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Bobby Moak said he will not seek reelection as chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Moak, who has led the party since 2016, announced on Friday afternoon he would not seek reelection to the top leadership position — an abrupt decision that shakes up an already dramatic struggle for control of the party.

The announcement, which Moak sent to the party’s 80-member executive committee on Friday afternoon, comes just hours before the committee is scheduled on Saturday morning to elect its leader for the next four years.

Moak, who had previously announced his candidacy and asked for support, was being challenged by at least two people: former longtime Appeals Judge Tyree Irving and longtime state Rep. Earle Banks. In his email on Friday, Moak endorsed Banks for the top job.

“I will not seek the office of Chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party Executive Committee nor will I seek any elected office of this committee,” Moak wrote in a Friday afternoon email. “It is time we join together as a party and work toward helping our candidates, rather than suffering through petty, in-house political maneuvering. Now is the time for the party to unify behind a candidate that can bring the party together.”

Earlier this month, a group of Irving supporters on the party’s executive committee, who believed Moak was stalling the new leadership vote, utilized an obscure party constitution clause and garnered enough signatures to call their own meeting for Saturday. Moak, in turn, scheduled a meeting for Thursday — two days before the Irving supporters’ special meeting.

But on Thursday morning, Banks publicly announced he was entering the race, prompting Moak to cancel the Thursday meeting. Saturday’s previously scheduled meeting is still on, and committee members are expected to vote to elect their new leader.

Irving on Monday — before Banks entered the race and before Moak dropped out — told Mississippi Today that 45 members of the party’s newly elected 80-member executive committee have pledged support to him, and another eight have told others they’ll vote for him.

It’s unclear how the executive committee may vote now that Banks has entered the race and now Moak has withdrawn.

“It is no secret that during this election for the chair’s position of the Mississippi Democratic Party the process has become contentious and placed friends at political opposites,” Moak wrote on Friday. “The process devolved to something more than it should have. It certainly is not a way to bring the committee or Democrats statewide together. Campaigns like this should be reserved for taking on Republicans in elections around the state.”

Many Democratic leaders and candidates have decried a lack of leadership in the party and support for candidates, particularly amid the party’s dismal showing in the 2019 statewide elections. Republicans swept all statewide offices last year, solidifying supermajority control of the state Legislature and increasing down-ticket wins on the local level.

Some party elders have also criticized Moak and other party leaders for failing to devote resources to electing Black candidates, even as white voters have left the party in droves and Black voters have become a substantial majority of the party’s base. The last six Democratic Party chairmen, including Moak, have been white. Irving and Banks are Black.

The meeting to elect new party leaders is scheduled for Saturday at 10 a.m.

The post ‘Petty, in-house political maneuvering’: Democratic Party Chairman Bobby Moak will not seek reelection appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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INDIANOLA —About 30 parents, educators, students and community members gathered at Minnie Cox Park here for the Parents for Safe Schools Rally to protest schools reopening due to the rising number of coronavirus cases and deaths around Mississippi. Many schools across the state are expected to reopen in August despite the rising number of reported cases.

According to State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, 2,413 cases have been reported in children between the ages of 11 and 17. As of Thursday, Sunflower County has a total of 721 cases and Bolivar County has 673. Around the state, total confirmed cases have reached 48,053, with 1,436 confirmed deaths. A follow-up rally, led by Mississippi Teachers Unite, is scheduled for Monday in Cleveland.

Here are images from the Parents for Safe Schools Rally:

The post Gallery | Parents for Safe Schools Rally appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Stan Hindman, a consensus All American for Ole Miss in 1965, died on July 15 in California.

This was Nov. 3, 1963, a Saturday. Ole Miss was playing a rare afternoon football game against LSU in Baton Rouge. CBS was broadcasting. I was 11 years old, watching on a black and white TV in Hattiesburg.

As was always those case in those days, the Ole Miss-LSU game had SEC and national championship implications. Ole Miss was undefeated. LSU had lost once. Ole Miss sped to an early lead and LSU was fighting to get back in the game. And then it happened.

Ole Miss punted and LSU speedster Joe Labruzzo, who had run the 100-yard dash in 9.6 seconds for the LSU track team, gathered in the kick at his own 14 and took off. He broke into the clear and seemed headed for an 86-yard touchdown that might have turned the game around. Then, a huge Ole Miss player appeared on the screen, racing to try and catch Labruzzo from behind. This huge, speeding Rebel was a sophomore from Newton, named Stan Hindman. Labruzzo weighed 175 pounds. Hindman weighed 232. As Labruzzo crossed the 5-yard-line, Hindman reached out his right arm, snagged Labruzzo from behind, and took him down at the one-yard-line. Ole Miss then held the Tigers on a goal line stand and went on to win the game 37-3. Nearly 57 years later, Hindman’s rundown of Labruzzo remains one of the most incredible athletic feats I have witnessed.

“Not many linemen anywhere could have done that,” Ole Miss coaching legend John Vaught said in the next day’s newspaper. Vaught called Hindman the “greatest lineman he had ever coached at this stage of his career.”

When told the player who had run the great Labruzzo down from behind was a sophomore guard, LSU coach Charlie McClendon responded: “A guard, you say. I can’t believe it.”

Rick Cleveland

So why bring up this play from 57 years ago? Because Stan Hindman, a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, died July 15 in Oakland, Cal., where he was a renowned architect and sculptor. Hindman, three times an All-SEC player and once a consensus All-American, was 76.

Stan Hindman, a college football god, was the quintessential Renaissance man. A pre-med major who made straight As, he was as interested in art as he was football, says Mike Dennis, his roommate for four years at Ole Miss.

“Stan wasn’t like the rest of us; he studied all the time,” said Dennis, a running back who became a dentist. “Stan loved school. He loved to learn.”

Stan Hindman, whose younger brother Steve was also an Ole Miss star, did not originally attend Ole Miss. No, he accepted an appointment at West Point to play football for Army. Federal judge Rhesa Barksdale was in the same plebe class as Hindman at West Point. Says Barksdale, “He was only at West Point for two months and he was already the best football player Army had. He was unbelievable.”

Ole Miss athletics

Stan Hindman was a big, fast guy.

And he was out of place. The Army way did not suit Hindman, who had been recruited by all the southern football powers including Ole Miss and LSU. In October, he called Vaught to see if Ole Miss still had a scholarship for him. Vaught, of course, said he did, and then Vaught had someone go fetch Dennis, who was an Ole Miss freshman and a friend of Hindman’s from when they had competed against one another in high school track meets. Vaught did not often talk to freshmen back then, and Dennis wondered what he had done wrong to be summoned by the legendary head coach.

“Mike, I have some really good news,” Vaught told him. “Stan Hindman is joining us at Ole Miss. And, Mike, you are going to be his roommate.”

Dennis reminded Vaught he was rooming with another freshman, who, as Dennis, had attended Murrah High School. Vaught responded, “Mike, as I told you, I want you to room with Stan Hindman.”

And that was that. Hindman and Dennis, both future pro football players, roomed together all four years at Ole Miss. Says Dennis, who now lives in Oxford, “I can honestly say we never had a harsh word, not one.”

“Stan was a quiet guy, and one of the smartest guys I ever knew,” Dennis says. “He could have been a great doctor, or a dentist like his dad, or an engineer or anything else.”

Stan Hindman was drafted in the first round by the San Francisco 49ers, and, says Dennis, could have been All-Pro offensive lineman from the start. But the 49ers needed more help on defense and so he began his pro career as a defensive end. When a serious knee injury caused him to lose a step, he slid over to defensive tackle. He wore jersey number 80, the same jersey another Mississippian, Jerry Rice, would wear years later.

Hindman started and played seven NFL seasons, becoming increasingly interested in architecture all the while. By the end of his football career he was living in Haight Ashbury studying architecture at Cal-Berkley. He later studied at UCLA. “I loved going to school,” he told a writer in 2007.

“I love the gathering of the information, creating the seed of what the building is going to look like,” Hindman told Dave Newhouse of the East Bay Times. “Then getting the sense of what it can be from an architectural standpoint and achieving it.”

Newhouse asked Hindman which pursuit defined him: architecture or football?

“The greatest sense of inner-satisfaction is derived from the architecture,” Hindman answered. “It’s something I’ve been doing for the longer time. But part of me is being an athlete. I owe football a lot.”

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