi Today intern Allison Santa-Cruz contributed to this reporting.
