OurTupelo

Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs, left, confers with Burl Cain, the former warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, on May 20, 2020. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Before Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Wednesday that he had appointed Burl Cain, the 77-year-old former warden of the notorious Angola State Prison in Louisiana, as the commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, he’d been handed a list of three finalists.

Reeves appointed a seven-member committee in January to conduct a national search and help him pick the next prisons chief. In total, the committee received about 55 applications for the job, said Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs, the chairman of the search committee.

The committee narrowed the applicant pool down to three finalists, including Cain, and sent the names to Reeves.

“Once we gave him the three finalists, we did not have any influence on the process,” Flaggs, a former chair of the state House Corrections Committee, told Mississippi Today this week. “But I stand behind the work of the committee and the governor’s prerogative to appoint whomever he wanted.”

Reeves’ selection of Cain to oversee the troubled Mississippi Department of Corrections was met with criticism by many this week. Cain, whose controversial corrections career has regularly garnered national headlines, resigned his post in Louisiana in 2015 after allegations that he misused public funds.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections has been plagued for years by scandal. The department received national attention in 2013 after the conviction and sentence of 20 years for then-Commissioner Chris Epps, who received bribes to award contracts to private vendors. 

Earlier this year, the department faced national scrutiny for outbreaks of violence inside state prisons. Since Reeves was inaugurated in January, at least three dozen inmates have died in state custody.

“We cannot rush the critical job of finding a new commissioner for the Department of Corrections,” Reeves said when announcing the search committee in January, as the outbreak of violence inside the state’s prisons had spurred massive protests and lawsuits from national celebrities. “We must get this right for the people of Mississippi. I am turning to my fellow Mississippians to help me in this mission.”

Serving with Flaggs on the search committee were Leake County Sheriff Greg Waggoner, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, Harrison County District Attorney Joel Smith, former Parole Board member Kathy Henry, Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing and Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge Sean Tindell.

Mississippi law requires that the prisons commissioner have a bachelor’s degree. Flaggs said about 50 of the 55 applicants met that qualification. 

“I was surprised by the number of applicants, good applicants,” Flaggs said.

Each of the seven committee members selected a top five from that large pool of candidates, with the top choice of a committee member receiving five points, the second choice receiving four points and so forth.

Based on the total points received from all committee members, five finalists were selected. One of the original five finalists dropped out during the process, Flaggs said, and the committee agreed to add one more candidate whose resume was lost for a time.

Those final five were interviewed virtually by the committee. Tindell, whom Reeves also announced as commissioner of Public Safety on Wednesday, conducted most of the questioning of the finalists.

The committee then voted again on a top three, and those three names were sent to Reeves. As chair, Flaggs said he did not participate in the final vote for the top three.

Flaggs said he could not reveal the names of the other two finalists, and several others close to the search declined to identify the other two finalists. Flaggs offered no comment on the selection of Cain other than to say he was chosen through a fair process.

“I would not change anything about it,” Flaggs said. He said he did not know the governor’s selection for the post until he attended Wednesday’s news conference where Reeves announced Cain.

“I did not know who it was until I saw Burl Cain getting out of the car right before the announcement,” he said.

In 2017, a Louisiana legislative watchdog audit found that 10 corrections employees performed work on Cain’s private residence — and some apparently while being paid by the state. The audit also claimed that while warden of Angola, Cain received other free benefits such as free appliances and flat screen televisions (totaling $27,000) and lodging at Angola for his relatives.

Cain also was accused of conflicts of interest for some real estate deals. He received national attention because of claims he reduced violence and crime at Angola by, in part, incorporating his Christian philosophy into the prison. Others criticized him for enacting harsh punishments into a prison already notorious throughout the nation.

Flanked by Reeves in a press conference on Wednesday, Cain maintained he did nothing wrong in Louisiana and said that at the time of the audit, he had actually helped grow Angola’s revenue through a prison rodeo that had gained national attention.

“I think what is important is those allegations were unfounded,” Cain said on Wednesday. “There was no crime committed. What we have to do is avoid the hint of impropriety. We will continue to do that. I have done that throughout my career.”

For his part, Reeves downplayed the allegations and doubled down on his support for Cain this week.

“The search committee was aware of the allegations. I was personally aware of the allegations,” Reeves said on Wednesday. “We did extensive research, and it seems like that once the politics were removed the accusations were basically dropped.”

Reeves continued: “I have absolute full confidence in Burl Cain’s ability to change the culture at the Department of Corrections. I have absolute confidence he will do so in a manner to make Mississippians proud. I have zero reservations about appointing him.”

The post How Gov. Tate Reeves picked Burl Cain, the controversial former Angola warden, to oversee Mississippi prisons appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Ole Miss athletics

Ben Williams was elected Colonel Rebel in 1976. Here he is pictured with Barbara Biggs, who was Miss Ole Miss.

Forty-four years later, the photograph seems about as non-controversial as can be.

It was snapped in the spring of 1976. Ben Williams, the history-making football star from Yazoo City, had been elected Colonel Rebel, the since-retired equivalent of Mr. Ole Miss. He was the first black Colonel Rebel in the school’s history. Barbara Biggs, a biology major from Jackson and future doctor, had been elected Miss Ole Miss.

The photo was taken for – and appeared in – the university’s annual, “Ole Miss.”

Williams died Monday. He was 65.

Rick Cleveland

But at the time, Barbara Biggs could never have guessed the controversy the photo would cause. Not long after the yearbook published, the letters began arriving.

“I had multiple threats, even death threats,” Biggs said Tuesday from her home in Kennesaw, Ga., near Atlanta. “I really couldn’t believe it. I had one letter from California with a clipping from a racist underground newspaper with a story about the photo. Then a note that said something like, ‘What would your forefathers have thought?’ Just unbelievable. All that because of a photograph.”

“Ben was such a nice, very nice, man,” said Biggs. “I was so sorry to hear he had passed.”

“I knew Ben before the photo was taken, but we weren’t close friends or anything,” Biggs said. “I was – and am – a big football fan so I knew about Ben and about what a great player he was. He was also an outstanding fellow, so down to earth.”

Biggs and Williams had entered Ole Miss at the same time, in 1972, but from quite different backgrounds. She was an Ole Miss legacy and the granddaughter of Mississippi governor Martin S. “Mike” Conner, also the first commissioner of the Southeastern Conference.

Williams was the first African American to play football at Ole Miss. The son of sharecroppers and the oldest of six children, he arrived on the Ole Miss campus as a 17-year-old, the first in his family to attend college.

Williams’ election was a point of controversy at the time. The title was given for the school’s mascot: a cartoonish, aged white man in Confederate garb who many said represented a plantation owner and perpetuated racist symbolism of the Old South. The university officially removed the mascot in 2003, and it changed the title of its most popular elected male to “Mr. Ole Miss” in 2013.

“To be sure, (Williams’) election presented challenges to white sensibilities,” historian Frank Lambert wrote in his 2009 book “The Battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights vs. States’ Rights.” “How can a black man and a white woman be photographed together without confirming the segregationist fears of race-mixing and amalgamation?”

Ole Miss athletics

Ben Williams.

The photograph was taken in a country setting, Williams on one side of a wooden fence, Biggs on the other. The two are not touching. The photograph takes up an entire page of the annual, page 237. Biggs and Williams are pictured individually on preceding pages for being selected for the Ole Miss Hall of Fame and Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities.

Linda Williams, Ben’s widow, said her husband never mentioned anything about a racist backlash to the photo.

“But he wouldn’t,” Linda Williams said. “He would just let it go right over his head. He wouldn’t pay any attention to it. My husband was a loving man. He loved everybody.”

Biggs said little, if any, of the hate mail or other negative reaction about the photo came from anyone on the Oxford campus. “Everyone I knew at Ole Miss loved Ben,” she said.

Michael Sweet, an Ole Miss football teammate of Williams’ and now the director of ministries at Gateway Rescue Mission in Jackson, well remembers when the annual published.

“Oh yeah,” Sweet said. “We used to tease Ben about that. We said, ‘Man, Ben, they got you two on different sides of the fence. Why you reckon they did that?’”

But Sweet, who will deliver the eulogy at Williams’ funeral Saturday afternoon, said that Williams was fiercely proud of being elected Colonel Rebel by his fellow Ole Miss students. “As well he should have been,” Sweet said. “Ben loved Ole Miss.”

Linda Williams was at the Ole Miss reunion of former Colonel Rebels and Miss Ole Miss winners in 2008. “That was such a good time,” she said. “Ben enjoyed reuniting with Barbara and I did, too.”

Biggs, too, fondly recalled the reunion.

“Again, Ben couldn’t have been nicer,” Biggs said. “My kids (now 21-year-old twins) were with me and were so excited about meeting the big football star. He spent a great deal of time with them and was just wonderful with my kids.”

Hate mail – even death threats – over a photograph probably sounds far-fetched to young people today. But this was 1976, only 14 years after James Meredith became the first black student at Ole Miss amid a riot quelled by thousands of federal troops.

Said Biggs, “It’s amazing how far we’ve come from what really wasn’t that long ago.”

•••

A fund to help allay mounting expenses for Linda Williams, Ben Williams’ widow, has been established. The couple lost their home in a fire last autumn, and their rental home, where they had moved, flooded in February. Ben’s failing health in recent years also has resulted in enormous expense.

Donations can be sent to to First Commercial Bank, 1300 Meadowbrook Road, Jackson, MS 39211, Attn.: Sam Lane. Checks can be made payable to Linda Williams.

The post There’s a story behind this 44-year-old photo of ‘Colonel Reb’ and Miss Ole Miss appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post COVID-19 data: U.S. map appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Illness onset refers to the date when a patient with a confirmed case actually started getting sick. The metric can offer a better trend gauge than number of new cases due to reporting delay, but has its own shortcomings because most, but not all, known cases are reported.

Up until the last full week in April, the number of COVID illnesses starting on any given day peaked on April 6 with 174 people reported first having symptoms. Since then, the peak has moved toward the tail of the graph, meaning more recent, and jumped higher — in addition to clustering with other high points. As of the last weekend in April, for the first time, this chart shows most cases ever in the past few days, on April 20 at 214, and the two next highest points in the last two weeks as well — a departure from previous trends. Both single day reports and averaging the number of illnesses weekly show variability without a steady downward trend.

The post COVID-19 data: Illness onset appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post COVID-19 data: Hospitalizations appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Rogelio V. Solis / Associated Press

Burl Cain responds to a reporter’s question after being introduced by Gov. Tate Reeves as the new commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections during his daily coronavirus update for media in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, May 20, 2020. Cain was warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which is commonly known as Angola, for 21 years.

Gov. Tate Reeves announced on Wednesday that he appointed Burl Cain, the longtime warden of the Angola State Prison who resigned in 2015 after newspaper reports questioned his business and real estate dealings, to oversee the troubled Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Reeves said he selected Cain, the 77 year old who gained a national reputation for incorporating his Christian theology into the fabric of the notorious Louisiana prison, after a nationwide search because of his track record of reducing violence and crime at Angola.

The appointment comes after the Mississippi prison system was rocked in 2013 with a scandal resulting in the conviction and sentence of 20 years for then-Commissioner Chris Epps, who received bribes to award contracts to private vendors.

It also comes after a 2020 outbreak of violence inside Mississippi prisons that resulted in the deaths of dozens of state inmates since the beginning of the calendar year. Reeves himself indicated in January that more recent misspending had occurred in the department’s leadership ranks.

“I promise to do a great gob to help the Department of Corrections and do the four components that are essential to having a good prison: have good food, good playing, good praying and good medicine,” Cain said on Wednesday at a press conference with Reeves.

Cain was a controversial figure in Louisiana. An audit by the Louisiana legislature found that 10 corrections employees performed work on Cain’s private residence — and some apparently while being paid by the state.

The audit also claimed that while warden of Angola, Cain received other free benefits such as free appliances and flat screen televisions (totaling $27,000) and lodging at Angola for his relatives.

Cain pointed out on Wednesday he was not charged with any crime.

“I think what is important is those allegations were unfounded,” Cain said on Wednesday. “There was no crime committed. What we have to do is avoid the hint of impropriety. We will continue to do that. I have done that throughout my career.”

At the time of the 2015 audit, Cain said he did not know any of the state employees were on the clock and that he had spent a significant amount of his own money on the home at Angola before the appliances were purchased with public funds.

Reeves said he knew of the concerns raised in the audit before selecting Cain to oversee the corrections department.

“The search committee was aware of the allegations. I was personally aware of the allegations,” Reeves said on Wednesday. “We did extensive research, and it seems like that once the politics were removed the accusations were basically dropped.”

Reeves continued: “I have absolute full confidence in Burl Cain’s ability to change the culture at the Department of Corrections. I have absolute confidence he will do so in a manner to make Mississippians proud. I have zero reservations about appointing him.”

News of the decision was met with sharp criticism by several elected officials on Wednesday afternoon.

State Rep. Jarvis Dortch, D-Jackson, said he knew of Cain from the Angola rodeo that had received nationwide attention, but began researching him further after the governor’s announcement. In a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon, Dortch specifically highlighted information about the Louisiana Legislature’s audit of Cain.

“I don’t understand how somebody reads that and lets him get past the first interview,” Dortch said. “It does not make any sense. It is hard to explain that one.”

The Mississippi prison system, particularly Parchman State Prison, was the site of riots and violence late in December and early January before Reeves took office after winning the November general election. At least 30 inmates have died in state prisons since the beginning of the calendar year, and most of those deaths occurred at Parchman.

Many inmates and advocacy groups also have voiced opposition to the unsafe and poor conditions throughout the system, and those groups have criticized Reeves’ leadership since he took office in January.

Amid the violence in mid-January, Reeves appointed a committee to conduct a nationwide search to fill the top prisons position. Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs, the chairman of the search committee, said the committee received multiple applications, though he did not give a number.

In corrections circles, Cain is well known nationally. Some have praised him for turning around the culture at Angola, which for decades was considered one of the most violent prisons in the country.

An investigation by the Marshall Project, a national non-profit that reports on prison issues, detailed how Cain incorporated Christianity into the prison life. But it cited instances where he was accused of ordering beatings, of placing inmates in solitary confinement for long periods of time and of punishing non-Christian religious groups.

“We need a strong, experienced leader that Mississippians can trust, and I believe that person is Burl,” Reeves said. “I do not make this decision lightly. The safety and dignity of all within our system is at stake. Burl’s impressive, decades-long career in corrections, leading prison facilities and ushering in progressive measures to improve conditions is exactly what we need. We still have a long road ahead of us, but Burl will lead MDOC in the right direction.”

Reeves also announced the appointment of state Court of Appeals Judge Sean Tindall of Gulfport, a former state senator, to serve as commissioner of the Department of Public Safety on Wednesday.

Both Cain and Tindell must be confirmed by the state Senate. Confirmation hearings typically occur near the end of a legislative session, which this year will most likely be in June.

The post A Louisiana warden resigned under a cloud of misspending. He will now oversee Mississippi’s troubled prisons. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Governor Tate Reeves was pranked by someone submitting the name “Harry Azcrac” during his Facebook graduation ceremony. The video, of course, went viral. The governor, to his credit, responded with a sense of humor — which made me wonder, “How would past Mississippi Governors react?”

The post Marshall Ramsey: The Harry Azcrac prank appeared first on Mississippi Today.