The Mississippi Ethics Commission dismissed a complaint alleging the Legislature’s Joint Redistricting Committee violated the state’s open meetings law in developing a plan to redraw the four U.S. House seats.
The eight-member Ethics Commission, which is responsible for hearing allegations of public officials violating the open meetings law, said there was no violation because the Redistricting Committee never met behind closed doors with a quorum present, according to affidavits from Rep. Jim Beckett, R-Bruce, the chair of the committee, and from vice chair Sen. Dean Kirby, R-Pearl.
“A meeting is an assemblage of members of a public body at which official acts may be taken upon a matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power,” the commission wrote in its opinion dismissing the complaint. “Official acts, including deliberations, may only be taken when a quorum of the public body assembles.”
For the committee to have a quorum, which is needed to conduct official business, six House members and six Senate members must be present.
The ACLU complaint alleged, “The extent of the redistricting work that the Committee has performed thus far makes it apparent that the Committee has performed public business in private. In fact, following its November public meeting, Chairman Jim Beckett invited the Committee’s members to his office to view the U.S. congressional map that would be, and was, offered, voted on and adopted by the Committee.”
But Beckett and Kirby told the Ethics Commission there never was a quorum present during any closed door meeting.
The Ethics Commission said the ACLU contended that a quorum does not have to be present for there to be a violation of Mississippi’s open meetings law.
“That contention is incorrect,” the commission ruled, based on past state Supreme Court rulings.
The ACLU has the right to appeal the Ethics Commission ruling to a state court.
It already is likely that the NAACP and others will challenge the congressional redistricting plan in federal court. The new map was approved by the Redistricting Committee late last year and ultimately passed by the Legislature in January.
The NAACP told a federal judge last week there were issues with the plan, including the large geographic size of the Black-majority district in the plan. NAACP attorneys said the large district makes it more difficult to elect an African American U.S. House member.
Federal law, most agree, mandates that Mississippi have an African American majority U.S. House district because of the large African American population in the state, which is about 38%.
The state is supposed to redraw the congressional districts every 10 years to adhere to population shifts found by the decennial census. The Legislature also is in the process of redrawing the 174 state House and Senate seats.
Note: This analysis first published in Mississippi Today’s weekly legislative newsletter. Subscribe to our free newsletter for exclusive early access to weekly analyses.
Philip Gunn’s biggest political legacy is on the line.
The third-term speaker of the House, a white Republican, has been credited by numerous Black leaders with ushering through the Capitol one of the most tangible racial progressions in Mississippi history: changing the state flag, the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem.
It was a difficult challenge for Gunn to navigate in America’s Blackest state with a violent history of racism, but where white conservatives have historically dominated the political system.
Why would a white Mississippi Republican with aspirations of higher office ignore the pleas of so many white voters who wanted to keep flying that old flag? Because he knew Black Mississippians — and the state of Mississippi’s image — were hurting. That understanding, he said, was rooted in his Christian faith values.
Today, more than 18 months later, Gunn faces another political challenge, one with a similar mix of racial politics and dug-in heels: Legislative Republicans, inspired by out-of-state conservative media figures who know nothing about Mississippi, are trying to ban the teaching of critical race theory in the state’s public schools and universities.
The only bill alive that addresses critical race theory was passed in January by the Senate and is now pending in the House, where Gunn has virtually complete control of what legislation lives or dies. House leaders, if they want to keep it alive, have until March 1 to pass it out of committee. If they don’t act by then, the bill will die.
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Critical race theory became a flashpoint of national politics in 2021 as conservative pundits latched onto the term and sowed fear about its so-called hold on generations of young Americans. That rhetoric, predictably, reached the Magnolia State and has been broadcast by powerful Republicans.
Gunn has been one of Mississippi’s loudest critics of critical race theory. In a July 2021 speech, he echoed some of the same disproven talking points that national pundits have shared.
“We know the devastating effects that racism can have on a society. We in Mississippi know firsthand how that can be, what the devastating effects will be,” Gunn said. “That’s exactly why we must fight against this attempt to reintroduce racism back into our schools and undo all the progress that we’ve made.”
Sen. Mike McLendon, the sponsor of the Mississippi bill, admitted he was inspired to push the bill by what he and constituents heard on Fox News. Meanwhile, the Mississippi Department of Education has continually insisted that the theory is not being taught in the state’s public kindergarten through 12th grade schools.
The fallout from the Senate’s passing of the bill in January was dramatic and harmful to Mississippi’s image. For the first known time in the state’s history, every Black member of the Senate walked off the floor as the final vote was being tallied. The walkout — a tried-and-true strategy of the civil rights movement — captured the attention of the world, and the white lawmakers who voted to pass the bill ensured that Mississippi was once again painted in a negative racial light.
Gunn, if he’s listening, should know there’s similarly a low appetite for the bill among his Black House colleagues. State Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader who has maintained a close relationship with Gunn, did not mince words about what he thought of the GOP-led push.
“They’re spending so much time trying to ban something that’s not even being taught,” Johnson said in a radio interview in late January. “Meanwhile, people in our districts still have roads they can’t get back and forth on. The unemployment rate is still in the double digits in many parts of the state. We’ve got a medical crisis in this state, people’s hospitals are closed or about to close. We have an enormous wage disparity. We have a serious poverty issue in this state, and infrastructure problems in this state.”
“It’s an issue that’s been created and perpetuated by Republicans to have something to fight or argue and not have to deal with real problems,” Johnson said.
And it’s not just Black Democrats who are opposing the bill.
Last week, Mississippi Today reported that just one state educational institution, the University of Mississippi School of Law (coincidentally where Gunn received his law degree) teaches a critical race theory course. And, according to students currently taking the course, it’s nothing like what it’s being made out to be by Mississippi Republicans and the national media.
Take it from Brittany Murphree, a Republican and second-year law student currently taking the course. Murphree didn’t know what to expect when she enrolled in the class, but after just two weeks she wrote Gunn’s House colleagues a letter, begging them to stop pushing the Senate bill.
“To date, this course has been the most impactful and enlightening course I have taken throughout my entire undergraduate career and graduate education at the State of Mississippi’s flagship university,” Murphree wrote. “… I believe our leaders need to show greater integrity in every vote he or she may cast on a bill or resolution — especially when that vote affects the histories and cultural identities of a vast number of your constituents.”
Murphree continued: “I believe this bill not only undermines the values of the hospitality state but declares that Mississippians are structured in hate and rooted in a great deal of ignorance.”
Black lawmakers are saying it, and a white Republican enrolled in the state’s only critical race theory course is saying it: Passing a bill to ban the teaching of critical race theory is unnecessary. It can only stand to show Black Mississippians that white leaders aren’t interested in passing policies designed to move the state forward. And it will certainly be another hit to the state’s international reputation.
What Gunn decides on the bill could erase the credit for racial progress he earned during the flag change. It doesn’t have to be that way. He could direct Rep. Richard Bennett, the House Education chairman, to let the Senate bill die on the calendar on March 1. In doing so, he could mitigate the heartache this bill would cause so many Mississippians, and he could further protect the state’s international image — just like he did with the flag effort.
It’s notable that the House didn’t bring forward their own critical race theory bill before the committee deadline. That could be a sign that Gunn and House leaders are content with letting the Senate bill be the state’s standard. It could also mean that they saw the backlash after what happened in the Senate and don’t want to further harm the state’s image or relationships with Black lawmakers.
But there is certainly a different political read that could Gunn could make. If he were to run for statewide office — like governor, as he is reportedly considering — how would killing this bill play with white conservative voters? Would they think he backed down after promising to address critical race theory, or will this issue be a distant memory by 2023 similar to other political fads like the “migrant caravan” pushed by Republicans ahead of the 2018 midterms?
Credit for his efforts to change the flag could wane if he, 18 months later, pushes policy that jeopardizes the teaching of the racism that the old flag symbolized. He can’t center Christianity as the fundamental principle of his political calculus and expect grace from many Mississippians who watch him hand waving it off when it comes to critical race theory. Politically, the speaker will not be able to have it both ways.
Murphree, a potential future Republican voter of Gunn’s in a statewide election, would perhaps put it to the speaker the same way she put it to his House colleagues in the letter she wrote:
“Please vote with integrity, and not with fear of your constituents or fellow party members.”
Longtime Mississippi Sierra Club Director Louie Miller talks about Mississippi’s state parks system, which has suffered from decades of neglected maintenance. The Sierra Club opposes a current push to privatize state parks, and says Mississippi should instead use some of the billions in federal stimulus money flowing to the state to upgrade the state’s parks, and keep them affordable and accessible to Mississippians.
In episode 105 & 106, We have a special guest, JUSTIN (yes, that one) to discuss Stephen King and his intertwining stories in depth for a whimsical two-parter.
All Cats is part of the Truthseekers Podcast Network.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, esteemed 2016 – 2021 Mississippi Poet Laureate, author and Ole Miss professor Beth Ann Fennelly sits down with Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey to talk about her writing, creativity and how she plows through setbacks.
Fennelly is the author of three poetry collections: Unmentionables (W.W. Norton, 2008), Tender Hooks (W.W. Norton, 2004), and Open House (Zoo Press, 2002), which was a winner of the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award and a Book Sense Top Ten Poetry Pick. She is also the author of the nonfiction book Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother (W.W. Norton, 2007) and coauthor, alongside her husband Tom Franklin, of the novel The Tilted World (HarperCollins, 2014). Her sixth book, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (W.W. Norton, 2017), was named an Atlanta Journal Constitution Best Book, a Goodreaders Favorite for 2017, and the winner of the Housatonic Book Prize.
Fennelly teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year. She and Franklin live in Oxford with their three children. You can purchase Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs at Square Books.
Roger Wicker, Mississippi’s senior U.S. senator, made national headlines last week when he criticized President Joe Biden’s promise to nominate an African American woman to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
During a recent interview on Mississippi’s statewide conservative radio network, Wicker said the nominee would be “the beneficiary” of a “quota.”
Wicker offered nary a single word of criticism in 2020 after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when then-President Donald Trump promised to nominate a woman to the nation’s highest court.
Wicker’s comments beg the question: Why is he OK if a president promises to nominate a woman, but he’s not OK when a president promises to nominate a Black woman?
Is the problem, from his perspective, one of race and not of gender?
When asked that question a few days after the radio interview, Wicker said in an e-mailed response: “When Mr. Biden was trailing in the primaries, he made a promise to consider only Black females for the Supreme Court vacancy. Some 76% of Americans disagree with such a position, saying it is best for the president to choose from among all qualified applicants for the job.”
Former President Trump also was in the midst of a presidential campaign — for re-election — when he made the commitment to nominate a woman to replace Ginsburg.
And in 2016, during his first campaign, Trump released a list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court who consisted solely of white people. Wicker also did not have a problem with that list. Was the all-white list a “quota?”
It must not have been in Wicker’s eyes.
Later that summer at the Neshoba County Fair, Wicker offered a full-throated endorsement of Trump and offered no thoughts on the list of solely white people he had offered as potential Supreme Court nominees should he win the presidency, which he did later that year.
In recent years, Wicker, a former state senator and U.S. House member who was elected to the U.S. Senate is 2008, has taken some brave stands — stands that many believed could hurt him politically.
In 2015, Wicker and Thad Cochran, then the state’s senior U.S. senator, on the same day announced their support for changing the state flag, which incorporated the Confederate battle emblem in its design. Their announcements came in the wake of the shooting at a Charleston, S.C., church killing nine African Americans by a white supremist who highlighted the Confederate flag on his social media page.
Wicker and Cochran were among the first Republican politicians in the state to take such a stand.
He said, in part, at the time: “I have not viewed Mississippi’s current state flag as offensive. However, it is clearer and clearer to me that many of my fellow citizens feel differently and that our state flag increasingly portrays a false impression of our state to others.
“In I Corinthians 8, the Apostle Paul said he had no personal objection to eating meat sacrificed to idols. But he went on to say that ‘if food is a cause of trouble to my brother, or makes my brother offend, I will give up eating meat.’ The lesson from this passage leads me to conclude that the flag should be removed since it causes offense to so many of my brothers and sisters, creating dissention rather than unity.”
Then in 2021, Wicker was the sole Republican in Mississippi’s congressional delegation to vote to certify the presidential election over the protests of Trump, who argued despite no evidence that he had won. Trump was in essence calling for the overthrow of the U.S. system of government. Wicker would have no part in it.
And more recently, Wicker was the only Mississippi Republican to vote for the landmark Biden infrastructure bill.
“I served with Roger Wicker,” said state Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, a member of the Legislative Black Caucus, referring to when Wicker was a state senator. “I know he is not a racist. I like Roger, but his comment sounded racist. He is better than that.”
Perhaps talking on the conservative radio show, Wicker felt he needed to try to build his credibility with Trump supporters when he spoke of quotas — to save face politically with hardcore conservatives after some of those brave stands.
On the radio show, Wicker proclaimed the Biden nominee “will probably not get a single Republican vote” in the U.S. Senate.
But speaking days later in response to questions, he took a more moderate tone.
“I will review the president’s nominee on the basis of her qualifications and judicial philosophy,” he said. “Republicans will accord her all the courtesy and respect that was not shown to (Republican judicial nominees) Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Miguel Estrada, and Janice Rogers Brown.”
Mississippi Today higher education reporter Molly Minta joined MSNBC’s Last Word show on Feb. 4 to discuss her recent article featuring Mississippi’s only critical race theory course.
As Mississippi Republican lawmakers push to ban critical race theory from being taught in the classroom, Minta featured Brittany Murphree, a Republican student who wrote a letter to lawmakers arguing that they had it wrong about the class.
Minta, a Florida native, covers higher education for Mississippi Today. She works in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization focused on higher education. Prior to joining Mississippi Today, Molly worked for The Nation, The Appeal, and Mother Jones.
CLEVELAND — More than 150 people paid tribute to Lusia “Lucy” Stewart-Harris Saturday at Delta State University’s Walter Sillers Coliseum, the arena where the “queen of basketball” had played.
The two-hour ceremony underscored the impact that Harris, the powerful 6’3 center, had on every community she was a part of: Minter City, her hometown; Delta State University; the Mississippi Delta region; and her four children and their ten grandchildren.
Harris was remembered not only as a basketball legend, but as a humble, loving mother.
“I want everyone to know that Lucy Harris from the Mississippi Delta, land of cotton and long roads through fields, (was) the best basketball player in the world,” said Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood. “She’s the best. She’s a record maker and a record breaker.”
Lusia “Lucy” Harris
Harris passed away on Jan. 18 at age 66. Her silver coffin was adorned with colorful bouquets, and a portrait of her sat underneath the banners commemorating her three national titles.
In 1975, Harris was the only Black woman on Delta State’s Lady Statesmen when she led the team to its first national title, an achievement she’d repeat two more times before graduating. She scored the first-ever basket in Women’s Olympic basketball history, and in 1977, she became the first — and so far only — woman to receive an official offer to play for the NBA. Pregnant with her first child, Harris turned down the offer and took a job coaching basketball at Amanda Elzy High School in Greenwood, where she learned to play the game.
During the ceremony, several lawmakers presented proclamations in Harris’ honor. Inez Biles, the chairperson of Minter City, said the community plans to erect a historical marker for Harris. Christopher Stewart, Harris’ youngest child, said that Barack and Michelle Obama had sent the family a letter.
Harris was humble and gracious about her accomplishments, her children said as they shared some lessons she had taught them. Christopher talked about all the ways his mother was first for him: the first person who taught him the meaning of unconditional love, the first person who taught him to dream, to preserve and to sacrifice. Harris’ stepson Antonio Harris recalled that she had the “sneakiest little laugh.”
Christina Jordan, who is Harris’ youngest daughter, talked about the time when Harris encouraged her to pursue her love for chemistry. Crystal Washington, who is older than Christina by two minutes, said that her mother’s favorite saying was, “if you can dream it, you can do it.”
“If a kid from Minter City, Mississippi, can grow to touch millions, there is nothing that is stopping you from doing the same, okay?” Crystal said. “So farewell mother, farewell my queen.”
George Stewart, Jr., Harris’s oldest and tallest son, read a letter titled “Just Mama to Me.”
“She was a tall, strong woman,” he said. She was “generous with her time and resources, humble and confident at the same time, but just Mama to me.”
“She never boasted about her basketball playing days to us,” he said. “We saw the pictures, the newspaper clippings, and we saw her accolades, but she didn’t say much. The only thing she would say is I can go out and shoot the basketball in the hoop. She was just Mama to me.”
“She was a Delta from the Delta that went to Delta State,” he said, tearing up. “A true queen, a hall of famer, a humanitarian, a sister, an aunt, a friend, but most importantly, she was just Mama to me.”
Thousands of patients of Mississippi’s largest hospital and its clinics could be on the hook for higher out-of-pocket costs if the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi do not agree on a new contract by March 31.
The contract dispute dates back to 2018 but was temporarily resolved when an agreement was reached then between the two entities. UMMC, the state’s largest health care provider, wants Blue Cross, the state’s largest insurer, to pay higher reimbursement rates for medical services provided. BCBS has balked at that request.
The contracts negotiated between insurers and providers include massive discounts for the providers in their networks. If an agreement cannot be reached before March 31 and UMMC is forced out of the BCBS network, thousands of patients with BCBS insurance plans would have to pay the hospital’s inflated “chargemaster” prices or find health care elsewhere.
This week, UMMC officials sent a letter to each of its patients with commercial BCBS plans, alerting them to how their coverage could be affected by the outcome of the ongoing negotiations.
“Our negotiations with Blue Cross continue and we are hopeful that a new contract can be agreed upon before the current agreement ends,” Dr. LouAnn Woodward, UMMC vice chancellor for health affairs, said in a statement to Mississippi Today on Friday. “It’s a top priority that all Mississippians have uninterrupted access to the physicians and other services provided by the state’s only academic medical center and no patients experience disruption to their trusted UMMC care.”
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi officials did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Even if a new agreement isn’t reached, those enrolled in the Mississippi State and School Employees’ Health Insurance Plan would not be affected. Though that plan is administered through BCBS, the current negotiations only affect the insurer’s commercial insurance plans.
Still, thousands of Mississippians would be affected because BCBS is the largest private health insurance provider in the state, with a 17.56% market share, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Insurance. Those patients would have to find a new in-network provider or face higher costs. Many wouldn’t have a choice if they were to need emergency care at UMMC, or required any of the specialized services only exclusively by the medical center.
These services include Mississippi’s only Level 1 trauma center, Level IV neonatal intensive care unit and children’s hospital, among other critical care services.
This isn’t the first time UMMC and BCBS have battled over contract negotiations. UMMC pursued higher reimbursement rates before their original 28-year-old contract with BCBS was set to expire on June 30, 2018.
That negotiation period dragged on for months and passed the expiration date, though patients with BCBS plans were still treated as being in-network while the two parties haggled.
A new contract was eventually signed in August 2018. That contract is at the center of the current dispute.
