Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame

Harper Davis carries the ball for Mississippi State University.

This was before Julius Harper Davis became Mr. Mississippi State and a standout on some of the greatest Bulldog football teams in history. This was before Davis played for the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, and before the legendary George Halas named a play after him.

This was long before Davis coached as an assistant at Mississippi State and then for 25 years with great success as head coach at Millsaps College. This was before all that. This was when Harper Davis was just 18 years young, a recent graduate of Clarksdale High, and found himself across the continent in the mammoth Los Angeles Coliseum lined up across from the UCLA Bruins.

This was October of 1944 and America was still fighting World War II. Davis was in the Navy, stationed at St. Mary’s Preflight where his astonishing foot speed proved much more apparent on the football field than in a cockpit.

Davis, who died Saturday at 95, once showed me the news clipping from the next day’s Los Angeles Times, which ran an eight-column banner headline across the top of the first page of the sports section: St. Mary’s Preflight Jolts Bruins 21 to 12; Davis gallops over Uclans.

Rick Cleveland

The story details how Julie Davis ran for 206 yards on 31 carries and dazzled heavily favored UCLA. Davis was described as an “18-year-old newcomer from the Mississippi prep ranks whose arrival has transformed the Preflighters from plodders into dazzlers.”

“All these years later, it remains my biggest thrill in sports,” Davis told me in 1989 after he retired at Millsaps.

And that was saying something because Harper Davis, older brother of fellow Mississippi State great Art Davis, enjoyed a lifetime of thrills in sports.

He led Mississippi State in scoring in three of his four seasons, led them to 25 wins against 12 defeats, made All-SEC and All-South. As good as he was on offense, he was best in the defensive secondary.

The Pittsburgh Steelers drafted him in the second round of the NFL Draft, but the Los Angeles Dons, who played in the LA Coliseum, drafted him in the first round of the All-America Football Conference draft. The Dons offered him more money, plus Davis was familiar with the surroundings.

Davis signed with the Dons but after one season the league folded. The NFL held a dispersal draft and the Bears, coached and owned by Halas, chose Davis in the first round. Davis became a defensive star, intercepting five passes during the 1950 season. Halas also designed an offensive play featuring Davis as a wide receiver, who would get the ball on a double reverse. The Bears ran it once and Davis scored from 40 yards out. Afterward, Halas revealed the play’s name: The Harper Davis Special.

Brothers Art (left) and Harper Davis, in 2011.

What wasn’t special about the Bears was the payroll. As a coach, Halas was innovative. As an owner, he was miserly. Davis said players often had to mend their own uniforms. He was making $8,000 a season.

Young fans of today’s NFL can scarcely imagine what the league was like in the early 1950s. When Harper and Camille Davis welcomed a young son into the world in 1953, he sought some financial stability. Davis quit pro football to become the head coach at West Point High School. “I had to work toward a future and there was no future in pro football,” Davis told me.

After two years as a high school coach, Davis spent eight as an assistant at State. In 1964, he landed at Millsaps for a 25-year run, during which the Majors won 136 games, lost 84 and tied four. His 1980 team finished 9-0. He was old school, Harper Davis was. Offensively, his teams most often ran between the tackles. Defensively, they got after you. They practiced long and hard. Nobody, including Davis, drank water during practice.

Mostly, they won.

When he retired, I asked him, are you going to miss it? “I probably will,” he said, and he did.

It wasn’t long before he was volunteering to help Jackson Academy’s junior high teams learn to play the sport.

“He was great with the kids, one of the neatest, kindest people I’ve ever known,” said Joey Hawkins, long-time JA coach.

Hawkins reminded me of another Harper Davis exploit from years and years ago. World War II had ended. Mississippi State and Ole Miss both wanted him to play for them and awaited his return. But Mississippi State didn’t wait. Coach Allyn McKeen took action, dispatching an assistant coach to pick up Davis at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. That was on a Wednesday. They drove back to Mississippi on Thursday with Davis studying the playbook. On Friday, State traveled to Birmingham to play Auburn. On Saturday, Davis, who barely knew his teammates, entered the scoreless game in the second quarter. His first carry was a 61-yard touchdown. Eventually, he would then rush for 166 yards on 22 carries and score two of State’s three touchdowns in a 20-0 victory.

You couldn’t make up a story like that. And thankfully, where Harper Davis is concerned, we don’t have to.

The post You couldn’t make up these stories, and with late, great Harper Davis, there’s no need appeared first on Mississippi Today.

COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 1,701 new cases

By Mississippi Today | December 28, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Monday, December 28:

New cases: 1,701 | New Deaths: 28

Total Hospitalizations: 1,377

Total cases:208,089| Total Deaths: 4,634

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 16

By Alex Rozier

On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far. 

On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.

As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.  

Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people). 

The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

The post COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 1,701 new cases appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Mound Bayou Mayor Eulah Peterson near City Hall.

MOUND BAYOU — When Eulah Peterson was elected mayor here in 2017, she not only assumed the duties of the office but also inherited more than half a million dollars in debt.

Mound Bayou, a small town in Bolivar County, had accumulated $717,826.06 in debt to the IRS, Entergy, and 18 other entities. Peterson said she doesn’t know what happened in prior administrations to lead to this debt. 

“They just didn’t pay the bills, as far as I know,” she said. 

Peterson continued: “These were all bills that we inherited that were on the books from prior administrations. When I came in (to office) I was told, ‘It does not matter that you didn’t make the bills. You are the person in charge and the city is responsible for the bills.’”

So she went about the business of working with the board of aldermen to create a plan to pay if off. 

Peterson said the city has now paid down 84% of its debts through fundraisers, tax anticipation loans, and allocations from the city general fund.

“We’re very, very proud that the board and I have worked to get this $603,958.70 paid off and in addition to that, all of our bills are current. We don’t have any bills that we’re not paying.” Peterson said. 

It is not unheard of for small, rural towns to find themselves in this kind of debt. 

About 50 miles southeast of Mound Bayou, the city of Itta Bena was potentially going to lose its power because of $800,000 in unpaid bills before the state intervened. 

Hope Policy Institute Director Diane Standaert said that lack of wealth in some rural, small towns can be understood through the lens of policies that have historically divested from these kinds of places.

“Generally, the big picture of smaller town finances is not disconnected from what’s happened in the region in terms of the history of extraction and exclusionary policies and practices. (That includes not) only extractive policies but a divestment, and not getting resources whether it be philanthropic public or private dollars into these communities on an ongoing basis,” Standaert said. 

Willie Simmons, central district transportation commissioner and former state senator of more than 26 years representing the Delta, agreed that state and national policies have tended to not prioritize small-town economic development.

Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today

Standing near the former home of Mound Bayou founder Isaiah Montgomery, Mayor Eulah Peterson describes how during more prosperous times, the train travelled through the center of town past the founder’s house.

Rural Mississippi — especially the Delta — lacks the necessary infrastructure to attract and maintain a thriving population. With a loss of population, so goes economic development, employment opportunities and new business. 

“We have to rethink what we have done in the past if we want to have a holistic state, if we want to have a holistic nation,” Simmons said. “We have to invest in those communities that we may have neglected in the past due to public policies and population migration, and begin to invest in those communities so that they can grow.”

Though these types of policies are not the sole reason for Mound Bayou’s debt, they have played a role in what the city couldn’t afford to do while paying it off. And now that the town is mostly out of debt, Peterson said the town can prioritize infrastructure projects.

She wants to fix the streets and sewer systems as well as revitalize the community center. This June she plans to run for re-election so she can continue on the work she’s started. If not successful, she’ll continue to push for the rest of the debt to get paid off before the new mayor comes into office. 

“It became a goal of mine to not have a new administration come in with these debts over their heads,” Peterson said.

The post Mound Bayou leadership pays off nearly $700,000 in inherited debt appeared first on Mississippi Today.

COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 1,365 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 27, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Sunday, December 27:

New cases: 1,365 | New Deaths: 41

Total Hospitalizations: 1,377

Total cases:206,388| Total Deaths: 4,606

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 16

On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far. 

On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.

As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.  

Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people). 

The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

The post COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 1,365 new cases appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America

State Capitol in Jackson Friday, August 24, 2018.

States that consume the most sushi per capita have a higher work force participation rate than Mississippi.

But wait, states where more venison is eaten also have a higher percentage of eligible works employed than in Mississippi.

No actual research has been done on those statistics, but rest assured they are correct. After all, every state, except for perhaps West Virginia, has a higher work force participation rate than the Magnolia State.

There have been efforts in recent days to buoy support for Gov. Tate Reeves’ proposal to phase out Mississippi’s income tax by pointing out that the nine states with no tax on earned income have higher — much higher in some instances — work force participation rates than Mississippi. It’s an interesting point, but states with the highest tax on income also have higher work force participation rates than Mississippi. The point is: Mississippi’s work force participation rate is lower than every state except that of West Virginia.

Still, the argument made that eliminating the income tax would help improve Mississippi’s work force participation rate is an interesting one since Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has made improving the state’s work force participation one of his primary goals. Hosemann, as do most economists, cite improving the rate as a way to improve the economy of a state.

In order to steer a proposal to phase out the income tax through the 2021 Mississippi legislative session, which begins Jan. 5, Reeves probably needs buy-in on the plan from Hosemann, who presides over the Senate.

House Speaker Philip Gunn has previously voiced support for eliminating the income tax and appears to be solidly behind Reeves’ proposal to do so during the 2021 session. When asked about the proposal, Hosemann simply said “everything is on the table.” Perhaps the thought is that if the income tax phase-out is linked to increasing Mississippi’s work force participation rate, Hosemann might be more likely to jump on board.

In fairness, the work force participation rates of many of the nine states that do not tax earned income are above the national average. Based on information provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national work force participation rate for November was 61.4%. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was above 63%. Mississippi’s was at 55.8%, seasonally adjusted for November. Of the nine states with no tax on earned income, six were above the national average. The states with the highest work force participation rate of that group were South Dakota at 67.9% followed by New Hampshire at 66.3%.

But, of course, most of the states with work force rates higher than the national average have a personal income tax, most with much higher rates than Mississippi’s relatively low rate. They include Maryland with a 65.8% work force participation rate and Minnesota at 67.9%.

Incidentally, Kansas had a 68.3% rate in November. In the early 2010s, Kansas famously enacted deep income tax cuts but repealed them in 2018 as state revenue plummeted.

When announcing his plan, Reeves said Mississippi needed the boost that the income tax cut would create.

“We as a state need to think big,” Reeves said in November. “We need to think about not only what can we do to make strategic investments, but what can we do to make a splash.

“What can we do to say to the world not only do we want to invest capital here, (but) we want you to move here? Mississippi needs to see population growth in the coming years. We need more people moving into the state to grow our economy.”

He said phasing out the income tax by 2030 would spur that growth.

Reeves said the states with no tax on personal income are experiencing faster population growth. Many are. The top 10 fastest growing states between 2010 and 2019 include four with no income tax. All nine were growing much faster than Mississippi, which was in the bottom 10 in terms of population growth.

In most categories, measuring a state’s economic vitality — gross domestic product, per capital income, education attainment and so on — most states with or without a personal income tax are ahead of Mississippi.

Former Gov. William Winter, who died earlier this month, used to famously say, “The only road out of poverty runs past the schoolhouse door.”

No doubt, those states that have had strong school systems for a prolonged period and have high educational attainment levels also are outperforming Mississippi economically.

Some of those states do not have a personal income tax, but most do.

The post Mississippi’s work force participation rate lags, but is it because of taxes or sushi? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 845 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 26, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Saturday, December 26:

New cases: 845| New Deaths: 3

Total Hospitalizations: 1,377

Total cases:205,023| Total Deaths: 4,565

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 16

On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far. 

On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.

As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.  

Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people). 

The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

The post COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 845 new cases appeared first on Mississippi Today.

COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 1,527 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 25, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Friday, December 25:

New cases: 1,527| New Deaths: 6

Total Hospitalizations: 1,377

Total cases:204,178| Total Deaths: 4,562

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 16

On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far. 

On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.

As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.  

Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people). 

The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

The post COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 1,527 new cases appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Merry Christmas to all and may you have a peaceful remainder of 2020. If you like this drawing, you can order prints and T-shirts here. Thank you for reading my work this year! I am grateful for you. And thank you for supporting Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Merry Christmas! appeared first on Mississippi Today.

COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 2,326 new cases

By Alex Rozier and Erica Hensley | December 24, 2020

We are bringing you the latest COVID-19 Mississippi trends with daily case, death and hospitalization updates, as well as testing data charts and other helpful interactive maps and graphs.

This page was last updated Thursday, December 24:

New cases: 2,326| New Deaths: 24

Total Hospitalizations: 1,377

Total cases:202,651| Total Deaths: 4,556

Mask Mandates | On Sept. 30, Gov. Tate Reeves ended the statewide mask mandate order, originally issued Aug. 4. Since then, he has added a total of 78 individual county mask mandates, covering half of the state. State health officials encourage widespread masking and credit the original mandate with helping cases improve after a steep summer spike. View the full list of COVID-19 orders here.

All data and information reported by the Mississippi State Department of Health as of 6 p.m. yesterday

Weekly update: Wednesday, December 16

On Tuesday Mississippi hit a new record with the seven-day average for cases, reaching 2,196. After going nine months without reporting 2,000 cases in a day, the state has reached that point nine times in just the 16 days of December so far. 

On Dec. 9, Mississippi also hit a new high for total hospitalizations on the rolling average, surpassing the summer peak. The state had already reached a new high for confirmed hospitalizations at the end of November, but hadn’t yet for the total tally, which includes suspected cases as well.

As seen in MSDH’s illness onset chart, the record for most illnesses in a day — Dec. 11, with 2,442 — is within the last two-week period, meaning those numbers could still go up.  

Mississippi’s present rise in cases mirrors the national surge, as the state currently has the 26th most new cases per capita. According to the Harvard Global Health Institute tracker, every state except Vermont is now in the “red zone” (recording over 25 daily new cases per 100,000 people). 

The health department reports that 148,466 people are presumed covered as of Dec. 13.

Click through the links below to view our interactive charts describing the trends around the coronavirus in Mississippi:

View our COVID-19 resource page for more information about coronavirus in Mississippi.

The post COVID-19 cases: Mississippi reports 2,326 new cases appeared first on Mississippi Today.