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WINONA – It has been 59 years since Euvester Simpson returned to the city where police arrested and beat her and five voting rights activists in the former county jail.

The then-17-year-old remembers seeing Fannie Lou Hamer after the beating and how black and blue the woman’s hands were. Simpson tended to Hamer’s injuries by applying a cold rag to parts of her body. 

On Thursday, a multiracial group gathered to unveil a historical marker from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History at the former Montgomery County jail site at the corner of Oak Drive and Sterling Avenue. Over 100 people watched Simpson and Hamer’s daughter Jacqueline Hamer Flakes pull a covering off of the marker.

“Being here today, she accomplished what she was here to do,” Hamer Flakes said about the commemoration and historical marker, which are part of her mother’s legacy. 

The unveiling kicked off four days of events called Bridging Winona, which are meant to remember the violence at the jail and commemorate Hamer and the voting rights activists.

“The bridging of Winona can be a model for other towns not just in Mississippi, but all across this country,” said Simpson, who is now 75. 

Bridging Winona organizer Vickie Roberts-Ratliff, whose family has lived in Winona for six generations, was one of about 10 people who worked with city officials to get the historical marker and organize the commemorative events. 

“It goes back to knowing what your history is,” she said. “It can be difficult to peel it back, but it can be healing.”

Roberts-Ratliff was an infant when Hamer and other activists were beaten at the jail, and she didn’t learn about what happened in Winona until later in life.

She tried previously to get a historical marker for Hamer at the former jail site, but those efforts were not successful. 

During last year’s city elections, a new mayor, Aaron Dees, and members of the Board of Aldermen were elected. She approached Dees, who agreed to work with her. 

He agreed that the city was missing the mark by not acknowledging what happened to Hamer and the activists. Dees said a historical marker should have already been installed. 

“This is a time to bring the whole community together – every racial background, every ethnic background,” he said. “Hopefully we can take this and move forward with this.” 

The marker now stands as a reminder of the infamous violent events that occurred here nearly 60 years ago. In 1963, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizers Hamer, Simpson, Annell Ponder, June Johnson, James West and Rosemary Freeman were returning by bus to Greenwood from a voter education workshop in South Carolina. Members of the group got off the bus when it stopped in Winona and went to a lunch counter where they were refused service. The bus terminal area was segregated and they attempted to integrate it.

A Mississippi Highway Patrol trooper tried to get the activists to leave. Local police came and arrested them. Hamer got off the bus to see what was happening to her colleagues, and was arrested too. 

Hamer Flakes, the youngest and only living daughter of Hamer, said at the jail, her mother heard screaming and crying from 15-year-old activist Annelle Ponder, who refused to address the officers as ‘sir.’ She was beaten until her dress was soaked with blood, according to SNCC. 

SNCC leader Lawrence Guyot, who came to the jail to post bail for the group, was also beaten.

A sheriff’s deputy beat Hamer with a billy club and then ordered two inmates at the jail to beat her with the club until they were too tired, Hamer Flakes said. The deputy also beat Hamer in the head, her daughter said. 

Hamer sustained injuries to her kidney and eye from the violence that were with her for the rest of her life, her daughter said. 

“It’s amazing how she went through that beating but came out stronger than ever,” Hamer Flakes said. 

The U.S. Department of Justice tried five Montgomery County law enforcement officers. They were acquitted by an all-male, all-white jury in December 1963, according to SNCC. 

Hamer was born in 1917 in Montgomery County and lived in Ruleville in Sunflower County. She was the daughter of sharecroppers and a former plantation worker who began organizing in her 40s. 

In 1962, Hamer and a group traveled to the Indianola courthouse to register to vote and were given literary tests. The day later she was fired from her plantation job. 

Hamer joined SNCC and helped organize voter registration drives, including during the 1964 Freedom Summer. 

She stepped into other forms of organizing, including through politics when she helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer and activists traveled to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and delivered a speech asking the party to be recognized. In her speech to the DNC, Hamer shared her experience of violence in Winona. 

In Ruleville, she founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative to help Black farmers grow produce to be financially self-sufficient. 

Hamer, who died in 1977, has been commemorated in Ruleville, including through a sign marker along the Mississippi Freedom Trail and a statue of her and a memorial garden where she and her husband Perry are buried. There is also the Fannie Lou Hamer Civil Rights Museum in Belzoni. 

Oxford-based nonprofit Land Literary and Legacy, which Roberts-Ratliff is a member of, was part of organizing the Bridging Winona events. The group’s goal is to create awareness about the importance of local and national history through education and building community. 

In April, Dees signed a proclamation designating June 9 as Fannie Lou Hamer Day – the same day she and the activists were beaten at the jail. 

The goal is not to forget what happened in Winona, but to bring closure and use lessons from the past in the future, Dees said.

He hopes to see a day declared for Hamer at the state and national level. Hamer Flakes said she would like to see an annual Fannie Lou Hamer day in Ruleville. 

On Thursday after the marker unveiling, the community celebrated at the Winona Community House with live music, food and children’s activities. There were also oral history interviews conducted and people were able to register to vote. 

A Friday morning event at Winona Baptist Church focused on land ownership. Representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Park Service talked about sustainable agriculture, forestry, economic development and other issues.

Other commemoration events planned for the weekend are:

• Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Fannie Lou Hamer legacy historical bus tour across the Delta. The cost is $95 and lunch is provided. Register on Eventbrite. 
• Sunday 4 p.m.: Fannie Lou Hamer community health service at Winona Baptist Church. This is a free event and registration is suggested on Eventbrite.

The post ‘It goes back to knowing what your history is’: New historical marker in Winona acknowledges civil rights beatings, honors Fannie Lou Hamer appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The eyes of the world were on Rep. Bennie Thompson, the longtime congressman from Mississippi, on Thursday night as the special House committee he chairs held a prime-time hearing regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Thompson’s bipartisan committee began laying out a seven-point case Thursday night they say will show former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat and keep himself in office.

“Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy,” Thompson said. “And ultimately, Donald Trump — the president of the United States — spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy.”

The committee showed dramatic video of how the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group, led the attack on the Capitol. They also heard the emotional testimony of a U.S. Capitol Police officer who suffered a brain injury during the attack.

“What I saw was a war scene,” said Caroline Edwards, one of the more than 150 officers injured in the rampage. “I saw officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up … I was slipping in people’s blood … it was carnage, it was chaos.”

Before the hearing — broadcast live on nearly every major American network with the exception of Fox News — began, Thompson convened the meeting with a powerful speech.

Below is a transcript of his remarks.

“Thanks to everyone watching tonight for sharing part of your evening, to learn about the facts and causes of the events leading up to and including the violent attack on January 6th, 2021 — on our democracy, electoral system, and country. 

I am Bennie Thompson, chairman of the January 6, 2021, Committee. I was born, raised and still live in Bolton, Mississippi, a town with a population of 521, which is midway between Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the Mississippi River. 

I am from a part of the country where people justified the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. 

Over the next few weeks, hopefully you will get to know the other members, my colleagues up here, and me. We represent a diversity of communities from all over the United States — rural areas and cities — east coast, west coast, and the heartland. 

All of us have one thing in common: We swore the same oath. The same oath that all members of Congress take upon taking office and afterward every two years if they are reelected. We swore an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies — foreign and domestic. 

The words of the current oath taken by all of us — that nearly every United States government employee takes — have their roots in the Civil War. Throughout our history, the United States has fought against foreign enemies to preserve our democracy, electoral system, and country. 

When the United States Capitol was stormed and burned in 1814, foreign enemies were responsible. Afterward, in 1862, when American citizens had taken up arms against this country, Congress adopted a new oath to help make sure no person who had supported the rebellion could hold a position of public trust. Therefore, congresspersons and U.S. federal government employees were required for the first time to swear an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies — foreign and domestic. 

That oath was put to the test on January 6, 2021. 

The police officers who held the line that day honored their oaths. Many came out of that day bloodied and broken. They still bear those wounds, visible and invisible. They did their duty. They repelled the mob and ended the occupation of the Capitol. They defended the Constitution against domestic enemies so that Congress could return, uphold our own oaths, and count your votes to ensure the transfer of power — just as we’ve done for hundreds of years. 

But unlike in 1814, it was domestic enemies of the Constitution who stormed and occupied the Capitol, who sought to thwart the will of the people, to stop the transfer of power. And they did so at the encouragement of the president of the United States. The president of the United States, trying to stop the transfer of power — a precedent that had stood for 220 years, even as our democracy has faced its most difficult tests. 

Thinking back again to the Civil War, in the summer of 1864, the president of the United States was staring down what he believed would be a doomed bid for reelection. He believed his opponent, General George McClellan, would wave the white flag when it came to preserving the Union. 

But even with that grim fate hanging in the balance, President Lincoln was ready to accept the will of the voters, come what may. He made a quiet pledge. He wrote down the words, “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the president elect….” It will be my duty. 

Lincoln sealed that memo and asked his cabinet secretaries to sign it, sight unseen. He asked them to make the same commitment he did: to accept defeat if indeed defeat was the will of the people. To uphold the rule of law. To do what every other president who came before him did, and what every president who followed him would do. 

Until Donald Trump. 

Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020. The American people voted him out of office. It was not because of a rigged system. It was not because of voter fraud. Don’t believe me? Hear what his former attorney general had to say about it, and I’ll warn those watching that this contains strong language. 

Bill Barr. On Election Day 2020, he was attorney general of the United States — the top law enforcement official in the country, telling the president exactly what he thought about claims of a stolen election.

Donald Trump had his days in court to challenge the results. He was within his rights to seek those judgments. In the United States, law-abiding citizens have those tools for pursuing justice. He lost in the courts just as he did at the ballot box. And in this country, that’s the end of the line. 

But for Donald Trump, that was only the beginning of what became a sprawling, multi-step conspiracy aimed at overturning the presidential election, aimed at throwing out the votes of millions of Americans — your votes, your voice in our democracy — and replacing the will of the American people with his will to remain in power after his term ended. 

Donald Trump was at the center of that conspiracy. And ultimately, Donald Trump — the president of the United States — spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy. 

Any legal jargon you hear about “seditious conspiracy,” “obstruction of an official proceeding,” “conspiracy to defraud the United States” boils down to this: January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup. A brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after January 6, “to overthrow the government.” 

The violence was no accident. It represented Trump’s last, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power. 

Now, you may hear those words and think, “This is just another political attack on Donald Trump by people who don’t like him.” That’s not the case. My colleagues and I all wanted an outside, independent commission to investigate January 6, similar to what we had after 9/11. 

But after first agreeing to the idea, Donald Trump’s allies in Congress put a stop to it. Apparently, they don’t want January 6 investigated at all. 

And, in the last 17 months, many of those same people have tried to whitewash what happened on January 6 — to rewrite history, call it a tourist visit, label it “legitimate political discourse.” 

Donald Trump and his followers have adopted the words of the songwriter: “Do you believe me or your lying eyes?”

We can’t sweep what happened under the rug. The American people deserve answers. 

So I come before you this evening not as a Democrat, but as an American who swore an oath to defend the Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t protect just Democrats or just Republicans. It protects all of us. “We the People.” 

And this scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people.”

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson, leading the public Jan. 6 hearings, has long worked to protect democracy

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It’s not the ambitious social spending platform of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But little-known Republican Michael Cassidy, who forced a runoff with incumbent U.S. Rep. Michael Guest in one of the nation’s most conservative districts, proposed social spending programs would cost taxpayers at least $48 trillion over 10 years, according to a Mississippi Today analysis.

Among Cassidy’s ideas are Medicare for All, stipends for married couples, and universal basic income for families with children.

Cassidy, a Naval reserve pilot whose campaign slogan is “America First for Congress,” garnered 48% of the vote in Tuesday’s Republican primary, while Guest received 47%. Thomas Griffin earned just 5% of the vote. Because no candidate reached 50%, Cassidy and Guest will duke it out in a June 28 runoff.

A Mississippi Today analysis of several ideas Cassidy proposed on his campaign website shows that his platform — focused on social spending — would cost taxpayers at least $48 trillion over 10 years.

On Wednesday, after several people posted to social media about some of the ideas listed on his website, Cassidy removed them from his site. But Mississippi Today saved an earlier version of the website that was publicly available to voters ahead of the June 7 primary.

Some of Cassidy’s ideas, now scrubbed from his website, include: 

• “Allowing all citizens to enroll in Medicare, regardless of age.” Kaiser Health News, forecasting the “Medicare for All” platform idea of Bernie Sanders in 2020, estimated that the policy would cost $44.8 trillion over 10 years.

• “Providing newlyweds with a $20,000 wedding gift, paid back if the couple divorces.” Across America in 2020, there were 1.68 million marriages — down from about 2 million in 2019. $20,000 per 2020 marriage is $33 billion a year, or $330 billion over 10 years.

• “Giving married citizens a $250/month stipend for children under 10, and $500/month for children 10-17.” There are 72.9 million American children in these categories. Assuming an equal distribution between the two groups, that’s $318 billion a year, or $3.18 trillion over 10 years.

Cassidy, meanwhile, has focused energy on touting himself as a “fiscally sane representative” for the district. Ahead of the primary, Cassidy ran a TV attack ad that sharply criticized Guest for voting to provide $53 billion in aid to Ukraine to assist its defense efforts against Russia — all while “the national debt is over $30 trillion and inflation is raging,” Cassidy said in the ad.

Cassidy, whose modest campaign has been bolstered by more than $200,000 he loaned himself, had few other supporters. At least 87% of his total receipts through May 18, 2022, came from personal loans.

READ MORE: Prominent 2020 election denier is aiding Cassidy campaign

After Facebook and Twitter comments blistering much of Cassidy’s original platform on Election Day, Cassidy removed his entire fiscal platform from the website sometime on Wednesday. 

By end of business on Wednesday, Cassidy’s campaign consultant Matt Braynard issued a press release announcing an “improved pro-family policy” and posted it to Cassidy’s campaign website.

Noticeably missing from Cassidy’s new platform is any mention of Medicare for All, stipends for married couples and universal income disbursements for families with children.

“Based on helpful feedback from many conservatives in the 3rd District of Mississippi, I’ve improved my America Dream policies by focusing on lowering the tax burden for working families with children,” Cassidy said in the press release.

The principle idea of Cassidy’s new-and-improved platform is expanding the current child tax deduction from a maximum of $3,600 to $10,000 “for working families not currently receiving government assistance.”

Cassidy’s idea for the child tax credit is remarkably similar to one of President Joe Biden’s chief economic focuses — a program the president fought to include in the American Rescue Plan Act.

The post Republican Michael Cassidy’s $48 trillion social spending platform appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Toughest ticket in Mississippi sports history?

If not, tickets to this weekend’s Ole Miss-Southern Miss NCAA Super Regional baseball series in Hattiesburg are certainly in the first sentence of any conversation on that subject.

Tickets with a face value of $60 are going as much as $1800 on StubHub. It goes back to the old economics principle of supply and demand. In this case, the demand for tickets is far, far higher than the number of tickets available for sale. The seating capacity at USM’s Pete Taylor Park is just over 5,000. Southern Miss could probably sell 15 or 20 thousand tickets if that many were available.

Ole Miss (35-22) and Southern Miss (47-17) play Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. in Games 1 and 2. A third game, if necessary, will be played Monday at a time to be determined (by ESPN, of course). The winner of the series goes to the College World Series at Omaha.

Says Southern Miss athletic director Jeremy McClain, “The bottom line is that we are not able to sell tickets to some people who have been very supportive of our baseball program.”

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter is in the same boat, if not one even more submerged. By NCAA rules, Ole Miss was allotted 600 tickets. About 250 of those are committed to players’ and coaches’ families, leaving about 350 to be sold to Ole Miss supporters. This will give you some idea of how insufficient that number is: Ole Miss baseball has more than 136,000 Twitter followers, about 8,200 season ticket holders. Carter said the Ole Miss ticket office received 3,500 Super Regional ticket requests — that, despite people knowing how unlikely it was to obtain tickets.

So it is tickets with a face value of $60 are selling online for several hundreds of dollars on. secondary ticket markets. So it is people are celebrating scoring a ticket on the various Internet message boards as if celebrating a national championship.

So it is both Ole Miss and Southern Miss are setting up different venues where their fans can watch the game in a crowd atmosphere. Ole Miss will hold watch parties at the school’s baseball stadium. Southern Miss will have watch parties at Spirit Park on the school’s campus, about a half mile from Pete Taylor Park where a 20-foot video wall will be set up for the ESPNU feed.

No doubt, Mississippians by the thousands will opt to view the game in their own living rooms in air-conditioned comfort.

McLain was asked if Southern Miss is considering an expansion of Pete Taylor Park — or “The Pete” as it often called — where the Golden Eagles shattered season ticket and attendance records this past spring.

“We’re exploring it,” McClain said. “Actually, we’ve been looking at it for several months. We are in the early stages and we have some issues with expansion because of the ballpark’s surroundings. But we are looking at it and feel like there are some ways to add quality seating.”

That won’t help disappointed fans this weekend, although any athletic director — or businessman — will tell you that when demand far exceeds supply, it is a nice problem to have.

The post Mississippi, where college baseball tickets are like gold appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Three marches Saturday in Mississippi will join a national call for lawmakers to address gun violence and pass gun control measures. 

Demonstrations are scheduled in Jackson at the Mississippi State Capitol, Oxford City Hall and Fairpark in downtown Tupelo, each from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. They will happen alongside marches in Washington D.C. and across the country for March For Our Lives.

March For Our Lives formed in 2018 as a student-led organization after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. where 17 students and staff died. 

That year, students from the school and around the country went to Washington to demonstrate and call for gun control measures. 

The Saturday marches were scheduled in response to the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas where 17 students and teachers died, according to March For Our Lives.

Since the group’s 2018 demonstration, there have been countless other gun violence incidents and a lack of gun control to prevent shootings, according to the organization. 

So far this year, there have been 251 mass shootings in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts gun violence and crime incidents daily and verifies them. Five of  this year’s mass shootings occurred in Mississippi.

A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot or killed during a single incident at the same time and location, not including the shooter.  

In 2022, there have been 450 school shootings in the county, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Five have happened in Mississippi this year. 

People who would like to participate are asked to register on the pages for Jackson, Oxford and Tupelo. Information about other marches can be found here. 

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The Cleveland boys discuss the Ole Miss-Southern Miss Super Regional in Hattiesburg this coming weekend. Ole Miss is fresh off a three-game dash through the Coral Gables Regional, winning impressively. Southern Miss had a fight to finish to win the Hattiesburg Regional over LSU. Who has the edge? People with tickets, that’s who. It might be the toughest ticket in Mississippi sports history.

Stream all episodes here.

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Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell announced Thursday he has been endorsed by all five other Republican challengers ahead of his June 28 runoff against incumbent U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo.

Ezell, who was one of six Republicans to challenge Palazzo in Tuesday’s primary election, was flanked in a Thursday press conference by four fellow candidates, including third-runner in Tuesday’s primary businessman Clay Wagner and distant fourth-runner state Sen. Brice Wiggins.

“My campaign slogan was we deserve better than what we have, and we’ve got the man right here who will be better,” Wagner said at the Ezell press conference. “He’s got my full endorsement.”

Wiggins noted he and Ezell have been longtime friends and worked together when Wiggins was an assistant district attorney.

“He is an honorable, stand-up law enforcement guy,” Wiggins said. “He knows how to get the job done. He knows how to take on the things we’ve seen in D.C. … 63% of the voters in South Mississippi (in the Tuesday primary) chose somebody other than the incumbent. That’s a mandate for change.”

Palazzo, who has held the 4th District U.S. House seat in South Mississippi since 2011, received about 32% of Tuesday’s primary vote in unofficial results — a poor showing for a longtime GOP incumbent in a district considered safely Republican. Ezell received 25% and Wagner 22%.

The Republican primary race for the 4th District has not centered on major policy differences to date, but more on Palazzo. He has been under a congressional ethics investigation for a year and a half over allegations of misspending campaign and congressional money and misuse of his office. Over years, Palazzo has also faced criticism for not holding town halls or attending many public events in his district, garnering a nickname of “No-show Palazzo” among detractors.

While endorsing Ezell on Thursday, challenger Carl Boyanton said: “I ran with one thing in mind: to get Palazzo out of office.”

READ MORE: Ethics complaints against Rep. Steven Palazzo likely to ‘evaporate’ in Congress

Palazzo, who left the district headed back to Washington on Tuesday before primary votes were counted, did not immediately respond to a request for comments to his campaign spokesman on Thursday.

In a press release after Tuesday’s vote pushing him into a runoff, Palazzo said: “It’s an honor to serve south Mississippi, and it’s something I do not take for granted. I’m grateful for our supporters and volunteers who worked hard in this election and who will work hard to help us over the next three weeks. We now turn our attention to the run-off, and we will not be out-worked. We will continue talking to voters about what we’ve been able to accomplish and our plans for promoting policies to restore economic growth, secure our borders, and keep Americans safe.”

READ MORE: Trump coming to Mississippi. Will he endorse in GOP midterm runoffs?

Ezell, in a new runoff ad, continued to hit Palazzo on the ethics allegations and complaints of being inaccessible in his home district.

“You have a clear choice,” Ezell said. “Steven Palazzo has been under the cloud of an ethics investigation … Mike Ezell has served with honesty and integrity as a law enforcement officer for 40 years fighting crime, cleaning up corruption and saving taxpayers millions. On June 28, the choice is clear. Mike Ezell is the conservative Republican who will show up to represent our values every day.”

The winner of the June 28 Republican primary for the 4th Congressional District will face Democratic former longtime Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, who handily won Tuesday’s Democratic primary, in the Nov. 8 general election.

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Reuben Anderson, Mississippi’s first African American Supreme Court justice of the modern era, had the responsibility of introducing former President Bill Clinton at the recent memorial ceremony for his longtime friends, Gov. and First Lady William and Elise Winter.

Before making that introduction, Anderson said he wanted to recognize “my congressman.” He described 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson as “the most unusual politician you will ever meet. He is not interested in getting rich. He is not interested in a higher office, and he shuns publicity.”

Reasonable people can differ on whether Anderson was being overly generous of “a fella I have known for over 50 years,” but what is not debatable is that Thompson will not be able to shun publicity this week.

Thompson, the Bolton native who has held the 2nd Congressional District post since 1993, will be at the center of attention as the special committee he chairs holds prime-time hearings beginning Thursday on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by those trying to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election. A big part of the committee’s work centers around the role of former President Donald Trump and his allies in the attack.

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson tapped to lead committee investigating Jan. 6 riot

Thursday’s hearing begins at 7 p.m. It and a separate hearing next week will be carried live by most major networks and cable news channels — with the notable exception of Fox News.

“I want, as an African American, to be able to say to the world that I helped stabilize our government when insurrectionists tried to take over,” Thompson recently told CNN of the hearings.

Thompson — the dean of the Mississippi congressional delegation and indeed someone who has worked to avoid the limelight — has built his long political career on protecting democracy.

As a young adult in the 1960s, he worked to register African Americans to vote and to ensure votes were counted. Now leading the Jan. 6 Commission, he is effectively doing similar work: ensuring that legally cast votes are counted and that the nation’s representative democracy is protected from any future efforts to overturn the results of an election.

During a 2018 Mississippi Today interview, Thompson recalled in the 1960s as a Tougaloo College political science student working in the Mississippi Delta trying to register people to vote on behalf of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer’s congressional bid.

“I was talking to my mother, and she was saying you know we don’t vote here in Bolton,” Thompson recalled. “It was a shock to me that I was up in Sunflower County helping register Black people to vote, and even in my hometown they didn’t enjoy the same luxury.”

Thompson’s auto mechanic father, who died in 1964 — the same year of passage of the federal Voting Rights Act designed to ensure racial minorities were not denied the right to vote — never got to vote. His mother, a schoolteacher, did, and most likely her first vote cast was for her son when he ran and was elected to the board of aldermen in his hometown of Bolton in 1969.

While Thompson won that election, it took a ruling of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to ensure victory for him and for two other African Americans elected that year in Bolton.

Thursday’s Jan. 6 Commission hearings could be viewed as a continuation of Bennie Thompson’s life’s work in terms of trying to ensure fair elections.

“I’m a passionate believer that in a democracy you have to follow the rule of law,” Thompson recently told NPR. “It has nothing to do with individuals. It has nothing to do with wealth. It has nothing to do with status in the community. It’s the law. The law is colorblind.”

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You know about Ole Miss and Southern Miss baseball teams winning NCAA Regionals and facing off this weekend in a Super Regional at Hattiesburg. You know about Mississippi State winning the national championship of college baseball last season. You know about the tradition of success at Delta State.

College baseball: It gets no better than what we have here in Mississippi. And it goes a lot deeper than those aforementioned. Last week, Pearl River Community College, 30 miles south of Hattiesburg in Poplarville, won the national championship of junior college baseball.

At Enid, Okla., the Wildcats, coached by Jackson native Michael Avalon, lost to Madison (Wisc.) College 11-4 in the first game of a best-of-three championship series and then came back and smoked Madison 19-1 and 7-2 the next two games. Madison entered the championship series having lost only eight of 56 games the entire season.  Pearl River beat them twice in two days by a total of 23 runs.

There’s so much to tell you about those Pearl River Wildcats, including the fact that 12 players off the team have either signed or committed to play for Division I teams in college baseball. That’s not even counting centerfielder Tate Parker of Gulfport, who should be named national junior college player of the year any day now and hasn’t committed to any four-year college yet. He may just go pro.

All those guys will follow a path so many Wildcats have taken over the past few seasons under Avalon. Slugging outfielder Reece Ewing and closer Landon Harper, former Wildcats, are two of the keys to Southern Miss’ success this season. Pitcher Cole Tolbert, who earned the most outstanding pitcher award of the national championship series (16 strikeouts in nine innings), has signed to play at Ole Miss.

The Wildcats lose a slew of players off the championship team, but Avalon believes he has “some really outstanding players waiting in the wings” to make another run next season.

“Pearl River will win as long as he’s there,” says Harper, the Southern Miss closer from Meridian. “Coach Avalon is a winner. No matter where I go or what I do, I am going to remember that man the rest of my life. He makes you not only a better player but a better person.”

Avalon, who grew up in south Jackson and pitched for Forest Hill, operates the Pearl River program, basing every aspect of his coaching on a four word mantra: “Success = Organization, Attitude, Pride.” The acronym is S.O.A.P. You’ll find it anywhere you look in the Pearl River locker room, dugout and clubhouse.

Michael Avalon didn’t come up with the slogan. No, he took it from his dad, the late Billy Avalon, who was a much-beloved English literature teacher and coach in the Jackson area for decades.

Billy Avalon, a gruff-voiced ex-Marine who loved his family, words and sports (probably in that order), was the best coach Michael Avalon ever had, Michael says. And if you talk to students who had Billy as their English or literature teacher at St. Joseph or Madison Central, most will tell you he was the best teacher they ever had. 

Billy Avalon used the S.O.A.P. mantra as a teacher, coach and parent. “I remember him asking me that of success, organization, attitude and pride, which was the most difficult to sustain,” Michael Avalon said. “I said success, and he said, ‘No, it’s pride, pride in everything you do, doing everything the best you can do. That’s the hardest.

“And that’s what we stress in this baseball program. I don’t want them to just be the best players they can be. I want them to be the best students, the best citizens, the best sons, the best teammates they can be.”

Says Harper, the USM closer: “S.O.A.P. was part of everything we did there. I mean, it’s stuff like, if you see a piece of trash on the side of the road, don’t pass it by. Pick it up.”

His players describe Michael Avalon as “intense” as a coach. He apparently got that from his father, too.

“This will tell you how intense my dad was,” Michael Avalon says. “Once, when he was coaching his girls basketball team, he broke a finger calling a timeout.”

He did what?

“Really, he broke his own finger calling a timeout,” Avalon says, chuckling. “When he made the ’T’ sign with his hands, he slammed his fingers on one hand into the other hand too hard. I’m telling you, he was intense.

“At the same time, he was a man who would do anything he could to help anybody he encountered. Not just his students or his players, but somebody he just met on the side of the road.”

Billy Avalon, friends say, was intensely proud of Michael’s coaching success. He made every game he could make. He was there for all the state and region championships his son’s teams won at Pearl River. He was in Enid, Okla., in 2019 when the Wildcats were eliminated from the national championship tournament.

Last July, Billy and Michael were having one of their typically brief daily phone conversations when Billy said, “You know what you gotta do next season?”

“What?” Michael said.

Said Billy, “You gotta go back to Enid and win the whole damned thing.” 

A couple days later, Billy Avalon, 72, was killed in an automobile accident.

This season, as Pearl River won 45 games and ranked at or near the top of national polls, Michael missed his father terribly — at least partly because he knew how much Billy would have enjoyed the success.

Billy missed the Region 23 championship. He missed his son’s team ascending to No. 1 in the national polls. He missed them winning three straight games at Enid to reach the three-game national championship series. He missed the ultimate victory.

Or did he?

Pearl River was leading the championship game 7-2 going into the ninth inning. On the P.A. system, the recording of Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” blared. Besides Proust, Dickens, Tolstoy and Joyce, Billy Avalon loved Springsteen. “Glory Days” was his favorite song.

Says Michael Avalon, “When Glory Days came on, I knew dad was there, knew he was watching. You couldn’t even make that up.”

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