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Bill Bynum: Netflix’s $10 million investment will help HOPE close state’s wealth gap
HOPE Enterprise Corporation
Bill Bynum, CEO of HOPE Credit Union
ITTA BENA — When the coronavirus pandemic hit, pre-existing health, education, housing, and economic conditions amplified the impact on the country’s most vulnerable people, including those living in the southernmost region — particularly the Mississippi Delta.
Bill Bynum, CEO of HOPE Credit Union, a member-owned financial institution that provides banking, loans, and financial resources, said his organization wasn’t surprised that a disproportionate number people of color tested positive and died from COVID-19. In addition to that, the economic impact of the pandemic hit low-income Black workers even worse.
“The service and retail industry is one of the hardest hit sectors of the economy and many people of color are employed in that sector, whether its health conditions or economic conditions, people of color, low income people are more fragile,” Bynum said.
While many rural people lost their jobs and economic viability as a result of COVID-19, HOPE provided payment flexibility and financial resources to some of them. With a $10 million deposit from Netflix, the credit union looks to do even more by bringing wealth into places like Itta Bena. Over the next two years, HOPE said the Netflix funds will support financing to more than 2,000 entrepreneurs and homebuyers of color.
A part of its $100 million commitment to bring capital into Black communities across the country, Netflix announced Tuesday its investment in HOPE Credit Union in the form of a Transformational Deposit. What this means is that Hope will “reimport capital into these capital starved communities,” Bynum said.
For example, HOPE is the only financial institution in Itta Bena – a town of more than 1,800 with a median household income of about $19,000. To support small businesses, housing, home or car ownership, the community needs more money coming in.
“The total potential deposit in the entire town from its residents is a little over $1 million, that is not enough to support the development needs in that communities whether its small business, homeowners, families who have need to buy a car or need of an emergency, you typically go to a bank,” Bynum said. “But when the community like Itta Bena has so little wealth, they don’t have the ability to save and put deposits in a local financial institution.”
After conversations around diversity and inclusion in April, Aaron Mitchell, director of talent acquisition at Netflix, spearheaded the initiative to help Black-owned and Black-led banks, credit unions, and financial organizations.
As a result of Bynum’s relationships with senior executives at Netflix, he spoke with Mitchell, who determined HOPE was a “solid investment.” The deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia heightened Netflix’s focus to invest in Black communities, Bynum added.
Compared to 9 percent of white households, 19 percent of Black families have no assets or negative wealth, Mitchell and Shannon Alwyn, treasury, wrote in a joint blog post.
“We believe bringing more capital to these communities can make a meaningful difference for the people and businesses in them, helping more families buy their first home or save for college, and more small businesses get started or grow,” they said.
With the $10 million, HOPE plans to continue to close the racial wealth gap in rural communities, communities of color, and low-income communities across the South.
“We believe at HOPE that whether you’re trying to close education gaps, housing gaps, make sure communities have grocery stores that sell healthy food, improve housing conditions, at some point all of those needs require capital,” Bynum said. “We help to address these conditions by providing affordable, responsible financial services that more wealthy, more prosperous, more majority white communities take for granted but are absent in the communities we serve.”
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‘It’s an artifact’: Mississippi officially retires its state flag to a museum
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Mississippi Highway Patrol officers furl the state flag outside of the Capitol in Jackson on Wednesday, July 1, 2020.
Mississippi’s former state flag with the divisive Confederate battle emblem in its canton was officially retired to a museum on Wednesday after flying over the state for 126 years.
Flags were raised a final time over the state Capitol domes on Wednesday afternoon. They were then lowered as a crowd of about 100 people outside the Capitol applauded.
The retirement ceremony on Wednesday came after lawmakers passed a bill on Sunday that removed the flag, which was the last in the nation containing the Confederate emblem.
Retired Army Col. Robert Barnes of Byram was among the crowd, taking pictures and video for posterity. He mused with another spectator about how in 1968, as a young African American ROTC cadet, his first unit crest included the flag, with its Confederate emblem.
“It was hard to put it on,” said Barnes, 69, who spent 31 years in the military.
Did Barnes think the flag — the source of bitter debate for decades — would ever come down?
He paused, reflected, then said: “I thought it was possible. But I knew it would be step by step, a long process.”
The flags were delivered by Mississippi National Guard and Highway Patrol color guards to House Speaker Philip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Archives and History Director Katie Blount. They then delivered the flags to former Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson, president of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History board, at the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.
Museum officials plan to create an exhibit about the flag for the history museum.
Anderson, the first African American member of the Mississippi Supreme Court in the modern era, proclaimed: “This is the thrill of my lifetime to accept these flags.”
He accepted the banners at the doors of the Two Museums and said the flag is now “an artifact, and where it should be is in a history museum.”
About 100 people attended the second part of the ceremony outside of the museums. Among those in attendance was Robert Clark, who is 1968 became the first African American elected to the Mississippi Legislature since Reconstruction and served two terms as speaker pro-tem of the House.
Gunn, who advocated for the replacement of the flag in 2015 when most Republican politicians were quiet on the issue, said during the 126 years the flag flew over the state, it “saw good moments as well as some of its darkest. This retirement is a somber occasion, but it also marks a beginning, a time for renewal.”
Anderson praised Gunn and Hosemann as “two great men. What they went through to get this done is remarkable.”
Hosemann told the crowd outside the museums what was occurring was historic, but he also said this was a time to look to the future and the new flag that Mississippians will vote on in November.
“It will be the flag of our future, for all of our citizens,” Hosemann said.
“This is not an end, but a beginning,” Gunn said.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
House Speaker Philip Gunn, left, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Director Katie Blount, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann prepare to deliver the retired state flags to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Wednesday, July 1, 2020.
Besides praising Gunn and Hosemann, who as the Legislature’s presiding officers were able to garner the votes to remove the banner, Anderson also recognized the work of Legislative Black Caucus members who for years had advocated for the removal of the flag, former Gov. William Winter, the Mississippi Economic Council and university academic and sports officials.
Mississippi now has no official state flag, under a bill signed into law late Tuesday by Gov. Tate Reeves.
Amid a renewed national focus on racial injustice, Mississippi had faced growing pressure from business, religious, sports and civic leaders and institutions to change its flag, the last in the nation to sport the Confederate emblem. Lawmakers on Sunday, after decades of debate, passed a law removing the flag and calling for design of a new one.
The law calls for the creation of a nine-member commission, with Gunn, Hosemann and Reeves appointing three members each. The commission will develop a single new design by September, and Mississippi voters will approve or reject that design on the November 2020 ballot.
The new design “will not include the Confederate battle flag but shall include the words ‘In God We Trust’,” the law reads. Should voters reject that design in November, the commission would present a new option during the 2021 legislative session.
Onetta Whitley of Jackson also watched the flag retirement ceremony at the Capitol. The 59-year-old said she had been doubtful she would see it removed in her lifetime. Whitley viewed the flag’s removal as forward movement for the state, maybe something that will prevent people like her son from moving away.
“That flag has been a distraction used to divide Mississippi for too long,” Whitley said. “… I just hope we can get a great flag design that everybody can rally around. Like the U.S. flag — we as Americans rally around it. Maybe now we can rally around a symbol as Mississippians. I do think this was the right thing to do.”
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Mississippi fire chief faces scrutiny after calling Legislative Black Caucus ‘a racist symbol’
CLARKSDALE — Shortly after the Legislature removed the state flag, which featured the Confederate battle emblem, the Coahoma County fire chief took to social media to say another “racist symbol” in the state should be taken down: the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus.
“Time to tear down another racist symbol in the state. The MS Black Legislative Caucus,” Coahoma County Fire Chief Jerry Mills wrote on Facebook on June 29.
Jerry Mills, chief of Coahoma County Fire Department
Mills, who faces calls for his termination over the comment, manages the Coahoma County Fire Department, which serves the entire county except for the city of Clarksdale. He has worked in the fire department for over 20 years, he said.
After lawmakers voted to remove the state flag on June 28, the Clarksdale Press Register shared a Facebook post from state Rep. Orlando Paden, D-Clarksdale, stating: “We are working for the progress and for the image of Mississippi. #TakeItDown #RetiretheMSFlag Let’s move forward. #LegislativeSession2020”
Mills wrote his comment under the newspaper’s shared post.
Black citizens and residents of Coahoma County have publicly blasted Mills over the post and expressed eagerness to have him removed from his leadership position.
Will Smith, a Coahoma County native and educator, wrote this post:
Coahoma County Fire Chief Jerry Mills – This is unacceptable. Accountability please!
I engaged in a conversation with a gentleman from Clarksdale. I did not know who he was, until today. Coahoma County Board of Supervisors should vote to fire the Fire Chief. I hope the Coahoma County Supervisors are not condoning this guy. He should not receive another dollar from the taxpayers of Coahoma County. As fire chief, you serve as a public servant. Spreading hate has no place in Coahoma County or anywhere. We expect the elected officials to stand up for the people of Coahoma County. A vote of no confidence and fire the fire chief. Derrell Washington Paul Pearson Johnny Newson, what are you going to do? Please don’t tell me you can’t do anything because we know that is false. If the board attorney tells you cannot do anything, he needs to be fired as well. #LeadershipMatters
Mills doubled down, later commenting under Smith’s post: “What’s so controversial? You have an exclusively black group of state legislatures (sic), that don’t allow white legislators, claiming a flag is racist. …. I would like to know what the White Caucus thinks about this though.”
In a phone conversation with Mississippi Today, Mills said organizations like the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus further divides the state by calling the state flag “racist or a hate symbol.”
“I’m just standing on the ground that says if you are elected by taxpayers, you should represent your district, your area, your county or whatever — you should represent everyone in your area,” Mills said. “There shouldn’t be any caucus for one group.”
When asked if Mills thought his comments were offensive, he responded by saying, “they’re trying to make me out as a racist.”
“I’ve got 60 something guys on the fire department, and I guarantee they won’t find one of them who thinks I’m a racist,” he added.
Several members of the Coahoma County Board of Supervisors could not be reached for comment.
Conversations about racial justice and racist behavior by government leaders throughout the state has intensified in the past month since the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a police officer in Minnesota.
Over the past three weeks, sports leaders, religious groups, and top business officials, pressured state lawmakers to remove the state flag or risk losing their business and support. After weeks of conversation, both chambers voted to suspend the rules to pave way for the state flag legislation. This week, Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill into law.
This isn’t the first time an official in Clarksdale took to social media to express offensive views. Last month, a nurse was fired after writing a lengthy Facebook post calling protesters “wild animals” and encouraging them to kill their own family members, burn their houses down and think about their actions.
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Letter from the Editor: Mississippi’s historic flag change
Lawmakers made history on Sunday by voting to remove the Mississippi state flag, which was the last in the nation featuring the Confederate battle emblem. Governor Tate Reeves signed the bill into law last night. Adopted 126 years ago, that flag has long been a point of political contention and debate. Many elected officials have spent their whole political lives trying to pull down that flag, but hundreds of bills and initiatives have failed over the course of several decades. The question I’ve been asked most the past couple days: How did this change happen now, in 2020, during an unprecedented legislative session in the midst of a worldwide health pandemic?
Many who deserve credit may never get it because of the work they did behind the scenes. This outcome didn’t come as a result of one moment, one person, or one group. It was this confluence of years of grassroots organizing, civic pressure, and political courage. I’ve never seen Mississippians rally around something so passionately and effectively when it mattered most. This was a wholly democratic process; the Legislature represented the will of the people. It was so beautifully Mississippi, and I’ll never forget it.
I was recently asked about how we saw our role as journalists in this debate. We cover politics, and we avoid partisanship. But unlike any issue we’ve covered, to use a cliché — this wasn’t about right versus left, it was about right versus wrong. I dare to say that this historic movement would have quickly fallen off the legislative agenda, once again, if it were not for the team at Mississippi Today.
We started by listening. One of the focal points of the historic Black Lives Matter protest on June 6 in downtown Jackson was changing the flag. After covering the protest, our team was inspired: With three weeks left in the 2020 legislative session, just what would it take to have the flag removed? Framed with the voices of activists from the protest, we outlined exactly how the Legislature could move forward on a flag change. The very next day, I received a call from a lawmaker who said that he’d read the article and was among a group of House members gathering to discuss changing the flag.
Then we took a chance. Using his tip, we published a story about this backroom, bipartisan conversation at the Capitol to change the flag. While we received sharp criticism from politicos that our story came too soon — before legislators had enough time to whip votes in veiled exchange — we focused on fulfilling our mission of informing and engaging our readers. As we suspected would be the case, our reporting ignited public conversation on the issue. Though the pressure dialed up that week, we were still assured by legislative leaders that there was very little chance of action on the flag in 2020. Hearing that really bothered me, so our politics team met and strategized.
Next we decided to apply some public pressure. We designed a plain and simple tally of where each lawmaker stood on the legislative action regarding the flag, and our political reporters began polling all 174 members. That list was cited in newspapers around the world as attention on the debate grew. Soon after publishing the tally, we followed with a list of municipalities, universities, private businesses and associations that had stopped flying the flag or had publicly called for its removal. That list never stopped growing.
We broke the story on the NCAA ceasing postseason play in Mississippi, and our reporting on SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s denouncement of the flag went viral. Our columnist Rick Cleveland deeply and poignantly covered the influence the sports world had on lawmakers. We developed a survey to gauge the perspectives of everyday Mississippians, and more than 5,000 readers shared their personal position on the flag with us, which further informed our reporting. All the while, our editor at large Marshall Ramsey drew several powerful cartoons about the debate, broadening the reach of our reporting.
Today, we wake up to a better Mississippi because our journalists helped hold legislative leaders accountable and ensure processes were transparent and public-facing. Is this something you can get behind?
I am asking you to dig deep and support a better trajectory for our state: One based on freedom of information, and communities engaged in civic conversation. We provide that, like no other news organization has done before, and our nonprofit newsroom needs your support.
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Mississippi education takes pandemic-fueled budget cuts, no teacher pay raise
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Magee Elementary School teacher Annashi Wyatt works with students as they work on a phonics and phonemic awareness exercise Friday, December 6, 2019.
Mississippi’s K-12 public education is taking a pandemic-fueled budget cut for the coming year under spending approved by lawmakers on Tuesday.
And the coronavirus economic slump forced the Legislature to scrap a teacher pay raise many top officials had promised when they ran for office last year.
Lawmakers adopted an overall $2.2 billion public education budget for the fiscal year that begins Wednesday, a cut of more than $70 million, or 2.7 percent.
The spending shorts the Mississippi Adequate Education Program – a formula that by law is supposed to set minimum funding for schools – by about $250 million. MAEP spending is taking a year-over-year cut of 1.6 percent, or about $37 million.
House Education Chairman Richard Bennett said that given cuts to other agencies due to projected revenue loss from the coronavirus pandemic-fueled economic slump, K-12 fared well.
“MAEP and education took less of a hit than all others,” Bennett said.
Public education advocates appeared to share Bennett’s view that cuts could be worse given the pandemic and economic climate. The Mississippi Department of Education declined comment through a spokeswoman.
In a statement on Monday, the Mississippi Association of School Superintendents said it realizes the impact the pandemic has had on state revenue, and is grateful the current year’s budget for schools didn’t get chopped as well. MASS said it hopes the state economy – and government revenue – will start to turn around in July.
“While most agencies got at least a 5 percent reduction for next year, K-12 was treated very fairly …,” the MASS statement said. “We are pleased that the legislators understand the tremendous struggle that K-12 education is having at this time and prepared our budget accordingly.”
Nancy Loome, director of the Parents Campaign public education advocacy group, also expressed gratitude that cuts aren’t deeper and thanked lawmakers for “mitigating them.”
But Loome said it shouldn’t be lost that “this does underfund our public schools by $250 million” at a time when schools are being asked to cope with safely educating children during the pandemic.
“All of those things cost money, and then they’re being funded less than last year,” Loome said. “I’m not sure how you add teachers to have smaller classrooms to abide by safety guidelines.
“… We’ve been asking our public schools to do more with less for decades,” Loome said.
Bennett and Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson told lawmakers that other money, from the federal coronavirus relief bill, could help ameliorate cuts to public education. Lawmakers are directing millions of the federal money to schools to purchase computers and tablets and to provide internet access to more areas of the largely rural state.
“Hopefully that will fill part of that gap,” Bennett said. “All schools spend money to some extent on technology already, and this would help cover that … Hopefully we’ll see things like getting away from hardback books, going to electronic, which are much cheaper.”
Bennett said public education’s coming expenses and operations, like so many other things, are up in the air with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Projected shortfalls caused lawmakers earlier to scrap a planned teacher pay raise for the coming year that appeared assured of passage before the pandemic hit. It would have given a $1,100 a year raise to teachers in their first three years and $1,000 for others. Mississippi teachers remain among the lowest paid in the nation.
“We just couldn’t do it – conditions wouldn’t allow it,” Bennett said. “We couldn’t put that burden on taxpayers, given everything else going on, people out of work.”
Kelly Riley, director of Mississippi Professional Educators, said: “We appreciate the Legislature not cutting K-12 as significantly as they were forced to cut other agencies. We will continue to work with legislative leaders on a teacher pay raise, as a pay raise is critical to addressing teacher recruitment and retention.”
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Marshall Ramsey: The Moment the Flag Came Down
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After waffling for years, Gov. Tate Reeves signs bill to change state flag
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Tate Reeves prepares during the August 2019 GOP gubernatorial debate at WJTV studios.
Gov. Tate Reeves, who for years refused to take a stance on whether Mississippi should change its state flag, signed a bill that does just that on Tuesday in a private ceremony at the Governor’s Mansion.
“I know there are people of goodwill who are not happy to see this flag change,” Reeves said shortly before signing the bill into law on Tuesday. “They fear a chain reaction of events erasing our history — a history that is no doubt complicated and imperfect. I understand those concerns and am determined to protect Mississippi from that dangerous outcome.”
Reeves continued: “I also understand the need to commit the 1894 flag to history, and find a banner that is a better emblem for all Mississippi… A flag is a symbol of our present, of our people, and of our future. For those reasons, we need a new symbol.”
The signing on Tuesday — a historic moment as the last official step in removing the flag, which was adopted in 1894 and featured the Confederate battle emblem — comes after Reeves isolated himself from both sides of the flag debate.
In all his public statements, including the one he gave shortly before he signed the bill on Tuesday, he equivocated and worked to plant one foot on each side of the debate. Reeves, who has consistently campaigned on not changing the flag except by referendum, refused to answer questions from reporters several times the past month about his personal stance on the flag.
In a June 10 press conference, Reeves dodged four separate questions about whether he felt the flag represented all Mississippians and should be changed.
“I believe that at some point people will want to change the flag, but it should be done by a vote of the people, not by a vote of politicians doing a backroom deal in Jackson,” Reeves said at the time. “I believe that if we’re going to have real change in our state, we’ve got to deal with the issue of the flag in such a way in which all Mississippians can come together at the end, rally around one another with whatever decision is made and work together to make a better Mississippi.”
After the Legislature passed the bill to change the state flag on Sunday, people close with Reeves have been privately telling some of the state’s top business leaders that the governor deserves credit for whipping the Senate votes necessary to remove the flag. Several Senate leaders scoffed at that notion, telling Mississippi Today the governor played no role in the effort.
On Sunday, shortly after the bill was signed in both chambers, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said he had not talked to Reeves on the historic weekend when lawmakers voted to remove the flag. When a reporter asked House Speaker Philip Gunn if he had spoken with Reeves over the weekend, Gunn paused a beat and simply replied: “No.”
During the debate, Reeves effectively earned the ire of both the hardcore supporters of the flag and the most outspoken critics of the banner.
“Tate Reeves is moved by money, not morality,” said Lea Campbell, the president of the Mississippi Rising Coalition, a group that actively lobbied lawmakers to change the flag. “So when this became an issue about economics, he caved. As long as he’s been a Mississippi politician, Reeves has demonstrated his commitment to defending the symbols of white supremacy and the systems that enforce it because it has been financially beneficial for him and his allies. The flag issue is no different.”
Campbell continued: “He knows that flag symbolizes the system of white supremacy and all the oppression, violence and terror used to enforce it, and he’s OK with that. What he and his allies weren’t OK with is losing money. The only thing that moves white supremacy is power and money. If he didn’t change the flag, he stood to lose both.”
On Saturday morning, as lawmakers arrived to the Capitol to vote on the procedural motion that paved the way for the Sunday flag vote, Reeves released a statement that said he would sign any bill lawmakers sent him.
“We should not be under any illusion that a vote in the Capitol is the end of what must be done — the job before us is to bring the state together and I intend to work night and day to do it,” Reeves posted on Saturday morning. “… No matter where you are…I love you, Mississippi.”
But the governor’s promise to sign the bill was met with scorn from legislative leaders, as their proposal to remove the flag passed both the House and Senate by more than the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto, had the governor opted to try to block the bill from becoming law.
Upon the release of that Saturday statement and as lawmakers began to vote, pro-flag Mississippians blasted Reeves on social media, saying they regretted voting for him in 2019 and swearing to ensure he would not be re-elected in 2023.
Several popular Facebook groups — like the Mississippians to Keep the Flag of 1894 — have effectively turned into an anti-Tate Reeves pages, posting memes and statements like: “We need to nail Governor Tate Reeves to the wall, we are being betrayed, he is telling us our vote does not count. WHO ELECTED TATE REEVES and WHY DID WE ELECT HIM?… GIVE HIM HELL BEFORE BREAKFAST, BEFORE LUNCH and BEFORE SUPPER.”
“I am disappointed in Gov. Reeves,” said George Bond, the chairman of the Coalition to Save the State Flag. “The people of the state of Mississippi voted for him due to the fact he campaigned on his beliefs that any change to the flag would be sent to the people. He may try to hide behind the fact that technically we do get to decide on the flag design in November, but that design is forced upon us by the Legislature.”
Bond continued: “It’s basically like saying, ‘You can have whatever you want, as long as it’s this.’ That is a shame.”
As House and Senate leaders worked during recent days to garner the legislative votes to change the flag, Reeves seemed to flounder on how to deal with the volatile issue. He called a meeting with five of the other seven statewide elected officials to gauge their feelings on the issue. Hosemann and Attorney General Lynn Fitch were not at the meeting.
By the time of the meeting, all of the statewide officials except Reeves and Secretary of State Michael Watson had endorsed removing the old flag, though most did not say whether it should be done by a vote of the people or by the Legislature.
The bill Reeves signed on Tuesday now becomes law. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has 15 days to officially retire the state flag.
A nine-person commission will be appointed to develop a single new design by September, and Mississippi voters will approve or reject that design on the November 2020 ballot. In the meantime, Mississippi will have no official state flag.
The new design “will not include the Confederate battle flag but shall include the words ‘In God We Trust’,” the law reads. Should voters reject that design in November, the commission would present a new option during the 2021 legislative session.
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Mississippi Today sweeps 2020 Green Eyeshades Awards for digital news
Mississippi Today journalists were recognized this week for awards in five categories of digital news by the Green Eyeshades Awards. The Green Eyeshades Awards was established in 1950 to recognize excellence in journalism in the Southeastern United States. This highly competitive awards program is administered by Southern members of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Mississippi Today reporters and reporting teams in criminal justice, education, equity and sports commentary take home 2020 honors.
Deadline Reporting / Online
• Second Place: Mississippi Today – Staff, Immigration Raids in Mississippi
Investigative Reporting / Online
• Second Place: Mississippi Today – Anna Wolfe, Alternative Data
Sports Commentary / Online
• First Place: Mississippi Today – Rick Cleveland, Sports Columns by Rick Cleveland
Business Reporting / Online
• First Place: Mississippi Today – Anna Wolfe, Jobs, Poverty and the Mississippi Economy
Public Service in Online Journalism
• Second Place: Mississippi Today and The Hechinger Report – Aallyah Wright, Kelsey Davis, Eric Shelton, Mississippi’s Teacher Shortage Crisis
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