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Don’t know about you, but I spent most of Thursday — from well before dawn until mid-afternoon — watching The Open, played this week in Northern Ireland at a golf course known as Royal Portrush.

A more appropriate name for the par-71, 7,300-yard course would be Hell on Earth. Wind, rain, the rugged terrain, narrow fairways, dense, unforgiving rough, deep bunkers and severely undulating greens combine to make the course about as difficult as any imaginable.

One hundred and fifty six of the most accomplished golfers in the world competed Thursday. The golf course was the clear winner. Only 32 — about one in five — broke par. Three did not break 80. Hattiesburg native Davis Riley, an incredibly gifted golfer and the only native Mississippian in the field, shot 77. Brooks Koepka and Colin Morikawa, winners of seven major championships between them, each shot 75.

What would your average 12-handicapper shoot at Royal Portrush? He or she would not break 120. Hell, he or she might not finish.

I write from some experience. Eight years ago, I joined a group of eight Mississippians on a golfing tour of Ireland. We played seven world class golf courses in nine days, six in Ireland and one in Northern Ireland. All were links courses, abutting either the Irish Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. All were brutally hard. Yours truly became all too familiar with a prickly vegetation called gorse, which ate several of my golf balls over the course of nine days.

The hardest of all the courses was the one in Northern Ireland: Royal County Down, just across the border from Ireland in a little village called New Castle. Apparently, an age-old argument in Northern Ireland rages over which course is hardest of all: Royal County Down or Royal Portrush. Most experts side with Royal County Down. My take: Royal County Down is far and away the most difficult golf course I have ever played, and we played it from the member tees (6,400 yards) not the championship tees (about 7,200).

When our two foursomes headed to the first tee at RCD, we decided to have some fun with the starter. When it was our turn to play, we went to the back of the championship tee. 

“What’s the course record?” I asked the starter.

“From those tees?” he asked back, appearing rather astonished. “Sir, you should not play those tees. The course record from the championship tees is 70. Rory McIlroy shot that. But last time Rory played here, he shot 80.”

We immediately marched up to the forward tees. “Any other advice?” I asked the starter, who replied, “Steer clear of the bunkers, my friend. They are very deep and they will break your heart.”

They absolutely did. I must admit my main concern often wasn’t whether or not I could launch my ball out of those bunkers; no, it was whether or not I could climb back out of the bunkers myself. They were that deep – and they were often hidden from sight until, after a search, you located your ball in one. All sand traps have rakes; these needed ladders.

At Royal County Down, about 90 miles south of Royal Portrush, we seemingly experienced all four seasons during one 18-hole round. We were alternately cold, warm, dry, wet, dry and wet again. We changed in our and out of rain suits and sweaters so often we could have used a changing room. And, all the while, the relentless wind blew and blew and blew.

“Is the wind aways like this?” I asked a course ranger at one point after my cap had blown off for what seemed like the 20th time.

“Ah, lad, ’tis but a breeze today,” the ranger said. 

It reached the point that we Mississippians would make our double and triple bogeys, head for the next tee, survey the situation and say, “Ah, lads, what fresh hell have we here?”

Nothing in Mississippi prepares you for links golf. In America, we refer to any golf course as “links” — as in, let’s go hit the links. We are in error. Links comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “hlinc,” which means a ridge. It evolved to refer to the rough, grassy area between the land and the sea. And, yes, there are often ridges and dunes involved. Trees are scarce and sometimes just plain absent. Said McIlroy of Northern Ireland’s rugged terrain, “Many have tried to replicate our bunkers, but it is impossible for man to replicate creations of nature.”

The other six Irish courses we played – Waterville, Tralee, Ballybunion, Old Head, The European and Portmarnock – were all links courses and all really, really hard. None was as brutally difficult as Royal County Down.

And yes, there were times we asked ourselves: “Why did we pay all that money to put ourselves through this wringer?” But then you would hit that one shot, the soaring 5-iron with the wind that left you an eagle putt. That, or you would stop and gaze at one of those amazing vistas over the Atlantic Ocean or the Irish Sea. Or you and your partners would sit in the 19th hole recounting the round over tall pints of Guinness, telling fresh stories and laughing like school kids. 

The famous English golf writer Bernard Darwin called it the kind of golf people play only in their most ecstatic dreams. Yes, but your score, if you can count that high, is often a nightmare.

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

My parents were born in 1945 Tylertown in southwest Mississippi. Despite being raised in rural homes where overt racism was served up as often as turnip greens or buttermilk biscuits, Dad and Mom refused to pass down to their children the generations-old heirlooms of animus and fear. No racist jokes. No slurs. No stray remarks about knowing one’s place and no lamentations about lost traditions or unwelcome changes. And whom do I have to thank for this gift that changed the trajectory of my life?  Uncle Sam and the United States Air Force.

As it did for so many young men from small farms in far-flung rural counties, the military and ROTC provided Dad with a pathway to college and a career after graduation.

Upon graduating from Ole Miss in 1967 with an obligation of active-duty military service (and a two-week-old baby, me), the Air Force sent my father to Texas A&M to obtain a master’s degree in computer science and start down the road toward becoming a military officer. When he left College Station, the next stop was officer training school.

An important thing happened during that period between completing his formal education and being sent off to Vietnam. The Air Force confronted Dad with the hard truth about racism in our country and our military – and they made it crystal clear that it would not be tolerated from Air Force officers.

More times than I can count, Dad has told me the story of a crusty officer barking out, “In the United States Air Force, there is no white, there is no black, there is only Air Force blue!” That same officer told Dad and other young officers from the South that their particular brand of prejudice might be quickly cured by a glimpse at the scores from IQ tests administered to all in attendance.

And as Dad moved through the mandatory “race relations” component of his training, another important thing happened. He got to know the Black officers from his squadron. He ate meals with them. He learned to play handball with them. He figured out that they wanted the same things he did.

As Dad puts it, “They just wanted to marry a pretty girl, get promoted, drink a cold beer once in a while, and maybe take a decent vacation.”

Dad didn’t like everything they said to him in that class, and he admits that he sometimes got angry. But on the handful of occasions when I have discussed with him how it came to be that he and Mom ended the cycle of overt racism in our family, he consistently has credited the fact that the Air Force told him hard truths about who he was and afforded him the opportunity to discover the painful reality that what he was told around the dinner table in Tylertown was a source of pain and oppression for those new friends about whom he cared deeply – and with whom he shared table as an adult soldier.

The training Dad experienced was part of a national effort in the late 1960s and early 70s to address racial division and inequality in our military. On March 5, 1971, the secretary of Defense announced that the effort would be expanded to require every member of the armed forces to attend classes in race relations.

As part of that historic effort, the Defense Race Relations Institute trained 1,400 race relations instructors in a single year. According to the New York Times, a bibliography of “100 of the most important works on the Black man in America” was contributed to the Institute in hopes of educating soldiers on the challenges confronting our country.

As a direct beneficiary of that historic effort, I am deeply disturbed by the fact that the difficult and important lessons the United States Air Force taught my father would be illegal today, 55 years later, if presented in any Mississippi school or university.

Mississippi’s new anti-DEI law prohibits requiring “diversity training” in our schools and universities and defines that term as “any formal or informal education, seminars, workshops or institutional program that focus on increasing awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” (Emphasis added by me). 

In a world where we still are plagued by bias and racism, and at a time when we remain deeply and violently divided, Mississippi politicians have outlawed efforts to increase awareness and understanding of issues that are as complicated today as they were when I was a young boy. They have made illegal conversations and lessons that our armed forces – not Harvard University or the University of Virginia – deemed central to the security, morale and identity of our nation.

Sticking our heads in the sand, or elsewhere, and “protecting” our children from our painful and violent past does them, and Mississippi, no good. It shortchanges and underestimates young people who are fully capable of talking about hard things, fosters the stereotype of Mississippi as a place where ignorance and injustice flourish, and is a slap in the face of all those like Dad who did the hard work of grappling with the truth and fighting for our freedom to tell it.             

Cliff Johnson is a civil rights lawyer and law professor in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson is a graduate of Mississippi College and Columbia University School of Law, and he speaks frequently on the intersection of law, politics and religion.      

This story from Reasons to be Cheerful is one in a series about the confluence of capitalism, conservation and cultural identity in the Mississippi River Basin. It is part of Waterline and is sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation.

Dorothy Grady pulled at a tuft of green fronds sprouting from one of an array of soil-filled buckets sitting in the driveway of her house. A plump carrot, five inches long and brilliant orange, popped out.

Nearby, a sage shrub grew from another bucket, and scallions crowded a squat grow bag. In about three weeks, Grady would kick off the spring growing season on the land she cultivates around Shelby, Mississippi, including two plots at the now-closed middle school across the street, a small grove of peach and pear trees up the road, and five acres outside of town. She was ready to start planting eggplants, melons, tomatoes and a cornucopia of other produce that would soon end up in the homes of 127 nearby residents. 

Shelby, a few miles east of the Mississippi River, is surrounded by flat, fertile farmland. But Grady’s vegetables and fruit are some of the only crops around that make it to local plates. The vast majority of Mississippi Delta farms are devoted to commodity crops like soy and corn.

Grady is one of almost a dozen local growers supplying produce to Delta GREENS, a collaborative research project that is delivering fresh ingredients to residents of Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties with diabetes and monitoring the health impacts. This “food is medicine” project is one of a number of initiatives that are supporting farmers and expanding the market for locally grown produce in this western Mississippi region. The benefits run in both directions: At the same time that community members are getting access to these nutritious ingredients, the small-scale farmers who grow them are getting a leg up.

“What we’re trying to do is build cooperative development amongst the farms,” says Julian Miller, founding director for the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for Social Justice in Jackson, a co-principal investigator for Delta GREENS, and a long-time local food advocate in the Delta region. “Ultimately, we want to be able to give them the capacity to scale and capture the broader market.”

The 200-mile-long Delta region, on the fertile floodplain sandwiched between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, has a rich agricultural history. Once known for growing cotton, today the area is dominated by ridged fields growing commodities that will be processed into animal feed or ethanol.

In the past, many Delta residents cultivated fruits and vegetables, says Miller, yet over time, pressures like farming mechanization and loss of land eroded the practice. Miller, a fifth-generation Delta resident who grew up a few miles away from Shelby, never saw anyone with a vegetable garden. “That tradition was lost, as far as growing your food,” he says. 

Today, despite the abundance of fertile land, very little of it is dedicated to edible crops. About 90 percent of the food people eat in this region is grown elsewhere and imported. “That’s the irony,” Miller says.

And even imported fresh food can be hard to access. As of 2021, 63 of Mississippi’s 82 counties were classified as food deserts, meaning there is no grocery store or option to buy fresh ingredients in the immediate area.

Significant health and economic inequities overlay this region. In Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties — where the Delta GREENS study is focused — almost a third of residents live at or below the poverty level. Meanwhile, the rate of diabetes is twice the national average.

This confluence of public health disparities, economic inequity and lack of food sovereignty has fueled an effort to reestablish food-growing traditions, led by growers like Grady. A child of sharecroppers, Grady recalls her family always kept a garden when she was growing up, exchanging veggies and fruits with neighbors.

She has been involved with growing the local food movement in the Delta since the 1990s, when she first started working on farm-to-school garden projects.

In addition to helping establish hundreds of community gardens at schools and churches around the region, she’s also expanded her own growing operation, now supplying her harvests to residents in and around Bolivar County. Last year, the peach and pear trees she keeps yielded about 30 bushels of fruit, which went to local schools and was distributed through produce boxes for participants in the Delta GREENS study.

These weekly produce boxes are helping to address one of the structural challenges of developing the local food system in the Delta, explains Miller: the lack of a consistent market. While many residents are interested in eating more local produce, growers don’t have a reliable pathway to sell to the public. But nutrition- and food-security projects that source produce from local farmers are helping those agricultural businesses scale up.

About 40 miles northeast of Shelby, Robbie Pollard is busy planting and tending to more than 10 acres of fruit and vegetable plants. 

Pollard grew up around farming — his grandfather grew commodity crops. But he says he didn’t know anything about cultivating food until he tried growing his own in his backyard. It turned out to be a calling, he says, and he soon left his job in IT to pursue it full time.

Farming fruits and vegetables is more complex than commodity crops, explains Pollard. For one, it’s more labor intensive — weeding, tending and harvesting by hand. Unlike commodity farmers, who deliver their crops directly to local co-ops, distribution is harder for fruits and vegetables, Pollard says: “We have to find our own markets.”

Pollard has found a range of ways to distribute his produce through his farm, Start 2 Finish, and his associated healthy foods initiative Happy Foods Project. Today, he is one of the main growers supplying for Delta GREENS, as well as similar projects that provide households with regular local food boxes, including another food prescription project, Northern Mississippi FoodRx, in conjunction with the University of Mississippi. This summer, he’ll also be distributing through a mobile market, and he recently started selling through a grocery store with a focus on local products that opened in the city of Clarksdale in May.

Produce prescription boxes have given him a way to steadily expand his farm by reinvesting each year in incremental upgrades. He’s progressed from doing all his work by hand, to having a tiller, then a small tractor. He’s now leasing 46 acres of cropland. Last year, he grew four acres. This season, he put in more than 10, with plans in the works to expand hydroponic and aquaponic capacity. Soon, he hopes to work with other local growers to try a range of different techniques across the acreage.

Tyler Yarbrough, Mississippi Delta project manager for the nationwide organization Partnership for a Healthier America, has worked alongside Pollard on a range of projects building out the region’s local food movement, including some that provide households with produce for a limited amount of time — like Good Food at Home, which has supplied about 500,000 servings of produce to local families through weekly boxes, each household eligible for 12 weeks at a time. Through these shorter-term projects, growers are able to take steps to become more stable, while building a demand for local produce among consumers.

“You can leverage it to bring on the consistency, and to further bring those markets into your orbit,” Yarbrough says.

While produce box models have yielded success, they have the most impact for farmers when they’re paired with other initiatives, according to Yarbrough. What’s key is to give growers flexibility with funding so they can build up over time.

“It can’t just be one thing,” Yarbrough says. “It needs to be coupled with funds for these farmers to actually build their capacity on their farm. It needs to be coupled with connecting all the dots with the market. It has to be a holistic approach.”

Within the Delta region, the local food movement still faces many barriers, according to Natalie Minton, a University of Mississippi researcher who is working with Pollard to study the local food market, and on North Mississippi Food Rx. Growers struggle to find — and afford — workers. And without a reliable market, growing their business is very difficult.

There are also environmental factors. Beyond extreme weather, like drought and severe storms, growers face challenges related to the dominant commodity cropland. Pesticides and chemicals routinely used on commodity crops drift, harming food crops.

Yet, Minton says the roots of change in the local food system are taking hold. The success of farmers like Pollard is showing how specialty farming can be a viable career.

For projects that rely on grants and outside funding like Mississippi Fresh, another major challenge is working with federal programs, according to Miller. Trump administration cuts, including to subsidies that support buying from local producers, are straining local food systems. Delta GREENS is funded through the National Institutes of Health, and Miller says there is uncertainty around whether support will continue. 

Despite the uncertainty, the local food movement in the Mississippi Delta is notable because it is so locally driven, says Marlene Manzo, of HEAL Food Alliance, a food justice coalition that works with groups across the country, including Mississippi Fresh. Manzo says that the growth of the local food supply within the Mississippi Delta shows the power of working at a small scale to make changes that really respond to the community.

“What we do know is building collective power within our communities and in regional systems can really make a large, lasting impact,” she says.

Grady sees a shift happening in the community. She knows more people, including her family members, who are starting to grow some of their own food. One former student is now a chef in a nearby school district. He’s keeping a garden and using the ingredients in the school kitchen.

“The interest of other people wanting to do this kind of work was the greatest reward of it all,” she says.

Elizabeth Hewitt is a freelance journalist based in the Netherlands. She’s interested in how policy-making impacts lives, and likes to write about local solutions to big problems.

A Mississippi law that requires age verification for users of social media sites can take effect, federal judges ruled Thursday. But a tech industry group says a court fight will continue.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals removed a block that a district judge last year put on the “Walker Montgomery Protecting Children Online Act.”

“Enacted after a sextortion scheme on Instagram led a 16-year-old Mississippian to take his own life, the Act imposes modest duties on the interactive online platforms that are especially attractive to predators,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote in court papers filed July 2, arguing for the law to take effect.

NetChoice, a tech industry group that sued the state, said the law creates risks to privacy, overrides parental authority and unconstitutionally limits speech for Mississippi residents of all ages.

The law says a minor must have permission of a parent or guardian to have a social media account, and it requires digital service providers to make “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify users’ ages. It also says social media companies could not collect, sell or share minors’ personal information and tech companies must have strategies to prevent minors from accessing “harmful material.” 

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the law in April 2024 after legislators unanimously approved it.

Members of NetChoice include the parent companies of Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. The group sued Mississippi in June 2024 and a federal district judge blocked the law on July 1, 2024 – the day it originally was set to take effect.

Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said Thursday that the group is “considering all available options” after the appeals court decision.

“NetChoice will continue to fight against this egregious infringement on access to fully protected speech online,” Taske said. “Parents – not the government – should determine what is right for their families.”

Fitch’s office is “pleased with the court’s decision, and we look forward to full consideration in this case,” spokesperson MaryAsa Lee said.

The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Texas law that requires people to verify they are adults to access pornography online. Nearly half of the states have enacted such laws, including Mississippi in 2023.

In response to questions from Mississippi Today on Thursday, NetChoice said the high court’s decision in the Texas case, which dealt with access to obscene material, “has no bearing” on the legal fight over the 2024 Mississippi law, which deals with constitutionally protected speech.

The driver’s license office in Jackson has moved downtown as the Mississippi Department of Public Safety prepares to shift its headquarters from the capital city to suburban Rankin County. 

The department last month announced it was closing the license office that had operated for decades next to its headquarters just off Interstate 55 at Woodrow Wilson Avenue, near the VA Medical Center.

The new office is at 430 State St., near Jackson’s main post office and a few blocks from the Capitol.

“This location provides easier access for those who live and work in the area and ensures we can continue offering vital driver services in a more convenient and accessible space within the city of Jackson,” said Bailey Martin, spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety.

Mississippi has 35 driver’s licenses offices. The new Jackson office is in a former car dealership – an all-white building with floor-to-ceiling windows that fill the space with sunlight. On Wednesday, customers sat on black benches, chatting or scrolling on their phones while waiting to be called up to get or renew a license.

Carlos Lakes, 34, from Yazoo City, said he first went to the Richland office that issues commercial driver’s licenses but couldn’t get what he needed there. He said he then went to the old office on Woodrow Wilson and saw a note on the door showing the office had moved.

“So, it’s been about two hours of running around,” said Lakes, a truck driver.

He said the customer service at the new office was good, aside from the long wait time.

Medical student Seth Holton, 22, had a similar experience. He drove in from Flora, in Madison County, and went to the Woodrow Wilson location before finding the new office. He said it was his first time getting his license renewed. 

“I think it looks nice,” Holton said of the new location. “I think it’s organized. There’s good seating. It’s pretty quick, for the most part.”

Student Marquerion Brown, 19, posed for photos with a large cardboard frame of a driver’s license in the corner of the new office. He’d just passed his driver’s test for the first time.

“I’m just lucky and thankful to get this one this time,” Brown said. He hadn’t decided where he wanted to drive first. “I got a lot of places in mind.”

The Department of Public Safety headquarters will open in Pearl within the next year, near the state’s crime lab, fire academy and emergency management agency.

Martin said the new headquarters will allow the department to have its divisions in one place – the highway patrol, bureau of investigation, bureau of narcotics, homeland security office and commercial transportation enforcement.

“As such, this move will enhance operational efficiency with other public safety partners, improve interagency collaboration, and position the department for future growth,” Martin said.

The headquarters move has been in the making for over five years. Public safety officials said the old building on Woodrow Wilson fell into disrepair after years of neglect. 

Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, was part of a group of lawmakers who proposed moving the headquarters to a different location inside Jackson. 

“I personally think that the state government should be based in the state capital,” he said.

Mississippi Today has been recognized in multiple categories of the 2025 Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Awards, a prestigious annual competition that recognizes the best journalism in the Southeast.

The awards honor work published in 2024 and are open to journalists and news organizations from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Investigative Reporting

Mississippi Today’s Anna Wolfe won second place for her work that got five Mississippi mothers out of prison after she questioned a district attorney’s use of a nebulous state law. Click here to read the reporting.

Serious Feature Writing

Mississippi Today’s Jerry Mitchell won second place for his feature about how reporter William Bradford Huie’s false narrative about the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till “stole the story of Emmett Till from his mother and family.” Click here to read the reporting.

Public Affairs and Policy Reporting

Mississippi Today’s Sophia Paffenroth won third place for her series about Mississippi’s fight for IVF policy change. Click here to read the reporting. 

Editorial Writing

Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau won third place for a series of editorials he wrote about the state Legislature’s 2024 debate about whether to expand Medicaid. Read the winning series here: Editorial 1, Editorial 2, Editorial 3.

READ MORE: The full list of 2025 Green Eyeshades winners

MARKS – In 1925, a body hung, suspended in a village square outside Lambert, Mississippi. The man, whose name has been lost to time, was the victim of a lynching – one of several hundred Black people killed at the hands of white mobs in the Mississippi Delta in the first half of the 20th century.

Local Black sharecroppers were afraid to cut the man down. But Silas Kelly wasn’t. The wealthy Black landowner took the body to his home to prepare for burial. The idea for Delta Burial Corp. was born. 

Now 100 years later, the funeral home’s mission is the same: provide dignified burials for locals in the Mississippi Delta, regardless of status and income.

Without help from nearby banks, Kelly and his Black colleagues in business and farming pooled their money to form a company. To this day, it remains a business managed entirely by Black stockholders.

Black mourners who sought a standard burial previously had to visit white funeral homes that subjected them to subpar service and inflated costs.

In an oral history, Greenville native and funeral home director Beatrice Huddleston recounted how sharecropper neighbors were often forced to tear plywood from their shacks for a makeshift coffin.

With local wages in mind, Delta Burial offered services on a sliding scale or with small monthly premiums throughout the Jim Crow era, the AIDS epidemic, floods and wars. Its leaders have provided sanctuary for civil rights organizers, hosted burial society galas and organized countless celebrations of life.

The funeral home’s longtime mortician, Woodrow “Champ” Jackson, embalmed Emmett Till’s body at his previous job – and assisted in the transport of the teenager’s body to Chicago. Jackson mentored several morticians who have passed through the Marks funeral home’s screened door.

Today, much of Delta Burial’s clientele still comes from Quitman County, along with southern Tunica County, Coahoma County and Tallahatchie County. Through the business’ inclusion in the National Mortuary program, the funeral home prepares bodies from as far as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and even East Africa.

This month, Delta Burial Corp. celebrates its 100th year serving Mississippi Delta families. Manuel Killibrew, the corporation’s latest president, credits the firm’s longevity with “reaching out to the community” and “good service.”

A community undertaker

When his father fell ill, Killibrew assisted him on house calls to collect burial insurance. He grew accustomed to his father’s route and soon took it over. He came to appreciate the conversations in neighbors’ living rooms. Every month, he would bring his report and cash to what 55 years later would be his office.

After receiving a large insurance payout from a car accident, he bought his first two shares in the company. He later became general manager and president.

Some aspects of the business haven’t changed. He still makes house calls, visiting grieving families and discussing funeral packages. He still has to negotiate with pastors to keep their sermons and services short enough to make the reserved time at the cemetery.

While the same sales agents for casket companies and vaults still call Killibrew, they now all work for the same company. Many of his suppliers have consolidated, which means higher prices. Memphis, Tennessee, and the Mississippi towns of Canton and Batesville used to have their own casket factories.

Killibrew, who says integrity and fairness are guiding principles, welcomes regulations in the death care industry.

State law requires funeral home directors to show families the actual costs of caskets, vaults, embalming and other services and products. The directors must deposit 85% of money from prearranged funeral contracts into a trust. The money is only released to the funeral home after the service is completed.

At Delta Burial, families have been shown actual prices of products and services as long as Killibrew has led the company. 

He said customers often ask for credit so they can pay expenses over time.

“But we don’t turn anybody down,” Killibrew said. “Some bring money every month. Some don’t. But I know we are blessed. We were founded on a religious foundation.”

“You make more on one family and lose more on another. So you still hang on,” he added.

He said a majority of Delta Burial funerals cost $3,000 to $6,000, which is well below the state average of roughly $8,000. He said he has only sold a $10,000 funeral roughly four or five times in his career. 

Families are selecting cremation more than in the past for financial reasons. Even Mississippi, which has the lowest cremation rate in the country, saw a 31% increase in cremations from 2019 to 2023, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

In his garage, between two Mercedes-Benz hearses, Killibrew pointed to a 4-foot stack of wooden box slats. The most affordable option available for a traditional burial is for his team to assemble a wooden coffin on-site.

“But some still like the show,” he said.

Some families are willing to pay a couple hundred to a thousand extra for a horse-drawn carriage procession. Some opt to rent the Cadillac hearse, which he recently bought in Atlanta for $134,000.

The ancestors

Delta Burial leadership and staff played a discrete role in the civil rights movement. For many morticians who were already embedded in the community, activism was an extension of their service.

On Feb. 2, 1962, former Delta Burial President John Melchor was sentenced to six months in jail for organizing a boycott against white business owners. Two other nearby funeral home directors were sentenced, too. Melchor’s bond was set at $1,500, which would be roughly $16,000 today.

Melchor also hosted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at his home in Clarksdale. The two spoke on the telephone frequently and strategized on how to register Black voters in the Delta.

“Until they are stopped, our money, our tax money, will go to the White Citizens’ Council. To be free, you and I must pay and give,” Melchor wrote in a letter to Mississippi pastors and community organizers dated Feb. 14, 1961. 

He was fundraising for legal challenges to school segregation cases and cases involving the imprisonment of civil rights activists.

Melchor’s wealth and business success were seen as a threat by his white peers. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency that spied on civil rights activists, kept more than a dozen files on him.

Like other Delta funeral home directors, Melchor’s business suffered as a result of his activism. The Sovereignty Commission connived with local law enforcement to jail his embalmers for operating without a license. While it was standard to leave the license at a business and not in a hearse, law enforcement still fined Melchor and his peers for the misdemeanor when they weren’t at their mortuaries.

Ginise Clement, Melchor’s niece, remembers the family’s first home, which was connected to the morgue and funeral home. She could see from the window in the dining room the caskets lined up. The smell of formaldehyde and embalming fluid would waft through the side door.

She remembers the fear she felt visiting. When she was still a child, Melchor walked her into the morgue to confront her fear.

“You have to be afraid of the live people because those are the ones that can harm you,” Clement remembers John Melchor telling her.

“Sometimes, they would,” she added.

Clement remembers the frequent death threats the family would receive over the telephone. She remembers the strange cars that would follow the family home. She remembers the harassment Melchor’s wife, Ollie Mae, received from administrators at the school where she worked.

“These people were fierce,”  Clement said of her aunt and uncle. “I would’ve been scared to death.”

A good day’s work

On Friday evening, mourners departed the funeral home’s chapel for their trucks and cars. The day’s visitation drew to a close. Inside, bouquets of flowers hugged a black casket and colorful lights cast the room in shades of purple.

Shelton Leonard, a 65-year employee with Delta Burial, shut the lid on the casket and wheeled it into a storage room. In another room was the casket with a young woman. Two services were set for the next day.

“I go out of my way to provide service for people,” Shelton said. “I think that’s what it’s about: helping people.”

As the sun set on Marks, creating pink and orange streaks in the big Delta sky, a red pickup, an ATV, a golf cart and two more cars pulled up to a corner near the funeral home. Ulysses Hentz and his brother, Phillip, gathered with neighborhood friends. 

They shared tributes to Killibrew and Delta Burial. Killibrew was a teacher for 33 years in the county public schools. He has also represented them on the Quitman County Board of Supervisors for 42 years.

For residents of Marks and Quitman County, economic development has been slow. But Delta Burial has stood as a beacon of success.

Most jobs are out of the county. FedEx has three buses that transport locals to work at its warehouse in Memphis. Others work at the prison in Tutwiler or commute to the many businesses in Southaven. 

Crenshaw Rubber Factory, an oil meter, a jean manufacturing factory and a garment mill have all closed in recent decades, taking jobs and families with them. The police department has changed locations at least three times in the last 100 years. But Delta Burial has remained in the same location. 

“It’s the oldest business in the community. Black or white. It’s a pillar of the community,” said Ulysses Hentz, whose grandfather’s funeral was recently arranged by Delta Burial.

“If you last that many years, a hundred years, in a town like Marks, you got roots in that mud.”

A federal three-judge panel ordered Mississippi to conduct special elections for 14 legislative seats this year because the court determined the Legislature diluted Black voting strength when lawmakers redrew legislative districts.

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The Mississippi State Department of Health issued an alert Wednesday that cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, are climbing in the state. 

The year-to-date number of cases in Mississippi ballooned to 80 as of July 10. That compares to 49 cases in all of 2024. 

No whooping cough deaths have been reported. Ten people have been hospitalized related to whooping cough, seven of whom were children under 2 years old. 

Cases have largely been clustered in northeast Mississippi. The region accounts for 40% of cases statewide. 

The nation has also seen rising rates of whooping cough, though cases have been climbing less steeply than in Mississippi. About 15,000 whooping cough cases have been reported nationwide this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The highly contagious respiratory illness is named for the “whooping” sound people make when gasping for air after a coughing fit. It may begin like a common cold but can last for weeks or months. Babies younger than 1 year are at greatest risk for getting whooping cough, and can have severe complications that often require hospitalization. 

Whooping cough cases fell in Mississippi after the COVID-19 pandemic began, but have since rebounded. This is likely due to people now taking fewer mitigation measures, like masking and remote learning, State Epidemiologist Renia Dotson said at the state Board of Health meeting July 9. 

The majority of cases – 76% – have occurred in children. Of the 73 cases reported in people who were old enough to be vaccinated, 28 were unvaccinated. Of those 28 people, 23 were children. 

“Vaccines are the best defense against vaccine preventable diseases,” State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said after the State Board of Health meeting.

Mississippi has long had the highest child vaccination rates in the country. But the state’s kindergarten vaccination rates have dropped since a federal judge ruled in 2023 that parents can opt out of vaccinating their children for school on account of religious beliefs. 

The pertussis vaccination is administered in a five-dose series for children under 7 and booster doses for older children and adults. The health department recommends that pregnant women, grandparents and family or friends that may come in close contact with an infant should get booster shots to ensure they do not pass the illness to children, particularly those too young to be vaccinated. 

Immunity from pertussis vaccination wanes over time, and there is not a routine recommendation for boosters. 

State health officials also encourage vaccination against other childhood illnesses, like measles. While Mississippi has not reported any measles cases, Texas has had recent outbreaks. 

The Mississippi Health Department offers vaccinations to children and uninsured adults at county health departments. 

Correction 7/16/25: This story has been updated to reflect that the age of the seven hospitalized children is under 2 years old.

Randy Watkins returns to the Crooked Letter pod to discuss The Open, where the weather will be wet, windy and coolish at Royal Portrush. Scottie Scheffler will be the betting favorite, but the Europeans, including Rory McIlroy, definitely will have a home-course advantage. The recent Major League Draft also will be discussed.

Stream all episodes here.