Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, in his own low-key manner, spoke with sincerity and authority about the ravages of COVID-19 on himself, on others and on the state as a whole at a recent digital town hall hosted by Mississippi Today.
Hosemann contracted the coronavirus in the summer of 2020 and revealed his struggles to overcome the illness.
“I’ve run marathons, New York marathon and all the others, and I am a regular exerciser, let’s just put it that way,” he said. “And my goal some days (after getting COVID-19) was to try to walk a hundred steps, and many days it was difficult to do so, just a devastating thing.”
He also spoke empathetically of a friend — healthy, but unvaccinated — who died recently of COVID-19.
“One of the last things he said to his three sons before COVID claimed him was, ‘Please get vaccinated,’” Hosemann recalled.
The Republican lieutenant governor also put COVID-19 in the context of what it might mean for the long-term economic health of the state, calling it “the elephant in the room.”
“How do we sell businesses to come to Mississippi as the least vaccinated state? Is that our selling point? I don’t think so,” Hosemann said. “So all these (economic factors) have multiplier effects, not just from the actual virus itself, but also from the economic effects…And I want to be real clear about that. This is a negative economically to you and your family, but also to the whole state.”
Or put another way: Can Mississippi’s population decline be reversed, as leaders say they are striving to do, when the state is mired in some of the most negative coronavirus outcomes in the world?
A few days after Hosemann’s comments, Gov. Tate Reeves appeared on a national news show where he was asked about those bad outcomes — specifically, the state’s highest COVID-19 fatality rate in the country.
The governor’s response to a question about what he was doing to combat that high fatality rate appeared to be that it was only a matter of timing, and that the death rate was “a lagging indicator.” As other states experience the surge in cases that Mississippi endured in July and August, Reeves contended, they would surpass Mississippi as having the highest fatality rate.
Perhaps that is true, but surely no one is wishing that the death rate increases in other states.
In that national interview, the governor could have said correctly that Mississippi has some unique challenges in fighting COVID-19. For instance, he could have pointed out that Mississippi for decades has been one of the unhealthiest states in the nation with multiple diseases that unfortunately make people more susceptible to dying from the virus.
In addition, Mississippians have less access to health care providers than people in just about any other state.
Granted, Reeves didn’t bring any of those problems to Mississippi, though it could be debated whether his policies — as a key state policy maker for more than a decade — have done enough or anything to reverse those trends.
In addition, Reeves could have pointed out that Mississippi also faces unique challenges in dealing with getting people vaccinated. The state has the highest percentage of African Americans and one of the highest percentages of non-college educated white people in the nation. These are two groups with lower vaccination rates nationally, though it should be pointed out the percentage of Black Mississippians who have been vaccinated is higher than the national average for Black Americans.
Ultimately, there are many factors that place Mississippi behind the proverbial eight ball when it comes to battling COVID-19.
It also could be argued that those factors place more of a burden on Mississippi leadership to say and do the right thing to battle the pandemic. That is where many have questioned Reeves’ leadership. Many argue that his constant equivocation on whether Mississippians should be vaccinated has given people just another reason not to get the shots. He also has waged his war on mask wearing accusing people of “virtue signaling” for wearing a mask.
Reeves called the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that even vaccinated people should wear a mask in some settings “foolish, and it is harmful. It reeks of political panic, so as to appear that they are in control. It has nothing, let me say that again: It has nothing to do with rational science.”
In a state like Mississippi, with so many pre-existing conditions that make fighting the coronavirus that much more difficult, the question is whether it is in the best interest of the leader of the state to spend time battling with others instead of fighting the pandemic.
As Hosemann pointed out, the future of the state and the lives of many of its citizens could hang in the balance.
Last week, Mississippi surpassed New Jersey as the state with the highest rate of COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 citizens, credited to August’s overwhelming strain on the state’s healthcare system due to the spread of the delta variant and low rate of vaccination.
Gov. Tate Reeves continuously skirted inquiries into his plan to address the death rate on Sept. 19, even referring to the dead as “lagging indicators,” meaning a signal that may confirm a pattern already in progress.
View our latest Data Dive detailing COVID-19 death rates across the United States in comparison with each state’s population to demonstrate the scale of the impact of the death rate on that particular citizenry:
The Mississippi economy, based on its gross domestic product, is projected to grow during the current fiscal year at its fastest pace since 1994, State Economist Corey Miller told legislative leaders Friday.
“Mississippi’s economy, like the national economy, continues to recover from the relatively brief but steep recession experienced in 2020,” Miller said, referring to the coronavirus-related recession that occurred last spring.
Miller said the infusion of federal funds, including direct payments to most adults and tax credits for children, and “the pent up demand” for retail items are helping to spur that growth.
Miller’s comments came during a meeting of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Members of the committee are working to develop a budget recommendation for the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1. The full Legislature will convene in January to begin the task of approving that budget.
The GDP, or total value of goods and services, is projected to grow 5.5% for the 2021 calendar year, which Miller said would be the best rate of growth since the 1990s when the casino industry first took off in the state creating an economic boon. The national GDP is projected to grow by 5.7% — the best since 1984.
Miller said the state’s GDP growth is expected to slow in 2022 to about 1%, which has been the normal rate of growth for the state. The national economy is expected to experience more robust growth during the upcoming calendar year.
In some ways, though the state is currently growing at a stronger rate than the nation, Miller said.
“As of August, Mississippi has recovered 79.7% of the jobs lost in March and April of 2020, a higher percentage than the U.S. economy,” he said. “Mississippi did not lose as many jobs as a share of total employment last year as the U.S. did, contributing to the recovery, and the state’s economy fully reopened sooner that the nation as a whole.”
The state has added 6,600 jobs through August of this year, the best rate of growth since 1998. The 6,600 jobs added included the state losing 4,100 jobs during August as the COVID-19 pandemic surged in the state.
Overall, the surge in COVID-19 cases this summer has slowed both the Mississippi and national economies, though strong growth is still occurring.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann expressed concern about the rising inflation rates and said that should be factored in as legislators work to craft a budget.
Miller said the projection is for an inflation rate of 4.2% for the year, which would be the largest increase since 1980. The inflation rate is expected to slow to 2.2% the following year.
The higher inflation rate comes as the nation and the state experience significant growth in wages. State wages are expected to grow by about 8% for the year.
Those higher wages, while good for Mississippi workers, are causing problems for state agencies that are having a difficult time maintaining employees.
Hosemann asked Department of Revenue Commissioner Chris Graham whether he was able to hire the additional auditors funded by the Legislature in the 2021 session. Graham said he was able to fill eight of the 10 slots, but other auditors already employment by the Department of Revenue resigned, meaning there are less auditors now than before he started the hiring process.
Graham said he is having trouble filling other positions, including in the Alcohol Beverage Control warehouse that provides state retailers liquor and wine. He said there is generally a two week delay from when a retailer submits an order before it is delivered.
“Our applications (for employment) have dried up,” Graham told legislators.
Other agency heads expressed similar concerns.
“We are no longer in a position to adequately compete with the private sector,” said Department of Transportation Executive Director Brad White.
Kelly Hardwick, executive director of the state Personnel Board, told legislators that a new system will be put in place to classify state workers and their salaries. He said that will make it easier to compare the salary and benefits of state employees to those in the private sector and surrounding states.
He said the average annual salary of Mississippi state employees is $41,260, which is about $9,000 below that of state employees in surrounding states. That comparison does not factor in benefits. When the new system is put in place, benefits such as health care and pension also can be compared.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Philip Gunn on Friday said they’ve asked fellow Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to call lawmakers into special session next week to deal with medical marijuana and the COVID-19 crisis in Mississippi.
“We believe the number-one issue going on in our state right now is the pandemic crisis,” Gunn said. “We have a crisis in Mississippi and we want to give some attention to that.”
Reeves’ office on Friday had little comment and was noncommittal on whether he would call a special session or when.
House and Senate negotiators and legislative leadership agreed on a draft of a medical marijuana bill to replace the program adopted by voters in November but shot down in May by the Mississippi Supreme Court. Reeves has said he would call lawmakers into special session on medical marijuana provided they reached such an agreement.
But the governor, who has sole authority to call a special session and set its agenda, has appeared less open to adding other issues to the call. He has had a rocky relationship with the Legislature, and has clashed particularly with lawmakers over control of spending federal pandemic stimulus money. Reeves has also said he doesn’t want lawmakers tied up at length in a special session, which would cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a day.
Asked for comment on Friday, Reeves spokeswoman Bailey Martin in a statement said: “Staff from the Governor’s office and Legislature met together to discuss it today, and we are looking forward to engaging further.”
Hosemann and Gunn said they asked Reeves to call the session for Friday, Oct. 1, and they believe lawmakers could finish business in one day.
Besides medical marijuana, Hosemann and Gunn said they asked Reeves to allow lawmakers to address:
The COVID-19 nursing shortage in Mississippi. Gunn and Hosemann said they want to give federal American Rescue Plan Act money to hospitals to pay nurses to help with what some health officials said is a shortage statewide of 2,000 nurses during the pandemic. Hosemann and Gunn would provide few details or an estimate of spending, other than they plan to allocate the money to hospital leaders, and let them use it to retain and recruit Mississippi nurses. Gunn said one proposal is for the hospitals to use the money to pay nurses extra under five-month contracts to entice them to stay and work in Mississippi.
Reeves, who has used other emergency funds to hire out-of-state firms and nurses under contract to help with the nursing crisis, has said legislative action and ARPA spending is not needed. Nurses and other health officials have complained that out of town nurses are being paid far more than those already here, further exacerbating the problem of nurses retiring or leaving Mississippi.
Benefits for first responders who die from COVID-19. A 2016 state law that provides $100,0000 death benefits to first responders who die in the line of duty, public safety officials have determined, does not allow payments to families of responders who die from COVID-19. This has brought an outcry from Mississippi law enforcement and others, as numerous first responders have died from the pandemic. A similar federal law providing first responder benefits was changed last year to provide such payments for COVID-19 deaths.
Gunn said a simple change to wording in the law would allow the state to provide payments to law enforcement, firefighters and other first responders who die from COVID-19. Lawmakers on Friday said they knew of eight such deaths in Mississippi, but Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said, “I would expect that number to be more like 30 to 50, if you include firefighters.”
Provide emergency funding to child abuse and domestic violence shelters and programs. Hosemann and Gunn said that regular sources of funding for such programs have been drastically reduced due to the pandemic, while cases of abuse have increased. Hosemann said an initial estimate is that the programs need about $11 million, which would come from the federal ARPA funds.
We want to hear directly from the Mississippians impacted by the issues facing our state for our video series, MT Speaks. If you are willing to be featured by speaking with a Mississippi Today reporter about how the pandemic has affected your college experience, please fill out the form below.
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Lonnie G. Bunch III’s efforts to lay the foundation for the newest museum on the National Mall took him from Mozambique to Mississippi.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is celebrating its fifth anniversary of welcoming visitors on Sept. 24. But for 11 long years prior to its 2016 opening, it was a museum abstractly envisioned “in the mind of the director,” as Bunch recalled in an interview with Mississippi Today.
Bunch, who now serves as the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, chronicles his tenure as the founding director of the NMAAHC in his memoir A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump.
Bunch was slated to headline the 2021 Mississippi Book Festival for a conversation with former Congressman Gregg Harper. The annual event was cancelled for the second year in a row due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but organizers will be releasing videos of author panels and conversations on Oct. 12.
Harper is one of a number of Mississippians that Bunch has gotten to know during the course of his career. Bunch shared memories of laughing alongside Harper and Myrlie Evers, who he described as “unbelievably funny,” and breaking bread with former Governor William F. Winter and blues singer Dorothy Moore. Bunch developed close relationships with Mamie Till Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, and Oprah Winfrey, a major donor and fundraiser on the NMAAHC Museum Council.
Bunch also wrote the foreword to William R. Ferris’ I Am a Man: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960–1970. The Mississippi Book Festival had planned to highlight this publication, which accompanied a recent exhibition of the same name at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, at its 2021 event as well.
Mississippi Today’s discussion with Bunch covered a wide range of topics, including critical race theory and confederate monuments. This is the transcript of that conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mississippi Today: In the book, you had a unique goal for the museum. You said that your definition of success was making the ancestors smile. What did you mean by that?
Bunch: There are a lot of people who talk about ancestors and libation. I never did that. It was never anything that was on my mind. Yet as I began to work in that building, I began to think about paying homage to people that got left behind, whose stories no one knew. I write in the book about going to Mozambique. I talked to this young woman who said to me that her ancestor was on the slave ship that we found and that they said his name every day. That’s when I realized this was really not about yesterday. It’s about today and tomorrow.
What I wanted was to do something that I could imagine all of our ancestors nodding and saying, “You got it right. You told the story truthfully. But you helped us find hope, as well as a clear understanding of the past.” It was almost trying to set a bar that was almost impossible to reach, but I didn’t want to settle to be just a good museum. I wanted it to be a place that would be transformative for a nation and that would help people who knew the story. It would help them find themselves. Or for people who didn’t know the story, they would see—you know, I am an old ’60s integrationist, I wanted everybody to see we’re in this together. And for me, this was about creating something that was about the greater good.
Mississippi Today: That echoes another one of the goals that you mentioned in the book, which was to make this an American museum told through the lens of African Americans. How did you try to accomplish that?
Bunch: I did it on both a philosophical and a practical level. As I was thinking about coming back from Chicago to build this museum, I thought a lot about, “OK, what can the Smithsonian do that this museum couldn’t do if it was in Los Angeles or Chicago or New York?” I realized that the Smithsonian has the ability to draw millions of people into a subject they may not be initially interested in because they’re coming to view the Smithsonian. That led me to thinking about how do I make sure that if this is just a story by African Americans for African Americans, that might be important in Chicago, but not on The Mall, not a national story. It was really important for me to shape this as a story of us all.
That is really tied to two things. It’s tied to my belief in what America is, trying to create a sense that we are a community, that we’re in this together whether we like it or not. The other piece was that I realized that there were a lot of museums—and it would be many, many more in the future—that looked at the Latino story or looked at a particular community’s story. I realized that I wanted to set a model that said: “This is not just about a community. It’s about a country.”
The way we did it was I imbued that in everybody. As we looked at the programs and began to do the exhibitions, I actually had a very concrete list and said, “OK, you’re doing an exhibition on the Black military experience. Show me where it talks about the broader issue. Show me where it makes it an American story.” It was really something that was intentional. I made people actually show that to me before I said, “OK, let’s keep going now,” and as the exhibition would evolve.
Mississippi Today: What kind of encounters did you have either in Mississippi or with Mississippians as you developed the collections and the relationships that built the museum?
Bunch: I thought a lot about this. When I was a little kid, my father, who was a teacher, brought a puzzle of the states, and we were learning the states through the puzzle. One day we were putting it together and he couldn’t find Mississippi. It got lost. And he said, “Mississippi is a state we should forget,” because of all that had happened. I always then became fascinated by Mississippi because we left it out of the puzzle.
There’s so many stories about Mississippi that are stories of pain, stories of hurt. And I wanted to tell those stories. I also wanted to understand what it was about people in Mississippi that had a kind of resiliency.
I remember going and talking to the family of Fannie Lou Hamer, and listening to them talk about her and the challenges she faced. The physical punishment. But they said she had a love for Mississippi because she wanted Mississippi to be what she hoped it would be.
That kind of thing had me think about Mississippi, obviously, because of my ties to Emmett Till and Emmett Till’s mother. Bringing the casket and actually doing the display [in the NMAAHC], it was really less about the broken body of Emmett Till and more about the mother’s courage to basically take the worst moment of her life and turn it into something that helped to transform a nation.
I spent a lot of time talking to people in Mississippi. We collected a lot of things from Mississippi, and one of the things that was most moving to me was a letter by one of the Freedom Riders who had written about what it was like to be in Mississippi.
In some ways, Mississippi is an example of what we hope America will evolve from. On the other hand, it’s clear that all of those issues were in every state. No, they may not have been as big as they were in Mississippi, but every state of the union had trouble with issues of race. So what we wanted to do was to not single out Mississippi. We wanted to tell its truer history.
I also came away looking at things like the Black colleges that were created in Mississippi and not just people involved in civil rights, but the educational communities that come out of that.
In essence, Mississippi is really important for helping us understand the challenges of race, helping us understand the pain of change. But it also is an example of when change works, what happens.
There was a governor of Mississippi who was very much in favor of the civil rights movement (William F. Winter). I was down in Jackson with him having the opportunity to hear his story, and what he tried to do was just amazing to me. I actually spent dinner with him and Dorothy Moore, who sang the song “Misty Blue.” I was like a little kid going, “Wow, I’m with this great singer. I’m with this great political leader.” That just by itself changed my notion of what Mississippi was.
Mississippi Today: You mentioned your relationship with Emmett Till’s mother Mamie Till Mobley. I would love for you to talk about that a little bit more.
Bunch: My dear friend Studs Terkel, the great oral historian, used to come to my office and he’d say, “Do you know this person? Do you know that person?” Any time I mentioned somebody, he knew them. He came to my office and he said, “Would you like to meet Emmett Till’s mother?” I didn’t know she was still alive. I was stunned. And I said, “Of course.”
For me, as a Black kid growing up in the North, I did not know Emmett Till’s name, but I knew his story. It was the cautionary tale for a lot of us who had relatives in the South: Don’t end up like that child.
When his mother came to my office, we were supposed to have an hour lunch. She spent seven hours talking to me about everything from the moment she kissed him goodbye to the time she buried him. I’m a pump, I’m just crying away, and she is unbelievably stoic. I was so moved that I ended up writing about her for the Chicago Tribune. We became friends. I’d go see her every week.
In her house, she had this huge picture of Emmett Till on the couch. So he was with her every day, and when you sat there, he was always looking at you. You could really see that this was the moment that transformed her. She said to me that she had been carrying the burden of Emmett Till for 50 years—and it was my turn.
She unfortunately died. When they found the casket that supposedly was going to be taken care of, and it wasn’t, the family reached out to me and said, “Could you do something?” I have to be honest, I was so concerned about, “Do I want to collect the casket? Is that what I should be doing?” But I felt that at least for the family I’d collect it and preserve it. But I thought we’d never display it. But as we are working on the exhibitions, I realized that the story was his mother, not necessarily his broken body.
We actually brought the casket back to the original church and had a service there. What’s so interesting was, the senior choir was the children’s choir—many of those that sang at the funeral. Then we brought the casket back, put it in the exhibition, and it’s become the most sacred space in the museum.
That really is my way of honoring—yes, Mamie Till Mobley—but I’m honoring the role that women play. Women get undervalued often in the struggle for fairness. So this was my way of making sure, at least through the story of Mamie Till Mobley, that we begin to reposition this and understand the power and pain that these women carry.
What I hope is conveyed in my work and my career is that there is nothing more powerful than remembering, than honoring people and telling full stories, telling difficult stories. The goal of my work is to make the country better, and I think you cannot be made better if you are not willing to illuminate the dark corners of a country’s existence.
Mississippi Today: Critical race theory: Probably the three biggest buzzwords in the news right now. How do you respond to political leaders who are attempting to legislate the use of historical and educational methods like critical race theory?
Bunch: I don’t get involved in a debate around critical race theory, because as a scholar, I could pick apart any theory. But for me, the issue is: What kind of country is afraid to deal with its own history? I think that George [W.] Bush said it best at the opening of the museum. He said a great country doesn’t run away from its history. It looks at it and it learns from it.
For me, the debate really ought to be: How do we make sure that we tell a diversity of opinions? Not everybody’s gonna agree with this story or that, but you don’t want to legislate what is historically accurate. I think that what the great strength of the country has been is that even though we’ve had these debates for hundreds of years, the great strength is that ultimately truth prevails. So to me, it’s an opportunity to tell good scholarship, and that good scholarship will make us better as a country.
Mississippi Today: Many communities in Mississippi and around the country are debating about what they should do about confederate monuments in public spaces. What advice would you give to a community that is reckoning with its racial history?
Bunch: There are a couple of things. One is recognizing what the monuments symbolize, when those monuments were established, what they were supposed to say. I think that’s first and foremost.
For me, the fundamental question is that the South lost the war, but they won the peace. And these monuments are examples of winning the peace—the Lost Cause, Gone with the Wind, all of that. You can’t erase that, but it seems to me that what you want to do is try to give people an opportunity to understand a little more about how that legacy of the Lost Cause led to America not living up to its ideals in terms of issues of discrimination and race.
I’m a historian, so I believe that you prune history, you don’t throw it all away. So there is nothing wrong with taking down some monuments. As I talked to Mayor Mitch Landrieu in New Orleans, I said, “Put them in a place so they can be interpreted, because they are part of the history.” I stole that idea from Hungary. I went to Hungary, and all these statues are really Soviet statues. Now the leadership is different, but initially the notion was, we want to pull these away, but we don’t want to lose that history because that’s part of who we are. And so I would argue pruning is good, because pruning also gives us room for other people.
I think it’s really important to understand when these monuments were put up. The ones in the 1890s were about segregation. Ones in the ’20s, same thing, the Klan was big again in 1915. Some of the monuments aren’t until the 1950s. It really is that these monuments are as much about the moment of today than they are about yesterday.
Mississippi Today: You were going to be in conversation with former Congressman Gregg Harper [at the Mississippi Book Festival]. You mentioned him in the book. You shared a memory of touring the Two Mississippi Museums with him.
Bunch: One of the great things about this job and getting to know Congressman Harper is that here you have somebody who you might think politically you’re different, but yet here is someone who appreciates history and wants to be part of a way to ensure a country is living up to its stated ideals. I learn so much whenever I’m with him. I just enjoy learning from him, talking to him.
Many times I will talk about when he and I were with Myrlie Evers. We hung out and just laughed all night long. I was like a little kid, both learning and laughing. I had known her but not well, and now we’re real close because I’ve never met anybody so funny. She is unbelievably funny. We were together one night with the Congressman and about 30 other people, and I guess I was criticized because all the two of us did was laugh all night long and ignore everybody else. The Congressman has opened doors for me that I’ll never forget.
Mississippi Today: You also talk about the diversity of the museum profession. How has that changed since you started your career and what more should be done to ensure that underrepresented groups have professional opportunities?
Bunch: For years of my career, I would fight that fight. I would speak at conferences. I wrote a piece that people are still quoting 20 years later. It was called “Flies in the Buttermilk.” I was pushing people. And what I realized is that the museum profession talked a good game but didn’t live up to the ideals, the standard. I decided when I got a chance to build the National Museum of African American History and Culture, that I wasn’t gonna talk anymore. I was going to model exactly what I expected. I had a staff that was 40% non-African American, because I said, “If this is an American story, I want a diversity of people to grapple with it.”
I think the museum profession, candidly, has improved. The challenge is I think in three ways. One is, unfortunately, leadership is still rare in the museum community, even leadership in the curatorial area, because the curatorial area is still the most powerful part of a museum. So I worry a little bit that there hasn’t been enough movement in that arena.
The other thing is that what I want people to do is to see this as not just, “Oh, we’re fixing something that was an omission for 30 years.” No, what we’re really doing is saying: We can’t understand the interpretation of whatever it is without making sure that we’ve got these multiple points of view, and the best way to do it is to make sure you’ve got a diverse group of people around the table. I’ve always felt that as a leader, what I wanted was people who could cover the waterfront, so that before I made a decision, I heard everything rather than just what I wanted to hear or what I expected. So I think there’s movement, but there’s still a lot of work yet to be there.
Mississippi Today: You essentially crowdfunded a lot of the collections and democratized it in some really innovative ways. We’re living through a really interesting period of history right now. What could American families do to preserve our living history so that it might be in a museum in 10 or 20 or 50 years?
Bunch: One of the things that really hit me over the last 10 years, especially, is that we were able to collect not just the traditional stuff you would expect, but collect the memories of people left on their cell phone or the videos they took. I always tell families, just talk into your phone for a minute. Tell the story of what this means to you or what that artifact means so that’s preserved and collected.
Often, there were times in my career I wanted to tell stories and there were no collections. So I am committed to making sure we have a diversity of collections so that it may not happen in my lifetime, but somebody down the road, we want to be able to tell that story.
I always use the example of near the end of my career at [the National Museum of] American History. I got to be part of a team that created the American Presidency exhibition—I think one of the most important exhibitions we did. We were able to do that because the history of the presidency was important to the Smithsonian, so it had collections for almost a hundred years. I want to make sure that some of these other stories are as important to cultural institutions, so that they will have the collections that allow us to remember, and allow us to be challenged, and will allow us to be made better.
Emily Liner is the owner of Friendly City Books, an independent bookstore and press in Columbus, Miss.
In the popular 1970s children’s book, Alexander had a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” where nothing went right. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves had such a day, or at least such an interview, Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Jake Tapper.
Reeves appeared astonishingly unprepared for Tapper’s questions about Mississippi’s highest in the nation — and second highest in the world, behind Peru — rate of COVID-19 deaths.
In quick encapsulation: When asked what he might do to address one in 320 Mississippians dying from the pandemic, Reeves said he’ll sue President Biden to stop vaccine mandates and offered some strange what-about-isms about how people, including Democrats, will probably soon be dropping like flies in other states and countries.
He also coldly referred, numerous times, to thousands of dead Mississippians being a statistical “lagging indicator.”
Reeves said “timing … has as much to do with that (deaths) statistic that you used as anything else …”
Timing? Perhaps he believes that COVID-19 is intentionally trying to make him look bad with its timing on when it kills people?
Reeves uttered some nonsensical gibberish about how Congress should be part time like the Mississippi Legislature, apropos of … who knows? He appeared at one point to begin to say that vaccination is the best way to defeat the virus. But he quickly caught himself and, as he has many times past, he equivocated on this about personal choice and individual freedom. He could only muster that people should “talk to their doctor about potentially getting the vaccine.”
His performance was not well received, at home or abroad.
A Washington Post opinion piece titled “Tate Reeves and the high cost of covid incompetence” said Reeves is in the running for “the poster child for irresponsible leadership” after his “disastrous appearance” on CNN. Numerous other national outlets published similar critiques.
“Yes, deaths are a lagging indicator,” the Post piece noted, “but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.”
If, as some state politicos have surmised, Reeves has national — perhaps presidential — aspirations, his performance on CNN did not make him look ready for prime time.
Tapper set up the Reeves interview with a clip of President Joe Biden responding to Reeves’ recent comments accusing him of “tyranny” over his push to have OSHA mandate large businesses require employees to be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 weekly.
Biden responded that Mississippi, which has one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates for school children, requires children be vaccinated for numerous diseases.
Reeves responded to Tapper by arguing that the Legislature enacted the state’s vaccine laws and, “It’s unique to kids … It’s not vaccines mandated in the workplace,” which he called “an attack by the president on hardworking Americans and hardworking Mississippians.”
Reeves said, “The question here is not about what we do in Mississippi.”
Indeed, Reeves appeared most uncomfortable being questioned about what’s being done — or not being done — in the state he leads.
“Jake, as I mentioned earlier, deaths, unfortunately, are a lagging indicator,” Reeves said, as he sidestepped questions about what he’s doing to change the virus trajectory in Mississippi. “Our total number of cases went from 100 to 3,600 and, over the last two weeks has declined. They have been cut in half, from 3,600 to 1,800 … You wanted to talk about our number of cases. And then you want to talk about our hospitalizations. Now you want to talk about a lagging indicator, which is sad.”
Tapper responded: “I’m trying to talk about the dead in Mississippi, is what I’m trying to talk about.”
All employees in the Jackson Public School District are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to weekly testing after the Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new policy at its meeting Tuesday night.
Employees have until Oct. 1 to be fully vaccinated.
The policy also says that if a fully vaccinated employee contracts COVID-19 that person will be entitled to paid leave. However, unvaccinated employees will not receive that benefit, unless they are legally exempt because of a medical issue or sincerely held religious belief, per federal law.
“As a result of the aggressive delta variant and recent data on its impact on children, specifically those pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, the administration is compelled to introduce this policy,” Superintendent Errick Greene told board members. “We the administration and the JPS community endeavor to keep the health and safety of our scholars a priority.”
Employees will also be required to show proof of vaccination, said Greene.
The district will cover the costs of testing for unvaccinated teachers and staff, spokesperson Sherwin Johnson said.
Board members thanked Greene and the district for moving quickly on the policy.
“I am very proud and glad to see the urgency with which the district has pursued this policy and is bringing it before the board,” said Robert Luckett. “The bottom line is the safety of our students, scholars and entire community is of fundamental importance to the work we do. I believe this is an absolutely necessary step.”
The move follows on the heels of Natchez-Adams School District, which adopted a similar policy last month. Natchez-Adams’ policy also includes incentives for staff and teachers to get vaccinated. For those who don’t, they must submit to testing twice a week.
It is unclear if any other districts have adopted similar vaccine requirements.
Some school districts also recently indicated plans to use federal COVID-19 relief funds to incentivize teachers and staff to get vaccinated. Several are offering payments of as much as $1,000 for those who get the shots but stopping short of passing any requirements.
The newly approved policy is not yet posted on the Jackson Public School District’s website.
This photo gallery is part of our new initiative, MT Listens. Learn more about the project here or be part of it by taking our survey.
Take a virtual stroll through New Albany, a historic Mississippi community, through the lens of Mississippi Today photojournalist Vickie King.
New Albany is just one of five communities our newsroom is focusing on for our community listening project, MT Listens. The others are Canton, Yazoo City, Forest and Moss Point.
New Albany water tower depicting William Faulkner and the New Albany Bulldogs. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Fence painting honoring renowned author William Faulkner. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The birthplace of author William Faulkner, located on Cleveland Street in New Albany. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The Union County Heritage Museum on Cleveland Street. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Colorful murals depicting Mississippi notables and points of interest in the state brighten a retaining wall along Highland Drive. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Bicycle sculpture and artwork on East Bankhead Street in New Albany. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“We’d love to see more of a police presence around here. But, otherwise, I like this little town. It’s quiet, peaceful and pretty,” said New Albany resident Alsalvo Oliver, with his mother Mary James at her Snyder Street residence, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The Little Tallahatchie River in the Park Along the River in New Albany. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Pedestrian bridge that spans the Little Tallahatchie River in the Park Along the River in New Albany. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The beginning of the Tanglefoot Trail in New Albany is the longest “Rails to Trails” transformation in the state. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Cyclists head out along the Tanglefoot Trail in New Albany, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Shops along the Tanglefoot Trail in New Albany Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Cooper Park in historic downtown New Albany. The clock is a gift to the city from Renasant Bank. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The historic downtown area of New Albany is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“I like it here,” said Candy Sullivan, serving up take-out on the east side of town. “It’s clean, quiet and friendly.” Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Historic downtown New Albany. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
A view of the historic downtown area of New Albany, “The Fair and Friendly City,” Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
New Albany, located in the northeastern part of the state, is the county seat of Union County. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The beginning of the Tanglefoot Trail in New Albany is the longest “Rails to Trails” transformation in the state. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
The Union County Courthouse in New Albany was constructed in 1909. The courthouse is said to be named for Union District, South Carolina, the former home of many of the county’s settlers. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
New Albany’s historic downtown with festive lights strung along roof edges, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
A view of New Albany’s historic downtown area of antique shops, specialty stores, parks and restaurants, Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
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