In a brief filed on July 22, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch urged the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that ruled that the Constitution protects a pregnant person’s right to have an abortion.
In the brief, Fitch called Roe and further abortion-related rulings, most notably Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “egregiously wrong” and argued they recognize a right with no actual Constitutional basis.
“They have proven hopelessly unworkable,” Fitch wrote. “They have inflicted profound damage… And nothing but a full break from those cases can stem the harms they have caused.”
The case at the center of Fitch’s brief, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, revolves around Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case in May, marking the first time since Roe that the Supreme Court has taken up a a pre-viability ban case — a law that prohibits access to abortion based on the amount of time pregnant before the fetus is viable, or around 24 weeks when it is able to live outside the womb.
The 15-week ban, passed by state lawmakers in 2018 and immediately blocked by lower federal courts, will provide one of the first reproductive rights cases argued before the Supreme Court since Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed in 2020, creating the current 6-3 conservative majority.
Fitch argued in the brief that questions over abortion access should be left to state legislators and voters.
“The national fever on abortion can break only when this court returns abortion policy to the states — where agreement is more common, compromise is often possible and disagreement can be resolved at the ballot box,” Fitch wrote.
If the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe, an existing state law will be triggered banning abortion in most instances in Mississippi. The law, which would permit abortions only when the mother’s life is at risk and in cases of rape, was passed in 2007 by the Mississippi Legislature. Nine other states have similar “trigger laws” in effect.
The particular question the justices agreed to decide in the case is “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”
In Mississippi’s original appeal to the Supreme Court last year, Fitch argued the 15-week ban complied with existing precedent, and that the court should only overturn Roe if it concluded there was no other way to uphold the ban. Fitch’s latest brief abandoned this earlier, narrower focus on pre-viability restrictions.
Fitch’s brief also goes against how Gov. Tate Reeves described the case during a June 6 appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“The question is not are you going to overturn Roe v. Wade, the question is: The science has changed and therefore it makes sense for the court to review their decisions from the past and this is a vehicle in which for them to do it,” Reeves said. “Let me just tell you that for people such as myself that are pro-life, I believe that the Supreme Court made a mistake in the 1970s, but that’s not the issue at stake that is before the court, hopefully when the arguments are heard sometime in the fall.”
Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, only performs abortions until 16-weeks, though current Mississippi law only bans abortion at 20-weeks.
Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group that is representing JWHO in the Dobbs case, said Fitch’s brief “reveals the extreme and regressive strategy, not just of this law, but of the avalanche of abortion bans and restrictions that are being passed across the country.”
The Supreme Court’s next term begins in October, with a ruling in the Dobbs case likely coming sometime in 2022. The Court’s ruling could reaffirm Roe and Casey, hollow them out, or overturn them all together.
Reeves said recently he will not be issuing any mask mandates and has announced Mississippi’s COVID-19 State of Emergency will end on Aug. 15. Most schools are set to begin the new school year in early to mid-August.
The group’s letter coincided with the report of 3,608 new cases over a three-day period, and recent new infections trending similarly to a year ago.
Though the understanding of COVID-19 has evolved over the course of the pandemic, “one thing has never changed: Masks work, and they are a simple and effective way to help prevent the spread of this disease,” the letter states.
Reeves doubled down on his decision on Monday afternoon.
“Governor Reeves has no intention of requiring students and staff to wear masks when they’re in school this fall,” Bailey Martin, a spokesperson for Reeves, said.
While governors in states with low vaccination rates like Alabama and Arkansas have been speaking up urging people to get vaccinated, Reeves has been mostly quiet. It’s been months since he held a COVID-19 specific press conference, and while he said in a recent statement he encourages Mississippians to get vaccinated, he said he respects people’s “right to make that choice” of not getting the vaccine.
The teachers’ group said that the Mississippi Department of Health’s current policy advising unvaccinated individuals to wear masks doesn’t make sense in the school setting.
“It is imperative that schools see state-led intervention beyond advising mask wear among unvaccinated students and educators. This policy has the potential to create more problems than it solves: How will we determine who is and is not vaccinated? Are there repercussions for lying about vaccination status or choosing not to wear a mask if you are unvaccinated? Who is responsible for confirming a student’s vaccination status?” the letter said. “Simply put: It is unfair to ask educators to become their school’s vaccination police when putting on a mask will help keep the entire school community safe and healthy.”
A separate teacher group, the Mississippi Professional Educators, wrote in a newsletter Friday that many of its members had questions about vaccine requirements.
“We have received several inquiries from members as to if a district may ask if an employee has received the COVID-19 vaccination. Our attorney has advised that a district may ask if an employee has received the vaccine and may ask for proof of vaccination.”
Some school districts, such as Jackson Public Schools and West Tallahatchie School District, will be requiring everyone to wear masks when the year begins.
But many of the larger districts, including Madison, Rankin, Clinton, DeSoto and those on the Gulf Coast, are currently making masks optional.
The Mississippi Association of Educators is hosting a Facebook event Monday at 5:30 p.m. with MAE President Erica Jones, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, and State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers.
Ole Miss football great Patrick Willis will go into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Saturday. Credit: Ole Miss Athletics
Sixty years into its existence, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame this week prepares for the biggest weekend in its history. That’s no exaggeration.
This Saturday evening, the state’s sports shrine will induct 11 deserving individuals, the most ever in a single year. Because of 2020’s postponement due to Covid, the Hall of Fame classes of both 2020 and 2021 will be installed at a Saturday night banquet at the Jackson Convention Center.
Rick Cleveland
Created by the Jackson Touchdown Club in 1961, the MSHOF often has had a heavy football flavoring at its annual induction banquets. Other sports, especially basketball, at times have seemed under-represented. That’s not the case this year. This surely will be the most diverse group of inductees in the Hall of Fame’s existence. That’s no exaggeration either.
The newest Hall of Famers will include three basketball greats, two former football stars, two golfers, a tennis great, a baseball coach, an administrator and an architect. Actually, four basketball players were elected but former NBA standout Antonio McDyess, selected for the Class of 2020, will be inducted at a later date.
That 2020 class includes Jerry Boatner, the winning-est high school baseball coach in Mississippi history; Pete Brown, the first African American to win on the PGA Tour; architect Janet Marie Smith, who has changed the way America builds its stadiums; former Mississippi State athletic director Larry Templeton, who remains a prominent administrator in the Southeastern Conference; and Ole Miss and NFL linebacking great Patrick Willis.
The Class of 2021 includes Debbie Brock, the remarkable point guard who helped Delta State win three straight women’s basketball national championships; Mississippi State and NBA great Erick Dampier; Jackson State and NBA great Lindsey Hunter; Ole Miss and NFL offensive line star Terence Metcalf; Dave Randall, surely the most accomplished Mississippi tennis player in history; and Randy Watkins, a national junior golf champion, Ole Miss All American Mississippi golf hall of famer.
All are deserving. In many cases, their numbers boggle the mind. Consider: Boatner, already a member of the national baseball coaches hall of fame, won a remarkable 1202 baseball games, first at Clarkdale and then at West Lauderdale. His teams won 14 state championships. And that’s just baseball. His softball teams won eight state championships. Before he coached, Boatner was a fine player for the legendary Boo Ferriss at Delta State.
Hollywood could make a movie about the life of Brown, the son of poor sharecroppers born in Port Gibson. When the Brown family moved to Jackson, young Pete began to caddy at the municipal golf course and learned to play the game with two golf clubs, one left-handed and one right-handed. He learned to play it so well, he became one of the first of his race to play the PGA Tour and in 1964, 11 years before Tiger Woods was born, he won the old Waco Open. In 1970, he won the more prestigious Andy Williams/San Diego Open, prevailing in a playoff with Tony Jacklin, the 1969 British Open champion who would win the U.S. Open later that year. Brown, the only deceased inductee this year, will be represented by his wife, Margaret.
Janet Marie Smith
Smith, a Jackson native and Mississippi State architecture graduate, becomes the first architect in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. She could well someday in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, as well. Her hardhat already is – and should be. She famously designed Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which has become a trendsetter for Major League stadiums. She has since directed the renovation of Boston’s famous Fenway Park and most recently the renovation of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where she still works for the Dodgers.
When Larry Templeton, a State grad and Starkville native, took the job as athletic director in 1987, the school’s athletic department was struggling both on the field and financially with aging facilities. Templeton, a former sports information assistant (and, for a while, the golf coach) changed all that. State prospered under Templeton’s guidance. He earned the respect of his peers, becoming the longest serving chairman of SEC athletic directors and had of the NCAA’s baseball committee. He hired the SEC’s first Black head football coach, Sylvester Croom.
Willis, the former Ole Miss football All American, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2019. At some point, he surely will go into the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his remarkable career with San Francisco 49ers, where he was a first team All Pro linebacker for five seasons. Willis sometimes seemed a tackling machine, winning the Dick Butkus Award as the nation’s best linebacker at Ole Miss and then again in the NFL, one of only two players ever to achieve the feat. (The other is Luke Kuechly.)
Moving to the Class of 2021, Brock becomes surely the smallest of all MSHOF Inductees. Listed at four feet, 11 inches, she led Delta State to three national basketball championships in the 1970s with her playmaking and defensive skills. In four seasons, the Forest Hill native led the Lady Statesmen to 120 victories against only nine defeats as the consummate point guard, making All American three times and eventually being inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Dampier, two feet taller than Brock, also is an important part of Mississippi basketball history. His defensive presence in the lane was critical to the 1996 Mississippi State run to the Final Four, the only Magnolia State men’s basketball team to achieve that feat. Dampier, a Monticello native, controlled the lane for State, and then became the 10th player taken in the NBA Draft. He played 16 years of pro basketball, scoring more than 7,000 points and grabbing more than 7,000 rebounds.
Hunter, who played basketball for Murrah High School in Jackson, was highly recruited out of high school but became of the most accomplished basketball players in Magnolia State history. He signed with Alcorn out of Murrah but quickly transferred to Jackson State where he averaged over 20 points per game for his career and became a first round draft choice. In the NBA, his teams made the playoffs in 12 of his 17 seasons. He scored nearly 8,000 points and passed out more than 2,500 assists as a pro. Hunter is now head coach at Mississippi Valley State.
A Clarksdale native, Metcalf as one of the state’s top football recruits before signing with Ole Miss and becoming one of the school’s most accomplished offensive linemen – All-SEC for two seasons and a consensus All American in 2001. In the NFL, Metcalf played eight seasons, seven with the Chicago Bears.
River Hills tennis pro Randall was born in Memphis but was raised in Tupelo where he was a state junior champion and nationally ranked junior. He signed with Ole Miss and made both All-SEC and All American there, helping Ole Miss to its first-ever NCAA Tournament. As a pro, Randall excelled in doubles, playing 12 years on the Association of Tennis Pros (ATP) tour. In 1993, Randall became the first Mississippian to win a draw match at Wimbledon, defeating Russian Andrei Cherkasov in the opening round.
Randy Watkins
Watkins first gained national prominence as a 15-year-old in 1977 when he won the PGA-sponsored National Junior Golf Championship. Recruited by many of the nation’s collegiate golf powerhouse programs, Watkins chose to stay home and played for Ole Miss where he became an All-SEC and All American golfer, winning the SEC individual championship in 1982. Watkins turned pro, earned his PGA Tour privileges but a series of back injuries marred his professional playing career. He owns and operates three golf courses in the Jackson area where he is a highly respected teaching pro active in the promotion of junior golf.
In addition to the Hall of Fame inductions, long-time Jackson businessman Con Maloney will be presented The Rube Award for his lifetime of contributions to Mississippi Sports. Maloney helped bring professional baseball back to Jackson and then bought the team when the New York Mets wanted local ownership. In addition, Maloney, a long-time state senator, was one of the original supporters of the idea of a Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum and has served on the board of directors ever since it was created.
•••
Banquet tickets remain on sale for Saturday night’s reception and banquet at the Jackson Convention Center. Call 601 982-8264 for details or go to msfame.com. The reception begins at 5:30 p.m. with the banquet to follow at 7 p.m.
The weekend’s festivities begin with a drawdown and sports auction Friday night at 6 p.m. at the Madison Healthplex Training Center. Then, Saturday morning this year’s inductees and many past inductees will be available for autographs at the museum from 10-11:30 a.m.
Mississippi Today reporters Will Stribling and Geoff Pender discuss the Delta variant of COVID-19 and the spike in cases and hospitalizations as Mississippi schools prepare to start the year. They also discuss what the state’s leaders are doing (or not) to promote vaccinations.
Adam Ganucheau: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Other Side, Mississippi Today’s political podcast. The Other Side lets you hear directly from the most connected players and observers across the spectrum of politics in Mississippi.
Geoff Pender: [00:00:17] I’m Geoff Pender. I’m joined today with my Mississippi Today colleague Will Stribling. Let’s jump right into it.
To use an old mangled saying, it’s deja vu all over again. It seems like we are here in July of 2021, and we’re looking at Mississippi COVID numbers that resemble the worst of last year as I understand. We’re recording this on a Friday, July 23. And Will, what have we seen with the COVID numbers this week?
Will Stribling: [00:00:51] All right. Well, do you want the good news first or all the bad?
Geoff Pender: [00:00:56] Is there some good news? Let’s hear it.
Will Stribling: [00:00:58] Well, the good news, as hollow of a victory that it may be, we’re no longer 50th in vaccination rates. We’re now 49th. We’re beating Alabama by 0.01 percentage where our fully vaccinated population is at 34%.
And theirs is at 33.9. We’ve been swapping back and forth with them. You know, it might, you know, depending on what numbers are reported to the CDC that day, it may go back and forth. But there is that. Today MSDH is reporting 1,317 new cases. Yesterday was the first time since February that we reported more than a thousand cases in a single day.
But we are doing a lot better than some of our neighbors right now. Like on Wednesday, Louisiana reported 5,388 new cases of COVID and their vax rate is a little higher than ours. And that total for them was the third highest daily count since the start of the pandemic. Overall, where we are right now is around where we were when school started last year. So that’s where that deja vu kinda comes in. But we’re not anywhere close to where we were in February where the entire hospital system across the state was on the verge of collapse.
Geoff Pender: [00:02:12] Are we headed that way though? We’ve seen some pretty strong warnings from Dr. Dobbs and others that they’re calling this the fourth wave. Are we headed to such precipices?
Will Stribling: [00:02:24] Dobbs said this week that there’s not a lot of slack in the system, as far as ICU beds go and our number of ventilators. There are 11 hospitals across the state that have no ICU capacity right now. Before that was just because they were full of COVID patients.
But now hospitals have started to go ahead and allow those beds to be booked for elective surgeries people have put off and other procedures. And so that’s what’s limiting the capacity right now, but it’s, you know, it’s not good. And it’s so bad that, you know, there are COVID patients in the Delta that are having to be flown to the Pine Belt just to get a bed. And another thing that sets this fourth wave apart from the ones that proceeded it is that this Delta variant is a lot better at infecting young people and children than mainline COVID or any of the other variants were. So we’ve had, you know, infants in ICUs with COVID in Mississippi and across the country, you know, this week and last week.
Geoff Pender: [00:03:33] And this is breaking right as schools get ready to start, or, some are starting back at this point. So you mentioned, well to look at maybe one other silver lining, Dr. Dobbs said as we did indicate, that vaccination rates have seen an uptick at least, correct?
Will Stribling: [00:03:50] Yeah. They have been just cascading downwards since the week that ended.
On February 27th, we had our highest, that was under 132,000. And then they’ve gone down just considerably each week following that. Our lowest number was the week that ended July 3rd with just 19,956. And they’ve been hovering around that since the beginning of June, just like early to mid 20K range per week.
But we saw a big jump from July 10th to July 17th, from 20,000 to 27,000. And that’s a trend that I and others expect to continue over the next few weeks because parents are getting their kids vaccinated for school. Just this week I came home one day and my little sister who’s 12, so she’s old enough to get the vaccine, said that she was going to get it, so she didn’t have to wear a mask at school. And, you know, a lot of you know, whatever it takes to get people to take their shots, right? But I imagine a lot of people are in that same position or they’re saying how nasty. this Delta variant is, and it’s finally giving them that prod to just go ahead and take it.
Geoff Pender: [00:04:57] Right. Right. You mentioned Alabama stepping up, stepping up their game. Yeah, we’ve seen some news across across the country. Some states that have low vaccination rates: Alabama, Arkansas, Utah, West Virginia. These happen to be all Republican governors of these states. And we’ve seen this week that those governors are kinda out on the stump urging people to get vaccinated. Some of these states have either created or continued some incentive programs.
One thing I have to ask here is where is our Governor Tate Reeves on this? We would appear not seen a whole lot from him. You know, Mississippi governor, they always say is pretty constitutionally weak. What they do have is a bully pulpit. They’re the state’s cheerleader so to speak. So a lot of their power or ability to get things done comes from talking to the people and using, using that megaphone.
We haven’t seen our governor strongly out pushing vaccinations, have we?
Will Stribling: [00:06:09] No, it’s been months since Governor Reeves has held a COVID-19 specific press conference. He really seems to be more focused on reopening the economy, bringing in new investments, but as far as the spike and this fourth wave, he’s been really quiet.
See yesterday to WLBT, a statement from Governor Reeves’ office read,” Governor Reeves believes the vaccines are safe and effective and are an important part of our path beyond COVID-19. He continues to encourage Mississippians to get vaccinated, especially given the rise in new COVID infections in all 50 states, but believes in their right to decide what is best for them and their families.”
And that last sentence there is doing a lot of lifting.
Geoff Pender: [00:06:52] Sure. He’s thrown that caveat in, and I think here recently got strong stuff.
Will Stribling: [00:06:59] And it’s just a huge contrast with, you know, even the Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, he’s doing a statewide tour right now, encouraging people to get vaccinated.
And so we see other Republican governors—
Geoff Pender: [00:07:10] As from what I understand, Kay Ivey in Alabama, Spencer Cox in Utah, Governor Justice in West Virginia. Just from what I’ve seen this week, all those governors again, similarly situated red states yeah, they’re out beating the drum whatever, but yeah, for whatever reason, this is not something that Governor Reeves appears to have really taken on. To me, it’s a shame this has been politicized. But it is what it is. We have seen vaccinations politicized. This is your beat, your bailiwick. What do you see along those lines? You communicate with a lot of our readers. And what are you seeing as far as vaccine hesitancy?
Will Stribling: [00:07:53] There are, you know, camps. They’re the vaccine skeptics or anti-vaxers that are just never going to take the shot no matter what anyone says. There are other people who are still saying, you know, “I want to wait. I wanna, you know, see how other people respond,” but, you know, millions and millions of people in this country have been vaccinated.
Very few of them have experienced side effects or have experienced breakthrough cases. So I don’t know what those folks are waiting for. They’re really just counting down the clock until they get infected. And like Dr. Dobbs has said, at this point you’re likely either going to get the vaccine or you’re going to get COVID cause this, this Delta variant has just completely changed the game. You know, a study released the other day that showed that the viral loads in Delta infections, and a viral load is the measurement of the amount of virus in an organism, you know, in the bloodstream. But the viral loads in the Delta infections were a thousand time higher than the earlier variants, or the main line COVID, when the virus is first detected in the infected person. And, you know, Delta is, is 50 to 60% more infectious than the Alpha variant and up to twice as infectious as the original strain of the coronavirus. This is why. It’s because you’ve got so much more virus in your system and the spike proteins on the Delta variant particles are better at resisting the antibodies, being able to grab onto them. And so that’s you know, I admit fault that I, you know, I’ve been fully vaxed since early February and recently I’ve gotten kinda more lax with masking in public and like I’m sure a lot of people are. But seeing these breakthrough infections has really scared me.
You know, we’ve seen a lot more people that are fully vaxed get breakthrough infection. And I do want to add to that, that though the risk for you getting a breakthrough infection after being vaccinated is still extremely low. And even if you do your chances of being hospitalized or dying even lower all over. The breakthrough infections that we’ve seen in the state that have resulted in deaths and hospitalizations have been in folks older than the age of 65.
So those are, you know, people that are the highest risk.
Geoff Pender: [00:10:13] From what I understand though to o, the rise of variants. The way variants work, lack of vaccinations is playing into that, right? It’s giving this virus room to mutate. Yeah, there’s been some talk and I haven’t seen any thing on it, I guess, lately, but about vaccines getting full approval, as opposed to just the emergency approval.
Now, do you think that would convince more people to get vaccinated once that happens?
Will Stribling: [00:10:43] Yeah. There is a subset of vaccine hesitant folks that are saying that that is what they’re waiting for. Whether or not they’ll actually do it afterwards is yet to be seen. But yeah, hopefully that will increase trust in the vaccine.
President Biden said this week that he expects that to happen you know, in sometime in September, October, but it’ll be coming soon and that’ll be good for businesses or schools that want to mandate the vaccine. That will give them the more cover because you know the lawsuits that are being filed against schools and businesses that are trying to par that right now are saying, “Hey, this only has emergency approval. You’re trying to make me get an experimental vaccine.” And that’s like the only real argument that they have right now. We saw that UMMC announced a new policy that’ll go into effect at the end of July that’s going to require all employees and students to either be vaccinated— and they have several methods by which to verify folks’ vaccination status there— or to wear N95 masks at all times while on
the premises, but that mask option is only available to people until the vaccines get that full FDA approval. After that a condition of employment or of learning at UMMC is going to be that you have to be fully vaccinated. So I’m interested to see if other you know, healthcare entities in the state or LTCs or schools follow suit.
Geoff Pender: [00:12:14] Right, right. That could, from what we’re seeing now, that could get ugly politically. Although, I mean, let’s face it. It’s not that unprecedented. I mean, I remember back to my childhood, which was long ago, you had, you know, specified list of vaccinations you had to have before you could attend public school. It’s not totally unprecedented here, but this is again, as we said, really become politicized, I guess would be the would be the word. Yeah. Social media appears to be playing a big role.
Will Stribling: [00:12:46] It is, you know, we see the Biden administration taking Carter rhetoric against social media companies for their role in allowing that misinformation to fester. And we’re seeing that even hearing, you know, that it’s way easier to get on Facebook and get vaccine misinformation than, than accurate information. But and it was so bad that the Department of Health had to or they decided to remove the ability to comment on any of the—
Geoff Pender: [00:13:13] Mississippi Department of Health, right?
Will Stribling: [00:13:15] Yeah.
Geoff Pender: [00:13:15] And I’ve seen they’ve caught a little flack for that. In this day and age, it appears that one person’s misinformation is another’s science. So that’s going to be really interesting how that plays out.
Will Stribling: [00:13:29] And it’s so unfortunate because, you know, we saw in June Mississippi returned like 872,000 doses of vaccine to the federal government pool because of of low demand.
And they’re, you know across a bunch of different states. You know, you see, you know, thousands of doses going to waste every week because they can’t use up an entire vial. And then most of the world right now can’t get access to vaccines at all. And so we have all of the supply here that is just not being utilizedfor folks to keep themselves and their families safe. And it’s really unfortunate.
Geoff Pender: [00:14:02] It is. And I don’t know, personally thinking back a year or so ago, you know, our country was shut down, a world upended by a pandemic. I guess it just seems a little surreal. I don’t know if I would have believed you if you told me back then that, “Hey, there’s effective, safe vaccines for this, but people aren’t going to take it.” I would’ve probably not believed that back then. But again, hopefully this fourth wave is not going to be like some of the previous ones. I know state leaders have said the goal here is to prevent our hospital systems from being overloaded,
Will Stribling: [00:14:42] What we’re most likely to see are really localized outbreaks in the counties with the lowest vaccination rates and then in schools because there are, you know, vast differences between the back to school plans for different school districts across the state. Like say, in Jackson, masks are going to be required on day one, but in in Madison and Rankin counties, they’re going to be be optional. And they’ve of course said that they will go back to making them mandatory if there is an outbreak, but there’s undoubtedly going to be. What really worries me is you know, kids getting infected, there’s a very low chance that they’re going to be hospitalized or develop a serious you know, have long COVID or something like that.
But then they could bring it home to, you know, their grandparents, faculty, and staff parents. So we’re going to see a lot of community spread through kids. And so that’s what we’re looking at for the fall semester, at least.
Geoff Pender: [00:15:38] Wow, okay, well, as you said you opened this with the scant good news that vaccinations do appear on the increase at this point, so hopefully that’s a trend we’ll see. Maybe some other things will play into that. And we’ll see things head back in the right direction again, but they certainly have not been for this week or so.
Will Stribling: [00:15:59] Yeah, I’m going to be keeping my eyes locked on not just the overall vaccination rate, but the rates for young people. Right now only 7% of 12 to 15 year olds in Mississippi are fully vaccinated and only 13% of 16 to 17 year olds, so I’ll be interested to see if there’s significant gains in those two groups over the next, you know, month or two.
Geoff Pender: [00:16:23] Right. To follow this news follow, Will Stribling at Mississippi Today and our other colleagues. And Will, good talking with you, but not a very good uplifting subject at this point.
Hopefully we see that turn around.
For
Will Stribling: [00:16:39] sure. Thanks for having me, Geoff,
Adam Ganucheau: [00:16:47] As we cover the biggest political stories in this state you don’t want to miss an episode of The Other Side. We’ll bring you more reporting from every corner of the state, sharing the voices of Mississippians and how they’re impacted by the news. So, what do we need from you, the listener? We need your feedback and support.
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Subscribe to our weekly podcast on your favorite podcast app or stream episodes online at MississippiToday.org/the-other-side. For the Mississippi Today team, I’m Adam Ganucheau. The Other Side is produced by Mississippi Today and engineered by Blue Sky Studios. We hope you’ll join us for our next episode.
Robert “Bob” Parris Moses, a civil rights leader, educational advocate and pioneer in grassroots community organizing whose efforts played a key role in helping Black Mississippians gain basic rights, died Sunday at 86.
On Sunday morning, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project’s 60th Anniversary Conference posted on social media that Moses, a civil rights hero, had died.
“We honor his vision, tenacity, and fearlessness. His deep belief in people who find themselves in the socio/economic bottom made a fundamental difference for millions of his fellow Americans,” the SNCC Legacy Project said in a statement.
Moses, a New York native, was a field secretary for SNCC in Mississippi. He also served as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), which used community organizing as a tool to launch voter registration projects across the state.
COFO served as an umbrella for an alliance between the SNCC, the Congress of Racial Equality and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and helped focus civil rights efforts in the state. COFO was known for its young organizers’ door-to-door canvassing, voter registration preparation and workshops, and actual registration attempts in Mississippi.
Through his work with both of these organizations, Moses was instrumental in the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the 1964 voter registration drive created to increase the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. That summer, white volunteers traveled to the South to work alongside African Americans who were fighting for access to the polls.
“At the heart of these efforts was SNCC’s idea that people—ordinary people long denied this power—could take control of their lives,” the SNCC statement continued. “These were the people that Bob brought to the table to fight for a seat at it: maids, sharecroppers, day workers, barbers, beauticians, teachers, preachers and many others from all walks of life.”
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP and a Mississippian, said “Bob Moses was a giant, a strategist at the core of the civil rights movement. Through his life’s work, he bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice, making our world a better place. He fought for our right to vote, our most sacred right. He knew that justice, freedom and democracy were not a state, but an ongoing struggle.
“So may his light continue to guide us as we face another wave of Jim Crow laws. His example is more important now than ever…Rest in power Bob.”
In response to the state Democratic Party denying access to Black Mississippians, Moses, along with Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and others created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The effort created national attention at the 1964 National Democratic Convention as conflict developed over whether to recognize the integrated party or the traditional party. New party members ultimately failed at being seated as voting members of the 1964 convention, but their efforts brought new attention to the plight of African Americans in Mississippi and other Southern states and ultimately led to a revolution in the national Democratic Party on racial issues.
“He was a civil rights icon who made sacrifices for what he believed,” said state Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez. “He could have done a lot of things, but he made sacrifices on behalf of the movement.”
In addition to his civil rights work, Moses taught math to students in Tanzania from 1969 to 1976. In 1982, Moses went on to found The Algebra Project. The national organization exists to teach students, especially low income students and students of color, mathematical literacy and prepare them for college.
In 2000, Moses was honored by both the Mississippi House and Senate, whose members in past years had passed laws that he fought to overturn denying voting rights and other basic rights to African Americans.
“One of my greatest honors as a legislator has been to sponsor a resolution honoring Bob Moses for his work with SNCC and, later, with the Algebra Project,” said Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson. “He was a quiet, meticulous, effective visionary and leader and his contributions to helping Mississippi free itself from the yoke of discrimination and tyranny are incalculable.”
State Rep. Alyce Clarke, D-Jackson, was just this past weekend honored at Jackson State University along with Moses and other civil rights leaders as being part of a mural titled “Chain Breakers.” Clarke was the first Black woman elected to the Mississippi Legislature. She began serving in the state House in 1984. Clarke described Moses “as a brilliant person and somebody who did what he said he was going to do….It was an honor to be included in a mural with him and other civil rights leaders.”
Moses also inspired an exhibit in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in downtown Jackson. The museum’s fifth gallery, “A Tremor in the Iceberg,” is inspired by his description of the movement in Mississippi: “A tremor in the middle of the iceberg from a stone which the builders rejected.”
“Staff are saddened to hear of the death of Bob Moses, an American icon who left a tremendous legacy in Mississippi,” said Katie Blount, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “We are honored that he was the keynote speaker during the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Lecture Series in 2014. His commitment to justice is displayed throughout the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.”
States like Texas, Georgia and Florida that have been in the national news recently for efforts that many say will make it more difficult for their citizens to vote still have a long way to go to catch Mississippi.
An objective argument easily can be made that there is no state where it is more difficult to vote than Mississippi.
“Mississippi is one of the most difficult states to vote in in the country,” said David Becker, executive director of the national non-profit Center for Election Innovation & Research. In April, the Center released a study showing that Mississippi is among six states that do not allow no excuse in-person or mail-in voting or both. In one of those six states, Connecticut, voters will decide in 2022 whether to amend their constitution to allow no-excuse early voting. The study cited 36 states as allowing both no-excuse voting by mail and in person and nine states allowing no-excuse early voting, but not mail-in voting.
The national news has covered extensively the law enacted in Georgia that many say will make it more difficult to vote. National boycotts were announced against Georgia. Many companies with ties to Georgia expressed their displeasure and Major League Baseball, in protest of the new law, moved the All Star game from Atlanta to Denver. In Texas, the national media has covered breathlessly the decision of House Democrats to flee the state to prevent a quorum so that Republicans could not pass a bill that would limit voting opportunities.
Yet, Mississippi chugs along with perhaps the most restrictive voting laws in the nation and hardly anyone notices.
“I know for a fact (in)Mississippi…,compared to a state like Georgia, quite frankly, it is still more difficult to vote even after the Georgia law passed,” Becker said.
Of course, Mississippi’s restrictive voting policy is nothing new. At one time Mississippi was a leader in developing and passing laws to deny African Americans the right to vote. And to this day, Mississippi, the state with the nation’s highest percentage of African Americans, still is a national leader in limiting citizens the access to the vote.
In Mississippi, a person must have an excuse to vote early, such as being disabled, over age 65 or be away from home on election day. And Mississippi is the only state to require people to get two documents notarized to vote by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The voter must get both the ballot application and the ballot notarized.
Heck, in some states absentee ballot applications are mailed out to all voters or are available to be downloaded from the internet.
Of course, Mississippi was famously cited by the Democracy Initiative for limiting the accommodations made to voters because of the COVID-19 pandemic during the November 2020 election.
“Mississippi is now the only state in which in-person voting on Election Day is the only option available to all voters,” said a report released before the November election by the Democracy Initiative, which is a coalition of 75 groups advocating for voter access. “In Mississippi, an excuse (other than risk of COVID-19) is required to cast an absentee ballot or to vote early, and not all voters qualify.”
This past November, Gov. Tate Reeves proclaimed on social media, “Based on what I see in other states…I will do everything in my power to make sure universal mail-in voting and no-excuse early voting are not allowed in Mississippi – not while I’m governor. Too much chaos.”
But Becker said that no excuse early voting and voting by mail was not developed in most states because of the coronavirus. It was widely used before the pandemic, including in neighboring Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana.
Becker pointed out that in 2016, 80% of Arizonians voted by mail. That number increased to 90% in 2020. The complaints, he pointed out, were made by people upset with the fact that then-President Donald Trump did not win in Arizona as he did in 2016. Was that the chaos that the governor was referencing?
Becker, a former U.S. Department of Justice senior attorney, argues that having more days of voting actually makes for more secure elections. He said having the extra days provides election officials more opportunities to catch and fix any problems.
By having early voting, Becker said, “It is very likely it (any problem) will be detected so that the impact on the election will be zero. But if you concentrate more voting on election day you have less secure elections.”
The question for Mississippi’s political leadership might be whether they oppose no-excuse early voting because of issues of election security or for some other reason.
Annalyn Swan is an official panelist in this year’s Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 21. Photo courtesy Annalyn Swan.
Annalyn Swan entered the Zoom chat wearing a round straw hat and a blue-and-white patterned shirt. A packed, white bookcase lined the room behind her in her New York City home. It was 5 p.m., and the acclaimed biographer and native Biloxian had just come from drinking ice tea on her neighbor’s screened porch.
“That’s the closest you could possibly get to a Southern porch up here,” she says.
It’s been 50-oddyears since the award-winning writer went north for college, and in the time since, Swan’s accomplishments are the kindpeople dream of moving to New York City to achieve. She was a music critic and senior editor for Newsweek in the 1980s and has been published in the Atlantic, the New Republic and New York Magazine. In 2005, Swan’s biography of the pioneeringabstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, co-authored with her husband Mark Stevens, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
These days, Swan is busy teachingand promoting her and Steven’s new book called “Francis Bacon: Revelations” about the Anglo-Irish painter. The 880-page tome, researched over the course of a decade, is the first comprehensive look at the artist who created some of the darkest, most twisted art of the 20th century.
Swan will be discussing her biography next month as an official panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival. In a recent interview, Swan talked about growing up in Biloxi, her love of Eudora Welty, and what it’s like to be a Mississippian living outside of the Deep South.
“If you grew up a happy Mississippian, you feel kind of special,” she said. “I don’t think of us as ‘redneck land.’ I think of us as something totally different—something only we would know.”
Though she didn’t decide to pursue professional writing until college, Swan fell in love with stories as a kid in Biloxi.
“Growing up, I absolutely knew who Eudora Welty was, and I knew who, of course, (William) Faulkner was, and I knew who Robert Penn Warren was,” she said.
Her earliest memories are of her father reading aloud classics such as “Treasure Island” and “The Jungle Book.” Going to the Biloxi Public Library, a two-story Spanish Mission building a block from the Gulf, was like “walking up into this heaven of books,” she said. Swan was so precocious, she read through the entire children’s floor and was given special permission “to go downstairs” and read the adult books.
Her father, an insurance agent, knew everyone in town. Soon, Swan remembers, he started telling her stories about the eccentric, secretive characters who populated Biloxi. There was George Ohr, the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” and Walter Anderson, the reclusive painter from Ocean Springs who was known to spend hours sitting on his long skiff sketching birds, alligators and palmetto trees.
These stories piqued Swan’s curiosity in the inner lives of artists.
“Those tales almost became to me as mythic as the reading,” she said. “It was this kind of otherworldly thing because I didn’t know these painters, so they took on these great outlines of their lives.”
Swan left Biloxi in 1969 to attend Loyola University in New Orleans. After a year, she transferred to Princeton as part of the second wave of women to attend the Ivy League school. It was an “overwhelmingly male” experience, Swan said. At the time, most of the women who had stepped foot on campus were not students but “imports,” as they were called — coeds from neighboring colleges who visited the upperclassmen on the weekends.
“I remember sitting in big lecture classes and being one of four women in a sea of men,” she said. “We were always sitting together because the guys just didn’t know what to make of the women.”
Since she ventured north, Swan has found herself running into Mississippians again and again. One of the first people she met at Princeton was from Yazoo City. At Time Magazine, where Swan took her first writing gig after moving to New York City in late 1975, she met one of her best friends: the late Alice Rose George from Silver Creek.
“Our relationship was just drenched in Mississippi,” Swan said of George. “It was so indelible, our love of history and culture—I could go on and on. Linens, you know, we all love linens, Mississippi women who go north. Linens! Gentility! Garden gloves! It’s just a way of appreciating things that we grew up with.”
“But there were other Mississippians too,” she added, such as Rea Hederman, the heir to the Clarion-Ledger who purchased the New York Review of Books, and Diane Rosen, a journalist from Birmingham. “We just kind of found each other.”
Together, they convened at annual picnics in Central Park for writers from Mississippi. “We start off by saying, ‘Well I’m from Mississippi,’ and it’s kind of a badge of pride.”
After a decade or so working in magazines, Swan found herself wanting to “bite into a huge piece of apple” — that is, write a book. In 1989, one of Swan’s editors from Time recommended her to write a biography of de Kooning. She was interested in the project because de Kooning reminded her of the characters she grew up with in Biloxi — artists with a complex, intense inner life.
“The more quirky and eccentric the person, the better if you’re writing about an artist,” she said, “because you want to deal with a mind that is as interesting as the art it produced.”
Swan and her husband won the Pulitzer for that work in 2005, the same year Hurricane Katrina hit her hometown. The Pulitzer resulted in an offer to write about Bacon.
“Francis Bacon was the Oscar Wilde of his day,” Swan said. “He dominated every room he was in. He was the ‘king of Soho;’ he was called the ‘sacred monster.’ He always knew he was the most important man in the room. I mean, when you have a life like that … that is just catnip to biographers.”
Long before Swan began writing about artists, she dreamed of pursuing a biography of Eudora Welty. Swan had a connection with an editor at Random House who encouraged her to go down to Jackson to explore the idea.
So she went. Outside Welty’s house in the Belhaven neighborhood of Jackson, Swan had ice tea with a companion of Welty’s. “She said Eudora isn’t here but she’ll think about it.”
Welty decided against her proposal.
“That was my first love,” Swan said. “I wanted to write about her and immerse myself in her books. But that’s the fish that got away.”
The Mississippi Department of Corrections is asking people in prison to renounce gang membership as a part of the department’s Security Threat Group Management Unit.
The one-page form asks for the person’s name, the gang’s name and their signature in efforts to encourage people in prison to leave their gang. The form also promises a follow-up interview with the person in prison where the person will be evaluated on their willingness to leave the gang.
MDOC is asking gang members in prison to renounce their membership by signing a letter of intent.
Since Burl Cain took post as MDOC commissioner in June 2020, he’s promised to make Mississippi’s prisons safer by decreasing gang activity. The Security Threat Group Management Unit is the arm of MDOC that’s putting into motion Cain’s promises.
According to MDOC’s website, the Security Threat Group Management Unit “mandated a zero tolerance position in its efforts to reduce gang activity and assaults being committed in MDOC’s facilities … gang members are able to renounce their gang membership and are provided the opportunity to participate in programs designed to help them come to the realization that they do not have to be part of a gang to have a feeling of self-worth.”
While signing gang renunciation forms may be seen as one step in decreasing gang violence in prisons, David Pyrooz, a professor of sociology at University of Colorado-Boulder, said it is ultimately ineffective in decreasing gang membership.
David Pyrooz is a professor of sociology of the University of Colorado-Boulder. He studies the impact of gangs in prison. Credit: David Pyrooz
Pyrooz, who studies gangs in prison, said “debriefing” is when a person simply states they are no longer in a gang, while “disengagement” is a process where a person participates in programming to encourage and support leaving a gang.
“Debriefing is not a very effective way of promoting leaving the gang. Signing a form, anybody can do it,” Pyrooz said. “Simply signing a form and providing some intel, it’s only going to end up getting people hurt because it’s going to be viewed as a snitch form.”
Alternatively, Pyrooz said, prisons should focus on providing opportunities for self-governance, meaningful work assignments and training and educational opportunities. Pyrooz also said, based on his previous research, people in prison join gangs for protection, so prisons can also deter gang membership by providing safer living conditions.
Cain, the head of MDOC, told Mississippi Today the department offers opportunities for people in prison to join groups to build community rather than allowing gangs to entice new membership. Last year, when Cain was appointed commissioner, he said MDOC had identified about 6,400 active gang members in prison. Today, those numbers have dwindled to about 1,500 gang members, Cain said.
“What we did to really combat it was to try to create other organizations and groups for people to be members of because everybody wants to be in a group. That’s what humans do,” Cain said.
One of the groups Cain highlighted was the 35 “inmate churches,” a partnership between MDOC and the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where “inmate pastors” lead congregations of incarcerated people. He also mentioned the “Men of Integrity Club,” where people in prison join together over arts, crafts and food, Cain said.
In the midst of MDOC’s efforts to decrease gangs in prison, parole eligibility expansion went into effect July 1, raising the stakes for people in prison to keep clean rule violation reports as to not affect parole eligibility.
Mississippi Parole Board Chairman Steven Pickett said an additional 5,479 people in prison became eligible for parole under the new law. He said about 12,000 people in the state’s prisons are now parole-eligible, and the board plans to hold 1,800 parole hearings within the next year, with preference given to incarcerated veterans and people who are sick and elderly.
Steven Pickett is the Mississippi Parole Board Chairman. Credit: Steven Pickett
“For those who have become eligible for parole, eligibility does not mean freedom. It means they are eligible to be considered by this board after they have served so much time,” Pickett said “It’s going to encourage participation in programming. It’s going to promote better behavior, which is going to reduce prison violence.”
Pickett said when the board sees people in prison during their parole hearings, they take into consideration a variety of factors to determine whether a person is ready for parole, including past parole hearings, re-entry plans, psychiatric evaluations and rule violation reports, which may detail a person’s gang activity and affiliation.
“Gangs are disruptive to the overall goals of any corrections facility, so participation in that is certainly not one of the things that’s going to draw us to giving a prisoner parole,” Pickett said.
Cain also said parole eligibility expansion is viewed by people in prison as “an incentive to be good.”
“Especially if Pickett holds true with not paroling a gang member, it’s an incentive to not be in a gang, and it’s an incentive to get a skill and a trade,” Cain said.
Mississippi Today spoke with some incarcerated people who expressed concern that signing the form and admitting they were members of a gang could be used against them in parole hearings.
Pickett also said while renouncing gang membership does not ensure a person in prison earns parole, a person with gang activity on their rule violation reports “pretty much guarantees that you will not be paroled.”
“What we’re wanting is for folks to be successful, and we don’t want to see them again. That’s why we look hard at these cases to see if they’re ready and see can they make it,” Pickett said.
Still, Pyrooz said prison systems should also prioritize creating programs, groups and activities that replace the perceived benefits that gang membership provides while a person is in prison in order to not only encourage people in prison to leave gangs but to stay out of gangs.
“Status, protection, whatever sort of economic benefits that came along with (being in a gang), camaraderie, and so on. It’s got to be able to build up a person to replace those things,” Pyrooz said.
