The rapid rise of Delta variant cases and virus outbreaks combined with the state’s low vaccination rate led the Mississippi Department of Health to release a slew of new COVID-related guidelines on Friday.
The new recommendations, which will stay in place through July 26, are:
All Mississippi residents ages 65 and older, as well as anyone with a chronic underlying medical condition, should avoid all indoor mass gatherings regardless of their vaccination status.
All unvaccinated Mississippians wear a mask when indoors in public settings.
All Mississippians 12 years of age and older get vaccinated.
State Health Officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said that these recommendations were decided on because Mississippians collectively have not done what it takes to protect us all, and MSDH wants to give the most vulnerable individuals the best guidance so they can survive the Delta surge the state is facing.
“At this pace, and given the sort of external dynamics that are in play here, we’re going to remain vulnerable for a long time,” Dobbs said. “I don’t think that we’re going to have some miraculous increase in our vaccination rate over the next few weeks, so people are going to die needlessly. And so when we look at who our most vulnerable people are, it’s going to be the people 65 and older, or who have chronic medical issues.”
While MSDH has made these new recommendations, they are just that. Mississippi has had next to no COVID-related restrictions at the state level since Gov. Tate Reeves repealed most of them in March.
The Delta strain is currently circulating much more quickly than other variants in Mississippi. Over the past two weeks, the number of Delta cases in Mississippi has increased more than fivefold, up from 29 to 137.
Delta is now also the dominant variant across the United States. Nationally, the average number of new cases has started to trend upwards due to localized Delta outbreaks in places, like Mississippi, that have low vaccination rates. The Mississippi State Department of Health reported 427 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the most for any one day since March 13.
The Delta variant has considerably increased the already high risks posed by the virus to unvaccinated people. Between June 3 and July 1, 95% of all COVID infections in Mississippi were among the unvaccinated. During that period, the same group also accounted for 90% of hospitalizations and 89% of deaths.
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. Studies suggest, however, that being fully vaccinated is the only adequate protection against the Delta variant, as a single shot of either of the two-dose mRNA vaccines provides only weak protection against infection. The Delta variant, first identified in India, is believed to be about 60% more contagious than the Alpha variant and up to twice as contagious as the original strain of COVID-19.
On Thursday, Pfizer announced that it will seek emergency FDA authorization for a third booster shot that better protects against the Delta variant. Dobbs is already recommending that immunocompromised Mississippians get tested to check their antibody levels after getting vaccinated, and ask their doctors about getting a third dose if their immune system did not respond strongly to the first two doses.
State Epidemiologist Paul Byers added that the decision to receive a third dose right now will be on an individual basis and based on the physician/patient relationship.
“As far as an overall booster recommendation for a specific group, or for the total population, I think we are still not at that point yet,” Byers said. “That’s not a guarantee that we won’t be at a booster point down the road, but I think that the vaccines that we have right now are still showing effective long-term immunity.”
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. With over 2 million shots administered, only 31% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated.
TUTWILER — It’s been a 32-year journey for Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters. Mackey’s passion for quilting began in 1989, a year after Sister Maureen Delaney of the Sister of the Holy Name Order started the quilting program for women in the community to get out of the house, come together and make money.
It was a way for friends to get together and share stories, laughter, and of course, stitching. Once she started, Mackey caught the bug. She studied patterns and how to lay them out, working with cardboard cut-outs as her patch shapes before ever taking scissors to actual material. She taught herself how to use a sewing machine too.
“It’s a lost art and I want to keep it going,” said Mackey, who is passing the tradition down to her granddaughter. “She just came to me one day and said, ‘Grandma, I want to make a quilt.’ And that was it. She took right to it.”
“I love it. I really do,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters. “One day, I hope to travel around the state and teach all who want to learn how to quilt.”
“It takes patience, but it’s a lot of fun,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Tutwiler Quilt Director, as she touches up a few stitches on a music-themed quilt at the Tutwiler Community Education Center.
“I studied what I could. Taught myself on the side about patterns, and how to use a sewing machine. I have to admit, I’m addicted to quilting. I love it,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters.
“I want to keep this tradition alive,” Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters.
“I love it. I really do,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters, meticulously snipping loose threads from a quilt. “I want to keep the tradition alive.”
“It’s a dying art. I want to teach as many people as I can,” said Mary Willis Mackey, Quilt Director of the Tutwiler Quilters.
Many towns and cities in the Delta claim they are the birthplace of the Blues. For Tutwiler, local legend tells of W. C. Handy waiting on a train to Memphis, when he heard a man playing “the strangest music he ever heard,” on a slide guitar.
Local legend tells of W. C. Handy waiting on a train in Tutwiler to Memphis, when he heard a man playing, “Where the Southern Cross the Dog,” on a slide guitar. The song is a reference to the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog by locals, that crossed paths with the Southern Railway. And therein lies Tutwiler’s claim as the birthplace of the Blues.
Backing of a music-themed quilt.
Potholders created by the Tutwiler Quilters.
Mackey can be found every Saturday morning at the Ruby Armstrong Brown Resource Center in Jonestown passing down her knowledge to a quilting class of nearly 80 ladies.
“They’re really enthusiastic to learn,” said Mackey. “We usually run on past the time class is supposed to end because no one wants to stop. They all want to see that quilt take shape.”
Today, the Tutwiler Quilters program serves as a way for people, women especially, to learn a quilting style specific to the Delta and create art that they can use to support themselves.
“It takes patience though, and a lot of love,” said Mackey. “And I love it. I absolutely do. The learning is in the head, but you do it from the heart,” she said, while storing away all manner of quilting materials donated by a woman who traveled with a friend from Iowa.
“One day, what I’d really like to do is get me a little bus or van, and travel around to communities all over the state and teach people how to quilt. Keep a long tradition going, Plus, it really is a whole lot of fun,” Mackey said.
Curtis Wilkie, the 81-year-old Mississippi native and veteran journalist who recently released his new book “When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer,” will be a featured guest at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 21.
Adam Ganucheau: Not that he needs an introduction for anyone here, but I do want to read just a short one just to get us primed for this conversation. Curtis Wilkie, a native of Pike County, Mississippi, covered many civil rights happenings in Mississippi during the 1960s. Later as a correspondent for the Boston Globe, he continued to cover the later days of the movement, and many of the continued civil rights stories in Mississippi and across the South over the next few decades.
In 2007 he came back home to Oxford, where he served as professor of journalism and fellow at the Overby Center for Journalism and Politics for several years before his retirement just last year. He’s the author of several books, including “The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign”, “The Fall of the House of Zeus” and “Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South.”
And today, of course, we’re here to talk about Curtis’s newest book, “When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer.” Curtis, it’s an honor for me to be talking with you about your latest book, about your latest work. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Curtis Wilkie: Adam, thank you. It’s always fun to be with you guys.
Ganucheau: Curtis, I want to ask you to sort of tell us a little bit about the book, but I want to prompt you with the first words in the book that you wrote. It’s a quote attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
As the title of this book suggests, this is a story about a very good man in Vernon Dahmer, and of course the events leading up to and the fallout after his tragic murder. The book is about another very good man in Tom Landrum, and one very evil man in Sam Bowers.
Curtis, tell us just a little bit more about these three sort of main characters in the book, and a little bit about their stories.
Wilkie: Thank you, Adam… Vernon Dahmer was probably better known in south Mississippi at the time that he was active. I was a young reporter in the Delta and I can’t remember whether I had heard of him before his death. I certainly became aware of him following the murder. It was just another one of these awful things that went on in the south and in Mississippi in the sixties. He’s basically an unsung hero. I think he deserves a greater reputation than he has nationally because of the work he did and it cost him his life to do it. I covered the final trial of Sam Bowers when he was convicted in 1998, and during that, I spent some time with the Dahmer family, particularly with his wife Ella Dahmer and Vernon Dahmer Jr. And they just had such grace through all of this. And so I always appreciated their help back when I was in Hattiesburg, covering the trial of Bowers. Bowers was truly an evil guy. He was the imperial wizard of the White Knights and they were the worst of the worst of the klan.
Bowers lived in Laurel, he was not from Laurel originally, but he was a Mississippian with all sorts of distorted ideas about race and religion. He actually developed a crazy philosophy called Christian militancy, that basically authorized murder and terror, according to his perverted view of life, you know, it was perfectly acceptable. So he was one particularly bad, bad guy.
The third person who’s a major figure in the book is a man named Tom Landrum who was, you know, he was at the time a 33-year youth court counselor in Jones County. And he was approached by a friend of his who was a local FBI agent who asked him if he’d be willing to join the White Knights in order to report on their activities.
And Tom was so troubled by what was going on in his home community that he agreed to do that. And he did for four years, filed any number of literally hundreds of reports, all of that was eventually made available to me. And you know, that forms the basic raw materials for the book that I was able to flesh out with all sorts of valuable FBI documents that are available at the University of Southern Mississippi library. But in the course of writing it, Adam, I always like to have an epigraph at start up a book, pick up something that is wise and hope relevant to the book.
And at some point I came to that Burke quote, which I had always liked. It’s a famous quote. I thought it was just so very applicable here that, you know, you had a situation that involved certainly evil, but it also involved some very good people and two good men, who would have been Vernon Dahmer and Tom Landrum. So that’s that’s how I approached it. It’s kind of a battle of good versus evil. You’ve got almost pure good, and you’ve got pure evil.
Ganucheau: You know, the book is compelling. The many stories that you’ve just laid out for us and, of course the book itself, I think, is really important right now. Curtis, as I was reading the book, I was thinking a lot about this moment that we find ourselves in America… I thought a lot about last summer, the murder of George Floyd and how that inspired sort of this national reckoning on racism that many people have suggested has not been matched since the 1960s when, of course, this story is set.
I haven’t talked to you about this, but I assume you were either in the throws of finishing the writing and reporting of this book, or at least in the editing process last summer. What did that moment mean to you? And as readers now, as we are going through this work of yours, as we’re sort of learning more about the story of Tom Landrum and Vernon Dahmer and what happens in the late 60s in Laurel, what do you think we should take from it? And what did you personally take from sort of telling this story in a moment such as this?
Wilkie: Well, I suddenly realized that I started on this project in 2018, probably two years before all these other events that crystallized and these movements that are going on today. And before I had finished, I realized how relevant this story is to our current time — that it has a strong consciousness about race and race relations.
And suddenly once again, we’re seeing efforts being made by elected public officials to suppress the vote, especially of Black people, people they anticipate, are going to vote a particular way. And it seems to fly in the face of democracy just as the suppression that went on, you know, in the bad old days. You know, it didn’t start in 1960, it started with Jim Crow and all of the periods after Reconstruction. So it’d been going on in this state for 70 or 80 years until, the 1960s… Vernon Dahmer dedicated his life to, and it cost him his life.
Ganucheau: Sure. You know, getting back to the story a little bit, I am very intrigued by how this story sort of came to you. For you as the author, walk us through that. I think it’s incredibly compelling. I think it gives some insight into the writing process and the creative process that you’ve been through the last few years with this project. I do think that the genesis of it is compelling. Tell us just a little bit about how this came to you.
Wilkie: Yeah, sure. It’s not part of the narrative of the story. The story basically takes place from 1965 until 1969. I was approached in 2018, kind of secretively through a couple of middlemen, if you will, between the Landrum family and me. The Landrum family was searching for someone to write about Tom Landrum and what he had done. Tom was still living at the time, he had been identified in a book that was privately published and not a whole lot of people read it, but the book did identify Tom Landrum as a member of the klan. And he was troubled by that because his role had been secret for all of these years and he didn’t want that to be part of his legacy. He had not even told his children about this. So, his wife who had typed up all of his notes and journals that were sent to the FBI, she had very wisely saved carbon copies of them. And they had saved this material. And so they were able to draw up on this.
They just had this incredible, account, if you will, of Tom’s experiences at klan meetings. He talks about quarrels and disagreement among the klansmen, their plots to target people, or home burnings. He knew almost from the outset that Vernon Dahmer was going to be targeted, but he didn’t know when.
I think certainly the FBI was aware that Dahmer was a prime target, but no one knew. Of course when the White Knights finally decided to strike, they did it very suddenly and spontaneously and just a handful of members actually took part in the raid and the others didn’t even know about it, and there was some resentment among them, we learned from Landrum’s journals.
In some cases, the sentiment among the various klansman was deep resentment. Some had not been told about it. Others were so troubled that they had gone so far as to commit murders and drop out of the klan. The Landrum papers were invaluable to me until finally, I was taken down to the Landrum family home right outside of Laurel and met with the family. They were kind of vetting me and I was, you know, receptive to whatever they might have to offer. And then once I guess they trusted me, they shared with me these incredible journals. And once I took a look at it, I said to myself, oh my God, you know, you’ve got another book on your hands.
Ganucheau: That’s an incredible story. As a journalist that’s the stuff you dream about.
Wilkie: Yeah, so you always like to have something presented to you on a platter, it’s not always that easy. But it involved a great deal of other research. And unfortunately, you know, there’s not a lot of people still living who lived through that period.
I’m old enough to remember it myself. But so many of the people who were involved in the story are no longer living, not only the Klansman but some of the good people who tried to bring about justice. You know, the one person who’s pretty well-known in Mississippi, who is still living, is Judge Charles Pickering, who was a county prosecuting attorney in Jones County at the time. Judge Pickering was very helpful to me in this research.
Ganucheau: As a journalist, you know, the Landrum papers I know were sort of, the key part of your storytelling and your reporting and writing process, but besides just the Landrum papers, what else went into this? I seem to recall FBI files, you had to pore over many interviews. I mean, what all goes into writing a book like this that’s sort of so journalistically focused.
Wilkie: It helps to have some familiarity with the story and idea because, you know, I lived in Mississippi and was a young journalist in the 60s. But more importantly for my own personal background was, you know, the fact that I covered the final trial of Sam Bowers and had met with the Dahmer family and, you know, I spent been a lot of time on that story.
I had written several stories leading up to the trial and then covered every minute of the trial and its aftermath, which, the trial itself lasted at least a week as I recall. In fact, I wrote a book 20 years ago called Dixie, and it was my intention when I started writing that book that the book would open with the trial of (Byron) De La Beckwith, who had murdered Medgar Evers, and it took more than 30 years to finally convict him, but that was done in 1994 in Jackson. So that was going to be the beginning of that book, and it was going to end with the trial and conviction of Sam Bowers.
And as I was writing that book, my friend Willie Morris, who had been such an inspiration to me, died. And that just seemed to finally close the closest circle on what I was trying to write about. So, the Bowers trial became the next to last chapter in my book, Dixie. So I knew a bit about the story and, you know, the evil Sam Bowers. I had to one brief encounter with him.
It was jury selection and judge let the reporters come into his chamber while the various lawyers were selecting the members of the jury. And we all sat around this big long table. And as we sat down, I realized I’m sitting next to the imperial wizard himself. And I notice he’s got on Mickey Mouse pins, two of them, on each lapel.
And, at first I said, “Excuse me, Mr. Bowers. What’s with the Mickey Mouse?” And he looked at me and he put his finger to his lips and shook his head as if to say, “I’m not talking to you.” And it was a silence he maintained for the whole trial. He never opened his mouth during the trial.
So I never got a chance to talk to him. I did talk some to his very inept lawyer, Travis Buckley, who was a klansman himself. And some of the key figures in the book were witnesses at that trial including Billy Roy Pitts, who went on the raid and he testified against Bowers.
It was really Bowers’ chief lieutenant testified on behalf of Bowers, so I had seen these characters in action, too. So all of that, that helped immensely.
Ganucheau: Sure. Curtis I know I talked to you many times about it. I’ve read accounts, you know, Dixie has plenty of this in it. You were good friends with a lot of these, you know, civil rights activists. Some of the most influential people who were fighting for voting rights in the 60s in Mississippi. Of course Aaron Henry being a close friend and mentor of yours.
Wilkie: Yeah, absolutely.
Ganucheau: Did you have a chance to meet Vernon Dahmer?
Wilkie: No, I never did. Unfortunately I didn’t, but you know, Vernon Dahmer and Aaron Henry struck me as being very, very similar. Vernon Dahmer would have been a little bit older, but they were both NAACP and the movement was not a monolithic, you know, there were rival organizations, just like there were rival klan groups. And both Vernon Dahmer and Aaron Henry were very willing to work with the young turks in the movement to sometimes more scornful about the NAACP. You know, particularly people from SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and both Vernon Dahmer and Aaron Henry welcomed these young people to help them.
And they tried to help the young people and Vernon Dahmer even had a couple of SNCC people living on his land for a while, while they were engaged in voter registration activity in Forrest County.
Ganucheau: Another thing that I’m kind of curious about that came to me as I was reading this, is you just talked a lot about sort of your personal experience as a journalist at the time of the Dahmer murder. But I wondered, you know, being in Clarksdale at the time, this tumultuous time certainly for race relations in Mississippi, did you have any run-ins yourself with the klan, and did that help you as you were writing this book?
Wilkie: Happily, not really in Clarksdale. The Citizens Council, essentially, represented, the strategists for the segregationists, and they felt that the klan was counterproductive. And so they tried to tamp down any kind of violence. We had plenty of suppression that went on there, and the Clarksdale police force was pretty terrible at the time. But my one brush with the klan at that time was taken place in the summer of ’64.
The first arrests made under the Civil Rights Act were made in Greenwood. There was a Black guy who tried to cross a klan picket line at the local theater to attend the theater, which he was now legally able to do because of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and he was beaten up. And so the FBI quickly came in and arrested three people from Greenwood and brought them to Clarksdale, which was the federal jail for that part of the Delta.
And there I am, at my office at the Clarksdale newspaper and I get called up by the Associated Press. And they say, “Curtis, you know, if you get a picture of these guys, you know, you get our fee of $10” or something. Which was big money at the time. So I picked up the newspaper camera and went to the jail where ordinarily, I would have known everybody there from the sheriff to the jailer and the deputies and whatever.
I walked in that jail, and I didn’t recognize anyone. The jail had suddenly been taken over by the klan from Greenwood, and Greenwood was a tough town and that’s where (Byron) De La Beckwith came from. And I was not exactly a profile in courage, I have to admit. I was immediately asked in brusque tones, “What do you want, boy?”
And I said, “Well, from the Press Register and I was wondering if Mr. Bell might want his picture taken.” That was the name of one of the guys who had been arrested. And they said, “Mr. Bell don’t want no picture took.” And I knew right away, you know, who they were and what they were up to. And I said, “Thank you very much.” And I got the hell out of there.
So, you know, that was my one direct encounter with the klan during that period. Although, you know, we certainly had plenty of trouble into Delta, but in and around Clarksdale there were no murders, so far as I know, no bombings or burnings. But you know, a great deal of official suppression, plus demonstrations from the civil rights people, a lot of activity, but it didn’t get as bad as it did in parts of south Mississippi, including my home county Pike County where they had it bad.
They became known as the church burning capital of the world. Something like 25 black churches that were either burned or bombed because they had voting registration activity in those churches.
Ganucheau: Sure. You know, one thing that came through in this book — this sort of inside, you know, behind the scenes, look at the workings of the klan at the time showed just kind of how inept and unintelligent these people were. You know, I know there were plenty of tragedies, most of all the Dahmer murder being one of those main ones, but it came through, Curtis, that just they were really bad at the things that they wanted to accomplish.
Wilkie: I guess that’s a good thing. You know, if there’s anything that distinguishes this book from so many other good books had been written about this period, it’s that… I hope it did it justice in kind of describing in great detail, the actual meetings and the actual people in it and their crazy characteristics and their incredible stupidity and foolishness. They botched one mission after another. These were not a bunch of rocket scientists at work here. They were largely a bunch of bumblers. They even botched the raid on the Dahmer home and store, though, of course, they achieved their purpose of killing him. But in the process they left behind all sorts of evidence that could easily be traced to them. One character, Billy Roy Pitts, loved cowboy movies so he had styled himself a quick draw pistol, a holster, and he put his pistol in it.
And during all the excitement at the Dahmers, it fell out and he left it behind. Another character who was in the car with Billy Roy Pitts, his name was Lightning Smith. They were in two cars, four people in each car, one car burned a grocery down. The other one burned the Dahmer home down. The car that burned the store down is pulling out and, you know, they’re the only two cars down there. Lightning Smith in the other car thinks it must be to police. So he shoots out the tires of the other car and they have to abandon the other car and know suddenly you’ve got eight weighty, you know, not particularly small klansman, all crowded into one car, trying to flee the scene of the crime. And if it were not such a tragedy, it’d be, you know, great comedy.
Amtrak has gained some access to the freight-owned tracks it needs to begin a Gulf Coast passenger route. But whether Amtrak’s desired Jan. 1 start date will go on as planned is still unclear.
Despite an ongoing battle through a federal transportation board, freight operators have given Amtrak limited access to their properties on the Gulf Coast. The agreement, outlined in letters given to the board, allows Amtrak workers on freight-owned property to survey and prepare for the possible Gulf Coast route.
But the parties are still far from agreeing to operate a passenger service that connects Mobile to New Orleans with four Mississippi stops. Amtrak filed a petition with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board in March, asking the board to step in after years of failed negotiations over the route.
This week, Amtrak again pushed the board to speed up its decision making so it can begin the route in 2022.
“Amtrak respectfully renews its request for expedited treatment of its application,” Amtrak wrote in a filing dated July 6.
In that filing, Amtrak gave the board an update about the access agreement. Amtrak also included copies of correspondence between itself and freight operator CSX Transportation.
Per the agreement, Amtrak now can access CSX property and personnel to survey what’s needed to add a layover track in Mobile and repair stations in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula and Mobile.
In its response to Amtrak, CSX still emphasized another study is needed about whether the route can handle the mix of passenger and freight traffic.
The necessity for more studies is one of many disputes between Amtrak and the freight companies that the transportation board will have to tackle in its decision. But when that decision may come is unknown.
A spokesman for the Surface Transportation Board said it does not comment on timeframes for decisions.
As of July 8, the transportation board had 65 separate filings from stakeholders, public officials and the railways to sift through.
As public health experts have warned for weeks, the Delta variant of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain circulating in Mississippi, causing a spike in cases and hospitalizations.
Delta is now also the dominant variant across the United States. Nationally, the average number of new cases has started to trend upwards due to localized Delta outbreaks in places, like Mississippi, that have low vaccination rates.
With 678 confirmed cases, the Alpha variant, which originated in the United Kingdom, still represents over 75% of all variant infections in Mississippi, but the Delta variant is now circulating much faster. Over the past two weeks the number of Delta cases has increased more than fivefold, up from 29 to 137.
State Health Officer Dr. Thomas 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 Delta variant has considerably increased the already high risks posed by the virus to unvaccinated people. The variant, first identified in India, is believed to be about 60 percent more contagious than the Alpha variant and up to twice as contagious as the original strain of COVID-19.
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. Studies suggest, however, that being fully vaccinated is the only adequate protection against the Delta variant, as a single shot of either of the two-dose mRNA vaccines provides only weak protection against infection.
Scientists have put forth an explanation for the overall decrease in efficacy of the vaccines against the variant. According to a new study published on Thursday in Nature, evolutions in the Delta variant’s spike proteins make it more difficult for antibodies to attach themselves and fight the virus.
Still, the data collected on COVID-19 infections and deaths over the last few months has made the benefits offered by vaccination irrefutable. The Associated Press has reported that nearly all new 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.
Due to the surge of Delta infections across the globe, the World Health Organization recently repeated its longstanding recommendation that everyone, vaccinated or not, wear masks to limit the spread of infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not changed its advice that fully vaccinated Americans can forgo masks in most situations. Current CDC guidance states that in general “you do not need to wear a mask in outdoor settings” if you’re fully vaccinated. In areas with high numbers of COVID-19 cases, it is recommended you wear a mask in crowded outdoor settings, or other environments where you will come into close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, said in a Meet The Press appearance on July 4 that he would still wear a mask in Mississippi even though he’s fully vaccinated.
“You might want to go the extra step and say that when I’m in that area, where there’s a considerable degree of viral circulation, I might want to go the extra mile to ensure that I get the extra added layer of protection, even though the vaccines themselves are highly effective,” Fauci said.
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.
With over 2 million shots administered, only 31% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated. People are simply declining to get their shots, and this is keeping Mississippi in last place.
An overwhelming 82% of Mississippians believe there should be two ways to enact laws in the state – through the Legislature and through a citizen-sponsored ballot initiative process, according to a poll commissioned by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund.
The poll also found that there could be political consequences for Gov. Tate Reeves, who according to the poll already has a slim 48% to 46% approval rate, and for legislators if they do not take steps to revive the initiative process that was struck down by the Mississippi Supreme Court.
“The data show he (Reeves) is not in a position of strength on this issue,” said Ben Tulchin, president of Tulchin Research, which conducted the poll for the SPLC Action Fund. “If he wants to stay in office, he should heed these numbers and listen to the will of the people.”
The only role the governor can play in reviving the initiative process would be to call a special session. He would not sign a proposal passed by the Legislature to revive the process — instead, it would go to voters for their approval.
The poll found by a 76% to 17% margin, voters favor Reeves calling a special session before the summer is up to give legislators the opportunity to reinstate the initiative process and to pass a medical marijuana law. The poll did not address the costs of a special session or other costs that would be associated with trying to revive he ballot initiative as quickly as possible.
In May, the state Supreme Court by a 6-3 margin struck down a medical marijuana initiative approved by voters in November and in doing so also struck down the entire initiative process.
SLPC released results of the poll Thursday during a Zoom conference with members of the media. The poll was conducted June 12-17 by Tulchin Research, a national polling company, of 600 Mississippian via landline and cell phones. Those polls were designed to reflect the normal Mississippi electorate – about one-third African American and overwhelmingly Republican. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%.
Brandon Jones, policy director for the SLPC Action Fund, said the demographics and the party identification of those polls made little difference since support for restoring the initiative process was widespread — equally as strong among Republicans and Democrats and even stronger among independents.
“We rarely get opportunities to release data so overwhelmingly, so uniformly bipartisan and so overwhelming in its response,” Tulchin said. He said seldom do pollsters find such strong bipartisan agreement in today’s political environment.
According to the poll,
By a 79% to 12% margin, voters support the Legislature fixing the ballot initiative process as soon as possible.
By a 73% to 19% margin, voters oppose the Supreme Court decision.
By a 65% to 15% margin, voters would be less likely to vote for legislators who do not revive the ballot initiative.
By a 57% to 17% margin, voters would be less likely to vote for Reeves if he does not call a special session.
House Speaker Philip Gunn has asked Reeves to call a special session to fix the ballot initiative process. Reeves has said he would call a special session if legislators can reach agreement – particularly on medical marijuana.
The Court struck down medical marijuana and the ballot initiative process because the Constitution requires signatures to place an issue in the ballot be gathered equally from five congressional districts. The state lost a congressional district based on data from the 2000 Census and now has four.
Jones said the SLPC Action Fund is interested in restoring the ballot initiative process because the group was working on an initiative to expand Medicaid that was halted by the Supreme Court decision. In addition, the SLPC Action Fund has voiced support for early voting – another ballot initiative that was stopped by the Court ruling.
Local golf magnate and Cleveland family friend Randy Watkins talks about how the Mississippi golf business exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic and the state of golf in the Magnolia State.
The day after Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s historic win in 2018, Gregory “Gregg” Rader, a Columbus businessman and frequent Republican donor, was already thinking ahead to the next big election.
On Nov. 28, 2018, Rader wrote a $25,000 check to Tate Reeves, the frontrunner in the 2019 governor’s race. Five months later, after Reeves kicked off his campaign, Rader, an executive officer of a recycling company, dropped another donation for $10,000.
In July 2020, eight months after Reeves won the election, Rader cut Reeves yet another check for $50,000, handing the governor one of the largest one-time campaign contributions in his political career — and in a non-election year no less.
It wasn’t long before Reeves gave Rader a gift of his own.
Rader was one of the governor’s four appointees to the Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) board in May. The board, which oversees the state’s eight public universities, is one of the most coveted political appointments in Mississippi.
And Rader is in good company. All but one of Reeves’ four appointees to the IHL board are campaign donors, according to a review of Reeves’ campaign finance disclosure since 2016. Similarly, all three of Reeves’ recent selections for the Mississippi Community College Board — announced the same day as the IHL picks — are campaign donors.
Over the past five years, these six appointees and their businesses have contributed at least $155,750 to Reeves’ campaign committees, records show.
Reeves is far from the first governor to award appointments to friends, campaign donors and supporters. The practice is common and legal in Mississippi, though not free from criticism. The insider appointments not only raise ethical questions but are indicative of a system of favoritism that excludes the historically Black colleges and universities.
State Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, said the practice of appointing donors or allies is one way the political system ensures power stays in the hands of Mississippi’s predominantly white institutions at the expense of its HBCUs.
“It’s an opportunity for the status quo to remain with respect to our colleges and universities,” Bell said.
Mississippi Today contacted all seven of the recent appointees. In response, IHL spokesperson Caron Blanton wrote in an email that, “any questions you have regarding the governor’s appointments to the Board of Trustees should be directed to the governor’s office.” Kell Smith, MCCB’s director of communications and legislative services, wrote “we are not interested in commenting.” Reeves’ office did not return a request for comment.
Only William Symmes, a Gulfport lawyer appointed by Reeves to the community college board, returned our interview request. In a phone call, Symmes acknowledged his personal connections to Reeves led to his appointment, but said it is logical the governor would pick people who know and support him.
“Obama said it best: ‘Elections have consequences,’” Symmes told Mississippi Today. “I think that one of those consequences is you’re able to put people around you that you feel comfortable and work well with.”
The IHL has enormous power in Mississippi. The 12-member board oversees a higher education system that employs over 27,000 people and educates more than 95,000 students. They have the final say over contracts worth $250,000 or more and control personnel decisions ranging from appointing university presidents to approving academic tenure.
“The IHL is almost like a fourth branch of government in our state,” said Denis Wiesenburg, the president-elect of University of Southern Mississippi’s Faculty Senate who attended many IHL meetings when he was provost of academic affairs. “You have the courts, the executive, the Legislature and then you have the IHL — it is a constitutionally established body that technically has the same standing as the other branches of government.”
Governors appointing allies or donors to the IHL board is ironic considering its history. The board was created in 1943 to protect the state’s colleges and universities from “the blight of partisan politics,” according to “Making Haste Slowly,” a book by David Sansing that chronicles the history of higher education in Mississippi. That intent is spelled out in the state Constitution: Trustees are directed to perform their duties “uninfluenced by any political considerations,” and they have the power to fire university presidents “at any time for malfeasance, inefficiency or contumacious conduct, but never for political reasons.”
Initially, trustees served staggered 12-year terms so that one governor could never appoint a majority of the board. That began to change in the 1980s, when voters approved consecutive terms for governors. Then in the early 2000s, the state of Mississippi voted to decrease the trustee terms to nine years. Former Gov. Phil Bryant became the first governor since the board was created to appoint all 12 members, many of whom were also big-time campaign donors.
The Legislature has periodically considered proposals to curtail the governor’s influence on the IHL, most recently in 2020, after Glenn Boyce was appointed chancellor of University of Mississippi over wide opposition. Two bills were introduced that year: One from Bell to eliminate the IHL and another from Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, that would split up the appointees between the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker. Bell’s bill was killed by Speaker Philip Gunn, and Lamar’s passed the House committee but died on the calendar before lawmakers delayed their session due to COVID-19.
Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Lamar’s bill would have brought the appointment process for the IHL closer in line to the selection process for another important board in Mississippi, the State Board of Education. Seats on that board are divided between the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker. And of the governor’s five appointees, two must work in Mississippi public schools: one as an administrator, the other as a teacher.
There is no such requirement for the IHL board. The only criteria the governor is constitutionally required to consider are the age of a potential appointee and the Supreme Court district they reside in.
For now, theSenate remains theonly check on the governor’s power to appoint trustees is the Senate. That check, however, is rarely exercised. The last time the Senate rejected a governor’s pick for the IHL board was in 1996.
Rader graduated from Mississippi State University in 1984 with a degree in petroleum engineering. After working in Houston for several years, he joined Columbus Recycling, a scrap metal company founded by his late father-in-law, as an executive in 1991 and purchased it five years later. Under his leadership, the company broke $100 million in revenue in 2015.
Gregg Rader. Credit: IHL
A proud Bulldog, Rader has sought to share that wealth with his alma mater. Through a nonprofit foundation he owns with his wife, Rader has donated more than $2.8 million to MSU’s Foundation, School of Business and various athletic clubs since 2004, according to tax filings. He has also served on the boards of MSU’s foundation and the Bulldog Club.
In addition to selecting donors or allies, governors have traditionally picked appointees who, like Rader, are accomplished in their field and do not work in higher education — the idea being the board will benefit from a diversity of experiences. Among Reeves’ recent appointees: the president of a SWAT vehicle manufacturer, a real estate investor and car salesman, and the founder of a fertilizer company.
Governors have also tended to select passionate alumni of Mississippi schools, said Lynn Evans, who chairs Common Cause Mississippi, a nonprofit that advocates for government accountability and transparency.
“The general rule is that people want to be on the board because they graduated from a college in Mississippi, and they want to see that college get some stuff,” Evans said. “So, prosper, shall we just say. Prosper.”
These connections pose questions about conflicts of interests. IHL has a process for trustees to flag potential conflicts related to their business ties and, if necessary, recuse themselves from voting.
But trustees are not prohibited from using their position to benefit the university they attended or support, Tom Hood, the executive director of the Mississippi Ethics Commission, wrote in an email. While trustees are barred from being employed or, with few exceptions, contracted by the universities, Hood wrote that none of the prohibitions in the state’s ethics law requires trustees “to treat every university the same and none prohibit favoritism among the eight institutions.”
That’s one reason why it can be hard to hold trustees accountable, Evans said. Another is because the board functions in relative secrecy. Its public board meetings are pro forma; the trustees almost always vote in lock-step. The real decisions are made in executive sessions or the weeks between meetings.
“If everyday people look around and see they don’t have a chance to get appointed to the college board and they see that the people who do are a small circle of people with lots of money and influence, then they start thinking, ‘Well my government is not working for me, it’s just working for those people over there,’” Evans said. “And that’s not fair.”
When Reeves’ announced his four picks, Bell and other members of the Legislative Black Caucus were disappointed to see only one Black person on the list: Ormella Cummings, who is the chief strategy officer at North Mississippi Health Services. A University of Mississippi graduate, she is also the only appointee who has not donated to Reeves’ campaign.
Rep. Christoper Bell waits on the third floor of the Capitol building while the House was in recess during a special session of the Legislature in Jackson Tuesday, August 28, 2018. Credit: Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Yet this is a situation that Bell, who went to Jackson State University, knows all too well. Like many alumni of Mississippi’s three public HBCUs, he has watched in frustration over the years as Mississippi’s white governors consistently choose not to appoint people of color to the IHL board.
“It’s imperative that we have a diverse group of individuals who have an opportunity to lead our colleges and universities,” Bell said. “And we don’t have that.”
A review of the 26 trustees nominated by Mississippi’s past three governors shows that 20 were white. The other six appointees were Black. And just two are Black graduates of a public HBCU in Mississippi: Bob Owens, a JSU graduate who was appointed by Haley Barbour in 2004, and Steve Cunningham, a Bryant appointee currently serving on the board, also graduated from JSU.
When Owens rolled off the board in 2015, Bryant did not nominate an HBCU graduate to replace him. The Legislative Black Caucus called a press conference to demand Bryant reconsider.
“For the first time in 50 years, these state institutions will not have a voice on the IHL board,” Sen. Kenny Wayne Jones, D-Canton, said at the time.
The HBCUs continue to be underrepresented. Three out of the 12 current trustees are Black; only Cunningham has attended a public HBCU in Mississippi. IHL’s current commissioner, Alfred Rankins, received his bachelors from Alcorn State University.
“We are a part of Mississippi. We pay taxes. We vote. We live here and to exclude one million people we represent is disgraceful,” Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood, said when Bryant didn’t pick an HBCU alumnus for the board.
The lack of representation has a direct effecton how the board handles the business ofMississippi’s HBCUs, Bell said. He pointed to what is perhaps the most prominent example: Ayers v. Fordice, the class-action lawsuit settled in 2002, which alleged the IHL board violated the Fourteenth Amendment by not providing adequate funds to Mississippi’s three HBCUs.
“The IHL is almost like a fourth branch of government in our state.”
Denis Wiesenburg, the president-elect of University of Southern Mississippi’s Faculty Senate and former provost of academic affairs
The IHL board, per the terms of the settlement agreement, was supposed to raise $35 million for a private endowment for the HBCUs by 2009. Nearly 20 years after the suit was settled, the board has raised just $1 million.
“It has been on the agenda for … years,” Bell said. “They have constantly and consistently ignored that mandate.”
This unequal treatment will continue as long as Mississippi’s white governors continue to appoint white donors and allies to the IHL board, who in turn will advocate for the predominantly white institutions they attended at the expense of the rest of the state, Bell says.
“We have an opportunity with our colleges and universities to set the standard for the rest of the country,” Bell added. “We always talk about how we can be a leader and keep millennials here in the state of Mississippi, but we’re failing them and everybody else by not being open and receptive to different views from our college board.”
Shortly after Reeves was elected governor, William Symmes gave his childhood friend Sean Tindell a call.
Tindell, a former judge and a state agency head appointee of Reeves, is like a brother to Symmes: They’ve known each other since second grade, went to the same high school, and graduated in the same class at University of Southern Mississippi. In 2015, Symmes knocked doors in the Gulfport heat for Tindell. In 2016, they founded a law firm together.
“I told (Tindell) if I was needed in any capacity, I would be willing to serve if I was asked,” Symmes said.
That is how Symmes, who did not attend community college, received an email from Reeves’ office in early May asking if he’d like to serve on the community college board.
The 10-member board is tasked with distributing state and federal funds to the 15 community colleges and providing the schools with “general coordination.” It is regarded as a less powerful appointment than the IHL board. Still, MCCB’s authority to appropriate funds is significant considering the community colleges generate an estimated $277 million in tax revenue and $3.9 billion in state gross domestic product.
Board members, all of whom are appointed by the governor, serve for a period of six-years.
“I’m honored to be part of it,” Symmes said. “There’s no quid pro quo regarding any payback … you have to review a lot of documents, do a lot of things, and you’re not getting paid for it. It’s not a pay back in any manner. Just the governor trying to put good people in positions who will take the time and do the work.”
(MCCB members receive a per-diem compensation of $40 “for each day devoted to the discharge of official board duties” and are reimbursed for expenses, according to its policies and procedures manual.)
Like the IHL, the community college board also lacks diversity: Every member of the board is white.
In an hour-long phone interview, Mississippi Today asked Symmes if he thought the governor should use his power to appoint board members who better represent Mississippi.
“I think it should be based on merits and content of character,” he said. “You should never base anything on race.”
Mississippi Today also asked Symmes if personal connections influence the way a board member might vote.
“Is this gonna be some kind of hit piece?” Symmes replied. “What’s the situation here? Is it an angle of somebody paying in and getting a position—which frankly I don’t view my situation as that.
“The governor gets to make his choices,” Symmes added later in the interview. “It’s not based on race or sex or anything like that. He looks to put the best people in that will serve the governor as well as the state the best, and I appreciate the opportunity.”
