Robert “Bob” Parris Moses, a civil rights leader, educational advocate and pioneer in grassroots community organizing whose efforts played a key role in helping Black Mississippians gain basic rights, died Sunday at 86.
On Sunday morning, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project’s 60th Anniversary Conference posted on social media that Moses, a civil rights hero, had died.
“We honor his vision, tenacity, and fearlessness. His deep belief in people who find themselves in the socio/economic bottom made a fundamental difference for millions of his fellow Americans,” the SNCC Legacy Project said in a statement.
Moses, a New York native, was a field secretary for SNCC in Mississippi. He also served as co-director of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), which used community organizing as a tool to launch voter registration projects across the state.
COFO served as an umbrella for an alliance between the SNCC, the Congress of Racial Equality and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and helped focus civil rights efforts in the state. COFO was known for its young organizers’ door-to-door canvassing, voter registration preparation and workshops, and actual registration attempts in Mississippi.
Through his work with both of these organizations, Moses was instrumental in the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the 1964 voter registration drive created to increase the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. That summer, white volunteers traveled to the South to work alongside African Americans who were fighting for access to the polls.
“At the heart of these efforts was SNCC’s idea that people—ordinary people long denied this power—could take control of their lives,” the SNCC statement continued. “These were the people that Bob brought to the table to fight for a seat at it: maids, sharecroppers, day workers, barbers, beauticians, teachers, preachers and many others from all walks of life.”
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP and a Mississippian, said “Bob Moses was a giant, a strategist at the core of the civil rights movement. Through his life’s work, he bent the arc of the moral universe toward justice, making our world a better place. He fought for our right to vote, our most sacred right. He knew that justice, freedom and democracy were not a state, but an ongoing struggle.
“So may his light continue to guide us as we face another wave of Jim Crow laws. His example is more important now than ever…Rest in power Bob.”
In response to the state Democratic Party denying access to Black Mississippians, Moses, along with Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker and others created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The effort created national attention at the 1964 National Democratic Convention as conflict developed over whether to recognize the integrated party or the traditional party. New party members ultimately failed at being seated as voting members of the 1964 convention, but their efforts brought new attention to the plight of African Americans in Mississippi and other Southern states and ultimately led to a revolution in the national Democratic Party on racial issues.
“He was a civil rights icon who made sacrifices for what he believed,” said state Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez. “He could have done a lot of things, but he made sacrifices on behalf of the movement.”
In addition to his civil rights work, Moses taught math to students in Tanzania from 1969 to 1976. In 1982, Moses went on to found The Algebra Project. The national organization exists to teach students, especially low income students and students of color, mathematical literacy and prepare them for college.
In 2000, Moses was honored by both the Mississippi House and Senate, whose members in past years had passed laws that he fought to overturn denying voting rights and other basic rights to African Americans.
“One of my greatest honors as a legislator has been to sponsor a resolution honoring Bob Moses for his work with SNCC and, later, with the Algebra Project,” said Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson. “He was a quiet, meticulous, effective visionary and leader and his contributions to helping Mississippi free itself from the yoke of discrimination and tyranny are incalculable.”
State Rep. Alyce Clarke, D-Jackson, was just this past weekend honored at Jackson State University along with Moses and other civil rights leaders as being part of a mural titled “Chain Breakers.” Clarke was the first Black woman elected to the Mississippi Legislature. She began serving in the state House in 1984. Clarke described Moses “as a brilliant person and somebody who did what he said he was going to do….It was an honor to be included in a mural with him and other civil rights leaders.”
Moses also inspired an exhibit in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in downtown Jackson. The museum’s fifth gallery, “A Tremor in the Iceberg,” is inspired by his description of the movement in Mississippi: “A tremor in the middle of the iceberg from a stone which the builders rejected.”
“Staff are saddened to hear of the death of Bob Moses, an American icon who left a tremendous legacy in Mississippi,” said Katie Blount, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “We are honored that he was the keynote speaker during the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Lecture Series in 2014. His commitment to justice is displayed throughout the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.”
States like Texas, Georgia and Florida that have been in the national news recently for efforts that many say will make it more difficult for their citizens to vote still have a long way to go to catch Mississippi.
An objective argument easily can be made that there is no state where it is more difficult to vote than Mississippi.
“Mississippi is one of the most difficult states to vote in in the country,” said David Becker, executive director of the national non-profit Center for Election Innovation & Research. In April, the Center released a study showing that Mississippi is among six states that do not allow no excuse in-person or mail-in voting or both. In one of those six states, Connecticut, voters will decide in 2022 whether to amend their constitution to allow no-excuse early voting. The study cited 36 states as allowing both no-excuse voting by mail and in person and nine states allowing no-excuse early voting, but not mail-in voting.
The national news has covered extensively the law enacted in Georgia that many say will make it more difficult to vote. National boycotts were announced against Georgia. Many companies with ties to Georgia expressed their displeasure and Major League Baseball, in protest of the new law, moved the All Star game from Atlanta to Denver. In Texas, the national media has covered breathlessly the decision of House Democrats to flee the state to prevent a quorum so that Republicans could not pass a bill that would limit voting opportunities.
Yet, Mississippi chugs along with perhaps the most restrictive voting laws in the nation and hardly anyone notices.
“I know for a fact (in)Mississippi…,compared to a state like Georgia, quite frankly, it is still more difficult to vote even after the Georgia law passed,” Becker said.
Of course, Mississippi’s restrictive voting policy is nothing new. At one time Mississippi was a leader in developing and passing laws to deny African Americans the right to vote. And to this day, Mississippi, the state with the nation’s highest percentage of African Americans, still is a national leader in limiting citizens the access to the vote.
In Mississippi, a person must have an excuse to vote early, such as being disabled, over age 65 or be away from home on election day. And Mississippi is the only state to require people to get two documents notarized to vote by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The voter must get both the ballot application and the ballot notarized.
Heck, in some states absentee ballot applications are mailed out to all voters or are available to be downloaded from the internet.
Of course, Mississippi was famously cited by the Democracy Initiative for limiting the accommodations made to voters because of the COVID-19 pandemic during the November 2020 election.
“Mississippi is now the only state in which in-person voting on Election Day is the only option available to all voters,” said a report released before the November election by the Democracy Initiative, which is a coalition of 75 groups advocating for voter access. “In Mississippi, an excuse (other than risk of COVID-19) is required to cast an absentee ballot or to vote early, and not all voters qualify.”
This past November, Gov. Tate Reeves proclaimed on social media, “Based on what I see in other states…I will do everything in my power to make sure universal mail-in voting and no-excuse early voting are not allowed in Mississippi – not while I’m governor. Too much chaos.”
But Becker said that no excuse early voting and voting by mail was not developed in most states because of the coronavirus. It was widely used before the pandemic, including in neighboring Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana.
Becker pointed out that in 2016, 80% of Arizonians voted by mail. That number increased to 90% in 2020. The complaints, he pointed out, were made by people upset with the fact that then-President Donald Trump did not win in Arizona as he did in 2016. Was that the chaos that the governor was referencing?
Becker, a former U.S. Department of Justice senior attorney, argues that having more days of voting actually makes for more secure elections. He said having the extra days provides election officials more opportunities to catch and fix any problems.
By having early voting, Becker said, “It is very likely it (any problem) will be detected so that the impact on the election will be zero. But if you concentrate more voting on election day you have less secure elections.”
The question for Mississippi’s political leadership might be whether they oppose no-excuse early voting because of issues of election security or for some other reason.
Annalyn Swan is an official panelist in this year’s Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 21. Photo courtesy Annalyn Swan.
Annalyn Swan entered the Zoom chat wearing a round straw hat and a blue-and-white patterned shirt. A packed, white bookcase lined the room behind her in her New York City home. It was 5 p.m., and the acclaimed biographer and native Biloxian had just come from drinking ice tea on her neighbor’s screened porch.
“That’s the closest you could possibly get to a Southern porch up here,” she says.
It’s been 50-oddyears since the award-winning writer went north for college, and in the time since, Swan’s accomplishments are the kindpeople dream of moving to New York City to achieve. She was a music critic and senior editor for Newsweek in the 1980s and has been published in the Atlantic, the New Republic and New York Magazine. In 2005, Swan’s biography of the pioneeringabstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, co-authored with her husband Mark Stevens, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography.
These days, Swan is busy teachingand promoting her and Steven’s new book called “Francis Bacon: Revelations” about the Anglo-Irish painter. The 880-page tome, researched over the course of a decade, is the first comprehensive look at the artist who created some of the darkest, most twisted art of the 20th century.
Swan will be discussing her biography next month as an official panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival. In a recent interview, Swan talked about growing up in Biloxi, her love of Eudora Welty, and what it’s like to be a Mississippian living outside of the Deep South.
“If you grew up a happy Mississippian, you feel kind of special,” she said. “I don’t think of us as ‘redneck land.’ I think of us as something totally different—something only we would know.”
Though she didn’t decide to pursue professional writing until college, Swan fell in love with stories as a kid in Biloxi.
“Growing up, I absolutely knew who Eudora Welty was, and I knew who, of course, (William) Faulkner was, and I knew who Robert Penn Warren was,” she said.
Her earliest memories are of her father reading aloud classics such as “Treasure Island” and “The Jungle Book.” Going to the Biloxi Public Library, a two-story Spanish Mission building a block from the Gulf, was like “walking up into this heaven of books,” she said. Swan was so precocious, she read through the entire children’s floor and was given special permission “to go downstairs” and read the adult books.
Her father, an insurance agent, knew everyone in town. Soon, Swan remembers, he started telling her stories about the eccentric, secretive characters who populated Biloxi. There was George Ohr, the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” and Walter Anderson, the reclusive painter from Ocean Springs who was known to spend hours sitting on his long skiff sketching birds, alligators and palmetto trees.
These stories piqued Swan’s curiosity in the inner lives of artists.
“Those tales almost became to me as mythic as the reading,” she said. “It was this kind of otherworldly thing because I didn’t know these painters, so they took on these great outlines of their lives.”
Swan left Biloxi in 1969 to attend Loyola University in New Orleans. After a year, she transferred to Princeton as part of the second wave of women to attend the Ivy League school. It was an “overwhelmingly male” experience, Swan said. At the time, most of the women who had stepped foot on campus were not students but “imports,” as they were called — coeds from neighboring colleges who visited the upperclassmen on the weekends.
“I remember sitting in big lecture classes and being one of four women in a sea of men,” she said. “We were always sitting together because the guys just didn’t know what to make of the women.”
Since she ventured north, Swan has found herself running into Mississippians again and again. One of the first people she met at Princeton was from Yazoo City. At Time Magazine, where Swan took her first writing gig after moving to New York City in late 1975, she met one of her best friends: the late Alice Rose George from Silver Creek.
“Our relationship was just drenched in Mississippi,” Swan said of George. “It was so indelible, our love of history and culture—I could go on and on. Linens, you know, we all love linens, Mississippi women who go north. Linens! Gentility! Garden gloves! It’s just a way of appreciating things that we grew up with.”
“But there were other Mississippians too,” she added, such as Rea Hederman, the heir to the Clarion-Ledger who purchased the New York Review of Books, and Diane Rosen, a journalist from Birmingham. “We just kind of found each other.”
Together, they convened at annual picnics in Central Park for writers from Mississippi. “We start off by saying, ‘Well I’m from Mississippi,’ and it’s kind of a badge of pride.”
After a decade or so working in magazines, Swan found herself wanting to “bite into a huge piece of apple” — that is, write a book. In 1989, one of Swan’s editors from Time recommended her to write a biography of de Kooning. She was interested in the project because de Kooning reminded her of the characters she grew up with in Biloxi — artists with a complex, intense inner life.
“The more quirky and eccentric the person, the better if you’re writing about an artist,” she said, “because you want to deal with a mind that is as interesting as the art it produced.”
Swan and her husband won the Pulitzer for that work in 2005, the same year Hurricane Katrina hit her hometown. The Pulitzer resulted in an offer to write about Bacon.
“Francis Bacon was the Oscar Wilde of his day,” Swan said. “He dominated every room he was in. He was the ‘king of Soho;’ he was called the ‘sacred monster.’ He always knew he was the most important man in the room. I mean, when you have a life like that … that is just catnip to biographers.”
Long before Swan began writing about artists, she dreamed of pursuing a biography of Eudora Welty. Swan had a connection with an editor at Random House who encouraged her to go down to Jackson to explore the idea.
So she went. Outside Welty’s house in the Belhaven neighborhood of Jackson, Swan had ice tea with a companion of Welty’s. “She said Eudora isn’t here but she’ll think about it.”
Welty decided against her proposal.
“That was my first love,” Swan said. “I wanted to write about her and immerse myself in her books. But that’s the fish that got away.”
The Mississippi Department of Corrections is asking people in prison to renounce gang membership as a part of the department’s Security Threat Group Management Unit.
The one-page form asks for the person’s name, the gang’s name and their signature in efforts to encourage people in prison to leave their gang. The form also promises a follow-up interview with the person in prison where the person will be evaluated on their willingness to leave the gang.
MDOC is asking gang members in prison to renounce their membership by signing a letter of intent.
Since Burl Cain took post as MDOC commissioner in June 2020, he’s promised to make Mississippi’s prisons safer by decreasing gang activity. The Security Threat Group Management Unit is the arm of MDOC that’s putting into motion Cain’s promises.
According to MDOC’s website, the Security Threat Group Management Unit “mandated a zero tolerance position in its efforts to reduce gang activity and assaults being committed in MDOC’s facilities … gang members are able to renounce their gang membership and are provided the opportunity to participate in programs designed to help them come to the realization that they do not have to be part of a gang to have a feeling of self-worth.”
While signing gang renunciation forms may be seen as one step in decreasing gang violence in prisons, David Pyrooz, a professor of sociology at University of Colorado-Boulder, said it is ultimately ineffective in decreasing gang membership.
David Pyrooz is a professor of sociology of the University of Colorado-Boulder. He studies the impact of gangs in prison. Credit: David Pyrooz
Pyrooz, who studies gangs in prison, said “debriefing” is when a person simply states they are no longer in a gang, while “disengagement” is a process where a person participates in programming to encourage and support leaving a gang.
“Debriefing is not a very effective way of promoting leaving the gang. Signing a form, anybody can do it,” Pyrooz said. “Simply signing a form and providing some intel, it’s only going to end up getting people hurt because it’s going to be viewed as a snitch form.”
Alternatively, Pyrooz said, prisons should focus on providing opportunities for self-governance, meaningful work assignments and training and educational opportunities. Pyrooz also said, based on his previous research, people in prison join gangs for protection, so prisons can also deter gang membership by providing safer living conditions.
Cain, the head of MDOC, told Mississippi Today the department offers opportunities for people in prison to join groups to build community rather than allowing gangs to entice new membership. Last year, when Cain was appointed commissioner, he said MDOC had identified about 6,400 active gang members in prison. Today, those numbers have dwindled to about 1,500 gang members, Cain said.
“What we did to really combat it was to try to create other organizations and groups for people to be members of because everybody wants to be in a group. That’s what humans do,” Cain said.
One of the groups Cain highlighted was the 35 “inmate churches,” a partnership between MDOC and the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where “inmate pastors” lead congregations of incarcerated people. He also mentioned the “Men of Integrity Club,” where people in prison join together over arts, crafts and food, Cain said.
In the midst of MDOC’s efforts to decrease gangs in prison, parole eligibility expansion went into effect July 1, raising the stakes for people in prison to keep clean rule violation reports as to not affect parole eligibility.
Mississippi Parole Board Chairman Steven Pickett said an additional 5,479 people in prison became eligible for parole under the new law. He said about 12,000 people in the state’s prisons are now parole-eligible, and the board plans to hold 1,800 parole hearings within the next year, with preference given to incarcerated veterans and people who are sick and elderly.
Steven Pickett is the Mississippi Parole Board Chairman. Credit: Steven Pickett
“For those who have become eligible for parole, eligibility does not mean freedom. It means they are eligible to be considered by this board after they have served so much time,” Pickett said “It’s going to encourage participation in programming. It’s going to promote better behavior, which is going to reduce prison violence.”
Pickett said when the board sees people in prison during their parole hearings, they take into consideration a variety of factors to determine whether a person is ready for parole, including past parole hearings, re-entry plans, psychiatric evaluations and rule violation reports, which may detail a person’s gang activity and affiliation.
“Gangs are disruptive to the overall goals of any corrections facility, so participation in that is certainly not one of the things that’s going to draw us to giving a prisoner parole,” Pickett said.
Cain also said parole eligibility expansion is viewed by people in prison as “an incentive to be good.”
“Especially if Pickett holds true with not paroling a gang member, it’s an incentive to not be in a gang, and it’s an incentive to get a skill and a trade,” Cain said.
Mississippi Today spoke with some incarcerated people who expressed concern that signing the form and admitting they were members of a gang could be used against them in parole hearings.
Pickett also said while renouncing gang membership does not ensure a person in prison earns parole, a person with gang activity on their rule violation reports “pretty much guarantees that you will not be paroled.”
“What we’re wanting is for folks to be successful, and we don’t want to see them again. That’s why we look hard at these cases to see if they’re ready and see can they make it,” Pickett said.
Still, Pyrooz said prison systems should also prioritize creating programs, groups and activities that replace the perceived benefits that gang membership provides while a person is in prison in order to not only encourage people in prison to leave gangs but to stay out of gangs.
“Status, protection, whatever sort of economic benefits that came along with (being in a gang), camaraderie, and so on. It’s got to be able to build up a person to replace those things,” Pyrooz said.
I just pray that we can get the school year launched safely and keep the students in school this year. We’re facing a big challenge with the delta variant and its ability to spread rapidly. “The delta variant is more aggressive and much more transmissible than previously circulating strains. It is one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of and that I have seen in my 20-year career,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky
Cynetra Freeman, founder of the nonprofit Mississippi Center for Re-Entry, knows what it’s like to have a second chance at life.
In 2010, Freeman was faced with a three-year sentence for trafficking heroin. Freeman’s public defender worked tirelessly to get her out of jail and, once the case was resolved, she was faced with the struggle to re-enter society.
Once out of jail, Freeman realized that post-release services were important to getting her life back on track and re-establishing herself outside of probation services.
“After getting out of jail, the struggle of being able to re-enter and trying to regain entrance into society made me want to start Mississippi Re-entry,” Freeman said.
It took a year, but Freeman regained strength and was able to re-enter into the community. Though there were many challenges, she was able to get back on her feet.
“I didn’t have a good support system, but I did get back on my feet,” she said. “I became ill and had to step away from the nonprofit and take care of my health.”
Freeman was diagnosed with chronic end-stage renal kidney disease and had to take dialysis. When she became ill, she relocated to Mississippi to be closer to family. During her time in Mississippi, Freeman regained strength and started to pursue her dream to establish Mississippi Re-entry as a nonprofit. She founded Mississippi Reentry in 2017, and it has become a beacon to the community.
“Re-entry is a social service, and I didn’t want to make a profit off of anything but to change lives,” she said.
Mississippi Center for Re-entry has many programs, including housing, jobs and education. Freeman knows first-hand what an individual needs and knows where they are coming from.
“I have walked in the shoes of those individuals, and I know what they will need,” she said.
These programs are designed with the person in mind with case plans tailored especially for the client. Businesses, such as Concord Career College, Northwest Mississippi Community College, FedEx, Home Health and Best Notary are a few businesses that have invested their programs into the organization.
MCR has a virtual summit Aug. 5 on Zoom. The vision for this summit is to raise awareness and shed light on the struggles of those leaving incarceration. Attendees will give people a glimpse into why re-entry is needed. Sessions will be taught by people who have been incarcerated and those who work in re-entry. The sessions can also prepare anyone interested in helping those formerly incarcerated learn about re-entry.
Now that Mississippi for Re-entry has been in the community for a while, Freeman feels she can help people believe in re-entry. Also, in five years, she expects a decrease in people going to jail and recidivism rates decreasing as a result of her work .
To sign up for Mississippi Re-entry or to receive information, visit the website at www.msreentry.org.
Florance Bass of Brandon kept her kindergarten son home last year.
Nicholas, who has Down syndrome and a repaired congenital heart defect, wasn’t able to participate in virtual school because of vision issues, but he did receive about one hour of instruction a day via Zoom.
Bass was determined to get her son back in a school building this year as he repeats kindergarten. But the rise of the Delta variant, recent surge in COVID-19 cases and woefully undervaccinated status of the state has her increasingly concerned — and angry —for her high-risk child.
“I am so tired of people telling me ‘Well, if you’re that scared, or he’s that high risk, then stay home,’” she said. “We stayed at home for 16 months. We’ve done everything we needed to do to keep my child safe. My child should not be kept out of a classroom because other people don’t do what they need to do.”
Most schools in Mississippi are scheduled to start the year in early August.
Although the number of new daily cases this summer are becoming very similar to infections in July of last year, Gov. Tate Reeves has signaled he will not be issuing any mandates around masks or other COVID-19 protocols in schools. This means Mississippi districts are left to grapple with what restrictions to put in place in a state where only 34% of the population is vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Of that, just 7% of children ages 12-15 and 14% of kids ages 16-17 are fully vaccinated, according to the Mississippi Department of Health.
Mississippi is seeing what health officials are calling a “fourth wave” of COVID-19 infections, and the majority of the cases are the more transmissible and infectious Delta variant. Children are more vulnerable to this variant, it seems — earlier this month seven minors were hospitalized after becoming infected.
Last week the Mississippi Department of Health followed the CDC’s lead and recommended mask-wearing only for unvaccinated students and staff. They also recommended schools maintain three feet of social distancing when possible, in addition to several other guidelines.
Parents around the state are sounding off about how schools should operate during the second school year of a global pandemic. While some parents like Bass are in favor of stricter regulations to protect vulnerable children and adults, others don’t see the need.
“My wife is teaching in high school and she really has no concerns going into this year, she’s really hoping it’s just as normal a school year as it can be with little to no masking and social distancing,” said Jeff Frank of Kosciusko. At this time, both he and his wife have not been vaccinated.
“I won’t say that I won’t get vaccinated, because I probably will at some point,” Frank said. “I don’t really think it’s been out long enough. I would like to see a little more information around people’s experiences and what the effects are moving forward, versus the effects of actually catching COVID…I think there’s a lot of misinformation out there on both sides of the coin. You have Dr. Dobbs in Mississippi telling us that 96% of new cases are in unvaccinated people, yet you’ve got the medical professionals in Great Britain saying that 60% of new infections are in vaccinated people.”
The statement in question was an error by Britain’s chief scientific officer who misspoke and subsequently apologized last week, accidentally saying ‘vaccinated’ when he meant to say ‘unvaccinated’.
Rachel Chestman, a teacher and parent of two sons in Pontotoc City School District, said she is very concerned by the low rate of vaccination in her area and the district’s current stance that masks will be optional.
Chrestman said her district has not held vaccine drives or encouraged staff to get vaccinated other than announcing the shots are available at the school clinic. She’s also overheard colleagues discuss their distrust of the vaccine and their plans not to receive it.
As a cancer survivor who underwent chemotherapy two years ago and the mother of a child who’s not old enough for the vaccine, this worries her.
“Speaking as a parent and a teacher and someone who’s been through a critical illness … I so wish everyone (who can) would get vaccinated so we could get through this more quickly and spare more lives,” she said.
Jeff Navarro has twin sons entering the eleventh grade at Amory High School. When discussing the new guidance released by the Mississippi Department of Health last week, Navarro said he understood the limitations of their position, but did not feel that it was sufficient.
“What you do in terms of exercising your freedom is fine, as long as it doesn’t pose a threat to me, and unfortunately with coronavirus it does,” Navarro said. “It’s a public health concern, it’s not an individual decision. I think politically that’s been lost in the mix, so ideally I would want to see a mask requirement, but I’m afraid there would be such mass resistance to it that I think what the Department of Health did is probably as much as they could do.”
On Thursday the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, along with the division of pediatric infectious disease at Children’s of Mississippi, penned a letter to school administrators and school board members recommending masking for everyone in schools, regardless of vaccination status.
Those reasons include that many students are not vaccinated at this time because the youngest eligible age is 12, and masking is the next best way to reduce transmission among the unvaccinated.
“Many schools lack a system to monitor vaccine status among students, teachers and staff,” the letter stated. “In the absence of schools being able to conduct monitoring of vaccination status on a daily basis, universal masking is the best and most effective strategy to create consistent messages, expectations, enforcement and compliance without the added administrative burden placed upon already stressed teachers.”
Bass, who also has an eighth grader and a tenth grader in the Rankin County School District, said she still has questions for the district about how they will ensure unvaccinated people are taking precautions.
“I really want to know what they’re going to require at the staff level … for those who are vaccinated versus not vaccinated,” she said. “The adults really need to be the example for the kids about how to keep each other safe.”
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said he is working with schools and CDC officials to figure out how schools can monitor this. He suggested a policy similar to the Mississippi Department of Health’s in which unvaccinated office workers sign a document saying they will maintain six feet of distance and wear a mask when not at their desk. Liz Sharlot, a spokesperson for the department, said the goal is not to monitor who is and is not vaccinated but to ensure everyone knows the policy.
In Rankin County, school is set to begin on Aug. 6, and the district’s “Smart Restart” plan includes a return to “traditional school procedures with enhanced hygiene and disinfection protocols.” The document also says the year will begin with optional face masks but acknowledges that masks may be necessary as the year goes on, dependent upon state guidance.
A spokesperson for the district said Thursday she was unavailable to provide more details about the schools’ plans.
Cynthia Lisle, of Olive Branch, has a grandson entering the first grade in DeSoto County Schools. She felt that it was the right move for schools to be open last year since COVID-19 posed a lower threat to children, but the Delta variant’s increased threat to children has her very concerned. They have no plans to keep him out of school, but Lisle said she wished the vaccine was available to all school-age children.
“For six, he’ll put his mask on, but he forgets. He’s good at washing his hands but you’ve got to remind him. He calls it ‘the coronavirus’ all the time…but they did a great job at his public school,” Lisle said.
DeSoto County Schools have made masks optional for the upcoming year.
Henderson, the president of the state’s pediatrician association, said parents need to be aware that the Delta variant — which now accounts for all new COVID cases in the state — is up to twice as contagious as the original strain of COVID-19, and that 10 to 20% of children who’ve had the virus experience long-term complications such as shortness of breath, fatigue and high heart rate.
But despite those statistics, some parents are opposed to requiring masks in schools.
A group of parents in Oxford created a “Parents Against Mask Mandates in Oxford School District” Facebook group with over 300 members.
Oxford school board members are set to approve the district’s return-to-school plan at their meeting next week.
“Most parents would say I would do just about anything to get my child in school and keep them in school. Well, parents have that ability — they have the ability to get themselves vaccinated, the ability to get their children age 12 and up vaccinated and the ability to have their kids wear masks in schools,” said Henderson.
She also referenced the rise in respiratory illnesses pediatricians are seeing in the state this summer.
“Our concern is when winter hits and all these other respiratory illnesses (such as flu and RSV) are circulating with coronavirus, it’s going to be a continued explosion of illness in our children,” she said. “Masking in the school system would help protect us from that.”
Because of Covid, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame will be inducting two classes – the Class of 2020 and the Class of 2021 – the weekend of July 31 and August 1. Eleven new inductees, including some of the greatest athletes and coaches in Mississippi history, will be inducted. Bill Blackwell, the Hall of Fame’s executive director, joins to discuss the plans.
