Mississippi Department of Education headquarters in Jackson.
Gov. Tate Reeves in a press conference Wednesday said it was “very likely” he would veto the budget bill for the Mississippi Department of Education, a state agency that oversees almost 900 public schools and more than 465,000 students.
If he does — the deadline to sign it is midnight Wednesday — the Legislature will be dealing with the veto in the midst of chaos caused by the fact that both presiding officers, Speaker Philip Gunn in the House and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in the Senate, have tested positive for COVID-19. State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said Wednesday 36 cases of coronavirus came from an outbreak at the Capitol, and 26 of those were lawmakers.
Under the rules suspension in place it is likely that legislators could come back to address any veto without having to be called into special session by the governor. But Reeves surmised that because of the coronavirus outbreak in the Capitol, “It would be at least 14 days from today before the Legislature could meet remotely safe … and that’s only remotely.”
The education budget, about $2.2 billion in state funds, was one of the last approved by legislators before they adjourned with the intent to come back in the coming days to deal with one final budget for the Department of Marine Resources. Last week the Legislature approved a budget in the midst of declining state revenues caused by the coronavirus. Under the roughly $6 billion budget approved, most agencies will absorb cuts of between 3 percent and 5 percent for the current fiscal year.
The possible veto comes from the governor posting on social media Tuesday that “the education bill has a major problem,” saying the Legislature cut teacher pay by more than $26 million. He was referencing the school recognition program, which provides monetary rewards to schools that improve letter grades.
By moving the funding for this program into the main school funding program instead of earmarking it for the recognition program, the governor said, “over 20,000 teachers will get less pay than they earned if we allow this budget to become law.”
The Legislature created the program in 2014. It is a merit-based pay system to incentivize teachers and staff in high performing schools and those who are improving letter grades. Teachers in A-rated schools or improve from a ‘F’ to ‘D,’ or ‘D’ to ‘C’ receive $100 per student, and ‘B’ rated schools receive $75 per student. Since 2017, the Legislature has funneled about $71 million into the recognition program.
For the current budget year, information provided by the Department of Education indicates it would take $28 million to fully fund the program for about 21,000 teachers who qualify for the funds based on their schools’ grades. Reeves maintained Wednesday, more than 23,000 teachers would lose the bonuses. For fiscal year 2020, nearly 21,000 teachers in 510 public schools collectively received $25 million, according to Mississippi Today’s analysis of program records.
While Gov. Tate Reeves cited that teachers “will see pay cuts of a couple thousand dollars,” Mississippi Today’s analysis of the data found no teacher received thousands of dollars.
Last year, the Legislature created new guidelines clarifying that the money should only be awarded to current and certified staff of the eligible school and the award must be distributed evenly. For the first two years of the program, it has been difficult to solidify the accurate number of teachers receiving rewards because the Mississippi Department of Education has not kept record of this information.
House Education Chairman Richard Bennett, R-Long Beach, on Wednesday said legislative leaders had contacted the governor’s office, and assured him the program can continue without him vetoing or lawmakers having to redo the budget.
“As chairman of Education, the loss of the School Recognition program deeply troubles me. Regardless of budgetary movements, it was and continues to be our intent for MDE to fund this program,” Bennett said. “We informed the governor’s staff that legislative clarification will easily fix this matter, and that a veto was unnecessary. The Legislature can provide a deficit appropriation into the future to fund expenses for MDE to continue this program.”
Schools would qualify in the current fiscal year beginning July 1 for their educators to receive the funds based on their rating for the 2018-19 school year, according to information from the Department of Education.
The program was part of a pay increase provided to teachers in 2014. Then-Lt. Gov. Reeves and then-Senate Education Chair Gray Tollison, R-Oxford, were the primary proponents of the program. Some education advocates argued against the program, saying it would result in teachers trying to work in top performing or improving districts where they were more apt to receive the extra pay.
“The first couple of years the guidance sent out, based on what the Legislature wanted, was for individual schools to form a teacher committee to make a decision based on how the money would be dispersed. I don’t think the forms asked how many teachers would receive the money. It was more or less … we just needed something on record to determine how they were going to disperse that money,” Pete Smith, Mississippi Department of Education chief of communications and government relations said in February in an interview with Mississippi Today.
Though it was mandatory for districts to submit response forms that show how the money was dispersed and the number of certified staff who received money, a number of districts did not submit a form or state the number of certified staff to receive the award.
If Reeves vetoes the education budget as he said he is likely to do, he said under a 2010 Attorney General’s opinion funding to for the public schools can continue because education is identified as a constitutional mandate of the state.
Aallyah will moderate the ‘How I Did the Story’ session, where reporters give the backstory on projects and discuss what they learned along the way. The panel will feature three EWA award finalists, who will discuss their work on race and educational equity.
Aallyah joined the EWA’s advisory board, a select group of journalists from a mix of regional and national media organizations, in April. The group of accomplished journalists helps EWA carry out its mission to strengthen community of education writers and improve the quality of education coverage to help better inform the public.
Tommy Tuberville, who spent four years as Ole Miss football coach, hopes to spend the next six years in the U.S. Senate.
So I am trying to wrap my arms around the fact former Ole Miss football coach Tommy Tuberville, who hails from Arkansas and recently has lived on the beach in Florida, might well be the next U.S. Senator from Alabama.
Turns out, my arms are not nearly long enough.
Polls show Tuberville leading Jeff Sessions, whom he faces in a July 14 Republican primary runoff. The winner will be favored to defeat incumbent Doug Jones. Nothing – in football or politics – is certain, but Tuberville, who won 25 games and lost 20 at Ole Miss in his four seasons from 1995-98, is the clear favorite to become Senator Tuberville.
Rick Cleveland
The guess here is that the average Mississippi football fan could not have told you Tuberville’s Ole Miss record before reading that last sentence. But the average fan could certainly tell you the circumstances of Tuberville’s departure from Oxford.
For weeks during the fall of 1998, rumors had circulated that Tuberville was headed to Auburn. For weeks, Tuberville denied the rumors. He looked directly into the eyes of sports writers, one of whom was me, and said this: “They’ll have to carry me out of here in a pine box.”
Two days later, he stepped onto a private jet, sent from Auburn, and took the job after all. Turns out, no pine box was required, although many Ole Miss fans would have gladly provided.
“I’m a Rebel at heart,” he had told us. “I want to be where people want you, where you have a chance to win, where your players are giving all they can and where it’s a great place to live. That’s exactly what we have here in Oxford.”
As former Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone says, “Tommy always did have the gift of gab.”
Often, politicians talk out of both sides of their mouth. Tuberville has that part down pat. And he has for a long time. As one of his best Ole Miss players told me recently, “Tubs was always a politician.”
Long after he left Ole Miss, long after he was fired by Auburn, Tuberville was the head coach at Texas Tech. In December of 2012, Tuberville was at a dinner with several recruits, talking up the Red Raiders program. Shortly before dinner was served, Tuberville got up and left the table. “We thought he was going to the bathroom,” a recruit later said.
Tuberville never returned. The next day, he became the head coach at Cincinnati, proving once and for all that the grass is not always greener. Tuberville was 85-40 in 10 years at Auburn, 20-17 in three years at Texas Tech, and 29-22 in four years at Cincinnati.
This is not to say Tuberville could not coach. He most certainly could. You could argue – and I would – that Tuberville’s best coaching was done at Ole Miss, where he became known as The Riverboat Gambler for his propensity to buck traditional football odds. He inherited a program decimated by severe NCAA sanctions and somehow won six games his first season. His 1997 Rebels finished 8-4 and he was voted SEC Coach of the Year and deserved the honor.
Ole Miss athletics
Tuberville lifted the Golden Egg high after the 1995 Egg Bowl. victory in Starkville.
He used it, too. After that 1997 season, rumors were rampant that Tuberville was headed to Arkansas to replace Danny Ford as the head coach there. Tuberville got a huge raise and announced he was staying at Ole Miss. And then Frank Broyles, the Arkansas athletic director and legendary former coach, said Tuberville was never offered the job. Broyles, you may remember, hired Houston Nutt.
Tuberville resigned from his last coaching job at Cincinnati in 2016 when his final Bearcats team finished 4-8. He moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., and voted there, as a Floridian, in 2018 – as Jeff Sessions gleefully reminds everyone in his campaign ads, one of which shows an interview with Tuberville talking about moving to the “white sands and blue water of Santa Rosa – what a great place to live.”
The Sessions campaign lately also has zeroed in on Tuberville’s involvement in an investment fraud case from back in his coaching days. Former Lehman Brothers broker John David Stroud, with whom Tuberville founded a hedge fund, was sentenced to 10 years for bilking investors out of millions. Tuberville, who says he was an innocent victim, was sued for millions and settled out of court in 2013. Make of it what you like, but know this: The investment firms in question were TS Capital Management and TS Capital Partners. The T stood for Tuberville, the S for Stroud.
T also stands for Trump, and Tuberville famously has the president’s endorsement, which is like gold in Alabama and which he flouts in his campaign ads. In fact, Tuberville’s campaign can be summarized thusly: God, guns and Trump. That’s not all together different from Sessions, who also touts his own experience while Coach Tuberville touts his leadership qualities. The self-promotion is winding down, and this last week of the primary campaign will likely get down and dirty – entertaining to watch from one state over.
One factor I wonder about: When push comes to shove, how will Alabama Crimson Tide fans vote? Would Ole Miss fans vote for Jackie Sherrill? Would Mississippi State fans vote for Hugh Freeze?
Keep in mind, when Tuberville was the coach at Auburn, he won 7 of 10 against Bama and once beat the Crimson Tide six straight years.
Again, like him or not or trust him or not, nobody ever said Tuberville couldn’t coach.
Mostly cloudy skies will prevail this morning with a 50% chance of showers and thunderstorms. We will have a mix of sun and clouds this afternoon with highs in the upper 80s. Winds becoming southwest around 5 mph in the afternoon. Tonight we have a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. Otherwise, it will be mostly clear with lows in the mid 70s.
Doctor’s offices, restaurants and car dealers were the top businesses in Mississippi to receive loans from the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package signed into law this spring.
The U.S. Treasury Department released the names of 650,000 businesses that received loans of $150,000 or more on Monday as part of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) designed to help small businesses, including nearly 4,000 in Mississippi. The program is part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act President Donald Trump signed.
The released data also include information about smaller loan recipients, but excluded their names. In total, Mississippi businesses received between $2.5 billion and $4.4 billion in loans, spread across 45,000 recipients — loans of $150,000 or larger are only disclosed in ranges. There is not an exact figure because many of these loans are disclosed in ranges.
Below is a chart of the types of businesses receiving the most money in Mississippi:
Some Mississippi borrowers receiving between $5-$10 million in those categories include GI Associates, a gastroenterology group in Flowood, Ridgeland-based law firm Butler Snow, and two restaurant companies, Mid River Restaurants in Natchez and The Retzer Group in Greenville.
Religious groups in the state received between $53 and $80 million, spread across 80 different organizations.
According to the data set, these loans will allow the businesses to retain a total of 412,492 jobs.
The data also included the demographics of borrowers, although two-thirds of the state’s borrowers declined to provide a gender and three-quarters declined to provide a race or ethnicity. Of the Mississippi businesses that did answer, 75 percent were male, and 83 percent were white.
In Mississippi, 17 businesses received loans between $5-$10 million, the highest range of funding. For a full breakdown of which businesses received loans of $150,000 or more, see the tables below:
Disclosure: Mississippi Today sought a Paycheck Protection Program loan, which has been approved and disbursed.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, left, and House speaker Philip Gunn speak to media concerning the legislative session and the coronavirus Tuesday, March 17, 2020.
The Legislature’s two presiding officers, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, 73, in the Senate and House Speaker Philip Gunn, 57, are at home quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19.
They are among a growing number of legislators, particularly in the House, and legislative staff who have tested positive in recent days.
Throughout that time period, recommended safety precautions to combat COVID-19, like wearing masks and social distancing, were to a large extent ignored by most legislators, though some did wear masks.
“It is the way we have been doing things in our country,” said Jarvis Dortch, who served Jackson as a Democrat in the House until this past Thursday when he stepped down to become executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi. “We get tired of the safety precautions and it becomes business as usual.”
While not all of the members who contracted the virus have been made public, Dortch said he could count as many as 12 House members whom he had heard tested positive for the virus. Others said the numbers are higher. On Tuesday afternoon, state Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said eight legislators had tested positive, though, many others were waiting on test results.
When the session resumed in May after taking a recess in March because of concerns over the coronavirus, multiple safety precautions were put in place. The number of people allowed in the House and Senate chambers where the members’ desks are only a few feet apart, were limited. Most everyone, though not all, were wearing masks.
In late March, a Capitol Police officer reportedly tested positive for coronavirus while the Legislature was on hiatus, and in June legislative leaders also confirmed that an employee who occasionally works at the state Capitol tested positive as well.
Throughout the process, everyone has had to undergo a temperature check when entering the Capitol, though that was about the only safety precaution that was not eschewed.
As the historic debate to change the flag intensified, unusual focus was placed on the House Rules Committee since that is the committee where the flag legislation originated. Often, Rules Committee meetings, held in a small room, were crowded, near elbow to elbow. Gunn serves on this committee as do other members who reports indicate have tested positive.
Ironically, though, the first member to announce he was positive for COVID-19 was Rep. Bo Brown, D-Jackson, who was never seen not wearing a mask and often was wearing gloves.
“He even left his mask on to ask questions,” said Rep. Bryant Clark, D-Pickens. “He might have gotten it away from the Capitol.”
Dortch said he was glad Brown was wearing a mask. He said the people sitting near Brown in the House chamber have all been tested and none of them thus far have tested positive. Dortch said research indicates a mask worn by a person with the virus can provide a certain amount of protection for people the person with the illness comes in contact.
Senate Pro Tem Dean Kirby, R-Pearl, said Tuesday he was awaiting his test results. Should the Legislature be forced to come back into session before Hosemann recovers, Kirby would preside. If he was sick, Kirby said any senator could preside, though, it might fall to the Senate Rules Committee Vice Chair Walter Michel, a Madison County Republican. Kirby is Rules chair.
In the House, Pro-Tem Jason White, R-West, confirmed he had symptoms and was expecting to receive a positive test.
He said Gunn, who said Sunday he was not exhibiting many symptoms, remained in charge, but it is not clear who would preside if both he and the speaker were quarantined. Perhaps that would fall to Rules Chair Rep. Jerry Turner, R-Baldwyn.
The Legislature had planned to come back late this week to try to pass a budget for the Department of Marine Resources for the new fiscal year that began on July 1. Since the new budget year began, the Gulf Coast agency had been performing only basic services.
DMR was the only agency left unfunded when the Legislature adjourned last week.
On Tuesday, Gov. Tate Reeves, who was with both Gunn and Hosemann last week when he signed into law a bill retiring the state flag, announced, he had tested negatively.
Alex Hurdle, who graduated from Caledonia High School this year, supports a change to the school’s Confederate nickname. She said she’s embarrassed to tell her peers from other schools she’s an alum of a school with what she believes is a racially-charged mascot. “Our mascot does not represent any of the good parts of Caledonia. I feel like it obscures what it really means to be a student here,” she told Mississippi Today.
Rooting for and rooting out the Confederate mascot in small town Mississippi
When a federal judge scrutinized Caledonia’s Confederate mascot eight years ago, he quoted William Faulkner in his opinion: “We need to talk, to tell, since oratory is our heritage.”
CALEDONIA, Miss. — Graduating senior Teri Shellman was one of few Black students at her school in the small, rural northeast Mississippi town of Caledonia. She arrived there in third grade after the U.S. Air Force stationed her father at the base in nearby Columbus.
Shellman and her classmates were the “Confederates” — the public school’s current nickname and the name of the Southern army that fought to preserve slavery in the 1860s.
She said she never learned that fact about the Confederacy in her history classes, at her school located on Confederate Drive, but she does remember when her parents refused to purchase the band’s T-shirt for her in middle school.
“It’s a deep-rooted issue that everyone has just kind of ignored,” Shellman said. “It’s like everybody knows but nobody wants to open that can of worms.”
Following protests against Confederate imagery across the country, a group of parents are now petitioning the Lowndes County School District to change the mascot. Caledonia — a town of about 1,400, where nearly nine in ten people are white — is home to the better-ranked schools parents have flocked to in recent decades as the quality of the majority-Black Columbus Municipal School District declined.
Courtesy Teri Shellman
Teri Shellman, a senior at Caledonia High School in northeast Mississippi, embraces her mom NaTarsha Shellman after their graduation ceremony on June 26, 2020. The high school held a limited attendance, socially distanced ceremony in the football stadium due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Efforts to change the nickname, which began with conversations among the military families, have riled some locals, who made their opposition known through crass comments on a neighborhood Facebook page.
“Leave Caledonia alone,” one said. “If you don’t like the ‘Feds’ don’t move there.”
Though they have the option between the county or city school systems, virtually all parents who live on base enroll their kids in Caledonia, the only schools that send a bus there now. Even more families who move to the area for work are choosing to locate in the county district for the schools, which receives A or B grades from the Mississippi Department of Education, in contrast to many Ds and Fs among the elementary and middle schools in Columbus.
The Caledonia mascot, a nod to a proposed government founded on the principle that Black people are inferior to white, became an issue about a decade ago when the district sought to finally escape a federal consent order over unequal education that had carried on since integration.
But without vocal outcry over the nickname at the time, it has remained.
Protesters left a “HARRY MUST GO!” sign outside the Lowndes County Courthouse in Columbus on June 30, 2020 after gathering during the latest Board of Supervisor’s meeting to demand the resignation of Supervisor Harry Sanders, whose district encompasses Caledonia. Residents and some board members want Sanders to resign after he remarked to the local newspaper The Commercial Dispatch that Black people in America “didn’t have to go out and earn any money; they didn’t have to do anything,” during the 250 years white people violently forced Black people into slavery, and that they had failed to assimilate American culture as a result. His comments came during a debate over whether to remove the Confederate soldier statue outside the courthouse, a measure the Supervisors first voted against, then approved three weeks later.
“It’s frankly … a backwards way of, in my opinion, trying to segregate the school,” said Makade Archibald, a white Caledonia resident, father of three and steel mill engineer. “By making people of color uncomfortable with the mascot, you’re discouraging them from joining the school.”
Caledonia is also represented by Lowndes County Supervisor Harry Sanders, who made national headlines in June when he remarked that Black people in America are the only group “having problems” because, he said, they had become dependent during the 250 years white people violently forced them into slavery. He made the inflammatory comments after the board voted against relocating the Confederate monument in front of the Lowndes courthouse on June 15. The board later voted on July 6 in favor of moving the statue.
Shellman told Mississippi Today that while growing up in Caledonia, a quiet town where residents generally get along, she never felt people treated her differently because of her skin color.
“I never noticed it because I didn’t want to, I guess,” Shellman said, though she did recall a few years ago when a student called her younger brother the n-word on the school bus.
Shellman said it wasn’t until the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May, and the national conversation surrounding race that ensued, that she learned how divided her town really is.
“Recently, I’ve felt like I was kind of like blindsided by everything that’s going on,” she said, especially after sharing her thoughts on current events and using the “Black Lives Matter” expression on social media. “I thought everybody thought Black lives mattered. I didn’t realize that people actually thought there was an opposing statement to that.”
“My parents have always told me that I think everybody in the world is so nice … I have to be a little bit more mature about the way I look at everybody now,” she added.
Anna Wolfe
Caledonia, a small town in rural northeast Mississippi, is “Home of the Feds,” short for the “Confederates” — the nickname for the school’s sports teams and the army that fought on behalf of Southern states in the 1860s with the goal of preserving the institution of slavery.
Stay-at-home mom of two Amanda Nielson, who is white, said she loves the feel of older homes. So when the Air Force stationed her husband in Columbus three years ago, she began looking at houses in the city, which were, as an added bonus, lower priced than property out in the county.
Ultimately though, “we could not handle the difference in the school quality, so we sucked it up and we moved out here,” Nielson said.
She initially bought T-shirts that read “Feds” to support her 8-year-old son, who is on a recreational football team. But she quickly became uneasy about where she and her husband would wear the shirts and what message they may be sending. “And you should never feel uneasy about something like that,” Nielson said.
After Floyd died, Nielson felt compelled to better educate herself about systemic racism. She wasn’t sure how she would go about fixing inequities in large, stubborn systems — such as segregated and unequal public education — but “I can think of this one thing at my school that does seem unfair to a group of people,” she said, referencing the Confederate nickname at the local schools.
“So just from my own sphere of influence, maybe that’s something that I could address,” she added.
Amanda Nielson, a mother of two, inadvertently began a community-wide discussion around changing the local school’s nickname — the Confederates — when she posted a status on the Columbus Air Force Base’s Facebook page, gauging its members’ opinions. She recognized the mascot was problematic when she began feeling apprehensive about wearing the team’s T-shirt outside of Caledonia.
She wrote a post in a Facebook page for military members, thinking she would slowly gauge the feelings of her community on the mascot, but opponents of the change picked up and shared her post on a larger platform, prompting a firestorm of messages. “This all started when some knot headed air force mom stuck her nose in some business it DID NOT belong in,” one commented.
Others defend the nickname, suggesting to change it would be to “destroy our school history.”
Anna Wolfe
Makade Archibald, an engineer at the local steel mill, and his wife moved to Columbus three years ago and chose a house that would put their three boys in the Caledonia schools district. Since speaking out in favor of changing the school’s nickname from the “Confederates”, Archibald said he’s been confused by the resistance to getting rid of the clearly offensive name.
“You’ve got to give me a logical reason. And all I hear is like, ‘Blah, blah, blah, history,’” Archibald said of these arguments. “Do we really preserve history with high school mascots? Is that how history preservation is done? I just don’t get it. Where are the Caledonia Dwight D. Eisenhower’s?”
Mississippi Today reached out to a dozen people who voiced opposition to the name change on Facebook but almost none of them responded or agreed to an interview. One former student, Rita Flippo Boykin, said she didn’t oppose the name change, but wishes the students could offer some input. Jimmy Brewer, a Caledonia parent, felt the same way, adding, “the ones that want it changed should be willing to pay the bill for it all.”
The Lowndes County School Board has agreed to consider changing the name and will include a survey about the mascot in the enrollment packets it sends to parents at the start of the school year, Superintendent Sam Allison said.
Once Nielson explained in simple terms to her son and 6-year-old daughter the purpose of her campaign to change the nickname, “they instantly thought of their friends, who are Black, and were really sad for them.”
The girl, a cheerleader named Lottie, became solemn and asked her mom if she should stop saying “Go Feds!” in her team’s routine.
“I wish that more people would feel that way, not for the politics of it … but just on a personal level, if we would have conversations with our friends and our neighbors and just genuinely say, ‘How do you feel about it?’ And then be open to listening about their personal experience,” Nielson said. “I think that’s where that change of heart comes from.”
Thomas McAfee, whose wife was stationed at Columbus last year, said they were already apprehensive about moving to Mississippi because of its reputation, but were excited about the quality of the schools in Caledonia.
Anna Wolfe
Thomas McAfee, his wife and two children moved to the Columbus Air Force Base last year and chose Caledonia schools because of their high academic scores. But when they realized their children would be referred to as the “Feds,” short for “Confederates” — the school nickname — they had second thoughts.
“It wasn’t until after we actually got them enrolled that we realized their mascot was the Confederates,” Taylor, who is Black, said. “We were considering moving them over to the Columbus school system.”
One mom, who is also Black and attended Columbus schools herself, also struggled to decide where to send her daughter, who’s now in middle school, before enrolling her at Caledonia.
“It was a really tough decision, you know? What do you do? You deal with the mascot, put her in the school that’s rating or grading higher? Or do you send her to where she would probably be more comfortable but not have as many opportunities?” said the mom, who did not want her name printed for fear of retaliation against her daughter at school.
Her son also went to Caledonia and played on the basketball team before he graduated. She said she felt they were the butt of a joke as she strategically cropped out the gigantic “Caledonia Confederates” lettering on the gym walls in her photos of him on the court.
Another Air Force parent who did not want to be named and no longer lives in the state told Mississippi Today he enrolled his Black 14-year-old son in Columbus High School, against the advice of all the advisors on base, purely because of the nickname at Caledonia. He was not happy with the quality of the education and eventually sent his son to live in Colorado with his grandparents during his second year stationed in Columbus.
Anna Wolfe
Graves in Caledonia’s Unity Cemetery are segregated by race, with the few marked graves for Black residents located closest to Wolfe Road and the white graves, many topped with Confederate battle flags and American flags, further back. Soldiers who fought in the Civil War and Revolutionary War are buried in Unity Cemetery. During a Facebook debate over changing the Caledonia schools’ nickname from the Confederates, one commenter wrote, “Maybe these people that are not from Caledonia need to study up on their history. Or better yet… take a walk through Unity Cemetery. Do some research about the town. We don’t go to their hometowns and try to change what we don’t like there.”
By 2012, Lowndes County School District was still under a federal consent degree dating back to the 1970 court order that permanently prohibited many school districts across the state from discriminating or offering unequal education to their students based on their race.
When the district asked the court that year to grant them unitary status, certifying that they had indeed rectified the lingering effects of past segregation, the judge had one primary reservation: the Confederate nickname at Caledonia.
“Simply stated, the court can discern no good reason why a Mississippi public school would wish to associate itself with any divisive nickname or symbol,” U.S. District Judge Michael Mills wrote in his order.
Mike Halford, a former superintendent who spoke on behalf of the district at the hearing, “appeared to recognize that such a nickname can hinder the school’s mission of educating students of all races,” Justice Mills wrote.
But Halford argued the district had distanced itself from the Confederates nickname — using the shortened “Feds” for chants and on some sports jerseys.
He also sought points with the judge by emphasizing “how the school did not replace the painting of a Confederate soldier on the wall in Caledonia High School’s gymnasium after it was destroyed in a tornado,” in 2009, the opinion reads. But students had painted “Caledonia Confederates” in big red and white letters on the walls inside the current building, longtime teacher Christi Carter told Mississippi Today.
The judge also examined the use of the “n-word” among students in the district, for which there had been 26 complaints 2010-2012 — which Halford called a small number.
Ultimately, the judge granted the district unitary status, dismissing the original case in large part because no one from the community actually spoke out against the Confederate mascot.
“You pick your battles,” the mom from Columbus told Mississippi Today as she recalled the younger years of her son, who has since graduated from Caledonia.
She never tried to fight the Confederate nickname, explaining: “Going through a divorce, having to start over, raising a son. It’s hard enough just … keeping him on the right track and having people not see him as a threat. I just had my hands full and that just was a beast I was not equipped to take on at the time.”
“I never liked it,” she said.
In his order, Mills acknowledged there were “strong feelings” on both sides of the debate and that officials had taken the “political path of least resistance” by choosing not to act.
“On the one hand, some will say ‘we mean no harm, we are only honoring our heritage.’ On the other hand, another will say ‘this is a heritage which demeans me.’ The best minds of the South have long known that those with competing interpretations of the past need to find a way to overcome the past.”
Anna Wolfe
Sonniah Ramirez, a 12-year-old student at Caledonia Middle School, has participated in recent demonstrations to remove symbols of the Confederacy from her community, such as the statue outside the Lowndes County Courthouse and the nickname at her school. She said she wants to see the monuments to the Confederacy removed because “they wanted to me to stay a slave. They wanted my people and people of color to stay in slavery. That’s basically what they did and basically what they fought for.”
Eight years later, the name of the South’s failed alliance still appears on the gym walls and in a half circle around first plate on the baseball field — a new addition in the last few years, Allison said.
It also lives on through merchandise designed by the local booster club and the Dollar General in town still sells shirts with “Caledonia Confederates” emblazoned across the front, Shellman said.
And student are still subjected to racist slurs.
“They’re basically allowing us, Black people, to come to a school that represents keeping slavery around. There’s a lot of racists in that school,” said 12-year-old Caledonia middle schooler Sonniah Ramirez, who is Black and Hispanic. “Me and my friends, we have been called a n*****.”
Ramirez said the student who called her the racial slur this past school year was only disciplined with a write-up. “Nothing happened,” she said. “You could tell they (administrators) didn’t care.”
Anna Wolfe
Seniors at Caledonia High School can reserve their own parking spot for the year and paint it with the design of their choice. From left to right: the Mississippi State flag and American flag; a painting of the Earth and message, “Be the change”; the school logo, which is an image of two swords crossed and flag reading “Feds”.
For the 2019 Homecoming parade, students at Caledonia High School crafted a float entitled “Imprison the Indians”, in reference to the team they played in football that week, the Itawamba Agriculture High School Indians. Several students and family members told Mississippi Today they found the float, approved by school faculty, offensive.
Use of the n-word is not the only example of racist microaggressions perceived by parents and students who spoke to Mississippi Today: During the high school’s 2019 Homecoming parade, students on one float stood in a mock prison cell, dressed in costumes with feather headpieces. Their sign read “Imprison the Indians,” referring to their opponent in football that week, the Itawamba Agriculture High School Indians. Students told Mississippi Today that faculty voted it best float in the annual contest.
Alex Hurdle, a graduating senior, recalled that the school suspended her Black classmate after using a curse word, though other white students frequently curse with much less severe, if any, repercussions.
Allison, the superintendent, said he had not encountered any of these issues since taking the position in January and that any kind of racial harassment is “a huge infraction across the district,” and incidents are “treated as serious as they are.”
Shellman, the recent Caledonia graduate, said she believes some of her peers who reject “Black Lives Matter” or who’ve said they prefer to keep the Confederate mascot “are falling behind what they hear their parents say.”
“And I feel like they’re doing that because we weren’t taught in-depth about the Confederacy, so they don’t have enough information to actually form their own opinion.”
In middle school, Shellman’s teachers taught her the South fought the Civil War over states’ rights. They taught separately that slavery ended after the war, Shellman said, as if they expected students to connect the dots themselves.
Shellman said she also believes her school shied away from the Confederacy’s history because of the iconography at the school, which subconsciously hinders them from addressing those hard truths.
“I’ve been reminding myself that I can’t be angry at people for things they don’t understand,” Shellman said. “I think a lot of people, they’re not fully educated on what’s actually happening and they’re just acting on feeling right now. They just feel like the world is against them and it’s more like the world is finally being unveiled for what it actually is.”
Education reporter 
