Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
President Donald Trump greets Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves during a rally at BancorpSouth Arena in Tupelo, Miss., Friday, November 1, 2019.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday praised President Donald Trump’s executive order to continue to supplement unemployment money for those out of work from the pandemic.
But Reeves noted Mississippi might not be able to pay its matching share. He said Congress needs to break its stalemate and pass a COVID-19 relief bill that states and taxpayers can afford.
In a move that had politicians on both sides of the aisle questioning whether Trump was overstepping his constitutional authority, he announced an order Saturday that would provide unemployed people an additional $400 a week. This comes after the $600 a week Congress approved early in the pandemic expired.
But Trump’s order would mandate states provide $100 of that $400 a week. Reeves said this would cost Mississippi about $21 million to $23 million a week, roughly doubling what it is paying in state unemployment insurance benefits currently.
“We have not made a decision yet if we will participate,” said Reeves, who has been in running battles with the state Legislature over his own constitutional authority to spend state money, even during a crisis.
Reeves said that even with a recent infusion of $181 million in coronavirus relief funds the Legislature appropriated for the state’s unemployment trust fund, the fund would be tapped in short order if the state had to pay its share of the $400 a week. Reeves said the fund currently has about $489 million, down from its more than $700 million before pandemic unemployment hit.
Reeves said he appreciates Trump “trying to step up and help struggling workers.”
“The president acts,” Reeves said. “Members of Congress talk, but the president acts … Through executive order he did all he could do. He stepped up. But now Congress needs to come together.”
Reeves said he and his staff had been in calls with the White House on Monday.
Reeves said he believes he has the authority to decide whether the state would participate in Trump’s unemployment order and to pay the $100 per unemployed worker per week, under emergency powers from the federal Stafford Act.
But Mississippi lawmakers have been challenging Reeves’ spending authority, saying that the state purse strings are the Legislature’s domain.
“Only the Legislature can spend dollars,” House Speaker Philip Gunn said repeatedly on Monday as lawmakers battle with Reeves on other spending issues. Gunn said he had not yet had a chance to study details of the president’s unemployment orders.
Reeves noted the Mississippi’s unemployment numbers are greatly improved, with state unemployment at 8.2 percent, down from a high of more than 22% in April, “making Mississippi seventh in the nation in the number of jobs that have returned since May and June.”
Cohen Trolio (right), with his father V.J. Trollo, at last year’s U.S. Amateur in Pinehurst, N.C.
Teen-aged golf sensation Cohen Trolio of West Point was supposed to tee off Monday in the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Bandon, Ore.
Instead, Trolio and his father/caddy, renowned golf instructor V.J. Trolio, were making the 2,550-mile, cross-continent trip back to Mississippi in a rental car.
Cohen Trolio, who remarkably made the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur last year at age 17, tested positive for COVID-19 and had to withdraw from this year’s tournament.
Rick Cleveland
He got the news on Friday night. On Saturday, he turned 18. Happy Birthday, Cohen.
“It’s all right,” Cohen Trolio said in phone conversation as he and his father were approaching Wichita, roughly two/thirds of the way home. “Nothing the USGA or I could do about it – just following the rules.”
The United States Golf Association (USGA) required two tests for all participants, including caddies: one, before leaving their hometowns to make the trip; and two, upon arriving at Bandon Dunes. Both Trolios tested negative for COVID in West Point last week. At Bandon Dunes, Cohen Trolio tested positive, while his father tested negative.
Cohen Trolio said he feels fine and has shown no symptoms. He already is eligible for next year’s U.S. Amateur at famed Oakmont Country Club in Pennsylvania because of his semi-final berth in the 2019 championship.
“That’s nice,” he said. “Makes me feel a little better.”
His dad was more philosophical.
“This is just one of those things that happens when you are trying to play championship golf in a pandemic,” V.J. Trolio deadpanned.
“We’re disappointed, obviously,” V.J. Trolio said. “We were told that of all the 250 or so entrants, just two tested positive. Cohen was one of the lucky two. That’s life. The USGA did a great job. We have no complaints about anything where the USGA is concerned. This is just the world we live in right now. This stuff is real.”
Following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, the Trolios were left with two choices: quarantine for nearly two weeks in Oregon or find private transportation home, being careful not to expose anyone.
“No restaurants or anything like that,” said V.J. Trolio, who said the rest of his family is quarantining at home in West Point.
Before last year, no Mississippian had ever advanced to the quarterfinals of the national amateur championship.
The Golf Channel
Jim Gallagher, Jr.
“Man, how amazing is this for Mississippi golf?” Golf Channel announcer and former prominent PGA Tour player Jim Gallagher of Greenwood said at the time. “… It’s amazing how junior golf in Mississippi has changed. We’ve got better courses and better instruction and what you’re seeing at Pinehurst is all the proof you need.”
Cohen Trolio’s instructor, since he was little more than a toddler, has been his dad.
“He’s my man,” Cohen Trolio said last year after his quarterfinals victory. “He’s got my back.”
Cohen Trolio finished 25th in the prestigious Sunnehanna Amateur in July, shooting rounds of 71, 67, 70 and 69 in Johnstown, Pa. He said he was playing his best golf of the summer leading into this week’s event at Bandon Dunes.
“I was driving the ball well, playing the best I have all year,” he said. “I had worked hard. I thought I was ready. Of course, it’s golf and you never know, but I felt really good about it. I was as ready as I could be.”
Several of the finalists selected by the state flag commission.
The nine-member commission tasked with choosing one design for the new Mississippi state flag announced 147 finalists on Monday after viewing nearly 3,000 submissions.
The Mississippi Legislature, after decades of debate, voted to remove the 1894 state flag with its divisive Confederate battle emblem. The legislation it passed created the commission to choose a new flag to put before voters on the Nov. 3 ballot. Voters can either approve or reject the new design. If they reject it, the commission will go back to the drawing board and present another design to voters next year.
Next, the nine members of the commission will rank their top 10 choices. In their next meeting on Aug. 14, the members will select five flags for final consideration.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Former U.S. States Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy speaks during Jim Hood’s watch party at Duling Hall in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, August 6, 2019.
If Democrat Mike Espy catches lightning in a bottle in November, he could make history as the first Black Mississippian elected to the U.S. Senate in the modern era. If he does not, his campaign could at least serve as a primer for future statewide candidates.
Espy is running a statewide race like no other Mississippi Democrat has. In the past, Mississippi Democrats — at least those with a puncher’s chance of winning — ran from national Democrats. Espy is not.
Espy, who is challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Nov. 3 election, was the featured speaker recently in a videoconference conducted by the campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on racial equality in rural America. Espy was asked to participate because he represented the mostly rural Mississippi Delta as a member of Congress and because he served as U.S. secretary of agriculture.
At the event, he spoke glowingly of Biden.
“I know Joe Biden has the capacity, the empathy, the experience and the knowledge to return this nation to some sense of normalcy,” Espy said. “That is what we need.”
Juxtapose such an event with former Attorney General Jim Hood’s 2019 race for governor. On election eve, the Hood campaign quietly released a telephone endorsement from former President Barack Obama targeted to Black Mississippians. That entire election year, the Hood campaign worried that an endorsement from Obama might hurt the candidate with certain white voters they needed to swing their way.
Then there was the 2008 special Senate election. That year, Democrat Ronnie Musgrove was viewed by many as trying to distance himself from Obama, then the Democratic presidential nominee. Roger Wicker, the Republican Senate candidate, even ran radio advertising in Black communities pointing out Musgrove’s perceived aversion to Obama. Wicker, of course, did not endorse Obama. He just claimed that Musgrove was not wholeheartedly endorsing him, though Musgrove made it clear he was voting for Obama.
Election after election, Democrats have tried to walk that same tightrope in Mississippi.
And it wasn’t just Obama. Mississippi Democrats running statewide also have avoided Bill and Hillary Clinton and other national Democrats.
For a statewide Mississippi candidate, there may be good reason not to be chummy with national Democrats. Since 1960, the Democratic presidential candidate has won the state just once — in 1976 when fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter eked out a victory.
Remember, during most of those years, nearly all officeholders in Mississippi were Democrats, but they were far from liberals who aligned politically with national Democrats. It was no accident that when Michael Dukakis made his speech at the Neshoba County Fair in 1988, he was introduced as the presidential nominee of “the national Democratic Party.”
But this year, Espy has surveyed the landscape and opted to pursue a new strategy. After all, the old strategy has not worked in recent history, with the exception of Hood’s four-term hold on the office of attorney general before deciding in 2019 to run for governor.
Espy is quick to say that if elected he will work with whomever the president is to try to help Mississippi, but he is hitching his campaign wagon to Joe Biden and thus to national Democrats.
To a degree, Espy flirted with this new strategy in the 2018 special election when he challenged Hyde-Smith, an interim senator tabbed by then-Gov. Phil Bryant to replace Thad Cochran, who resigned for health reasons.
That year, California Sen. Kamala Harris, the front-runner to be selected as Biden’s running mate, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and other national Democrats visited the state to campaign for Espy. Harris was quick to add during her visit that Espy was much more conservative than she was, but said she still believed he would be the best candidate to represent Mississippi in the Senate.
In that 2018 special election, Espy won 420,819 votes, or 46.4%. A year later in the race for governor, the Democratic Hood won 414,368 votes, or 47.85%.
In 2008, Musgrove garnered 560,064 votes, or 45%, against Wicker in the Senate race, while Obama captured 554,663, or 43%, against Republican John McCain.
No matter how you view it, Espy in 2018, Hood in 2019 and Musgrove in 2008 garnered similar vote tallies. Musgrove’s results were skewed because his election occurred during a presidential year when voter participation is higher, but the bottom line is there were three elections with basically the same results. There are currently no statewide elected Democrats in Mississippi.
Espy is banking on a new strategy for a different result. His campaign, if nothing else, will be instructive for future Mississippi Democrats.
But if he does not outperform Musgrove in the 2008 election, the question for Democrats might be: Can any strategy work for them in the foreseeable future?
We are quickly warming up this morning with current temperatures in the mid to upper 70’s. More heat and humidity is expected today with a high near 96 and heat indices ranging from 100-105 degrees later today! We will be mostly sunny with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph. Tonight will be partly cloudy, with a low around 74.
When Angie Thomas got word she had won an award from Mississippi, she was shocked.
Not only did the award from the Mississippi Institute for Arts and Letters mean more because it was homegrown, it was also for a book she knows makes readers uncomfortable — especially readers in traditionally white, Southern spaces.
“It means a lot more because I recognize that I connected with a number of people through my words, people that I may not have necessarily thought I would have connected with,” Thomas told Mississippi Today. “And it makes me check myself too and recognize that I put biases on people here, and I make assumptions here. I don’t want people to do the same to me, so I gotta stop doing that when it comes to my work and stop assuming that certain types of people wouldn’t read it.”
“So when I got word that I got that award for a book about a rapper, I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ … I’m very appreciative for it. I think this is the one I’m probably most proud of, of all the awards I’ve gotten, because it does come from home.”
In “On the Come Up,” — her 2019 follow-up to the debut bestseller “The Hate U Give” — we meet Bri, a 16-year-old rapper who harkens back to Thomas’s own foray into writing verse, then eventually prose. The book echoes themes prevalent in Thomas’s first book but on a micro scale and shows us how one of our culture’s bedrock principles, that young people should be free to express themselves, doesn’t always apply to young women like Bri. For her, rapping is a way to make sense of and work through the cycle of poverty, violence and addiction that has ravaged her family and others around her. But, to the authority figures in her life, it’s just violent noise that needs to be silenced.
The novel also pays homage to Thomas’s hometown of Jackson — from the scenes taking place at Midtown Arts High School and Sal’s pizza spot to the protagonist’s surname. (Watch, too, for the Outkast and “Black Panther” references.)
Angie Thomas’s second bestselling novel, “On The Come Up” about 16-year-old rapper Bri, won Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters’ 2020 award for Youth Literature. Of the recognition from her home state, she said it means more than other awards because it “comes from home” for a book that challenges the Mississippi status-quo.
Other references to Mississippi are more sobering, reflecting some of the time’s most heated debates. Bri’s attempts to navigate a mostly white charter school highlights the state’s ongoing school-choice debate, while the book also touches on the social and environmental determinants of health, the social safety net, educational disparities and racial profiling.
As her books challenge the status-quo, Thomas, too, has been vocal about her complicated relationship with Mississippi.
“It’s definitely a complex relationship in the sense where I’m always looking for hope in Mississippi, and I’m always getting disappointed by Mississippi. But, I can’t give up on it because there is so much good here,” she said. “There’s so much good here aside from the bad.”
That’s both why this award catches her differently from the others and provides another impetus to dig in here while focusing on cultivating joy and giving back.
That giving back has changed the life of 18-year-old Jackson native Imani Skipwith who, thanks to a new scholarship in Thomas’s name from her alma mater, is attending Jackson’s Belhaven University’s creative writing program on a four-year full-ride scholarship.
Though she realized she wanted to be a writer in middle school, it wasn’t until a teacher at the Mississippi School for the Arts, where she transferred after 11 years at Jackson Public Schools, helped cultivate her skillset and encouraged her to start a portfolio of her poetry and short stories. Despite “finding inspiration in quarantine” over the past year, Skipwith still doubted herself and her work and was unsure what pursuing a creative writing career would even look like. Until she got a Zoom call — that she thought was family calling in for her high school graduation party — from Angie Thomas in April.
Belhaven University
Imani Skipwith, 18, of Jackson visits Belhaven University after being chosen as the inaugural winner of the Angie Thomas Writers Scholarship, which covers tuition, room and board for four years. Skipwith, already an award-winning writer, will study creative writing.
“Winning this did something,” she said. “It’s something solid I can grab on to.” Of Thomas’s support, she said: “Her work can validate other people — no matter where you come from, no matter what you do, you can get somewhere. This scholarship will help (young people) find self-love and help them in their journey. It’s such a weight off to know someone is in your corner.” In the midst of getting the award herself, she’s already excited for future recipients to share in Thomas-driven Belhaven support system.
Despite her self-doubt that’s slowly growing into self-confidence, she says, Skipwith’s work packs punches while balancing both weight and light. She writes about mental illness and oppression in heavy, but deeply self-aware, ways for a young writer. Through scenes like alternative history narratives of the Vietnam War and sci-fi prose, her writing is bright with emotion and clamors with symbolism, while still begging grounded questions of equity and fairness. Thomas couldn’t help but be impressed after reviewing Skipwith’s portfolio and, upon choosing her work on a blind-read to win the scholarship, told her, “You did this and God did this. I’m just helping you out.”
For Skipwith, the scholarship is two-fold, plus some. The financial support is key — not having to take out loans means she won’t start her writing career in debt and any extra savings in her household can go toward helping her 10-year-old sister save up for college. But, equally important, says Skipwith, is the validation and support that comes from knowing Thomas is in her corner.
“For Angie to get to know me, for her to tell me I’m a good writer — this will become a reaching point for people like me,” Skipwith said. “I cried so hard when I found out, and it’s just a way to break away from everything (negative) you heard.”
Imani Khayyam
Angie Thomas, bestselling author
For Thomas, that emotional support piece is pivotal — and too often missing, especially for young girls that look like her, she says. She did have to take out loans to pay for Belhaven and was all too aware of the lacking diversity in her program at the time. She said the emotional weight of not feeling like she fit in at first compiled upon the financial hardship. She was one of the only students from Jackson — on a Jackson campus — and the first Black young person to graduate from the creative writing program.
“If any of this validates her in any way, I’m so thrilled. Honestly it is important for young people to have that going into college. I think about it — had I had that when I was entering Belhaven in the creative writing program, my experience probably would have been a whole lot different because I was so afraid of, ‘Well what if I’m not good enough, or what if this or what if that?” and validation plays a huge role in all of this. For me, a big part of what I do is giving back to others — instilling in others either what I received or what I didn’t receive,” Thomas said.
“That’s one of the things, validating young writers and letting them know that the stories they want to tell matter. Their voices matter. Their dreams matter, just as much as their lives. If I can even be a footnote in (Skipwith’s) writing legacy or another young person’s writing legacy, then I’ve accomplished mine.”
Thomas hopes the annual scholarship will help give hope to Jackson’s young people, who might not have been supported in their writing and who need help making college work financially. But, too, knowing that there are support systems out there.
“The stress of (loans) is not something any young person should have to deal with when deciding to get a higher education, but that’s the reality we live in. And, specifically young people in Mississippi — so often they deal with other hardships, and I really wanted to reach out to young people in schools that were in the area where they may be dealing with a lot of financial hardship,” she said. “There are kids in Jackson right now who have never seen a skyscraper and there are skyscrapers in downtown Jackson. They’ve never been downtown, never seen an alleyway, never seen anything beyond their neighborhood. And, so, when they don’t see beyond, they don’t know beyond.”
Sereena Henderson / Mississippi Today
Author Angie Thomas (left) takes a picture with one of her fans, Joyce Lawson at a celebration given for Thomas, hosted by the city of Jackson at the Two Mississippi Museums Oct. 10, 2018.
For Thomas, it all comes back to the homegrown recognition for a book written for and to young people of color telling them, “You’ve got this.”
“I hope that it tells young people who identify with my books that they matter here in Mississippi too, that their stories matter here in Mississippi, that a book written to them is getting an award like this,” she says. “I hope it validates them and their existence even a little bit more to know that, yeah, even when there’s an award for literature, a story about a young person like you can get that award. That means you’re worthy, that means you matter, that means your story matters.”
Angie Thomas’s third novel “Concrete Rose,” a prequel to “The Hate U Give,” will be released January 12, 2021 by HarperCollins.
More than a half century later, four members of the 1962 SEC Championship track and field team kneel in front of their team photo. The four are from left to right: Malcolm Balfour, Jimmy Taylor, Bob Morrison and Mike Sanders.
You couldn’t make up Grammy-winning song writer Bob Morrison’s life story, but then there’s no need for that. Morrison has lived it – all of it – and can tell it. He could write a song about it and sing it, too, and we’ll get to that.
Such a story…
About how he was born and raised in Biloxi with sand between his toes and music in his ears. About how his daddy, who operated juke boxes all over the Gulf Coast, brought home hundreds of records – music from all genres, which he listened to at length. About how a handsome young fellow drove his Cadillac down from Memphis to perform and how that that guy with the slicked-back hair stole the hearts of all the young Biloxi girls.
Rick Cleveland
About how Morrison was inspired. “Mama, I need me one of those guitars like Elvis,” young Morrison said.
About how his mama bought him “the worst guitar in the world” when he was 14, and how he began to teach himself to play.
About how he was “always good at math and science” – and also athletics. About how he grew long and lean and fast. About how he won the half mile in the state high school track meet. About how he was recruited to Mississippi State to run track and field and how he majored in – get this – nuclear engineering. About how he was one of several sophomores who helped State win its first and still-only Southeastern Conference track and field championship in 1962. About how he and some friends, including track teammates, formed a band and played fraternity house gigs for spending money.
“We didn’t make anybody forget The Beatles, but we did make a few bucks, and we did have some fun,” Morrison said Wednesday on his 78th birthday.
There’s so much more…
About how he never really used that hard-earned nuclear engineering degree, because “my heart just wasn’t in it,” Morrison said.
Courtesy of Bob Morrison
Bob Morrison has persevered and succeeded as a song writer.
About how he wanted to make music his life and how he struggled for years to make that dream come true. He performed solo as a folk singer. He moved to New York City to try and make his mark there – and didn’t. On his agent’s advice, he moved to Hollywood in 1967, signed a contract with Screen Gems and made a pilot TV show that nobody bought. About how Screen Gems let him go.
About how he moved to Nashville in 1973, began to concentrate on writing songs and experienced far more failure than success at the beginning.
“My first 100 songs were turned down; nobody wanted them and I thought I was going to crash and burn,” Morrison said.
In retrospect, Morrison says, “I think I was always a good writer. I just had to learn to write Nashville songs.”
In other words, he needed to learn to tell stories, and he did.
His first “hit” was “The River’s Too Wide,” recorded by Olivia Newton John. That was 1975. “After that, I was rockin’ and rollin’,” Morrison said.
Yes, he was. He was ASCAP’s (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) Country Songwriter of the Year in 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1982. His and Debbie Huff’s Grammy-winning “You Decorated My Life” became a No. 1 hit for Kenny Rogers. Meanwhile, in Gulfport, two school teachers and aspiring song writers, Patti Ryan and Wanda Mallette, saw Morrison on TV accepting his Grammy for that song. They sent Morrison some of their songs, and he at first rejected them. They sent him some more songs – better songs – and one of those was “Lookin’ for Love.” Morrison saw promise in that one. So he revised some of the lyrics, cut the bridge in half and slightly altered the chorus medley.
Morrison says the song was turned down by various artists more than 20 times before he gave a cassette to an old Hollywood friend, who dropped it off at Paramount Pictures, which was filming “Urban Cowboy,” starring John Travolta. “Lookin’ for Love,” recorded by Johnny Lee, became the theme song of the hit movie and then became a No. 1 country music hit and rose to No. 5 on the pop charts.
“You gotta know what you’re doing but you also have to have a little luck,” Morrison said of all the happenstance involved in that one song.
Morrison also has written songs recorded by the likes of Conway Twittiy, Barbara Mandrell, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gary Morris, The Carpenters, the Oak Ridge Boys, Bobby Vinton, Highway 101 and Bobby Goldsboro, among many others. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016.
Says fellow Mississippi songwriter and performer Tricia Walker of Cleveland: “When I first moved to Nashville to pursue song writing, the first person on my radar was Bob Morrison. He was the gold standard for writers and he was a Mississippian, which was encouraging for me.”
Morrison is well-remembered by his Mississippi State track teammates, including Jimmy Taylor, his roommate for four years, who later became a successful college basketball coach and then a banker.
“Bob is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, could have done anything he wanted,” Taylor said. “I’ll bet he didn’t tell you he once scored 44 points in a high school basketball game or that he could out-kick the guys who were punting for the Mississippi State football team.”
Morrison played a key role in State winning that SEC track and field championship in 1962. State went to the meet in Baton Rouge as a dark horse, rated behind perennial champion LSU and Auburn. The Bulldogs’ chances were hurt early in the meet when Mike Sanders, one of the team’s top runners, pulled a hamstring. Sanders, for whom the track facility at State is named, was the anchor on State’s mile relay team. As fate would have it, the championship came down to the mile relay. State had to finish ahead of LSU to win the title. Morrison, who normally was a half-miler, was moved into the Sanders’ anchor position.
“We had a big lead when I got the baton, but I still had to finish ahead of LSU’s anchor man who was a lot faster than I was,” Morrison remembers. “My strategy was to burn it up the first 200 meters and pray the last 200 that I could hold on. Somehow, I did. We didn’t win the event, but we finished third and we finished ahead of LSU.”
Just as he would in song writing, Morrison persevered and succeeded.
Fifty-eight years later, that championship is the only SEC track and field team title State has ever won.
•••
Cleveland’s Grammy Museum will feature Bob Morrison in a live-streamed event August 17 as part of its Words and Music series. Details here.
Good Sunday morning everyone! Temperatures are in the mid 70s this morning, under mostly clear skies. There will be plenty of sunshine today with a high near 96! It will be hot and humid feeling like 100°F though. Calm wind becoming southwest around 5 mph in the afternoon. There is a very limited chance of rain and most everyone will stay dry. Tonight will be mostly clear, with a low around 74. Southwest wind around 5 mph.
