Mississippi officials said they’re aware of FBI warnings of possible armed protests at state capitols across the country and that security here is ready — although they won’t go into many details.
“Whether you see us or not, we are there and we are going to protect the integrity of our public buildings here in Mississippi,” Gov. Tate Reeves said Tuesday. “… In Mississippi we are prepared and we will be prepared.”
Reeves said he has been meeting with law enforcement, military and emergency management leaders, and state security is prepared, but, “I will not go into operational details.”
“The Office of Capitol Police is aware of the possibility of protests,” the Department of Finance and Administration, which oversees Capitol Police, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Neither the (DFA) nor the Office of Capitol Police is able to discuss specific, confidential protocols or security measures.”
Capitol Police Director Don Byington, a veteran Mississippi law officer, called last week’s attack of the U.S. Capitol “appalling.” On Tuesday, he deferred all questions about Mississippi Capitol security to DFA.
When asked if additional steps were being taken to ensure safety in the Mississippi Capitol, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, said, “Yes, but I do not want to go into that. You should anticipate we are having regular meetings with (Department of Public Safety) Commissioner Sean Tindell and the Capitol Police.”
Mississippi’s Capitol Police, with about 114 officer positions funded, provides protection and law enforcement at state facilities and grounds including the Capitol. The Mississippi Department of Public Safety and its Highway Patrol force often help provide security around the Capitol for big events.
Capitol Police also have mutual agreements with other county and metro-area law enforcement agencies for help in times of emergency.
Honor guard members of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol prepare to raise the new state flag during a flag raising ceremony at the State Capitol Monday. Credit: Vickie King, Mississippi Today
Law enforcement, primarily members of the Capitol Police Department and Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers, had a heavy presence on the Capitol grounds Monday for the ceremony raising the new state flag.
The new state flag was approved overwhelmingly by voters in November to replace the old state flag that displayed the Confederate battle emblem prominently in its design. The Confederate flag and even the old state flag were carried by some of President Donald Trump’s supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol last week aiming to prevent Democrat Joe Biden from being sworn in as the nation’s next president.
The pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6 — incited earlier that day by the president’s oldest son and other close allies of the president — assaulted U.S. Capitol Police officers, smashed windows and tore down security barricades on their way into the building, prompting officials to lock down both legislative chambers of the building and nearby congressional office buildings.
Several high-profile members of Congress were evacuated, and others were told to shelter in place during the lockdown. The electoral vote counting process was halted.
The mob — many of whom were visibly armed and carrying pro-Trump and Confederate flags — breached the Senate chamber, and others tried to break into the House chamber. Inside the House chamber, police officers drew guns to deter them from entering.
Five people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, died in the riot.
Before the 2021 legislative session began, cameras were placed in strategic locations in the Mississippi State Capitol, and machines were recently installed to scan bags at the two main entrances to the Capitol. Currently, Capitol Police officers screen and check people as they enter the building.
Before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Centers in New York and on the Pentagon, people had unfettered access to the Mississippi Capitol, not only through the two main entrances on the north and south sides of the building, but also through multiple side doors. After those attacks, those sides doors were closed and Capitol police were stationed at the only two entrances that remained open to the public.
Editor’s note: This story is part four in a series examining Mississippi’s child support enforcement program. Read the other stories here.
The welfare agency in Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, manages a particularly high number of child support cases each year.
The state’s child support enforcement program oversees 267,000 cases in a state with a population of nearly 3 million, a case rate that is the highest of any state and double the national average. Arkansas, a state with a similar population to Mississippi, for example, has just over 100,000 cases.
The child support enforcement program helps mostly single moms secure support orders — the court document that spells out how much a noncustodial parent must pay to support their child each month — and collect the funds.
Compared to other states, Mississippi pushes more of its people into the program because it requires single moms to cooperate with child support enforcement to remain eligible for food benefits — a requirement that only seven states impose — or before applying for the child care voucher. And the state has a larger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program population due to its high poverty rate.
The policy also just adds complexity to the government programs, as the state is constantly identifying parents who are out of compliance with child support enforcement and kicking them off the rolls — only for them to reapply.
Within advocacy surrounding the child support program in Mississippi, challenging this policy has been the primary priority. Attempts to eliminate the requirement, including during the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions, have failed to gain traction, dying in committee before most lawmakers had a chance to consider them.
But there are several other things agency officials or lawmakers could do to improve the fraught program, according to eight safety net policy or administration experts Mississippi Today interviewed, to benefit both participating families and the state’s overall wellbeing.
Don’t punish the poor for being poor.
Since government contractor YoungWilliams began operating the child support enforcement program statewide in 2016, it has implemented a more stringent process for bringing contempt of court complaints against noncustodial parents who are behind on child support. The process requires there be some evidence that the parent possesses the funds and is willfully refusing to pay, so that the state is not potentially jailing people for living in poverty, turning the program into a debtor’s prison.
The agency and contractor worked together to make this happen, but the state is technically required to enact its own similar safeguards in its official child support guidelines under the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement’s 2016 rule change. It has until 2022 to comply, state officials said. Doing so would help ensure that the state is following a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Turner v. Rogers, which said states must determine whether a parent is able to pay the ordered child support before incarcerating them for nonpayment.
The state could consider using the same standard before it moves to suspend a parent’s driver’s license. License suspensions may counterintuitively harm a father’s ability to get to work, and therefore his ability to pay his child support.
The state is supposed to define “ability to pay,” for purposes of deciding whether to pursue civil contempt penalties, by looking at whether the parent can presently afford to pay the entirety of what the judge ordered, not just a portion. In other words, if the state is going to jail a father for back due child support, justices in the Turner case said, he “must hold the key to the jailhouse door.”
Don’t let debts accrue behind bars.
When a person with a child support order is incarcerated, they may request a modification to their order so debts don’t pile up while they sit behind bars. But in Mississippi, a judgemay decide that the parent’s imprisonment constitutes “voluntary unemployment,” thereby denying the change.
The 2016 federal rule change prohibits this practice, but the state hasn’t yet changed its own guidelines, so it continues to occur today.
The state could also implement an administrative appeals process to suspend child support orders during incarceration outside of the court system.
Help modify unmanageable support orders.
Noncustodial parents in Mississippi’s child support enforcement program could, in the worst scenarios, be paying up to 65% of their counted income to child support, former agency officials told Mississippi Today. Especially after employment or wage loss, these parents must be able to request a modification to their order so they can make do financially. Those are all handled through the often sluggish courts.
Mississippi could create an alternative administrative system that would allow the program to handle the modification internally with an option to appeal to a judge.
Create a portal.
Human Services officials have talked about creating a portal where custodial parents can track exactly how much the noncustodial parent is paying on their case and how much they owe, as is available in other states. This could provide some comfort to moms who have complained of confusion and delays in receiving their funds.
Pay families first, not state coffers.
Currently, Mississippi holds back child support dollars intended for families receiving welfare, first paying itself back for the cash assistance it provided, meaning some families never see a cent of child support paid into the system.
To help struggling families, the Legislature could pass a law to allow a portion of the monthly child support collected — $50, $100 or $200 — to first pass through to the family before the state begins recouping the funds for itself. Twenty seven states already do some version of this, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, including two, Colorado and Minnesota, that pass all child support to the parent.
Mississippi also currently counts any child support the family does receive as income for the purposes of awarding welfare or food benefits, meaning it could lower the amount of assistance low-income families receive or kick them out of eligibility.
Mississippi could move to disregard child support as income, as 28 states already do.
Child support recoupment in Mississippi doesn’t apply to an incredibly large population because of how few families receive welfare in the first place. However, if the new Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson is successful in expanding eligibility for welfare, these could become even more crucial policies.
Be realistic about earnings.
If a noncustodial parent is unemployed or lacking wage information, the state currently uses the minimum wage — $7.25 an hour at 40 hours a week — to determine how much child support to order. They do this regardless of the parent’s realistic employability, earning history or the job prospects in their area.
The state could alter its formula to take these economic circumstances into account, so separated fathers are not saddled with monthly payments they will not be able to pay.
Make processing applications easier.
The state could modernize the child support system by allowing participants to use electronic images of birth certificates and electronic signatures, improving remote access to the program.
Mississippi’s congressional delegation is split – currently by party line – on whether to remove President Donald Trump from office, with the state’s lone Democrat supporting impeachment and two Republicans saying the focus should be on national “healing.”
At least 213 House Democrats say they support an article of impeachment charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” after hundreds of his supporters overtook the Capitol last Wednesday in an effort to stop the process of certifying Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the November presidential election.
Democrats have privately and publicly urged Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which would force Trump to step down with a majority vote of the president’s cabinet. Pence’s reported refusal to take that step means the impeachment process could begin as early as Wednesday and move quickly.
Wicker, who was the only Republican member of the state’s congressional delegation to not challenge Biden’s overwhelming victory over Trump, said he opposes efforts to impeach Trump or to remove him through the 25th Amendment.
“In accordance with our Constitution, the orderly transfer of power will occur at noon on Jan. 20. The best way for our country to heal and move past the events of last week would be for this process to continue,” Wicker said in a statement.
In a statement, Guest said, “… I believe the resolution urging Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Trump and the articles of impeachment that are being discussed in the House of Representatives would be counterproductive and divide our country even further. As we begin preparing for a transfer of power from one administration to another in less than 10 days, I believe it is vitally important to allow our nation to heal, and I believe these actions that are being pushed on the House floor would prevent our nation from beginning the healing process.
“At this decisive moment in our history, we must focus on uniting our country and avoid stoking the fiery tensions currently consuming our nation.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the only Democrat in Mississippi’s delegation, has gone on record as supporting the impeachment effort against Trump.
“Trump’s lack of character continues to show,” Thompson said this week on social media. “By not attending the Biden-Harris inauguration his legacy of being the worst president is cemented in history. Good riddance.”
Other members of the congressional delegation – Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Republican Reps. Trent Kelly and Steven Palazzo – have not gone on record about whether they support efforts to impeach or remove Trump from office.
After Trump and other allies spoke to the crowd Wednesday morning, they marched to the Capitol, where Congress was performing its constitutional duty to count the electors and to certify the results. The mob overwhelmed law enforcement, entered the building and for a period of time stopped the counting. The assault resulted in five deaths. Multiple arrests have been made, including of people who entered the building or were on the grounds with guns and explosives – some of whom allegedly threatened to kill members of the nation’s elected leadership.
I tried to make sure I knew the words. I couldn’t sing; the least I could do was know.
It won’t be long
We’ll be going home
Grandma made sure I knew. I grew up running behind her, watching every move she made. Early in the morning, we watched The Price is Right and her “stories”; and she watched me do how she said: say yes ma’am, wash your face, and tighten up your belt. Late in the evening, we watched Grandpa watch John Wayne and other things he named based on whose they were.
On Sundays, I watched church from beside Grandma behind the mourner’s bench. That’s where she taught me how to listen and hold my Bible. That’s where she made sure I knew the words to all the songs. She nodded at me when I did.
Count the years as months
Count the months as weeks
Count the weeks as days
I asked questions when I didn’t.
What’s the difference between soon and very soon? Why would somebody leave here to go home? What do you do when you don’t know?
“You believe.” That was always her answer, always like that, even when she picked different words.
Brian Foster pictured with his grandmother.
My grandmother was born in Lee County, Mississippi nine years after Fannie Lou Hamer was born on the other side of the state, the same year Richard Wright left the South for the other part of the country. Believing without knowing—faith—helped all of them survive this place. It was by faith that Hamer stayed and organized in a Mississippi that wanted her dead. It was with faith that Wright left to write about a nation that was just like Mississippi. It is because of my grandmother’s faith that I am here, working at a university I could have barely attended if I was her son. White folks might have set bombs and started riots had I tried.
Mississippi is strange like that, especially for Black folks like us. It takes belief to stay, belief to go, and some type of belief to come back, which is hard because you will probably have to believe without knowing; which is impossible because what you don’t know is if you will survive.
Any day now
My grandmother was born in 1927. Like nearly 2 million other Black folks in the South, her parents were sharecroppers. Like Fannie Lou Hamer by the time she was old enough. Like Richard Wright’s father. Like Richard Wright’s mother, my grandmother let me read her newspapers at the kitchen table beside her, often eating something I had cooked how she taught me. Sausage patties in a cast iron skillet with grease that hurt when it popped.
The year Grandma was born, the Mississippi River flooded the Delta, leaving hundreds of thousands of sharecroppers like Fannie Lou Hamer’s family displaced; and Richard Wright a train ride away reading and writing about it all. That was the same year the U.S. Supreme Court passed a decision that affirmed the right of state institutions like hospitals to sterilize people without their consent. The next year, Mississippi passed its own sterilization law; and in 1961, under the authority of this law, doctors at the North Sunflower County Hospital performed a hysterectomy on Fannie Lou Hamer, preventing her from being able to have children. Hamer didn’t consent or know.
It was also in 1961 when Richard Wright died after having been gone from Mississippi ever since he was the same age I was when I came back after I first left. Freedom Summer was in 1961; it was about getting Black Mississippians registered to vote. The Clarksdale Christmas boycott was in 1961; it was about getting Black Mississippians opportunities to work. A Freedom Ride stopped in Jackson in 1961; it was about getting Black Mississippians the right to be in public. James Meredith applied for admission to the place where I work in 1961; it was about more than being the “first black” student to enroll. My grandmother turned 34 in 1961; that was three years older than I am now.
Since 2016, I have worked as Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. I started the job when I was 27, the same year I started writing a book about Black folks living in Mississippi with the blues; I was the same age then that Fannie Lou Hamer had been when the U.S. Supreme Court passed the Brown decision, which was summarily ignored by white elected officials across the state for a decade. That year Richard Wright published two books, one that I know well and another that I’ve never read, both probably better than any I’ll ever write.
My grandma never read that book Richard Wright wrote — or any book that wasn’t the Bible or about saying the right words in church — and she never met Fannie Lou Hamer. But their lives were entangled, like all of ours. That’s how it is in places like this for folks like us; no coincidences just the vibes of Black life folding over top and through each other, making love and tangled knots with two things that have always been. The first is that, what was promised never was. Mississippi was granted statehood in 1817. The 1820 Census says that there were more than 75,000 Mississippians then. Of them, about 45% were Black. Of those who were Black, 99% were enslaved. It never was.
It never was a time when what Freedom Summer was about was true. Today, political scientists describe Mississippi as the hardest state for folks to vote in. There is no early voting or online registration. There are felony voting restrictions that wipe away 16% of the Black electorate; and that big number is, itself, a legacy of something that never was in Mississippi, a humane approach to governance.
It never was a time when what the Clarksdale Christmas boycott was about was true. Today, the state’s unemployment numbers and lowest-paying employment options are highest where its Black residents are most, places like Clarksdale. It never was a time when what the Freedom Rides were about was true. Look anywhere in Mississippi, and you will find a highway, investigation, lawsuit, monument, oral history, prison, private academy, or public settlement that shows how difficult it is for Black Mississippians to be in Mississippi.
It never was a time when I felt like the people in charge of the place where I work would ever know. They couldn’t know what Fannie Lou Hamer believed, or what Richard Wright saw. They couldn’t know what their first Black student said about why he applied, or what the Black students today feel about all the reminders of when he couldn’t. They couldn’t know what Black women faculty and staff—who have been and remain the university’s architects and most essential workers—have been saying for years and years, stuff that at least some folks have only recently found cause to believe. Any day now. They couldn’t know.
Those who know don’t say.
Yet, that is what the folks in charge of the place where I work do best. They say. A year before I came back, a former University of Mississippi student pleaded guilty for his role in placing a noose on a statute of James Meredith. There were many things that happened in the aftermath. The more time that passes, the more it seems that most of it was just saying. In my first year in my current position, I interviewed the two black women who led the movement to remove the Mississippi state flag, which at the time bore a Confederate battle emblem, from campus. They shared stories of verbal assaults, death threats, paralyzing anxiety and fear, and being followed home on more than one occasion. There were many things that happened in the aftermath. The more time that passes, the more it seems that most of it was just saying. Last year, another group of university students posed with guns beside a bullet-riddled sign marking the murder of Emmett Till, which happened the same year my grandmother’s son turned four. There was a lot that happened in the aftermath, including a panel discussion that I moderated. The more time that passes, the more it seems that most of it was just saying. We couldn’t know.
And when you don’t know, it’s easy to say things about a truth that just never was. The University of Mississippi was established in 1848. The 1850 Census says that there were about 600,000 Mississippians then. Of them, about half were Black. Of those who were Black, 99% were enslaved. Of those who were enslaved, at least 55 were held by the people in charge of the University of Mississippi, the place where I work. It just never was.
A well-intentioned truth laid over an untouched lie is still a lie.
To keep laying good intentions and empty words on unrepaired damage is to still not know. And they don’t even.
Yet, we have always believed. That is the second thing that has always been for Black Mississippians: faith.
In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer was part of an eleven-person delegation, organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, that visited the west African nation of Guinea. In an interview the next year, Hamer reflected on two types of comments she heard while she was away. Some folks wished she had gone sooner. Others wanted her to not come back at all. She knew what she was to do the whole time. “It is our right to stay (in Mississippi),” she said in the interview, “and we will stay.”
“I dreamed of going,” wrote Richard Wright in Black Boy. Leaving Mississippi symbolized possibility for Wright. Leaving meant being able to see and believe what he had not been allowed to learn or know his whole life. It meant realizing a dream that “the entire educational system of the South had been rigged to stifle.” It meant learning how violent not knowing can be, how Chicago was as much Mississippi as they both are the nation that made them. Wright wouldn’t say it like this, but that was faith too, leaving one place that won’t let you be for another.
Lyvelle and Hosea Foster.
Grandma never left. For days, we watched Grandpa lie in a hospital bed without talking. She sat beside him listening every minute. That was 2004, when I was 15, the same age Fannie Lou Hamer was when she couldn’t go to school for working in the fields that Wright took that train through to get away from. I don’t remember many details from the Friday Grandpa died, except that Grandma sat on his right side, her yellow hand cuffing his black arm by his swollen right wrist, her not knowing but doing how she taught me: believing still.
The doctor kept not knowing how to say Grandpa’s name. I always said it was because the doctor could read but couldn’t listen. It was quiet when they did whatever they do when life support isn’t enough. Everybody sat waiting on it to happen. I sat doing what I had been doing my whole life: watching every move Grandma made. She raised his arm and let it fall. It was too heavy. She did it again. It did it again. The last time was the last time.
We’ll be going home
The last Census says that there are about 3 million Mississippians. Of them, 1 million are Black. Among them are the legacies of Fannie Lou Hamer who stayed as long as she could, Richard Wright who left as soon he did, and my grandma. Those of us who remain stand where they stood; and those of us who have not been robbed of the choice to choose will have to decide and believe how they did: without knowing.
That is the hard part.
If Grandma was here, I would ask her like I used to. “What do you do when you don’t know?” And she would tell me like she told me. “You believe.” And I would ask her like I never did. How do you hold belief and your breath at the same time?
That is the impossible part.
In order to survive, we must believe that the thing that is killing us won’t, all while not knowing if we’ll live long enough to see what Grandma saw on all them Sundays on the pew behind the front row, when she used to make sure I knew the words.
Patriot Party of Mississippi founder John Williams, left, uses a crowd volunteer to demonstrate the group’s moves while on Capitol grounds before and during the Jan 6. riot.
HERNANDO – Between 60-75 people gathered outside the DeSoto County Courthouse on Sunday for a rally organized by a local conservative group called the Patriot Party of Mississippi.
Members of the Patriot Party of Mississippi were among those who attended protests in Washington on Jan. 6 during Congress’ certification of electoral votes.
The group’s leader, John Williams, spent an hour detailing the experience of group members that traveled to Washington last Wednesday to demonstrate at the Capitol. During the rally, Williams also covered the group’s laundry list of grievances, which included railing against establishment Republicans and parroting conspiracy theories related to the presidential election and the deadly Capitol riot.
“On January 6, 2021 (the federal government) became tyrannical,” Williams said at the rally. “I’m just telling you, as far as I’m concerned, Congress declared war on the American people and the American Constitution on January 6. So we’re at that point.”
Williams maintains that none of the around 30 group members that went to Washington participated in the Capitol riot. They did travel to Capitol grounds following President Trump’s speech at his “Save America” rally at the National Mall, but never crossed barricades set up by Capitol police, according to Williams. The group then dispersed after tear gas was deployed in their area because of safety concerns for their elderly members, one as old as 82.
Some of the group’s members denied that any of the rioters who entered the Capitol were Trump supporters, while Williams chalks it up to a couple hundred “knuckleheads” that don’t represent Trump supporters as a whole, mixed in with Antifa members posing as Trump supporters.
Antifa is short for “anti-fascists” and used as a blanket term to refer to left-wing, anti-racist groups.
“I’m not trying to say that Trump supporters didn’t break into the Capitol, they did… This was coordinated to give a black eye to Trump supporters, and we’re not the ones who broke into the Capitol,” Williams said.
Williams says that most Trump supporters at the Capitol were peaceful, and that most of the people who stormed the Capitol were far-left Antifa activists. This claim is false and has been debunked by the FBI.
Why do they believe the rioters were members of Antifa? Williams claims one can tell based on their all-black clothing or appearance.
“If you’ve ever been up there, spotting Antifa and BLM is really easy. They’re all young. They’ve got nose rings, and piercings,” Williams said.
BLM refers to those who participated in Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
Williams also claims he saw Capitol police on the east side of the Capitol grounds taking down barricades to let members of Antifa inside. In reality, the far-right rioters tore down barricades and attacked Capitol police officers on their way to the Capitol.
The rioters — many of whom wore pro-Trump paraphenalia and carried Confederate flags — broke windows and ransacked congressional offices and chambers. The effort to protest and overturn Joe Biden’s election over President Donald Trump was ultimately unsuccessful.
At least five people — including a U.S. Capitol police officer — have died as a result of the riot. One woman died after being shot by Capitol police, and others died after experiencing medical emergencies during the events. The breach marked the first time that the Capitol has been under siege since the War of 1812.
Williams and other group members feel like the backlash they’ve received for protesting is unwarranted, and some even feel betrayed by Trump himself.
“I feel like Trump kind of hoodwinked us too, you know, he sort of threw us under the bus,” Williams said. “We went up there to stand up for him. And we came back like a soldier from Vietnam. Our country (is) trying to spit on us and paint us as domestic terrorists.”
The group was motivated to travel to Washington by claims from President Trump alleging rigged elections in states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Multiple crowd members brought up theories during the event that have been disproven, such as voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems switching votes cast for Trump to Biden votes. These allegations, spread by conservative media figures and politicians, have been disproven and have resulted in Dominion filing a defamation lawsuit against former Trump campaign legal advisor Sidney Powell.
Trump’s election challenges have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, has also said that no election fraud took place on a scale necessary to overturn the election.
Before the violence at the Capitol began, around half of William’s group met with two of Mississippi’s Republican congressmen, Reps. Trent Kelly and Michael Guest. After the violence was quelled and Congress returned to complete the certification process, Reps. Kelly, Guest, Steven Palazzo and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith all backed a failed effort by lawmakers to overturn Biden’s victory, citing the same disproven theories peddled by Williams and his group.
During the Sunday rally, Williams and crowd members expressed an anger that they said is directed more at establishment Republicans than their Democratic opponents. Williams said that Democratic lawmakers fight for their supporters in a way that Republicans don’t. He even gave Democrats kudos for their alleged theft of the election.
“I believe it was Walter Matthau in The Bad News Bears that said: ‘If you ain’t cheating, you don’t want to win bad enough.’ So I give the Democrats credit for that. Maybe we just need to learn how to cheat,” Williams said.
Williams directed group members to turn their anger toward local and state politicians that supported Congress certifying the results of the presidential election.
“I’m sorry if I offend anybody. Actually, I’m not. (Sen.) Roger Wicker is the worst one of all. And he has to go,” Williams said. “And I’m gonna tell you what, I don’t want to wait for the next election to get him out of there. Because I don’t trust the elections anymore. So I’m up for ideas on how we can pressure him to conveniently retire. But that’s what needs to happen.”
Sen. Wicker did not vote in support of overturning the election results.
Williams wants to turn the Patriot Party group into a registered political party in Mississippi to challenge Republican candidates in down the ticket races. The problem with that is he fears that their attempts at organizing will be impeded by censorship from “big tech” that’s controlled by liberals determined to stamp out conservative dissent, he said. He encouraged supporters to give him their email addresses in order to preemptively prepare for potential bans from social media platforms.
“The First Amendment, freedom of speech, is being suppressed as we speak in this country like it’s never been before,” Williams said. “And if you don’t believe that, you’ve had your eyes closed.”
Their fear of censorship is based on the recent de-platforming of President Trump by multiple social media companies that say Trump’s rhetoric incited the mob violence on Jan. 6. Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit and even Pinterest have all suspended President Trump’s accounts indefinitely.
People on the far right have migrated in droves to the social media platform Parler in response to the alleged censorship of conservative voices, mostly pertaining to restrictions being placed on accounts spreading false election claims. Saturday, Amazon booted Parler off its web hosting service, and it was removed from the Apple and Google Play app stores.
Williams and his group’s members say they don’t know what the future holds, but they’re preparing for any scenario, even taking up arms to be the “last line of defense for freedom,” as one supporter put it. They even have a contingency plan in case President Biden declared martial law and came to take their guns.
“We have designated points in DeSoto County that are gathering points,” William said. “One is this courthouse, the other (is) Snowdon Grove. If something happens, you can meet your brothers in arms, at Snowden Grove or here. I’ll just leave it at that.”
Mississippi’s new state flag flies for the first time at the Capitol after Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill on Monday ratifying the newly adopted state flag at the Two Mississippi Museums. Credit: Vickie King, Mississippi Today
A new state flag was raised over the Mississippi State Capitol on Monday to replace the old flag, which flew for 126 years and featured the divisive Confederate battle emblem.
Flags were raised on the Capitol grounds and over the domes of both the House and Senate in a Monday afternoon ceremony.
House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who this past summer steered passage of historic legislation to retire the old flag and to place a new flag on the November ballot, presided over the flag-raising ceremony.
Before the new flag was raised over the Capitol, where it flapped proudly thanks to the cold northwesterly wind, Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill into law making the banner approved by voters in November the official flag of the state.
Reeves called it “a historic day, one we all can be proud of.” He cited the past year as one filled with isolation and divisive rhetoric, but that “we are one nation under God,” united in “friendship, trust and joy.” He said the new flag would represent those items that bound the state together.
He said for many the old flag represented history and heritage, but saw the old flag as representing “divisiveness, dismissiveness and even hate. That is not a firm foundation for our state.”
As lawmakers worked during the 2020 session to retire the old flag, Reeves opposed that effort. He maintained that voters, not lawmakers, should decide whether to retire the old flag. Still, Reeves reluctantly signed the bill into law last summer, retiring the flag and putting on a ballot a new flag for voters to approve or reject.
More than 70% of voters approved the new flag in November 2020, and the Legislature ratified that vote last week. Reeves signed the legislation into law in the auditorium of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, flanked by the commission that selected the new flag design.
Gunn, who for years was the most prominent Republican leader to publicly advocate for changing the state flag, told stories on Monday of state lawmakers who had been against change this summer – up until just days before the Legislature voted – but who had changes of heart.
“It was their families,” Gunn said of what changed their minds. “It was knowing that history was going to record what they did, and they did not want their spouses and children and grandchildren to be disappointed. They wanted future generations of this state to be proud of what they did.”
“Now we turn the page on this new chapter in our state’s history,” Gunn continued. “It is blank. It has yet to be written. What will it say? What will the history of this new flag be? What will it stand for? That is going to be determined by you, the citizens of the state of Mississippi.
“… It can represent a place of hospitality, a place of goodwill toward all men, a place of sacrificial service to our fellow man, or it can not. It can represent a place where we love our neighbors as ourselves, or it can not … It can represent a place where in God we trust, or it can not. We will determine what is written … Yes, in God we trust, and may he bless the great state of Mississippi.”
Hosemann, who publicly advocated for a change in the flag after House leaders initiated the process this summer, also spoke at the ceremony on Monday.
“Over 900,000 Mississippians voted for this flag to represent the state of Mississippi,” Hosemann said. “It will provide a shade of history and community for our citizens. It will provide nourishment to the roots of our society. It will inspire children for hopefully generations to come, and it will give us a sense of place. We will learn together under this flag. We will work together under this flag, and we will worship together under this emblem.”
State Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood, a longtime legislator and civil rights leader, watched the ceremony and the new flags being hoisted above the state Capitol and remarked to a colleague, “It’s a good day. It’s a beacon of hope for Mississippi.”
Sharon Brown, a resident of Jackson, braved the frigid weather Monday to witness the flag raising ceremony at the Capitol. Brown in 2015 led an unsuccessful push for a voter referendum to remove the old flag and prohibit any reference to the Confederacy being on the state’s flag.
“We have constantly been in the fight since then,” Brown said. “I knew change would come.”
Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who worked unsuccessfully in the early 2000s to change the flag, attended the bill signing and raising of the new flag.
When asked if he believed he would ever see the change, he said, “I was certainly hopeful it would be in my lifetime.”
He praised the new flag design as having “emblems and designs everyone can support… It is a great day.”
On April 17, 2001, Mississippi voted on replacing its state flag. The debate, as most things in Mississippi do, became an emotional one. I remember that day because of the hate-filled phone calls I had received (I was for changing it). At 5:30, my doctor called and said, “You have cancer.”
I laughed.
He paused and then asked, “Why are you laughing?”
I said, “This is the nicest call I’ve had all day.”
When I was wheeled into surgery a couple of days later, I wondered if I’d survive. I just didn’t think I’d ever see the flag changed. Nearly 20 years later, I have both survived and seen that change.
We have come a long way since 2001 and in many ways are still in the same place. But we now have a banner we can all sit together under. And be proud of our great state together.
Don’t look now, but we suddenly have a competitive Ole Miss-Mississippi State women’s basketball rivalry. At last.
They’ve been playing one another for 45 years now, ever since Title IX compelled colleges and universities – most reluctantly – to field women’s basketball teams. The Ole Miss-State rivalry just never has been really competitive. One or the other has dominated. That appears to have changed, what with 14th ranked Mississippi State’s hard-earned 60-56 victory over Ole Miss on the Bulldogs’ home floor Sunday. The Lady Rebels had two chances to tie the score in the final 90 seconds.
“That is what a rivalry game should look like,” Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said afterward.
In women’s basketball, Ole Miss-Mississippi State has rarely, if ever, looked like this before.
Mississippi State, 8-2, now has won the last 14 meetings, most by decisive margins. Ole Miss, which dropped to 7-2, has not defeated State since Jan. 25, 2014 – and even then the Rebels needed an overtime to achieve it.
Before Sunday, State had won the previous eight meetings by an average of nearly 20 points per.
If that sounds one-sided, you’ve heard nothing yet. Of the first 51 times the two teams played, Ole Miss won 50. That’s right, the Lady Rebels were 50-1. Rivalry? More like complete and utter dominance.
Van Chancellor raves about Nikki McCray-Penson. Credit: Rick Cleveland
Interestingly, Van Chancellor, the architect of most of that Ole Miss dominance, is a proud graduate of Mississippi State. He won 37 of 38 games against his alma mater while at Ole Miss
Chancellor, a Naismith Hall of Famer, lives in Texas now, but he watched Sunday’s game with keen interest. “I went to one school, coached for a long time at the other. You bet I’m interested,” Chancellor said in a Monday phone conversation.
His take on Sunday’s game?
“Ole Miss has made unbelievable improvement from last season to this,” Chancellor said. “They are so much more talented. Coach Yo finally has her players playing her way. Now, it’s a matter of learning how to win, and that sometimes is the hardest part. They are good enough to be in every game. Now they have to learn how to win.”
Chancellor will get no argument from State coach Nikki McRay-Penson about the vast improvement at Ole Miss. “They are better in all aspects,” McRay-Penson said postgame. “Coach Yo has done a great job of recruiting talented players.”
And here’s the deal: One of those highly recruited and talented players, 6-foot-5 Shakira Austin, a Maryland transfer, was in foul trouble for much of the game, missed 15 minutes of playing time and scored only six points. Another, Madison Scott, a freshman and the first McDonald’s All American in Ole Miss history, did not play.
Nevertheless, Ole Miss was able to claw back from 12 behind and take the game into the final seconds. Donnetta Johnson, a sophomore transfer from Georgia, was outstanding in defeat, leading both teams in scoring with 23 points. Valerie Nesbit, displaying much grit, added 18.
Junior Jessika Carter led the way for State with 19 points and nine rebounds, and the Bulldogs got a huge boost off the bench from Aliyah Matharu, who scored 16 points in 27 minutes, including four 3-pointers. The Bulldogs won despite a rare off-night from talented Rickea Jackson, who scored just nine points on 3-of-13 shooting. The Bulldogs, as a team, shot just 38 percent.
McRay-Penson used the word “ugly” to describe the victory. She said her team lacked energy.
Part of that came from Ole Miss’s dogged defense. In fact, both teams played hard and well defensively. That brand of defense bodes well for both teams.
“I think both teams are headed in the right direction,” Chancellor said. “Both are well-coached. Both play hard. Both have a lot of talented players. There’s no doubt in my mind this rivalry is about to go to a different level. It’s great for women’s basketball in the state of Mississippi. Think about what the crowds are going to be like for these games when we finally get through this pandemic.
“I told Coach Yo one thing when she got the job. I told her you have to find a way to beat Mississippi State. That’s just the way it is in Mississippi. You have to win your share against the other school.”
The Lady Rebels get their next chance at State on Valentine’s Day at The Pavilion in Oxford.
In interview with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Bobby Harrison, state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, the chamber’s Democratic leader, praises bipartisan spirit in state Capitol, though he said differences still exist. Simmons also questions whether rioters at U.S. Capitol would have been handled differently had they been African American.
