Rick Cleveland has been in Omaha covering the Bulldogs’ College World Series run. The legendary sportswriter was joined by Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Adam Ganucheau to preview game one and to chronicle the atmosphere in Omaha.
More than 20 years ago, Mississippi State’s Rusty Thoms won the hearts of Omaha and fans of the College World Series. Today, his Omaha story continues to unfold. Join Rusty and Mississippi Today’s Rick Cleveland at noon on Tuesday for a conversation about the CWS and Mississippi State’s newest chapter in Omaha.
This is part one in a five-part series about Philip Gunn’s influence in changing the Mississippi state flag. Read more about the series here.
The day Speaker of the House Philip Gunn became the first prominent Republican elected official to publicly call for changing the state flag, the backlash he received was so distressing that he asked the Clinton Police Department to watch his house closely overnight.
“I called and said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Would you just keep an eye on my neighborhood?’ I have no idea if they did, but I was concerned, to say the least,” Gunn said, pausing to collect his thoughts. “We had gotten some — just some very aggressive, hateful responses in emails and text messages that day.”
It was June 22, 2015, and Gunn had attended a fundraiser earlier in the day for state Rep. Joey Hood in Ackerman. After the event, a reporter at a northeast Mississippi television station grabbed Gunn for a quick interview.
Less than a week before in South Carolina, a young white man walked into a Black church in Charleston and brutally murdered nine worshippers. Because the gunman had publicly documented his obsession with the Confederate battle emblem, the murders inspired debate across the country about the government-sanctioned use of the Confederate symbol.
The TV reporter asked Gunn about the Mississippi state flag, which was the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem. While the camera rolled, Gunn advocated for a new flag.
As soon as Gunn left the fundraiser, he called Nathan Wells, his then-chief of staff and longtime top political adviser. The two had been privately talking for years about their shared disdain of the state flag and how they could work to change it.
“He said, ‘Nathan, uh, I think we need to release a statement,’” Wells recounted to Mississippi Today in an interview earlier this year. “I didn’t know he was going to take this step that rocked the Mississippi political scene for a minute, but knowing how he felt about it, it didn’t surprise me.”
Later that day, Gunn’s office released an official statement that did not mince words. It landed him in headlines and TV news broadcasts across the state and the nation.
“We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us,” Gunn said in the June 22, 2015, statement. “As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi’s flag.”
A former deacon of his Baptist church in Clinton and trustee of one of the nation’s top Southern Baptist seminaries, Gunn frequently cites his faith as he takes public positions on political and social issues.
In interviews with Mississippi Today, Gunn opened up about how difficult it became for him to square his perception of the state-sanctioned Confederate battle emblem with his view of Christianity.
“My conviction was borne out of my religion, out of my understanding of scripture,” Gunn said. “I believe the number one charge of anyone who professes to be a Christian is to love God first and love your neighbor second. We are also charged to be witnesses for the gospel to share our faith and to encourage others to follow God. And so as I began to think about that and the flag, it just seemed to me that the continued use of the Confederate emblem was an obstacle we had to overcome.”
Gunn continued: “It would be very difficult for me to go into an African American neighborhood, say, with a Confederate battle emblem on my T-shirt and say, ‘Let me tell you about how I love you and Jesus loves you.’ To me, that would immediately raise suspicion because of how that image has been used to represent the hatred that some had in their hearts.”
While describing his feelings about the Confederate battle emblem, Gunn specifically mentioned the Charleston church shooting and the 2016 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where white nationalists from around the country came together around the symbol.
Even before that, Gunn said, he felt the image was offensive, leading him to vote in the 2001 referendum to change the state flag. Gunn was among just 36% of Mississippi voters who voted to change the flag that year.
“That image had become co-opted to represent things that I don’t think Mississippians stand for, for something I don’t think represents my Christian faith,” he said. “You know, there are other scriptures in the Bible, like when Paul says, ‘If I eat meat and it offends my brother, then I don’t eat meat.’ I don’t, for the sake of the gospel, do certain things that drive away people or prevent me having the opportunity to share the gospel or lead people effectively. So all that was, first and foremost, the nature of my conviction about changing the flag.”
Gunn’s statement in June 2015 sent a shockwave through the state’s political apparatus. While U.S. Sens. Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker quickly echoed Gunn’s sentiments about the flag, no other prominent Republicans in Mississippi were moved enough by his words to join him on the limb.
Statewide officials and top legislators privately suggested the speaker must have had intentions of leaving politics or had another job lined up. There were serious talks of a mutiny within the House GOP caucus, and several flag-supporting House Republicans from rural districts floated the notion of running against Gunn for speaker to anyone who would listen. Signs popped up in white yards of voters across the state: “Keep the flag, change the Speaker.”
“I respected him for it,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, the Democrat from Natchez who serves as the House Democratic caucus leader. “No matter the impetus, it took courage to do it in light of the people and party he represented. I witnessed some of the vitriol and backlash he got. I knew what the sentiment was in some circles, but I just didn’t know people would turn on him the way they did. Here’s a man who you couldn’t question his conservatism. And just because he took that stance on the flag, he was thrown to the wolves.”
Gunn didn’t even receive meaningful political support from his own caucus. Just six Republican lawmakers in the House reached out to him and privately offered their support that week, Gunn said. Only two of them backed his statement publicly.
“I got a call from a top Republican political adviser — a good friend of mine — who said ‘Philip Gunn is done,’” Wells said. “Was there a political risk? Sure. We talked about that at the time. Ultimately we said that if we lead a caucus that will vote you out as speaker because you want to change the flag from this hateful image, do you really want to be speaker of that caucus anyway? It was a pretty easy question to answer.”
Gunn, too, downplayed any perception of political fallout.
“I try not to operate worrying about the next election or worry about things like that,” Gunn said. “I would like to think that I operate more based upon conviction, what I think is right and not based on any possible consequences. I think most political experts would tell you to make a statement like that was probably not very politically smart.”
It’s difficult to overstate how alone Gunn remained on the issue. His statement spurred no movement within the Mississippi Republican Party, which had a complete grasp of the state’s power structure that had the capability to change the flag.
Neither of the two most powerful officials needed to make the change had the personal desire to take on the issue. Then-Gov. Phil Bryant, a dues-paying member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, displayed a state flag license plate on the front of his state-issued SUV. Then-Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, whose principal focus at the time was building statewide support for his planned 2019 run for governor, made no bones about his support of the flag, wearing the image on a ballcap to football games and on hunting excursions.
Republicans, who enjoy a legislative supermajority, long feared going against their constituencies on the flag. Gunn’s statement in 2015 came a couple months before the Republican primary in a statewide and legislative election cycle — timing that spooked even the members of his party who may have privately agreed with his position on the flag.
As late as 2019, Republicans who even hinted at a new flag were targeted the next election cycle. Any public statements from most Republican lawmakers not named Philip Gunn included something about the pro-flag vote in the 2001 referendum or how “voters, not lawmakers, should make this decision.”
In the legislative sessions following his 2015 statement, Gunn knew he didn’t have anywhere close to the votes necessary in his House to make the change. And even if he did expend the capital to whip the House votes for such a politically contentious issue, he still had to contend with a Reeves-led Senate and a governor who would likely veto.
He focused, instead, on building relationships with a broad coalition of House members.
“We talked about the flag every session,” Johnson said. “He’d always say, ‘You know where I’m at on this, you know I want to change the flag, but we just don’t have the support in the Republican caucus. None of my people want it out of committee.’ He thought it would further divide or create tension in his caucus. He saw it as a futile effort.
“He was trying to maintain unity within his caucus, and I didn’t always agree with that,” Johnson continued. “I thought the way to get it passed was to keep hammering it, at least force the debate. He thought it would end up creating more anger and discord. For better or worse, he stuck to that.”
In the years after the statement, Gunn felt he had no choice but to wait. Meanwhile, he continued to have conversations with both Democrats and Republicans about the issue. When the Southern Legislative Conference met on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2017, Gunn hosted several lawmakers of both major parties in a closed-door session with the William Winter Institute to discuss the state flag, among other things. Catching wind of that session, about 20 protesters waving old state flags gathered outside the conference center on its opening night.
The speaker would sometimes become visibly frustrated when pressed on why he hadn’t pushed legislation to change the flag following his 2015 statement.
“I think ultimately, those of us who wanted to change the flag knew that something outside our control had to happen for the energy to be created to have a real conversation,” Gunn said. “We of course weren’t rooting for another Charleston or anything like that, but something bigger than a statement I put out needed to happen (for real talks of a change among Republicans to occur).”
To Gunn’s dismay, it would take five years from the time he first called for the change for that “something bigger than a statement” to happen. But when it did, he was ready to move and didn’t hesitate.
Part two of the Mississippi Today’s series will publish on June 29, part three will publish June 30, part four on July 1, and part five on July 2.
As Mississippi’s vaccination effort continues to limp forward, state health officials are warning of the massive threat the Delta variant of COVID-19 poses to the unvaccinated, and of a potential surge of infections set off by a strain that’s much more infectious and potentially deadlier than the original strain of the virus.
“Delta variant increasing rapidly in Mississippi,” State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted last week. “Let’s pay attention to Missouri. I predict it will be our dominant strain in 1-3 weeks.”
Missouri is certainly a cautionary tale for how the Delta variant could impact Mississippi’s recovery efforts. The variant now accounts for around 29% of total cases in Missouri, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also accounts for one in every five COVID-19 cases in the United States.
A wave of new infections has left Missouri with the highest infection rate in the country and is stressing the limits of the state’s hospital system. In Springfield alone, there has been a 225% increase in hospital admissions since June 1, according to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department.
With 650 confirmed cases, the Alpha variant of COVID-19, which originated in the United Kingdom, still represents nearly 86% of all variant infections in Mississippi. There are currently 29 confirmed Delta infections in Mississippi, but this number nearly tripled in the 10-day period between June 14-24. Hinds County is the current hotbed for the Delta variant, where 18 of the 29 confirmed cases have been identified.
The vaccines are nearly as effective against the Delta variant as the original strain, greatly minimizing the chance of infection and nearly eliminating the risks of developing a serious illness.
Dobbs has repeatedly stressed that Mississippians have the choice of getting vaccinated or contracting COVID-19, and that in every scenario a vaccinated person is going to have a better outcome than if they had declined the shot.
The data collected on infections and deaths over the last few months has made this argument irrefutable. The Associated Press reported that nearly all COVID deaths in the U.S. are among the unvaccinated. Of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths that occurred in May, only around 150, or 0.8% were from fully vaccinated people.
Despite the wide availability of vaccines and the risks posed by variants, Mississippi continues to rank last in the nation in the share of its population that has been vaccinated.
Only 32% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated despite significant gains made in recent months in vaccinating the most vulnerable and making vaccine access more equitable. People are simply declining to get their shots, and this is keeping Mississippi in last place.
“We’ve been through the worst pandemic in over a century. We’ve lost over 600,000 Americans. It’s now the third leading cause of death in this country,” Dobbs said during a press conference last Wednesday. “We now have an exit door. Too many of us are choosing not to use that door. When we don’t all use it together, and in a sufficient number … it keeps us all vulnerable.”
We’re already seeing the danger vaccine resistance poses to the most vulnerable populations, with even some working in healthcare settings refusing to get vaccinated.
“We’ve seen outbreaks where symptomatic staff members have brought (COVID-19) into nursing homes,” Dobbs said. “This is something that just can’t be OK.”
The significant protections already known to come from COVID-19 vaccines received another credibility boost on Monday, as a new report found that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines initiate a persistent reaction in the immune system that may protect the body against the virus for years.
"It's a good sign for how durable our immunity is from this vaccine," Dr. Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University, who led the study, told The New York Times.
The study did not examine the immune response prompted by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and researchers said they expected it to be less durable than the protections provided by mRNA vaccines. Still, the results of the study suggest that those who received one of the two mRNA vaccines may not need booster shots later in the year, as many had expected, so long as significant mutations in the virus and variants do not occur.
Last week, the CDC said that there is no data that currently supports recommending booster shots. To recommend them, the center would require “evidence of declining protection against illness, such as declines in vaccine effectiveness" or detection of a "variant of concern substantially impacting vaccine protection.”
People who recovered from COVID-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters even if the virus does make a significant transformation. But whether or not boosters will be needed for more vulnerable populations with suppressed immune systems is yet to be seen, and the landscape will certainly continue to change as the virus continues to evolve.
New life has been breathed into a lawsuit attempting to overturn Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies.
The full panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear the lawsuit seeking to strike down the Jim Crow-era provision that framers of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution said was designed to try to prevent African Americans from voting.
Mississippi denies a higher percentage of its residents the right to vote because of felony convictions than any state in the country. In Mississippi, 235,150 people — or 10.6% of the state’s voting age population — have lost their right to vote, according to The Sentencing Project. Under the same restrictions, 130,500 Black Mississippians — or 16% of that voting age population — cannot vote. Since 2016, Mississippi has moved from second to first highest percentage in the nation.
The lawsuit, which challenges the constitutionality of the disenfranchisement provisions and was filed by the Mississippi Center for Justice, appeared dead in the water after a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in February rejected efforts to continue the lawsuit. But last week, the full panel of the Appeals Court agreed to hear the case. Oral arguments most likely will begin the week of Sept. 20.
“This is a big step forward in this case, which we filed in 2017 to remove the remnants of this racist 1890 provision from Mississippi’s Constitution,” Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff, who filed the lawsuit, said in a statement. “We are now in front of the full complement of 17 active Court of Appeals judges who will take a fresh look at whether the unconstitutional motivation behind this law requires that it be struck down.”
In the 1890s, the Mississippi Supreme Court said the disfranchisement of felons was placed in the Constitution “to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race” by targeting “the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.” McDuff said the provision’s intent was the same as the poll tax, the literacy test and other Jim Crow-era provisions that sought to prevent African Americans from voting.
Those crimes placed in the Constitution where conviction would cost a person the right to vote were bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary. Those were crimes that the 1890 framers believed African Americans were more likely to commit.
Under the original language of the Constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape and still be able to vote — even while incarcerated.
In 1968, the crimes of murder and rape were added as disenfranchising crimes. But even today, a person could be convicted of writing a bad check and lose the right to vote, but be a major drug kingpin locked up in prison and still vote. The lawsuit does not seek to overturn the voting ban for those convicted of murder or rape.
Under the Mississippi Constitution, a person who loses his voting rights because of a felony conviction cannot have them restored without a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature or by a gubernatorial pardon. The Legislature has been reluctant to restore those rights.
In the 2021 session, the House passed bills to restore voting rights to 21 people convicted of felonies, but the Senate rejected all but two of those bills.
“We are committed to challenging racial discrimination in voting on all fronts, including this remaining vestige of the infamous 1890 constitutional plan to steal the vote from Black people,” said Vangela M. Wade, president and chief executive officer of Mississippi Center for Justice. “At a time when most states have repealed their disfranchisement laws, it is time to remove from Mississippi’s Constitution this backward provision that was enacted with such a vicious purpose.”
Mississippi is in the minority of states — less than 10 — where voting rights are not automatically restored for people convicted of felonies either after they complete their sentence or at some point after completing parole or probation.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Roy Harness and Kamal Karriem. According to a statement from the Center for Justice, “Harness is a military veteran who was convicted of forgery in 1986 during a period of drug addiction. He served his sentence and later kicked the habit and went on to earn a degree in social work from Jackson State at the age of 62. Karriem is a former city council member in Columbus who was convicted of embezzlement in 2005. He also served his sentence and later became a pastor and one of the owners and operators of his family’s restaurant.”
Other attorneys working on the case for the Center for Justice include former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Fred Banks; civil rights lawyers David Lipman and Armand Derfner and former U.S. Solicitor General Don Verrilli. Verrilli is expected to argue the case before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Editor’s note: Vangela M. Wade is a member of Mississippi Today’s board of directors.
In this episode of The Other Side, Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender talk with former Mississippi journalist Karen Hinton, a Jones County native who became an adviser to politicians such as Mike Espy, Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, and later made national news as part of #MeToo movement.
Bobby Harrison: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to The Other Side. I’m Bobby Harrison, a political reporter for Mississippi Today. And I’m joined today by my colleague, fellow political reporter Geoff Pender. Geoff, how you doing?
Geoff Pender: [00:00:17] Hey Bobby.
Bobby Harrison: [00:00:18] Okay. And Geoff, I’m excited today that we have Karen Hinton who is like me from Jones County, West Jones High School and Jones County Junior College.
We were there about the same time in those two places. Karen, how you doing?
Karen Hinton: [00:00:33] I’m doing great. And I just want to say thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I’m delighted to be catching up with an old friend and to be making new ones, Geoff, and the viewers, listeners to your to your podcast.
Bobby Harrison: [00:00:50] Well, I mean, we’re excited to have you because you. I’ll let Geoff get started, but I just wanted to talk to you sort of about your career because your career started as a journalist and then went into a political consultant and communications on the highest level in the nation.
And so I’ll let Geoff get started asking about those things.
Geoff Pender: [00:01:06] Sure. And Karen, we’re just happy to see Bobby was being honest about really knowing you. We had some doubts there, but yeah, I wanted to see if you could give us a brief synopsis of your career to date, how you came to be a communications consultant for some of the most powerful politicians in the country. New York city Mayor, Bill De Blasio. I believe you worked for Mike Espy, Ron Brown, if I’m correct on that. Can you give us a little bit of your background and as I understand now, you pretty much are focusing on writing.
Karen Hinton: [00:01:39] Yes. Yes I am. Well, you know, I’m 62 years old, so I’ll try to keep this as short as possible.
But bear with me. I want to give everything back to Mississippi because that’s where I got my start. And it was in high school at West Jones and then at Jones County Junior College, and then Ole Miss where I really learned how to become a writer. I don’t know that I’m a great writer even today.
But that’s where it all started. And then of course, politics resulting from being a political reporter at the Jackson Daily News, which no longer exists. But it was the afternoon newspaper way back when, in the eighties, after I finished Ole Miss and where I got my first job and I covered the Haley Barbour Johnston, his Senate race, but more importantly, the Robert Clark with Franklin congressional race in the second district.
And Robert Clark, unfortunately lost. Cause I really highly respected him and wanted him to win. And after I worked for him in 1984, I was his press secretary, but then my Mike Espy ran and he won and he wanted me to go to Washington with him and be his press secretary. So that’s how I ended up in the nation’s Capitol and where I really learned as much as I could learn by working for Mike Espy, and, you know, working also with other democratic leaders who, who highly valued Mike Espy too.
And I got to know many of them, Tony Quilla. Dick Gephardt, even Nancy Pelosi was a young congresswoman at the time. So it was a tremendous experience that I look back on today was such fun memory. So everything connected to Mississippi had everything to do with helping me in my career going forward.
I met Ron Brown who was chair of the Democratic National Committee. And was actually one of the most important people in getting Bill Clinton elected president. And so I worked as a press aide for him, and then went on to eventually find my way working for Andrew Cuomo, who was named an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who then later became secretary of HUD.
And I was his press secretary. And then eventually found myself married one day to a New Yorker. Right. That does happen, but that’s only because I was working for Andrew Cuomo and that’s how I met him. And he had three children from a previous marriage and I had one from a previous marriage.
And so suddenly I had four children I was helping to take care of. And that’s when I started consulting. It’s the best way to be a mom and make money to work from home. And so I started consulting. But I, you know, after having worked with politicians for that length of time, I was able to build up a pretty good consulting arrangement with a number of clients who I value even today.
And then my husband later went on to take a job with Andrew Cuomo when he became governor of New York in 2010. And so we left Washington then and found ourselves in New York. And I continued to do consulting work until Mayor de Blasio, Bill de Blasio, who had worked for Andrew Cuomo as HUD secretary became mayor.
And he asked me I would help him with his press challenges. And so I went to work for him. And then later moved on to a PR firm in New York and had a freak accident on a treadmill, but suffered a pretty severe brain injury. And I had to lay low for a while to recover. So I really haven’t gone back into consulting, but I’m doing my own writing now.
And in fact, I’m working on a book on all that I just said in the past five minutes.
Bobby Harrison: [00:06:26] Go ahead.
Karen Hinton: [00:06:28] There you have it. Yeah. That’s me in a nutshell.
Bobby Harrison: [00:06:31] Well , you kind of got into the national spotlight as, I don’t know if it’s fair to say as part of the Me Too movement, if you will involving Cuomo who’s been in the news quite a bit lately. And can you just talk a little bit about that and just give your thoughts on that?
Karen Hinton: [00:06:51] I’ve known him since 1995 and have had a on and off again type of work relationship with him. Literally as well as personally because he and I did not always get along, and we had disagreements, but you know, like most people you work with in that way, you try to figure out ways to work through the problem.
And he and I did, especially after I married a man who was good friends with him and his father, Mario Cuomo so I really had a reason to try to always have a good relationship as I could with him even though he and I often would disagree on paths to follow when I was his press secretary at HUD, but nonetheless I did have some issues with him.
And later on, several women came out publicly in New York and said that he had sexually harassed, sexually abused them when they worked for him when he was governor and the governor’s office. I was just taken aback by that, because I definitely have seen the same pattern of that behavior when he was at HUD.
It wasn’t as extreme as it has been in New York, but it was problematic for me as well as many other women I knew who worked at HUD. And I decided after I heard one woman in particular, talk about how he propositioned her in his office. She is very young. She’s 26, 25 years old. He is now my age. He’s 62, 63.
I was just appalled at that. And after all this time and all the things that I had been through, I just decided to tell my story as well so I gave an interview with the Washington Post about a moment where he had made a sexual overture to me long ago in 2000. And I talked about that with the Washington Post as a way to affirm what some of these much younger women are saying about him now.
And I just wanted to say, you know, I’m glad to see more women speaking out about sexual harassment, sexual discrimination in the workplace or anywhere, because I think it’s very important that we be more vocal about it so that we can really help many other women, no matter where they are in New York, Mississippi or California or wherever, deal with these types of issues and try to convince our nation’s leaders to deal with it legally, as well as ethically so that we can stop to see this pervasive problem often that occurs between men and women, especially in the workplace.
Geoff Pender: [00:10:16] Ms. Hinton, I recall I recently read an op ed you wrote I believe in the Daily news or whatever where you kind of took both Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo to task. I guess one thing I’m wondering, you picture maybe both of these offices as being politically progressive or whatever, but you pointed out just some, I don’t know what you would call it, hostile environment, some issues in both offices. How does that still exist in this day and age in such public, high profile public places? How does it still go on? ,
Karen Hinton: [00:10:51] Well, I wish I knew the answer to that question because I would provide it, but I don’t. All I know is from the research I’ve done that sexual harassment, gender discrimination is pervasive. I mean, around 80% of women who are repped in survey will say they’ve suffered from some type of discrimination, sexual overture, harassment. And what often happens or so I’ve read from studies that have been done, that once it picks up a pattern, then it repeats itself. Like the boss may do something and it becomes noticeable to others underneath him and other men will start to do it because they think they can get away with it too.
Sometimes other women in the workplace will resent that certain women or be given more attention because a man is more attracted to that woman than other women, but that creates all kinds of tensions and problems. And then you see a pattern of it happening over time. It doesn’t stop unless something is done to call out the man or men who are part of discrimination or harassment.
And many times men don’t even see it as harassment, but women do. And finally there are laws being passed that deal with that very issue. A woman is feeling the impact of this and it stays with her and too bad if a man doesn’t understand it. They need to start understanding it. So that’s why there’s been all this sexual harassment training that’s been underway for quite a while, you know, over a decade or more.
But yet it continues to be a problem. So I don’t think it’s a Democrat or Republican issue. I just think it’s a man and women issue that we all need to acknowledge and deal with and openly. So there’s transparency around it. I think in my situation I just have worked for Democrats because I’m a Democrat, but I think Republican women, if they’re being honest, will say the same thing. And if you go back and look at all the sexual scandals that have happened in Washington, since there was Washington, D.C., you know, it’s been a problem for a long time. And even through the seventies when women’s rights took a hold and there was a feminist movement, it hasn’t really changed that much despite all of the women’s rights advocacy. So we still have to make it front and center. And I think when a leading politician, such as Andrew Cuomo, who became really well known during the COVID pandemic because he was on national news almost on a daily basis, talking about what New York was going through, suddenly had that become center stage for him. I think it’s important that the investigators looking into this take this very seriously and don’t just give him a, a slap on the wrist, but that they really take the problem seriously. So others in other states will do the same
Geoff Pender: [00:14:43] yeah, I was gonna ask you your thoughts on New York attorney general. If I’m recalling correctly, she’s created an independent investigative panel. Do you feel confident that’s going to be thorough and there will be some results from that?
Karen Hinton: [00:14:59] I do. They interviewed me, the investigators. And she does have private investigators who are taking this, who are handling the investigation. They’ve talked to me as well as many of the other women who have worked in the governor’s office, and they seem to me like you’re taking it very seriously. And so I have confidence that they will issue a report that will take these women seriously and won’t pass this up as confusion or as Andrew Cuomo has said, “misinterpretation of what he said, it was good intentions on his part, they just didn’t understand what he meant.”
I mean, and these harassment cases and sexual abuse cases, the perpetrator always comes up with another version of reality. And they twist things around in such a way so it makes a woman appear to be a liar or to be, you know, confused or incapable of understanding what was happening.
So that really has to stop and these women have to be taken seriously. And my incident happened so long ago because it was in 2000, you know, two decades ago. And because it happened in California, not in New York is not that relevant to them, but I think they were interested in my observation on the pattern over time.
So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens when they issue their report.
Bobby Harrison: [00:16:46] Karen, jumping around a little bit, you mentioned Espy and Robert Clark. That had to be an exciting time to be involved with, you know, candidate trying to be the first African-American elected to Congress, Mississippi and since reconstruction. And then, and of course, I think it was ’86 that Espy was elected. Can you just talk a little bit about that time and a little bit about how you got involved with those campaigns? You touched on it, but you can add some meat on that if you want to.
Karen Hinton: [00:17:15] Right. Well, I mean, sort of going back to Ole Miss, I majored in journalism and political science, so I had a good mix of politics as well as being a reporter. And this was in the day of the book coming out, All the President’s Men. Bobby, you probably remember that book. But we all read it and we all saw the movie. And so many our age wanting to become journalists because who wouldn’t want to be. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman who played Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward? So that’s who I wanted to be, right? And the professor at Ole Miss who actually took me seriously, and I don’t know that many people took me seriously then at Ole Miss, but he did.
And that was the former dean of the journalism department today Will l Norton. He recently resigned. And Will Norton was such a mentor of mine, and he really helped me become not only a better writer, but also just knowing how to investigate and report. And he really set the pace for me when he was a journalism professor. He later went on to be dean at the University of Nebraska I think it was, and then came back to Ole Miss as dean and did a fabulous job there building the journalism department. You know, Let me quickly take an aside here and say he faced some criticism over emails between himself and a funder, former Ole Miss graduate and donor big donor fundraiser, Bart. I’m blanking on his first name. Blake Bart.
Bobby Harrison: [00:19:17] I think that’s right.
Geoff Pender: [00:19:18] Tartt, Blake Tartt I believe.
Karen Hinton: [00:19:20] Tartt, I may have his last name wrong. Tartt, right. But I think Tartt really was the one who created this really racist, sexist view of Ole Miss from the comments that he made and the photos that he took that later become became distributed via Facebook. Black women who he described as prostitutes and had said they were ruining the culture of Ole Miss. I don’t know what that was all about, who this guy is, why he said the thing he did, but they were sexist and they were racist and it was terrible. And I think, I think honestly, Norton was trying to raise as much money as he could for the journalism department.
And some of the emails that I read between the two of them, I think he was just trying to back him off. And unfortunately Norton was criticized, but I think when I even look at the history of work and his contributions to journalism at Ole Miss and in Mississippi were very, very valuable and I just have such high regard for him.
So I just wanted to take that aside there real quickly. But it was from that time when I was at Ole miss that put me at the Jackson Daily News. I did an internship in the summer and then got a job there when I graduated. And that’s when I started covering politics and that’s how I met Robert Clark was I covered that first race in 1982. And then he wanted me to work with him as his press secretary in 1984 when he ran a second time. And you know, he and Mike Espy are two different people. They’re very different in so many ways, though, equally, very powerful politicians. Clark was a country boy. You know, he was a farmer and he was just a country boy, you know, a country man. And he had been in the state legislature for all this time even working at the only black state legislature for a long time and facing a lot of race racism before he ran for office, for Congress. And I think made a very powerful persuasion, but this was the first time that someone, a black person had run for Congress since reconstruction.
So he was really building that road to take to Congress. And I think it just took two elections to figure out what to do and how to do it to elect a black person. And certainly the federal courts had a lot to do with it with redrawing the line so you had more black people in one district, otherwise it would have not happened and wouldn’t happen today if the lines hadn’t been drawn again.
And then Mike Espy ran. Mike was very different. He wasn’t country. He knew the King’s English, right? He was dressed to the T. He’d been a lawyer and is a lawyer today and assistant attorney general when he ran. And he was able to pull it off.
I think he won with only 2% of the vote. So, you know, Clark got closer and closer and then Espy took it. And both of them had very important things to bring to the House for Mississippi. Mike obviously took the day and went on to, some of the things that I remember Mike for is catfish, right? Catfish took over because of Mike, and I remember Mike wanting me to promote National Catfish Day because it had passed a resolution in Congress. I said, “Mike, nobody is going to care about National Catfish Day.”
There is a national day for everything, right? He said, “No, no. We gotta promote it. We gotta promote it.” So I tried my best. It didn’t get that much coverage except in local, Mississippi newspapers where everybody loves catfish already. But it took off. And pretty soon, the cafeteria in Washington for House members was selling catfish, and then the Defense Department started eating catfish. And anyway, it’s one thing after another and it took off. And now Mississippi has the largest developer of catfish in the country and created so many jobs for the second congressional district as well. So those day of working for Mike were some of the most memorable political days of my life. I met so many terrific people, especially women who were really trying to make their way on Capitol Hill, and that was a tough place and remains a tough place for women though it’s improving immensely. You see many more women who are chiefs of staff, who are legislative directors and who are members of Congress. And there weren’t that many when I first started working there. So those are, those are great days to remember and my emotional strength toward both Mr. Clark, as well as Mike Espy is very strong and endearing part of my life.
Bobby Harrison: [00:25:13] Yeah. They’re both historical figures in Mississippi history. As you said, Clark was the first African-American elected to legislature since reconstruction and Espy was the first black elected to Congress from Mississippi since reconstruction. And you had the opportunity to work for both of them, so that’s significant.
Karen Hinton: [00:25:31] Yes. And I was lucky because I was a journalist first.
Geoff Pender: [00:25:37] Ms. Hinton, do I understand correctly there you may have a book in the works at this point?
Karen Hinton: [00:25:41] Yes, I do. I started working on the book. Well, let me put it this way. I started writing after my accident because I had a really tough time for a long time learning how to speak clearly again and write and read. I have now become an audible reader because my attention span will only last for about 15, 20 minutes when I read something visually. So many now of the books I consume are through my ears, not my eyes. But you know, one of the things I started doing though, was trying to get my writing skills back.
So I started writing about my life and I, as a result, started remembering things too, which was part of my struggle as well. And I found some West Jones school yearbooks. And I found some old diaries, and I found some memory albums, you know, where you put photos and write things.
And anyway, so it brought back all these memories of things in my past. And I started writing about them. I either read the diaries to my husband or I wrote about them and read them to him, and he thought they were hilarious. And he said, “Why don’t you write a book?” I said, “Oh, I can’t do that.”
And so I did, but I kept practicing and practicing. And I finally got to a place where the theme that kept reappearing was the struggle that young girls, as well as young women and then older women have with men and boys, both at school, college, the workplace, at home, and how we have to see the other sex as a way to bring our differences and our strengths together.
So that it works for everyone involved in our lives, our families, our friends. And that’s what got me thinking more about the dynamic between men and women in the workplace. So this book addresses many of those issues and it includes time at West Jones, time at Ole Miss and also time in Washington and New York.
And Andrew Cuomo is a chapter or too, but there are other people in other places are as well.
Bobby Harrison: [00:28:29] Karen, we appreciate you doing this. It’s been fun and just kind of, as they say in the legislature, just as a point of personal privilege, when we said that you and I went to high school together, I think it should just be pointed out you were a star basketball player. I don’t know if you were Miss West Jones, but you were right up there. And I was just kind of this nerdy kid. I say kind of, because I was the skinny kid, but I wasn’t smart like a nerd. It was kinda like being slow but small.
Karen Hinton: [00:28:57] I definitely wasn’t smart, but I love basketball. And I tell you, sports has a lot to do with helping a woman become a stronger person. And I know it helped me. And you may remember Title IX. When Title IX put women sports at the same financial level as men’s sports , it had a lot to do with helping women in their careers.
I mean, you know,I didn’t go on to become a professional basketball player. And I didn’t even last that long when I played at Ole Miss, but I love the game. So I, I don’t know that I was that great at it, but I loved it. So there you have it.
Bobby Harrison: [00:29:42] Yeah. Well, at a risk of keeping you on too long I know you’re busy.
I think when you were at West Jones, I mean, it was still, there was two on the defensive and two in the backend on the offensive end to that were rovers. Is that right?
Karen Hinton: [00:29:56] Right, up until our junior, senior year it changed. But yeah, for a long time I played when I was a freshmen, I played defense. And I think sophomore is when we switched, but I remember playing either rover or defense or forward. They switch you up all the time.
But yeah, it was six, it was six member team, but the boys played by us and then suddenly, suddenly we got switched to five as well.
Bobby Harrison: [00:30:26] Well, we appreciate your time and good luck with your book.
Karen Hinton: [00:30:29] Thank you. Nice to meet you, Geoff, and good luck with Mississippi Today.
Adam Ganucheau: [00:30:36] As we cover the biggest political stories in this state you don’t want to miss an episode of The Other Side. We’ll bring you more reporting from every corner of the state, sharing the voices of Mississippians and how they’re impacted by the news. So, what do we need from you, the listener? We need your feedback and support.
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. And as always thank you for your feedback and support.
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on your favorite podcast app or stream episodes online at MississippiToday.org/the-other-side. For the Mississippi Today team, I’m Adam Ganucheau. The Other Side is produced by Mississippi Today and engineered by Blue Sky studios. We hope you’ll join us for our next episode.
How unlikely was it that lawmakers would vote to change the state flag one year ago today?
“It would be the greatest legislative achievement in the history of the state,” a top adviser to Gov. Tate Reeves told this journalist just 12 days before the final vote. “There’s just no way it’ll happen.”
Many Mississippi elected officials tried unsuccessfully over the course of several decades to change the 126-year-old state flag, which would become the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem.
Speaker of the House Philip Gunn did it.
For most Mississippi observers, the process to change the state flag lasted 22 days in June 2020. But for Gunn, the process lasted five years and one week — a harrowing period in the speaker’s career that has never been told in detail until now.
Gunn, in a series of one-on-one interviews this year, spoke candidly with Mississippi Today about what motivated him to make this the defining issue of his political career, and how he operated behind the scenes to make the change. Beginning today, the one-year anniversary of the historic legislative vote to furl the flag for good, Mississippi Today will publish a five-part series chronicling Gunn’s leadership that left a legacy on the state for generations to come.
It’s important to note a few things. The first is that Gunn himself will not take full credit for the change. While he acknowledged organizing and leading many of the key efforts, he’s quick to point out many people and factors came together at the right time — “divine providence,” he calls it. But those closest to the speaker and the process know that without Gunn’s leadership, the change would not have occurred. This series shares the perspectives of many of those people.
Second, Gunn wouldn’t have had the ground to stand on had it not been for the countless legislators and activists — namely African American leaders — who fought for decades to change the flag. Gunn even being in the position to take a stand came after generations of white elected officials lacked either the will or the savvy to change the flag. Nevertheless, Gunn went on a limb in 2015 and laid the groundwork for the historic vote. This reporting quotes several Black leaders who saw that from him over the course of several years.
Lastly, this series does not seek to diminish the work of the many people who fought for the change — both last year and in years past. The reporting does definitively show, however, how the flag would not have changed last year without Gunn’s leadership.
Gunn’s conviction to change the flag didn’t waver even as most of his white legislative colleagues feared the electoral repercussions. Exhibiting both patience and tenacity, he built relationships and coalitions over the past few years that would become critical to the final outcome. He used shrewdness the likes of which have rarely been matched in recent political history.
He pleaded to the humanity of resistant white lawmakers, and he inspired their changes of heart to the point a couple of the most stubborn legislative holdouts brought their children to the Capitol to witness the historic final vote. He showed decisive leadership during a couple key inflection points last June, including single-handedly saving the effort from being killed less than a week before the final vote.
This reporting is based on four interviews conducted this year with Gunn, with many lawmakers and other stakeholders intimately involved with the process to change the flag, and from personal recollections of the past several months and years.
Part one of the series will publish on June 28, part two on June 29, part three on June 30, part four on July 1 and part five on July 2.
OMAHA — You scratch. You claw. You somehow fight you way through three dramatic, one-run victories to get to the championship round of the College World Series. And then, who do you face?
Why, defending national champion Vanderbilt’s much-feared, soon-to-be-multi-millionaire Jack Leiter, of course.
Rick Cleveland
Mississippi State has a chore on its hands tonight in the first game of the CWS best-of-three championship series that begins at 6 p.m. at what will be a jam-packed TD Ameritrade Park.
“Best arm in the country,” Tanner Allen, Mississippi State’s SEC Player of the Year, said Sunday. “Unbelievable talent.”
Leiter, son of former Major League star Al Leiter, probably will be the first college pitcher chosen in next month’s Major League draft. He won 10 games for the Commodores this season. More impressively, he struck out 171 batters in 104 innings. He throws a 95 mph fastball that he can accelerate to 98. His curveball, which seems to drop off the face of the planet, is devastating. And he has a terrific slider, too. He commands all, which is why some Major League team is going to write him a huge check later this summer.
Funny, Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said Sunday he didn’t know if he would start Leiter. He said it with a straight face, too. Forget that. Leiter will pitch tonight. He would have thrown against North Carolina State Saturday had the game been played. Now Leiter has had another 48 hours of rest.
Even so, State knows Leiter can be beat. After all, the Bulldogs beat him in Nashville back in April. The Bulldogs lost two of three in the series, but they did scorch Leiter. Rowdey Jordan homered to lead off the game and the Bulldogs scored four runs on six hits in five innings off Leiter en route to a 7-4 victory. Logan Tanner also homered. Tanner Allen had two hits and scored twice off the Vandy ace.
So, it can be done, and the Bulldogs know it.
To win, the Bulldogs will need a terrific pitching performance of their own. They are counting on left-hander Christian MacLeod to provide that. MacLeod (6-5, 4.61 ERA) blanked Vandy for three innings in the opener of that April series before Vandy knocked him out of the box with four runs in the fourth inning en route to a 6-2 victory.
“I had some pretty good stuff early,” MacLeod said Sunday. “My changeup was really working well.”
MacLeod struck out seven over those first three innings before he lost command of his pitches, especially his changeup. He fell behind in counts. The results were not good.
“I left some pitches up,” MacLeod said. “They made me pay for it. That’s a good lineup they have over there.”
It is. Vanderbilt, the defending national champion, has won eight of its last nine games.
“They have been here,” Chris Lemonis said. “They know how to win. … They know how to play the game and they are really well coached.”
Said Tanner Allen, “Vanderbilt is an unbelievable team… They have good arms and they can really swing it. We’ll have our hands full, but like I said, we didn’t expect this to be a cakewalk. We’re ready for it.”
Vandy is, too. These two Southeastern Conference teams have played some memorable games over the last few springs. There’s no reason to expect anything different here when the stakes are even higher.
State fans stayed and cheered long after the Bulldogs’ victory over Teas Saturday night. State players and coaches soaked it in . (MSU athletics)
OMAHA — So there’s a narrative making the rounds – particularly on social media – that no matter who wins this College World Series, it’s a tainted championship.
You know why. It is because North Carolina State, a CWS semifinalist, got eliminated by COVID-19, and not on the field. You know the story. No reason to rehash it all. It’s a terrible, horrible, awful, regretful thing that happened to the Wolfpack, who were a Cinderella story if there ever was on in college baseball.
Chris Lemonis may have said it best. “Man, it sucks what happened,” he said in a Sunday press conference
Rick Cleveland
But don’t try telling Lemonis or his Bulldogs that if they somehow defeat Vanderbilt – the defending national champion, after all – in a best of three championship series that Mississippi State’s first-ever national championship would be stained, that there would be an asterisk beside it. Don’t tell me either. That’s just not right.
If anything, North Carolina State’s elimination from the CWS made State’s road more difficult – much more difficult, actually. Now, the Bulldogs will face well-rested Jack Leiter – “the best arm the country,” says State star Tanner Allen – in the first game of the championship series.
While State needed to use its ace, Will Bednar, to beat Texas Saturday night, Leiter and Vandy rested. To win the championship, State will have to go through both Leiter and Kumar Rocker, who probably will be the top two pitchers taken in the Major League draft next month. Tainted? An asterisk? Come on…
“I don’t see that,” Lemonis said Sunday. “I mean, I see us having to play. They way that we came through it and the games that we’ve had to play and now you’re having to play Vandertbilt. There will be no asterisk for us.
“And I hate it for N.C. State,” Lemonis continued. “I have three coaches who worked for (NC State coach Elliot Avent) on my staff I have a long relationship with Elliot. My nieces and nephews all went to N.C. State. I have a lot of respect there. Man, it sucks what happened.
“But for our guys, that stuff’s out of our control. All we can do is show up and play., and whoever is in the other dugout we compete against. … Actually, it probably makes our job a little harder – not easier…”
Oddsmakers certainly agree. Vegas has made Vanderbilt a -200 betting favorite, meaning if you want to bet on Vandy you have to risk $200 to win $100. In baseball, that’s a heavy, heavy favorite.
But nothing ever seems easy for this State baseball team, which has won three one-run ballgames here in Omaha. These Bulldogs really do seem to play their best when they have their backs against the wall.
“They have been here, they know how to win,” Lemonis said of Vandy. “They are a very formidable opponent, and they just know how to play the game and they are well-coached. It will be a tough matchup. It will be who gets the big hit or who makes the big play because they are very good.”
Tanner Allen (left) and Rowdy Jordan are playing in their third College World Series but will play for the first time in the championship series beginning Monday night. (MSU athletics)
Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin had similar praise for State Sunday, and what you can tell listening to both men is that it’s not just coachspeak. Vandy knows State. State knows Vandy. It must seem to Corbin like he’s been facing Rowdey Jordan and Tanner Allen forever. For sure, it must seem to Jordan and Allen that they’ve been facing Kumar Rocker forever.
Now, they’ll face off at least two more times, maybe three, with the national championship on the line. Yes, it’s a shame what happened to North Carolina State. Nevertheless, this ought to be good stuff.
Mississippi State has been playing baseball for 136 years. The Bulldogs have won 18 SEC championships, played in 39 NCAA Tournaments, won multiple NCAA Regionals and Super Regionals and have played now in 12 of these College World Series. There’s one trophy missing from the case.
Here, in Omaha, State has endured much heartbreak.
Lemonis was asked Sunday if this team feels the burden of all that past history.
“We can’t — you know, you can’t go back. We know our whole university and our whole state is behind us, and we just want to play good and represent our fan base,” Lemonis said. But the reality is, these poor kids, I mean, Tanner Allen I don’t think was born when some of these we lost or whatever. They are here. They are making their own mark on history. That’s our goal.”
And if, they somehow do it, there’ll be no asterisk.
