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A group of cybercriminals hacked the Vicksburg Warren School District’s servers last month and claimed to have employees’ personal information and internal school documents.

A group that calls itself “Grief” breached the school’s servers through a ransomware attack on May 28.  

“The network of Warren Vicksburg School was screwed and now we have about 10 GB of data from file servers, including internal company documents and personal information,” the group’s website read before it was removed. “According to our rules we are publishing this data step by step in case if this company will keep silence (sic).”

While the district declined to answer whether it paid a ransom to the group to prevent the release or sale of personal information, Brett Callow, a threat analyst at the antivirus company Emisoft, said when the cybercriminals remove the threat from online, “it’s usually an indicator they are in negotiations or have been paid.”

A district spokesperson said Thursday they are “working to determine what information might have been affected.”

A Mississippi Department of Education spokeswoman confirmed the district had contacted the department in recent weeks about the attack. George Co. School District also made the department aware it had been attacked in recent weeks. It’s unclear if the attacks were carried out by the same group. 

Most employees in Vicksburg Warren School District first heard of the breach Friday morning, two weeks after it occurred and after Mississippi Today asked the district why teachers had not been informed their personal information may have been compromised.

“On May 28, we identified suspicious activity on some of our computer systems. We immediately took steps to stop the activity and investigate it further,” a Friday email from Superintendent Chad Shealy to district employees said. “Out of the concern to protect our staff and students, the District engaged an independent cybersecurity expert and law enforcement to help in our investigation. At this time, there’s no evidence that employee sensitive information was accessed or misused.” 

The Vicksburg attack comes after last month’s ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline and dozens of other American entities in recent weeks, renewing fears about technology being used to hold the government or entire sectors of the economy hostage.

The phenomenon is not new to Mississippi schools. In October of last year, Yazoo Co. School District was also the victim of a ransomware attack and was made to pay $300,000. 

Superintendent Ken Barron said the district’s insurance provider handled the attack and paid the ransom, and a cybersecurity company negotiated with the hackers. Since then the district has upgraded its firewalls, reconfigured its servers and taken several other measures to ramp up its protection against future threats, but leaders are still unsure exactly how the attackers made it into the school servers.

“It’s a growing concern” among schools in Mississippi, Barron said, noting he knew of another Mississippi superintendent who recently increased his district’s insurance coverage in case of future cyber attacks.

At least four Mississippi school districts or universities have been targeted in ransomware attacks since 2013, according to a database compiled by StateScoop, though others may not have been publicly disclosed. The Oxford School District was targeted in 2016, though officials said they did not pay a ransom. The FBI investigated the Oxford hack.

Callow said attacks in other school districts led to extremely sensitive information being released online.

“An attack in Ohio’s Toledo Public Schools has been especially egregious. Information posted on the hacker’s website in October includes Social Security numbers and dates of birth for students and employees, disciplinary and disability information on students, employee evaluations and exam grades,” Callow said. “It included the identities of an eighth-grader listed as emotionally disturbed, a ninth-grader suspended for sexual activity and a roster of foster children.” 

Callow said while it’s disappointing when schools and other companies pay a ransom to the cybercriminals, it’s not surprising. 

“Unfortunately, it’ll help keep schools in the crosshairs. If a sector proves to be profitable, they’ll keep on hitting it,” he said. 

Aside from Vicksburg Warren, “Grief” has also apparently targeted Lancaster Independent School District in Texas, Clover Park School District in Washington and Mobile County in Alabama. The Mobile County attack apparently shut down systems for three days and sparked a federal investigation.

The post Mississippi school districts targeted by ransomware attacks appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Several days of heavy rainfall fell over the Delta and parts of north and central Mississippi, breaching multiple levees, flooding homes and businesses, drowning crops and washing out roads.

Parts of Mississippi received up to seven inches of rain per day over a three-day period this week — a historic weather event.

“One observer measured slightly over 20 inches of rain in the last three days,” Andy Sniezak, National Weather Service meteorologist in Memphis, told the Clarion Ledger of rainfall in Tallahatchie County.

Several state and county highways in the Delta were closed this week because of flooding on Thursday. In Bolivar County, Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Lamb said that floodwaters got inside between 150-200 homes.

“We’ve had to use boats to rescue people and get them to safe ground,” Lamb said. “All the roads are under water, so we’ll have to wait until the water goes down before we can see if we have some infrastructure damage.”

The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency released video that showed two levees breached in Tallahatchie County, where more farmland was flooded.

Officials in Carroll County warned on Thursday evening that a dam known as the Pelucia Control Structure could collapse within the next 12 to 24 hours.

Earlier in the week, several in Lafayette County were asked to evacuate their homes on Wednesday due to a failing dam at Lake Tara. Those residents were later given the all-clear to return to their homes.

The weekend forecast calls for more rain and maybe severe weather in parts of the already affected areas of the state.

“After the week we’ve had this is not something anyone wants to see,” the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MSEMA) posted on Twitter.

The post Photos: Historic rainfall floods homes across north Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Learn more about this episode here.

Read the full transcript below:

Adam Ganucheau: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Other Side, Mississippi Today’s political podcast. I’m your host, Adam Ganucheau. The Other Side lets you hear directly from the most connected players and observers across the spectrum of politics and Mississippi. This week, we’re dedicating our episode to an exciting new project that we’ve recently launched.

[00:00:25] It’s called NextGen Mississippi, and it’s centered around one of our state’s biggest problems. Young people are either leaving the state in droves for various reasons. Or, they’re stuck here wanting to leave. A month ago, we learned that Mississippi was one of just three us states to lose population over the past 10 years.

[00:00:41] Only twice before had Mississippi lost residents during a 10-year span. Those years were 1920 and 1960. And, now, of course we can add 2020 to that list. More and more other states reaped the benefits of our minds, our energy and our passion. Meanwhile, Mississippi can’t get off the bottom in so many categories.

[00:01:00] It’s a tragic cycle that certainly isn’t limited to just our young people, but as a member myself of the next largest generation of Mississippi’s workers, voters and citizens, it’s become a little bit too hard to stomach. So, on May 25th, we launched this long-term reporting project called NextGen Mississippi.

[00:01:15] We’re hiring a full-time reporter for this, and we’re committing much of our existing newsroom’s energy to several things. First, we want to clearly define the problem, working to answer questions like, How many young people are leaving? Why are they leaving? What could convince them to stay? Why have so many young people stayed and what are they doing and what are they sacrificing?

[00:01:34] What more can we do for all of them? Next, we want to examine the implications of the problem, answering questions like what does this increasing Exodus of young Mississippians actually mean for Mississippi? What about for the states that they’re settling in? What are we missing out on because of it? How is our state’s future effected by the problem?

[00:01:52] Finally, we want to engage Mississippians — everyone from the people afflicted by the problem to our elected officials who have the responsibility to do something about it. We want to hear from anyone and everyone about how we can together keep more of our young people at home and create a better future for our state all the while we’ll make a concerted effort to regularly showcase the great things that so many young Mississippians are up to here.

[00:02:15] That’s as big a part of this story as anything. Last week, I was invited to talk more about this project on WJ TV, a local TV station here in Jackson that we regularly partner with. I want to play that interview now, which I think will give a bit more insight into what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

[00:02:31] But, before I play that, I want to tell you how you can get involved. Go to our website, mississippitoday.org, and at the top of the page, you’ll see a link that says NextGen Mississippi. There, you’ll find a survey that will ask you some basic questions about this problem. We’ll then take a close look at what you write, and that’s going to really help us inform our reporting in the coming weeks and months.

[00:02:51] We won’t use any of your information publicly, unless you give us the permission to do so. And also you can follow along our regular weekly coverage, and please share with your friends and on social media. Thanks for listening. And thank you so much for engaging with us on this project. Now here’s my interview with Byron brown at WJ TV.

[00:03:10] Today’s Adam Ganucheau joins us to talk about an ambitious reporting project designed to answer those questions. Also, Carla Lewis, CSpire’s chief technology officer joins us. She’ll explain why her company went all in with support for the new computer science and cyber education equality act. To set the stage for our first interview…

[00:03:31] I want to read a passage from our partners at mississippitoday.org: “More and more other states reap the benefits of our minds, our energy, our passion. Meanwhile, Mississippi can get off the bottom as a tragic cycle that certainly isn’t limited to just our young people, but as a member myself of the next large generation of Mississippi’s workers, voters, and citizens, it’s become too hard to stomach.”

[00:03:55] That passage is part of a column introducing Mississippi Today’s NextGen Mississippi. It’s a wide ranging reporting project just launched this week. It will explore the longterm impact of migration away from the Magnolia state. The man who wrote that passage joins us now this morning by Zoom. Adam Ganucheau is editor in chief of mississippitoday.org.

[00:04:15] And, he’s one of the lead authors of this project. Adam, welcome back to Mississippi Insight. Thanks for having me, Byron, excited to be here. Explain for us what NextGen Mississippi aims to accomplish and why it is so important for you and your news team. Yeah. So, I’m a 29-year-old native Mississippian. All my life I’ve thought about — I’ve heard these points brought up — you know, “As soon as soon as we can, we’re getting outta here.”

[00:04:41] You know, if you’re a young person in Mississippi, I know that you’ve heard that, you’ve been around that, you’ve been exposed to it all your life. Even if you’re not a young person in Mississippi, this is something that we all know. It’s one of the biggest problems facing our state — our young people either are running from Mississippi as fast as they can, or they want to. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of people, certainly like myself who want to be here, who are doing good work and trying to make a difference.

[00:05:10] But, at the end of the day, we know that we are not in the majority. We were kind of thinking about that problem, looking at the scope of it. Mississippi Today, when we launched, a little more than five years ago, we’ve kind of our bread and butter has been focusing on the state Legislature.

[00:05:26] You know, these, these policy leaders, these elected officials who have the ability to help solve any problem that the state faces. And this has been a big one. And, uh, Tom, and again, we’ve just, we’ve continued to see, uh, either, you know, little or no movement, uh, to try to help curb this problem more often than not, we we’ve experienced and covered the fact that.

[00:05:46] Our leaders don’t even acknowledge the problem, let alone do anything about it. So, uh, you know, we, we just kind of felt this responsibility, this obligation to ask these questions, to help people, uh, understand the real scope of the problem first and foremost, to help Mississippians understand why, like, how this is affecting our state and why this is a problem for us in the future.

[00:06:08] And, then to engage people, to really bring them into the fold, have them connect with us, have us connect with them and talk about how we all together can try to make these things better. So, that’s sort of the Genesis of NextGen Mississippi. It’s something we’re really excited about. And, again, it just stems from this understanding, no matter who you are, if you’re a Mississippian, you know this is an issue, this is a problem that we have to address.

[00:06:33] And, unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough focus placed on it. Well, we mentioned at the top of the program that Mississippi is only one of three states to lose population, according to the last month’s data, released from the U.S. Census. When you factor in births, deaths and people moving in and out of the safe, we lost 6,018 people between 2010 and 2020.

[00:06:52] What does your research indicate about who’s leaving the state and why? Yeah. So, first off, the Census data, this 10 year Census data, we don’t have a lot of specifics yet. That’s coming later this year. We’re going to be able to really drill into who the people are who live here, who left, what their backgrounds are, their education levels, racism, you name the demographics.

[00:07:14] We’re going to be able to drill into that a little bit more specifically, but based on some of the annual update the Census Bureau puts out there called American Community Surveys, we can sort of lean a little bit from just those. And, those certainly aren’t as comprehensive as these 10-year Census numbers will be later this year, but we can tell that the people who are leaving Mississippi are younger, or, you know, age 35 or 40 or younger, in most cases. They have higher levels of education attainment.

[00:07:44] And, certainly there are a lot of factors that go into all of this. That’s not a blanket statement. There are a lot of different Mississippians and a lot of different backgrounds and experiences who are leaving the state. When you’re lumping groups together and trying to assess some trends in the data, that’s what we’re seeing.

[00:08:01] So trending younger people, regardless of race or region of the state and trending toward that higher level of education attainment. So, that’s part of the issue, but another thing that we want to look at Byron, and I’m really curious to get the rest of this data back later this year, is take a look at some of the older generations who are leaving, as well.

[00:08:22] We, of course, know that depending on what region of the state you’re thinking about or talking or looking at, we have some communities across the state that are attractive for retirement. We have some communities across the state where we know we can see in the data already that even older people are flocking.

[00:08:38] They’re leaving those communities. And in many cases, leaving the state. So generally speaking, we’re really kind of counting down the days until we get that data. We’re not sure exactly when the Census Bureau is going to give that to us, but sometime. Probably this fall, maybe early winter or at the end of the year.

[00:08:53] But, like I said, the big trends we’re seeing — young people and educated people are leaving the quickest in Mississippi. Let’s look at a map that your team published for this project. Here, here, our viewers can see each county colored in different shades of blue and light green, the darkest colors in places such as Rankin county, Madison County, the Gulf Coast, and other denser populated centers show population growth, but the lighter colors are the Delta and other river counties over in East Mississippi and a lot of thePine Belt, uh, point to big population decline since 2010. What can you tell us about the geographical component in these populations? Yeah. So first off, I’d say, look at the job growth and economic development. The counties that you’re seeing there that have actually gained population over the years.

[00:09:38] Some of those more extreme ones like Desoto, Madison, Rankin, Lafayette, Oktibbeha and all those coastal counties, there’s been a huge focus by state leaders on creating jobs and boosting economic development in those places. I think no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, the number one factor for whether or not you want to stay or leave Mississippi has everything to do with the economy.

[00:10:02] There are other factors at play, of course, but as we’ve sort of been digging into these numbers, as we’ve been interviewing and collecting data from thousands of Mississippians the past few weeks, this is the number one issue I’d say across the board for most everyone. So, looking at economic development, but then also look at education.

[00:10:19] So yeah, Oktibbeha and Lafayette counties of course those are big college/ university towns. Now, you know, you look at some of the other sort of growing in population counties across the state — they have good public school systems, K through 12 public school systems. They have great community colleges or junior colleges where people can earn post-secondary degrees that aren’t those four years.

[00:10:43] And then, of course, where all those four year universities are, you’re seeing some growth there as well. What do these folks have to say about leaving or staying in the state? Yeah. So probably the thing that I’m most excited about with this project is that we are doing that direct outreach to Mississippi.

[00:10:58] You know, as best as COVID restrictions and travels sort of pandemic-related issues will allow u, we’re on the ground. We’re talking to the vehicle. We also released this pretty comprehensive survey on our website through the NextGen Mississippi brand that allows anyone in Mississippi or outside of Mississippi who left to come in and tell us a little bit about themselves and answer some questions — like why did you leave or why did you stay? If you stayed, what more do you need from state leaders? If you left, what might attract you to come back? You know, talking about issues about like the future of Mississippi, as it relates to the future of the City of Jackson. Do you think Mississippi needs an urban center in Jackson, the Capitol city, a metropolitan area of Jackson that has to thrive for the whole state of thrive. We’re trying to dig into a lot of these specific questions. And, like I said, we’ve been reaching out directly to Mississippians or former Mississippians who left about those very things. So we put out the survey, Byron, and we’re up to over 1,000 responses now. We’re really excited about that. It’s been a great, great response so far and in just a few days time, and we need more of that. So if you’re watching this, if you’re interested, go to our website, mississippitoday.org, and at the top of the website, you’ll see a link there that says NexGen, Mississippi, click on that and find the survey. But just looking through those survey responses, Byron, and as a native Mississippi, and again, who I’ve been, like I said, dealing with these issues my entire life, I’ve been thinking through them.

[00:12:27] Reading these responses from people — these, you know, hundreds of Mississippians who are either here or have left — has been pretty emotional. You know, I think I wrote when we announced this project, this isn’t about me. This isn’t about us at Mississippi Today, the reporters in the building. But, it is personal, it’s personal in a way that is personal to every Mississippian.

[00:12:48] And, you know, we miss our friends. We miss our family members who left. For those of us who stayed, we understand that there are such great things about the state and we love it. But we also understand that there are a lot of things that need to get better and need to improve. And, you know, I think, at the end of the day, that’s the shared experience of every Mississippian, whether they stayed or left, and and reading through these responses, it’s just been an emotional thing.

[00:13:11] This is something that we all should care about so much. And, this is our future that we’re talking about. And it’s been really, I think, rewarding already to see these responses. But, if you’re watching this, please get involved. Go fill out that survey. Those responses they remain anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

[00:13:29] But, regardless of whether you want to stay anonymous or not, it helps inform our reporting in the days and weeks to come. And the more, the better. The more experiences and perspectives that we can see and share, the better it will be for everyone.

And, you also reached out to state leaders about their perspectives on the brain drain, but you didn’t have a lot of luck getting many responses, I understand. Is that correct? That’s right. You know, myself and Candace McKenzie, who’s kind of this young reporter who herself, she’s a native Mississippi, and she just graduated from college at Millsaps College. She’s our lead reporter on this project. And, you know, the two of us sat down as we were thinking through the launch and the rollout of this project.

[00:14:09] And one thing that we couldn’t stop thinking about was that we got these Census numbers a little more than a month ago. Now, the numbers that we just talked about that showed that we were one of three states in the country to lose population — only three. We were just talking about that and, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that our state leaders have been largely silent about it. If this is indeed one of the state’s biggest problems, it just is striking that so many of these top state leaders haven’t even acknowledged that the problem exists —let alone offer up solutions to it.

[00:14:42] So what we did, what we wanted to do was was if they’re not going to talk about it themselves, which is disappointing and unfortunate, we’ll ask them, you know, that’s, kind of why we exist in this journalism world. You know, we want to be the eyes and the ears of the public who don’t have access to these elected officials.

[00:14:59] And, oftentimes, we can ask the questions that need to be asked. So we reached out to the state’s top three policymakers that would, of course be Gov. Tate, Reeves, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn.You know, these three men together collectively have as much power, the power needed to pass any policy they want to — really sort of implement some agendas and ideas to fix this problem, or to say, at least start fixing this problem. We asked several times for comment from all three of them, and we only heard back from one, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, and his statement was, you know, it talks about the importance of focusing on the core sort of policies of infrastructure, healthcare, and education, public education.

[00:15:41] That’s good. That’s certainly needed. And we were happy to hear back from him, but it was disappointing, to say the least, to not hear back at all from Gov. Reeves or Speaker Gunn. And, then, in that same piece, we kind of further contextualize this and talked about how underrepresented young people in Mississippi are in state government of the eight statewide elected officials.

[00:16:00] Just one of them is a Millennial or younger, you know. In the 174 member of legislature in 2019, we had fewer than a dozen members of the Legislature of those 174 who are Millennials or younger. So, you know, you talk about solutions to the problem or setting agendas, or even just throwing out some ideas.

[00:16:20] The problem, what we’ve seen, unfortunately, is, a state leadership that just hasn’t been engaged. They haven’t wanted to engage, seemingly, in helping address this and that was a big Genesis — the big reason for why we wanted to start this project. Adam Ganucheau of mississippitoday.org. Thank you for joining us.

[00:16:38] Thanks so much, Byron.

[00:16:46] Thanks again to Byron Brown at WJTV for giving me the chance to talk about that hope that helps everyone understand why we’re doing this and what exactly we’re trying to accomplish. Before we go, I just want to kind of reiterate how y’all can get involved, because we really want you to. Go to our website, mississippitoday.org. At the top of the site, you’ll see a tab that says NextGen Mississippi.

[00:17:07] When you get to that page, you’ll see a link on that page pretty high up to a survey that we’ve put out. We asked a lot of questions about a lot of these things that we’ve just been discussing on this podcast episode. So, fill that out. It’s really going to help us to see your answers and help inform our reporting in the coming weeks and months.

[00:17:25] And, of course, we won’t use any of your information publicly, unless you tell us that we can do so. Other than that, just stay engaged. Keep following Mississippi Today. In every one of our NextGen Mississippi stories, you’ll see a link to our newsletter for the NextGen Mississippi coverage.

[00:17:40] That’ll keep you up to date pretty regularly about what we’ve been writing and what we’ve been up to. And, as always, share what you see if you like it with your friends and on your social media pages, but otherwise, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for taking the time. And thanks for engaging with us.

[00:17:54] Hope you have a great week

[00:17:58] As we cover the biggest political stories in the 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 are impacted by the news. So, what do we need from you, the listener? We need your feedback and support.

[00:18:13] If you listen to the podcast on a player like iTunes or Stitcher, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. We also have an email in which you can share your feedback, that address is podcast@mississippitoday.org. Y’all can also reach out to me or any of my colleagues through social media or email.

[00:18:29] And, as always, thank you for your feedback and support. Subscribe to our weekly podcast on your favorite podcast app or stream episodes online@mississippitoday.org forward slash the other side for the Mississippi today. Team I’m Adam Ganesha. The other side is produced by Mississippi today and engineered by blue sky studios.

[00:18:47] We hope you’ll join us for our next episode.

The post Episode 161: Why we launched NextGen Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

An emergency grant program for small businesses during the worst of the pandemic last year was supposed to give priority to minority and women-owned businesses in Mississippi in giving out grants up to $25,000 each from federal COVID-19 relief passed by Congress.

Although the program overall appeared to sputter — with only half the money allocated being spent — nearly half the grants approved did go to minority and women-owned businesses, as did $51.4 million of the $118 million in grants approved.

The Mississippi Development Authority, the agency that oversaw the grants using a private contractor, said it cannot provide a breakdown between minority-owned and women-owned businesses awarded grants. It reported that 18,015, or 53%, of all applications received for the program were from minority or women-owned businesses.

MDA reported that the entire Back to Business program awarded grants to 21,200 businesses, totaling $118 million. Of those, 10,579 grants totaling $51.4 million were to minority and women-owned businesses.

“The short answer is, I don’t think we did a very good job as legislators in putting the program together,” said House Minority Leader Robert Johnson III, D-Natchez, who helped negotiate the programs, and the priority for minority and women-owned businesses. “It helped, but again, the whole process ended up being too cumbersome and restrictive. There were certain (lawmakers) who wanted to police the money more than make sure we got it out quickly to businesses … There were also people who didn’t want to do the (minority) set aside at all.”

READ MORE: CARES Act money was supposed to help Mississippi businesses. Did it?

Lawmakers in May of 2020 earmarked $300 million in federal CARES Act money for small businesses with two programs. One, funded at $240 million, would provide Back to Business grants up to $25,000 each to qualified businesses that applied. The other, funded at $60 million, would provide “automatic” grants of $2,000 each — no application necessary — to businesses shut down by state COVID-19 actions.

For the Back to Business program, $40 million for the first 60 days of the program was to be reserved for minority and women-owned businesses.

But the program moved slowly, and business owners reported problems navigating bureaucracy and red tape, and by August, only 1% of the Back to Business grant money had been given to businesses.

An analysis of the program by Mississippi Today showed that only about half of the $300 million was spent. The rest was redirected to other pandemic programs, such as rental assistance grants, help for hospitals and veterans, with the bulk swept into the state’s unemployment insurance fund.

Johnson said he hopes lawmakers have learned a lesson with the business grants programs as Mississippi receives more federal pandemic relief.

“We don’t need to make things too restrictive,” Johnson said. “… All (the federal government) had asked was that we verify it was going to small businesses. But this was frustrated by certain members who were more intent on policing the money. This wasn’t just partisan, it was Democrats and Republicans. We had conservative House members, members of both parties, who were sitting there appalled that we made this so hard, so cumbersome that we ended up spending only half the money and not meeting the objective of the federal money, which was to get it into the hands of our small businesses to keep the economy going.”

The post COVID-19 grant program promised to prioritize minority businesses. Did it? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hattiesburg is, no matter how you strike it, a Democratic city.

In 2020, Democratic President Joe Biden earned at least 60% of the votes in the state’s fourth-largest city. Of the 16 voting precincts that are within the city limits, Donald Trump received above 40% of the vote in just two. Democrat Jim Hood earned at least 65% of the city’s votes in the 2019 governor’s race, and a Democrat previously served as the city’s mayor for 16 years.

That’s why when 39-year-old independent Toby Barker won a second term Tuesday with an astounding 85% of the vote against Democrat Lakeylah White, it turned heads.

“We already knew Barker was good,” said Brannon Miller, director of voter targeting for the Jackson-based political consulting firm Chism Strategies. “He was the only Republican House member with an opponent in 2015 to get a higher share of the vote than former Gov. Phil Bryant, and he beat a Democratic incumbent in 2017. But he may well be the most talented politician of his generation.”

Barker, who previously served as a Republican in the Legislature, wasn’t the only successful independent winner this week. Notably, independents unseated several prominent local officials of both major parties.

In Gautier, independent Casey Vaughan unseated Republican incumbent Mayor Phil Torjusen. In Columbus, independent candidate Keith Gaskin appears to have unseated Democratic Mayor Robert Smith. In Pass Christian, incumbent Republican Alderman James “Buddy” Clarke was defeated by independent Betty Sparkman.

Well-known independent Mayor George Flaggs coasted to re-election in Vicksburg, independent Mayor Robyn Tannehill was re-elected in Oxford, and independent Mayor Richard White was re-elected in Byram.

In today’s political environment rife with polarizing pandering and intense partisan bickering, what explains the appeal of these independent candidates in so many Mississippi cities?

“I don’t think there’s a Republican or Democratic way to pick up garbage or pave streets,” Barker told Mississippi Today on Wednesday. “There’s no political philosophy, in my mind, that does that one way better than another. If you care about your community and seek to take care of needs and lead everyone equitably, I think being an independent is the best way to do that.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find any Republican or Democratic elected official talk about all of their constituents — regardless of their party affiliation or race — the way Barker talks about his. And a close examination of the effects of his work in Hattiesburg the past few years could explain why he won re-election so definitively.

When he took over as mayor four years ago, the city was mired in financial reporting problems. Barker has balanced the city’s budget and begun making visible investments across the city. In 2019, he championed a 1% restaurant, hotel and motel sales tax increase to pay for upgrades to the city’s parks. That vote passed with 81% approval.

In 2019 and 2020, the city received separate million-dollar transportation grants to improve infrastructure and mobility problems. The city’s school district had previously been at risk of state takeover because of financial reporting problems, but district leadership have achieved several fiscal and academic gains recently.

As his first term wore on and wins began piling up, Barker began sensing a transformation in how Hattiesburg residents thought about their city.

“The most rewarding thing to me is seeing people from every walk of life fall in love with our city again and find a place in it,” Barker said. “From day one, it’s been about bringing everyone to the table, listening to folks, communicating, and telling our story — the good and sometimes the bad.”

Barker continued: “It’s about helping people try to find their place in where the city is going, and how we’re going to tackle our challenges together… I could sense over time that people began celebrating each other’s successes regardless of what side of the city you’re on. We’ve tried to communicate that your neighborhood is as important as mine, and every neighborhood needs to see progress.”

Flaggs, the Vicksburg mayor, said leading as an independent, not a partisan, is critical to a local government’s success.

“Running municipal government is about providing services at the least cost to the taxpayer,” Flaggs told Mississippi Today. “It has nothing to do with political posturing or policy. You can’t be effective in managing municipal budgets without the state and federal government. In order to access money from the state and federal government, you have to be in a position to follow money and not the party.”

Flaggs continued: “Politically, all Democrats are not right, all Republicans are not wrong, and vice versa.”

But as statewide politics remain one-sided as ever, there is a growing sense that the state’s local officials — led by independents who have experience building coalitions based on people and issues, not parties — could pose unique electoral problems for top statewide officials.

A glaring example of the pushback state officials saw from local officials was COVID-19 policy. As Gov. Tate Reeves struggled for consistency in issuing statewide mask mandates and business requirements, mayors set policies in their own cities.

In Oxford, Tannehill became one of the first Mississippi mayors to issue a mask mandate, before Reeves finally gave into pressure from medical experts begging for the wearing of masks to stem the quick spread of the virus. The same could be said of Barker in Hattiesburg, as well as Flaggs in Vicksburg.

After Mississippi voters decided in 2019 to remove the Constitutional provision that effectively nullified any independent candidate’s chances to serve in a statewide elected position, the prospects of an independent’s statewide success has become more enticing to consider.

“People are looking for people that represent people,” said Flaggs, who said he has “certainly prayed about” a possible 2023 statewide run. “I believe (changing the Constitution) creates an opportunity to where an independent candidate — particularly an African American candidate — can be elected at the statewide level.”

In the meantime, though, Flaggs and Barker both said they expect the rise of local level independents to continue. 

“I think it started with my generation — people identifying more with causes or people rather than a set, rigid partisan ideology,” Barker said. “I think people understand that there’s a lot of gray out there. Sometimes, running as an independent, you can define yourself and define what you believe in. It allows you to have some very open conversations with people who might otherwise label you as a partisan before they even meet you.”

As for what his success and the success of other Mississippi independents means for our polarized political system today?

“It shows that even in this polarized world, there’s a way back,” Barker said. “It’s hard — it really isn’t easy because you never know what position you’ll be forced to consider because of the reality you’ve created for yourself — but we should be encouraged that there is a way back.”

The post The rise of independent elected officials in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

CARRIERE — It takes $80 to fill the gas tank inside the beat-up white cargo van 34-year-old Michael Beard calls home.

He can’t afford that, so he usually fills it in $20 increments. He spends no more than $5.40 on food each day. The shower and washroom at a nearby Pearl River County truck stop are his biggest expense, eating up one of the largest chunks of his weekly unemployment checks after child support. Each shower costs $13.

“I have to, though,” Beard said. “No one wants to hire someone who hasn’t showered.” 

That’s what Beard says he’s wanted for the last year: to land a job. But all he has to show for his efforts is an inbox of auto-generated rejection emails. Soon, the money he’s relied on to get by will be more than halved because Mississippi is dropping out of the federal pandemic aid program.

Ahead of the June 12 end date, about 87,000 Mississippians were collecting an extra $300 in unemployment on top of the state’s average payout of about $200 per week. Mississippi is one of the first states to drop the federal benefits, creating a mess of anxiety for people like Beard who say finding a decent, stable job after losing work to the pandemic has been a struggle. 

Beard says in the state’s smaller towns, like his own, that struggle is only amplified. He keeps a marbled notebook with information about each job he’s applied for written in black ink. He started a new notebook a few weeks ago after filling the last one.

“I applied for nine jobs so far this week,” he said, looking down at the pages. It was only Tuesday.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced the program would end as early as federally allowed, giving recipients a four-week notice. Reeves, and two dozen other U.S. governors, have said the extra benefits have kept people from going back to work.

“I’m tired of this narrative that we are lazy,” Beard said. “People want to work. I want to work.”

At most, Mississipians can collect $235 per week from state unemployment. At minimum, $30. The extra $300 in federal benefits put minimum-wage workers above what they could make at $7.25-per-hour jobs each week.

Reeves said in a statement last month that after talks with small business owners, it “became clear” that the unemployment assistance “may have been necessary in May of last year” but wasn’t anymore. Reeves’ decision came after politicians and business leaders said people were denying job offers to continue collecting unemployment. 

In response, the Mississippi Department of Employment Security pushed businesses to report people who denied offers to continue collecting benefits. The employment office says they’ve gotten 4,300 reports of “refusals to work” since January. Those are just the incidents that have been reported, not confirmed by the department’s investigators.

Even if the department’s investigators found every one of those reports to be true, they would still only account for about 5% of those collecting the extra aid in the state.

Mississippi’s labor outlook, while improved, still hasn’t recovered to what it was before the pandemic.

“Our job growth has kind of stalled out over the last few months,” said state economist Corey Miller. 

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows about 28% of Mississippi jobs — or 42,000 jobs — that existed before the pandemic have not returned. The job count has actually worsened since the start of the year. The April jobs report, the latest available, showed 4,600 fewer jobs accounted for than there were in January.

Although Mississippi’s service industry jobs — typically minimum-wage positions — are returning some, industries like construction and manufacturing have lost positions, according to the labor data.

Economists largely agree low wages, the cost of and lack of child care, and fear of COVID-19 are all contributing to the labor demand.

“The federal aid is just part of it,” Miller said. “It’s not the whole story.”

Before the pandemic, Alexis Lee, a 35-year-old Vancleave resident, was a teacher’s assistant in Gulfport. 

Lee, a single mother of four, went home for spring break and was never called back in. Her position wasn’t needed during remote learning.

She briefly collected unemployment starting in May 2020. By August, she became a COVID-19 substitute teacher for Jackson County. It was a good fit; she’s working on a degree online in secondary education. 

It was in the final days of the school year, just before her last paycheck, when Lee learned the extra $300 in federal benefits would end.

“It was heartbreaking. Mississippi has the lowest everything,” she said, from wages to education ranks. “How can you say we shouldn’t have this anymore? And to cut them so fast? People didn’t get enough time to prepare.” 

Unlike permanent teachers, substitutes like Lee don’t collect a paycheck over the summer. Further, her substitute position isn’t guaranteed to be available next school year. So, she signed up for unemployment a second time. 

She thinks the state should have weaned back the federal funds, rather than cut them off completely at once. But right now, she’s not collecting anything. She has a hold on her account with the employment office over a discrepancy she doesn’t understand. 

She says after more than a day waiting to hear back from the office by phone, she was told an investigator would look at her claim and potentially clear it up so she can receive the money in three to six weeks. Other substitutes have reported the same issue. 

The Mississippi Department of Employment Security did not respond to request for comment regarding Lee’s issue. 

She has been applying for a mix of jobs: seasonal retail gigs to get her family through the next few months and teaching assistant jobs in case she isn’t offered a substitute position for the fall.

She said when she is honest with employers that she intends to go back to teaching in the fall, they’re no longer interested. 

“It isn’t as easy as people think,” Lee said. “I got rejected from McDonald’s.” 

Tara Owens, a 39-year-old Gulfport resident, used to work in childcare. Now many of her former clients work from home and don’t need her to watch their children like they used to. 

Two of her own children are Type 1 diabetics, which makes Owens hesitant to take a public-facing job. Should those children contract the virus, they’re at a higher risk of having complications. She also has asthma and a history of bronchitis, which puts her in the same high-risk category.

She and her husband have six kids total, five of whom still live at home.

“I’ll apply to any and every job that’s COVID safe,” she said, “but a lot of places aren’t.” 

Mississippi has one of the lowest rates of vaccination at about 29% and was one of the first to lift its mask mandates and business restrictions.

Owens has focused on applying to jobs paying above minimum wage. Ideally, she’d have a customer service job she could do by phone at home. The cut in benefits won’t change the types of job she applies to. 

“I’m going to sit here and apply for jobs like I have all along,” she said. “I’m not going to stop doing what I’ve been doing.” 

She said the decision to pull back the federal aid should have been matched with a minimum wage hike. 

For now, she’s shifting her focus on her own online retail business selling mugs and T-shirts online. It’s something she can do from home, something with a chance of a payout above a bleak $7.25 an hour. Her family can’t survive on that. 

“I just have to believe the good Lord would never give me more than I can carry,” Owens said. 

Beard says he doesn’t see a major demand for workers in Pearl River County, where he’s lived his entire life. It’s home to about 55,500 people — 18% of whom are living in poverty, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That’s double the national average.

On a recent afternoon, Beard pulled his van off Interstate 59 in Carriere, a few miles outside the even smaller town where he held his last job — the McDonald’s in Derby. He was laid off at the onset of the pandemic, but then the franchise owner decided to shut down the fast-food spot altogether.

Beard tucked his van onto a dirt lot with a drive-up ice machine. It was hot. He sat on a camping chair — a gift from a stranger — inside the flat back of the van so he could face the roadway. 

A white poster board was beside him: “PLEASE HELP! HOMELESS MAN START A BUSINESS!! WILL WORK.”

Beard had been at McDonald’s for about a year. Even then, he was always looking for something better. He’s done the math: He’d need to make at least $14.25 an hour to inch above the poverty line in Mississippi.

He has completed some college in computer engineering, which left him $16,000 in student loans. He has worked call center jobs, which he’d like to get back into, but a lot of them are now making those positions permanently remote.

He sighed as he gestured to the van. Remote work, obviously, isn’t an option.

Beard balanced the laptop he bought with his stimulus check on his passenger seat, using his phone as a hotspot as he checked the payout balances on the state employment website. 

Mississippi usually sends him $116 a week, though sometimes it’s as low as $53 when his child support is sent out. He expects the last $300 from the federal program to be deposited June 14. 

His whole life is packed up in the compact space. He sleeps sprawled across the two front seats at night. Three plastic bins hold all his clothes.

His father’s ashes are in a tin box on a shelf secured to the van’s back wall. His mother died right before the pandemic, and he can’t afford the drive to Jackson to retrieve her ashes. 

Beard recently decided he will broaden his job search to the Gulf Coast, where the summer tourism surge has meant a pick-up in business. Outside of his immediate surroundings, he’d been applying largely just across the state border in Louisiana and Alabama where he found slightly higher wages.

Ashley Edwards, the CEO of the Gulf Coast Business Council, said there’s a labor demand in his region but that doesn’t mean getting a job there, or anywhere, during this time isn’t challenging.

“I think with the demands comes increased wages, and in some areas increased wages increases competition,” Edwards said. “It’s clear employers are looking for talent. We live in a human capital economy in which workforce talent and workforce skills are one of the major driving factors.” 

He also sees businesses recovering and having record months. That’s especially true of the coast’s casinos, which just reported another record-breaking revenue month in April. 

But Edwards says workers who lost jobs in 2020 are not walking into the same economy or employment outlook as they apply for jobs in 2021. The market isn’t static, he said.

For Beard, years living with little have made it feel impossible to catch up. He just got his current van in February, but he has been living out of a vehicle for the last two years.

Scratched in his notebook is a job opening that has given him more hope than any other in a while. He had to plan when he could take the typing test around which days the public library in Picayune was open. 

It’s at a call center that pays $13.35 an hour. It’s in Bogalusa, Louisiana.

The post Jobless Mississippians fear what’s next as $300 unemployment checks end appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Jackson Public School District was facing a teacher shortage crisis several years ago, not unlike many districts across the state.

In Mississippi’s second largest school district, hundreds of teacher positions were unfilled, and many of the educators in the district were either uncertified or teaching outside of their content area.

But in recent years, the district took advantage of statewide initiatives and implemented its own incentives to combat the problem. The number of “limited service” teachers, or those with college degrees in a subject but who have not obtained a traditional teaching license or those with licenses who are teaching outside of their certification area, dropped from 184 in 2018 to 29 in 2021, according to recent data. 

In addition, the number of overall vacant or unfilled teaching positions dropped from 246 in 2018 to 75 in 2021. While enrollment has declined drastically in the district, the reduced number of students is only a small part of the picture, district officials say.

READ MORE: Mississippi’s public school teacher shortage crisis

Wingfield High School math teacher Brittney Friday said for years she struggled with passing the Praxis, a required test for teachers to be certified, and had health issues that negatively impacted her efforts. But with the help of the district and private tutoring, she passed the Algebra 1 portion of the test last September.

She’s now working on her master’s degree and completing her remaining license requirements at the University of Mississippi, which partnered with the district to offer free tuition in exchange for a commitment to teach in the district for three years after graduation.

“I had support from my principal … pushing me to go ahead and get certified. My math coaches and district-level officials like Mr. (Tommy) Nalls stayed on me about getting my certification,” Friday said, referring to the district’s full-time teacher recruiter, Nalls. 

Now, she said, she is attending Ole Miss for free and learning real-life skills that translate to the classroom. During one of her courses, a professor visited her class and offered feedback on her teaching practices. Another course she’s taking is helping her learn more about Individualized Education Programs (IEP), or the academic plans developed for students with special needs.

Once she finishes her requirements, she will be issued a standard license. And when she has her master’s degree, she will get an increase in pay as a result. 

Friday is the quintessential example of the teacher the school district is looking to help get certified — the more they can help teachers who are already in the district achieve those three- and five-year licenses, Nalls and JPS Chief of Staff Michael Cormack said, the more likely they are to be able to retain them for a longer time period. 

From spring of 2019 to spring of 2021, 480 teachers requested special non-renewable licenses, which are conditional, temporary licenses for first-year teacher teachers in the process of obtaining certification. The district assisted 246 of those 480 in transition to three or five-year traditional educator licenses. Of those 246 teachers, 216 stayed in the district and are committed to return next year, Cormack said.

The district has also implemented efforts to ramp up teacher recruitment from outside of its schools, either those from other areas or those who have recently graduated from a program. 

District officials also implemented a $5,000 signing bonus for new teachers. The payment is spread out over the course of three years to ensure the teacher stays, and the district is considering increasing the bonus to $7,500 for certified teachers in the district’s highest areas of need: elementary education, math, special education and English as a Second Language. 

Altogether, the efforts have resulted in the district moving from the district filling 87% of its staffing capacity in 2018 to nearly 96% in March of 2021.

They are also looking to help current teacher assistants become teachers, especially in areas like special education where the need is critical.

“We had 82 assistant teachers in special education, and when we did a deeper dive, nearly 30 of them had a bachelor’s degree,” Cormack said. “ … We are pairing them with the coursework that’s necessary to become certified teachers. For single parents and folks on the lower end of the economic strata, to work one job that pays a living wage is transformative for both them and our students.”

Cormack and Nalls are confident the pandemic won’t erase the district’s progress. 

“Very candidly, this has been a very challenging year,” said Cormack. “But we have not seen an uptick in number of retirements (of our teachers). Our staff has been incredibly resilient and adaptive to this crazy year. I think they’re looking forward with hope with vaccinations and getting back to in-person instruction and recapturing some of these learning opportunities.”

The post How Jackson Public Schools tackled its teacher shortage appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Supreme Court Justice Michael Randolph used a little-known provision in a 2012 law to quietly — and without legislative approval — award pay raises to himself and all of the state’s judges earlier this year.

Randolph wrote a letter last December informing state Personnel Board Executive Director Kelly Hardwick that he was authorizing a $15,000 pay raise for himself to bring his salary to $174,000 annually and award similar salary increases for other members of the state’s judiciary. That included salary adjustments for the state’s nine Supreme Court justices, 10 Court of Appeals judges, 57 circuit judges and 52 chancellors. The pay raises were based on a Personnel Board recommendation of adequate salaries for judges.

“As chief justice, in my capacity as chief administrative officer of all courts in the state, the salaries for judges and justices shall be as follows,” he wrote before outlining the pay raises that went into effect on Jan. 1.

While most every other elected official in Mississippi has their salaries set by the Legislature — traditionally the only governmental body with the power to appropriate money — a provision in a 2012 law gives the Supreme Court chief justice the power to raise salaries of the judiciary without legislative approval.

“The Court recently implemented salary adjustments utilizing the authority granted by the Legislature in the Mississippi Code,” Beverly Kraft, a spokesperson for the Court, confirmed to Mississippi Today.

The plan approved by Randolph, which he based on a study conducted by the Personnel Board, increases the salaries:

• For Supreme Court associate justices from $152,250 to $166,500 per year.
• For Court of Appeals associate justices from $144,827 to $158,500.
• For chancery and circuit judges from $136,000 to $149,000.

In the 2012 session, a much-discussed bill providing pay raises for judges also contained the little-discussed provision that apparently gives the Supreme Court chief justice, based on a recommendation from the state Personnel Board, the authority to increase the salaries.

The 2012 legislation provided incremental pay raises for judges, district attorneys and other court staff through 2016. Then, starting after 2019, the new law called for the Supreme Court justices and other judges to receive an automatic pay raise if funds are available, based on a determination of “an adequate level of compensation” as determined by the state Personnel Board. That board regularly conducts studies to determine the salary levels for state employees based on various factors, such as pay for similar positions in the private sector and in neighboring states.

Before the 2012 law, the Personnel Board had not played a role in the pay for most elected officials. That was left up to the Legislature, which, based on multiple past court rulings, has the sole authority to appropriate funds.

Legislative leaders have not been willing to discuss the pay raises the judges received. However, various members told Mississippi Today that Randolph did communicate with legislative leaders before enacting the pay raise, and there was some level of disagreement about whether he should enact a pay raise on his own without legislative approval.

In the 2020 session, House Appropriations Chair John Read, R-Gautier, authored legislation that would have provided a judicial pay raise but would have removed the 2012 language that allowed the judges to set their own salary based on the Personnel Board report. The legislation passed the House, but died in the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg.

Hopson, a prominent attorney and recent past president of the Mississippi Bar, did not offer comment about the judicial pay raises when contacted by Mississippi Today. Read, a pharmacist, also did not offer comment.

In September 2020, less than six months after the 2020 legislation died, Randolph contacted the Personnel Board inquiring about its salary recommendation report for the judiciary. That recommendation was for about $2 million starting in January 2021 — a pay increase greater than what was proposed in the 2020 House bill.

In addition to providing the power to raise judiciary salaries, the 2012 legislation, authored by then-House Judiciary A Chair Mark Baker, R-Brandon, also increased the fees on various court filings — such as the fee to file a civil lawsuit or on the levies in criminal proceedings — to help pay for the salary increase. Some argued at the time the increase on the various court filings was equivalent to a tax increase for those who use the courts. But then-Chief Justice William Waller Jr., who advocated for the 2012 legislation, said judges at the time desperately needed a pay increase and he was trying to be responsible by providing a method to pay for it.

Waller could not be reached to comment on whether it was his intent to remove from the Legislature the authority to set the judicial salaries.

The money from the increase in fees goes into the Judicial System Operation Fund, which is supposed to be used in part for judicial salaries. The 2012 legislation says the salaries “shall be fixed” at the level recommended by the Personnel Board “to the extent that sufficient funds are available.”

Some legislators question whether the Supreme Court has enough money in the Judicial System Operation Fund to pay for the raise without receiving a deficit appropriation during the session. But in a letter to legislative leaders, Personnel Board Director Hardwick said the Court has enough money in a special court fund to pay for the pay raises.

Hardwick informed House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann of Randolph’s plan to increase the salaries in a January letter. He praised the 2012 legislation for taking “steps that will ensure that Mississippi continues to recruit and retain the best and the brightest for the bench. Allowing the judiciary this flexibility will enable Mississippi to close the pay gap with neighboring states.”

Based on data compiled by the National Center for State Courts, with the salary increases Mississippi judges still would trail those in neighboring states in terms of pay with the exception of associate Supreme Court justices and trial judges in Alabama.

The pay in Mississippi for state employees and teachers also trails that paid in the four contiguous states. And in general, the pay for judges in Mississippi and the four surrounding states is more competitive nationally than for teachers and state employees.

The post Supreme Court chief quietly gave pay raise to himself and other judges without legislative approval appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi received $1.25 billion in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act pandemic relief in 2020.

Here’s a breakdown of how state lawmakers spent the money, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Note: You can read a bulleted list under the graphic.

Housing assistance: $20 million for rental assistance grant program, providing grants up to $30,000 to eligible rental businesses that lost rent income from March-December 2020.

Elections: $1 million for pandemic expenses for elections

Higher education: $10 million for private schools and colleges

Veterans Affairs: $10 million

Health: $10 million for Health Department to establish Mississippi ICU Infrastructure program.

Health: $129.7 million for health care, including $80 million for hospitals and nearly $50 million for other health providers and nonprofits, including food pantries.

Tourism: $15 million

K-12 education: $150 million for K-12 distance learning

Unemployment: $181.8 million for unemployment trust fund.

Judiciary: $2.5 million for courts and judiciary

Corrections: $20 million for corrections

Small business relief: $300 million for small business relief grants (only about half of this was used for the grants, with the remainder redirected to other programs or the unemployment fund)

Health: $4 million to the Health Department to reimburse specialty hospitals for pandemic expenses

Emergency/disaster response: $40 million to Mississippi Emergency Management Agency for pandemic expenses.

Higher ed: $50 million for community colleges.

K-12 education: $50 million for K-12 internet connectivity

Governor: $50 million for governor’s discretionary fund

Higher ed: $50 million for universities

Workforce: $55 million for workforce development

Local government: $70 million for cities and counties

Broadband/technology: $75 million for grant program for electric cooperatives and providers to expand high-speed internet access and $10 million to the Mississippi Wireless Information network for communications for first responders and hospital ERs.

The post Here’s how Mississippi spent $1.25 billion in CARES Act funds appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Growing up in Greenwood in the 1980s, Sue Anna Joe was an artsy person.

Joe, 45, remembers The Greenwood Little Theater, a non-profit community theater that is run by volunteers. Despite the theater’s presence, the Delta’s remoteness — it was common for people in Greenwood “to drive down to Jackson” — removed Joe from the hum of city life and new adventures.

“I think as a creative person that I like to try new things and see things from someone else’s perspective,” Joe said.

After working a couple of clerical jobs post-college, a friend recommended web design to Joe. Ultimately, she felt that Mississippi could not provide her the diverse lifestyle nor the higher pay found in other states.

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“When I was getting ready to move, I wasn’t really thinking about the graphic design thing, but I wanted to leave for two different choices: I wanted to leave for a place with a bigger variety of lifestyle choices, and I felt that no matter what type of job I got in Mississippi that the pay was going to be kind of low,” she said.

So she left. Today, she’s a front-page web developer in San Francisco. She says California connected her childhood artistic interests to web and graphic design and offered her a reasonable wage for her career. 

Joe is among thousands of native Mississippians who have left the state to build careers in arts or other creative fields. The effects of this particular exodus undoubtedly leave a void in one of the state’s most appealing and successful aspects: its arts and culture scene. Dozens of creatives responded to Mississippi Today’s NextGen Mississippi survey and shared why they took their talents to other states.

SURVEY: Tell us why you left Mississippi, why you stayed in Mississippi, and what more you need from Mississippi leaders.

Some creative Mississippians shared experiences of “belonging” when they left the state to pursue their crafts.

“I didn’t feel I was able to be completely open as myself (in Mississippi)”, said Ellice Patterson, a 26-year-old native of Boonesville who now lives in Boston.

Identifying as Black, queer and disabled, Patterson’s latest ballet production, FireBird, which premiered on Zoom on May 14-15, drew on the art administrator’s and director’s personal identity as it comprised a myriad of sub-cultures like BIPOC, LGBTQ and Disability. 

However, the executive director and founder of Abilities Dance Boston focused on the conversation FireBird elicits surrounding intersectionality, a term that refers to understanding how a person’s social and political identity creates different modes of discrimination or privilege. 

“It was inviting allies and folks who don’t identify with certain communities,” Patterson said. “I believe intersectionality is the key to a better future.”

When asked about creating a production like “FireBird” in Mississippi, Patterson highlighted the “lack of opportunities” and the “lack of support” for creative Mississippians. 

“I think there are practical ways that the work can exist, but there’s no real theater,” Patterson said when referring to her hometown of Booneville. “There are no professional dance companies in Mississippi.”

Tony Adams Reimonenq III, a 23-year-old actor from Hattiesburg who now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, described acting as something that makes him “feel like a superhero.” 

“What I have gathered is that it has always been my escape,” Reimonenq said. “In real life, I stutter. But when I act, I don’t stutter. So, it empowers me to speak in front of all these people.”

Since he was 3 years old, Reimonenq has acted and credited Mississippi for birthing talented “superheroes” because the state has “a special kind of power” to curate creative people. 

But, Reimonenq also acknowledged that the state does not support its creative people in return. 

“I knew I was always going to leave Mississippi because just seeing how the arts are supported elsewhere,” Reimonenq shared.

At Oak Grove High School in Hattiesburg, Reminoneq recalled his theater group receiving little funding, while “sports was supported more.” Beyond financial support for artistry, Reminonenq has experienced a sense of genuine community in Louisville.

“When it comes down to true love, empathy or support, everyone will not show that because of political or family backgrounds,” Reminonenq shared when describing the reasons young and older Mississippians are polarized from each other.

However, Reimonenq has hope for Mississippi and plans to open a performing arts theater one day to support upcoming actors and actresses.

“My advice is to cling on to this passion you have for this craft and don’t let your circumstances stop you,” Reimonenq said. “Use your experiences from Mississippi in your craft.”

Hanna Lane Miller, a 30-year-old documentary filmmaker, TV, and film producer from Collins, MS who now lives in Los Angeles, left the state to sharpen her artistic skills.

Previously working as a production assistant at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Miller’s creative interests eventually transcended into documentary filmmaking, but the aspiring filmmaker sought outside educational opportunities to establish credibility.

“I just knew that if I wanted to have a name or credentials in this industry, then I knew I couldn’t go to a school in Mississippi,” Miller explained.

While Miller acknowledged the value of a Mississippi education, her words like “credentials” and “a name” reflect the sparse education for film and media studies in Mississippi because just four colleges — the University of Mississippi, Millsaps College, University of Southern Miss, and Mississippi University for Women — offer a film and media curriculum.

Additionally, Miller acknowledged the state’s complex history with social justice issues, which the native of Collins connected to hard but rich storytelling in Mississippi. 

“While all Southern states are stigmatized, there’s a very special stigma for Mississippi. I think Mississippi particularly has a complex history of social justice,” Miller shared when asked about creating documentaries in Mississippi that deal with social justice issues. 

After living in Jackson for just a year, Miller admitted that her short time in the capital city does not grant a current view of Jackson’s artistic community, but the “little interaction between Black and white creators” reflected a divisive atmosphere that still surfaces today.

Even though Miller went to a predominately Black school, she admitted being unaware of the intersection of race, art and politics where she recalled Black friends who entered majority-white, artistic spaces in Jackson.

Now, the 30-year-old documentary filmmaker recognized that “we have to be set on stepping out of our comfort zone” to bridge the gap between misunderstanding and collaboration. 

Other creative Mississippians reflected on the lack of state support for Jackson, the capital city and state’s only large metropolitan area that serves as a cultural hub. They shared nuanced emotions towards the city itself and state leaders’ policies that drive young creatives out of the state. 

“I’ve always wanted to support Jackson; I’ve never wanted it to fail, but people don’t want to invest in Jackson. They treat it like a lost cause,” said Maggie Hubbard, a 24-year-old Brandon and Flowood native who is now a graphic designe and animator in New York City.

Acknowledging that New York City is not perfect, Hubbard’s ability to find more jobs as a graphic designer, hear “different languages,” and “see many different types of art” — aspects that continued during the pandemic — appealed to her. 

“All of the measures they took to make life bearable really stuck with people,” Hubbard explained, contrasting the divisive political leadership surrounding the Jackson water crisis during the pandemic.

All of the young creatives interviewed for this piece expressed hope for Mississippi. 

Annsley McRae, a 25-year-old event coordinator and Tishomingo native who now lives in Nashville, looks forward to creating more events in Mississippi one day and acknowledged she “could quite have the market share in Mississippi” based on what she knows now about the state.

Other creative Mississippians like Miller have found a way to contribute their talents to the state from afar; Miller is currently working on her first Mississippi-based feature film that examines “a sense of belonging.”

“My advice for anyone who wants to be the best in this field is to leave Mississippi but to come back,” Miller said. “I still love Mississippi a lot, and the one thing about Mississippi I love when I work there is that I know exactly who I am and why I’m there because in Mississippi there’s no getting lost.”

Photo collage graphic by Bethany Atkinson / Photo credits: Annsley McRae, Mickey West Photography, Kyle Ware from Kentucky’s Shakespeare and flag design by Sue Anna Joe

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