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READ MORE: The home that became Bay Town Inn survived 100 years until Hurricane Katrina hit

READ MORE: Pass Christian family, like Gulf Coast, overcomes devastation of Hurricane Katrina

READ MORE: A conversation with Jim Barksdale, who led Mississippi’s post-Katrina recovery commission

Jackson faces many of the same issues it did 10 years ago, including youth crime, lack of economic development and failing infrastructure, according to testimony Mayor John Horhn and state officials gave Wednesday to a House committee.

The stuck-in-amber nature of Mississippi’s capital city was highlighted by a moment when Rep. Chris Bell, a Democratic lawmaker from Jackson who sits on the Capital City Revitalization Committee, asked Horhn about a state-funded study on gangs. 

The 2016 study, paid for with $500,000 in funding Horhn secured while senator, found in part that Jackson’s gangs were mainly neighborhood cliques of young adult men. 

“Are these some of the same issues that we’re seeing back then and we still have today?” Bell asked. 

“Absolutely,” Horhn responded. 

It was Horhn’s first time to publicly address his former colleagues through the select committee, formed by Republican House Speaker Jason White in 2024 to focus on issues in the capital city, since the former senator left the Legislature to become mayor in July.

For about an hour, Horhn gave the bipartisan committee a rundown of the issues on the top of his agenda, including reducing crime, rebuilding what he described as the “decimated” Public Works Department and eliminating blight in “parts of Jackson that look like a bomb has been set off.” 

Horhn also gave lawmakers suggestions for how they can help. By the end of the week, he said the city will have calculated the dollar figure – a basis for potential state or federal funding – it will take to reduce blight. If the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers approves a plan to reduce flooding on the Pearl River, Horhn said he hopes to see lawmakers vote to allow a casino in Jackson. And he’d like the state to expand tax incentives for developers, such as enterprise and opportunity zones, to make Jackson a more attractive place for warehousing. 

“We think Jackson ought to have a data center too,” he said, referencing similar projects in surrounding suburbs.

When Horhn finished speaking, Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent who co-chairs the committee, called him a “breath of fresh air.” 

Then Yates fired off a series of questions.

Does the city have a plan for a jail? 

“Right now the city depends on Hinds County,” Horhn said. 

What is his position on the Jackson Zoo? 

The zoo is rapidly losing money, Horhn said, but he believes relocating it is no longer an option after the previous administration chose not to pursue that deal. Since the zoo is on the National Register of Historic Places, Horhn said he is looking at potential state and federal historic tax credits. 

How many homeless centers are in the city and who is operating them? 

Horhn said he didn’t know but that the centers are not well coordinated despite scraping for resources. 

Yates responded that if Jackson is going to ask the state for more funding, the city needs to know what resources it already has. “Is that fair?” she asked. 

“More than fair,” Horhn said, adding that he thinks Yates’ request could be “the carrot on the stick to get these organizations working more cohesively together.” 

Finally, Yates asked Horhn about his goal for the city to eventually take back control of Jackson’s embattled water system. What does he envision? 

“A public-private partnership,” he said. 

Jackson-area representatives, including Democrats Stephanie Foster and Justis Gibbs, asked Horhn to consider striping the roads to help elderly citizens drive at night or if the city had a plan to enforce liens on blighted properties. 

“No m’am, we do not,” he said. 

Lastly, Rep. Jill Ford told Horhn that she had spoken to the mayors of Madison and Ridgeland and they were excited for Jackson. 

“We’re all rooting for you,” she said. 

Then much of the room cleared out. The committee heard from the Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey and Tyree Jones, the soon to be combination interim police chief-sheriff of Jackson and Hinds County, who spoke in outgoing Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade’s stead. 

Much of Jones’ discussion concerned the state of homelessness in Jackson. Since Yates’ bill requiring a permit for panhandling went into effect on July 1, the department has seen a reduction in the number of homeless people on thoroughfares such as Lakeland Drive or Ridgewood Road. 

At the same time, the number of people incarcerated at the Hinds County Detention Center has increased, Jones said, placing a strain on county resources. As of this morning, the jail housed more than 900 people. 

“When they leave, they go two places: They go home or they go to prison,” Jones said, adding that the longer people stay at the center, the longer the county is “stuck with having to provide services to them.” 

Luckey added that the city needs more resources for homeless people who do not belong in jail. 

“I completely agree the criminal justice system in Hinds County is bogged down,” Luckey said. “I will say the CCID (Capitol Complex Improvement District) court has been running very well.” 

A brief testimony from the Secretary of State’s office concerned legislation passed earlier this year to use tax incentives to put Jackson’s state-owned, tax-forfeited properties back on the market and into private hands. 

Bill Cheney, the assistant secretary of public lands, noted that lawmakers still need to address the state’s tax sale loophole – the subject of a recent Mississippi Today report – that results in tax-forfeited falling into limbo when investors who buy the property at a tax sale do not request a deed. 

“Nobody really owns it because nobody has requested the deed,” he said. 

Kevin Felsher, the Republican representative from Biloxi, and Sam Creekmore, the Republican representative from Starkville, then addressed the committee about public health issues, including the opioid settlement fund that cities can use with “no restrictions.” 

“There should be substantial funds available for Jackson and Hinds County,” Creekmore said.

This alarmed some lawmakers. 

“When you say no restrictions on the funds, that terrifies me,” Yates said. “Can they use it, can they rehab the zoo?”

“That is my understanding,” Creekmore replied.

RIDGELAND, Miss — Janae Usner recalled how her former primary care doctor bullied her for her weight.

“She was implying, essentially, that I was letting my child down, probably because if I’m obese, he’ll probably be obese,” said Usner, 40, who is from Metairie, Louisiana. 

She also described how the doctor looked through her Apple Watch “to see if she could find a pedometer that would let her know how many steps I had made the day before.”

This was about a year and a half ago, and the experience made her so uncomfortable she switched doctors.

“I know I need to manage my weight better,” Usner said, “but bullying and shame is definitely not the way I want to be motivated.” 

The Florida-based nonprofit organization Obesity Action Coalition promotes a different approach to obesity. Its Your Weight Matters Regional events provide free information from experts about weight loss and health in cities around the country.

Usner drove three hours to attend the latest event Saturday in Ridgeland, Mississippi.

Michelle Vicari is the senior program manager at the Obesity Action Coalition. She said the ultimate goal of these events is to get people to talk to their doctors about their weight and health.

“Going to your doctor and saying, ‘I need help,’ is not a moral failing,” Vicari said. “It’s something that you deserve. You’re worthy of care.”

Speakers gave presentations on nutrition, mental health, obesity treatment options and more. Paul Davidson, an independent concierge consultant and health coach with a doctorate in clinical psychology, spoke about managing stress and stress’ relationship to weight.

“How many of you got stressed, your brain tells you to eat, and you reach for Brussels sprouts?” he asked the crowd, getting several laughs.

Between presentations, attendees opened up about struggles they face in trying to manage their weight and health.

Georgia Lewis, 52, is a child care provider from Yazoo City. She has multiple family members with obesity and noticed some weight problems of her own. 

“I started seeing some weight kind of sticking a little bit with me because I was at a certain size,” Lewis said. “And when I guess I passed menopause, the weight started sticking a little bit more.” 

She sought information about how to keep herself and the children in her care healthy. 

Chandra James, 48, lives in Jackson and is a single mother of two daughters. She has family members who are borderline obese, including herself.

“Well for me, I’m looking at the future of my kids, myself, my family, and I’m trying to learn, educate myself, to help keep us healthy,” James said. However, she said she finds it difficult to afford healthy foods.

Like Lewis and James, Usner has family members with obesity and other health problems. She also has trouble choosing healthy food options.

“I have a toddler, so it’s harder to get him to eat things that aren’t Spaghetti O’s and stuff like that,” Usner said. “So that’s the things you end up surrounding yourself with just out of necessity to get through the day.”

Obesity is a complex chronic disease defined by having too much body fat. Factors such as food insecurity, diet, certain medications and genetics can all lead to obesity. It is linked to several other chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

The Obesity Action Coalition, which advocates and supports those impacted by the disease, brought Your Weight Matters Regional to Mississippi specifically because of the state’s high obesity prevalence. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mississippi has the second-highest prevalence of obesity in the county, 40.1%. Nationwide, it’s estimated that three-quarters of American adults have obesity.

People with obesity also face problems accessing treatment. Many insurance companies don’t cover obesity management services. Many doctors outside of the speciality are underinformed about how to treat patients with the disease.

“Many people still are in the old-school thinking that if you just eat less and move more, the problem will go away. And we now know that is not true at all,” Davidson said.

Lisa Sudderth is clinic administrator for Premier Medical Weight Loss of Mississippi, which had a table at the event. In addition to doctors not being informed, patients may not have enough time or enough information, or may be too intimidated to ask questions, she said.

“Look for somebody who is trained in the field, and who is specialized in the field of bariatric medicine and make sure it’s being done right,” Sudderth advised.

Lewis said she learned more about the science behind obesity and the stigma surrounding it.

Usner said her most important takeaway was “not to blame myself for my weight because it’s defeatist and inaccurate.”

James said she learned that if someone is struggling with obesity, “You’re not out there alone, that there’s organizations out there that can help you out.”

Editor’s note: Mississippi Today Ideas is publishing guest essays from people impacted by Hurricane Katrina during the week of the 20th anniversary of the storm that hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

On Aug. 28, 2005, six friends came to stay at the Bay Town Inn in Bay St. Louis as Hurricane Katrina was approaching.

At the time, the Bay Town Inn consisted of eight bedrooms and baths, a large kitchen and a wonderful dining room with a table for 12. It was across the street from the beach and had a beautiful view of the sunrise. But that sunrise was not so beautiful one day later.

The house that was the Bay Town Inn was built in 1899 and had withstood many storms. We all felt the house would be able to handle this one. And, we felt the storm was going toward New Orleans, more than the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Even so, the house was boarded up.

The next morning near 5:30, I drove around with my friends Doug and Kevan. We saw that we were almost the only ones who had not evacuated.

The storm picked up just a few hours later. Looking out the kitchen window, I saw my Jeep starting to float. About that time water started seeping in the front door.  

We all went upstairs (we seven and my Scottie, and a friend’s Shepherd) to Room 5 at the back of the house thinking it was the safest. It was for a while.

Then one last surge broke through the front of the house and took the first floor and all of the second floor except Room 5.  

The older couple went off on a piece of flooring side by side. I thought they were gone, but luckily they were rescued by the sheriff’s department that afternoon. Doug first swam to an oak at the back of the house, then I swam with my pup, then Kevan.

We tried to get our other friend up but the water and debris was too strong. Her husband made it to another tree. She went under. Thank goodness she was rescued that afternoon as well.  

We were in that oak for three or four  hours with my Scottie under my stomach, Kevan facing the water and Doug behind me.  Every once in a while Kevan would say “duck!” as a wave would come over us.

Around 1 p.m. or so the eye passed, and Doug bravely jumped down, followed by  Kevan and me and my pup.

We saw nothing but destruction – mud, pieces of furniture, bathrooms, stuff.

We went to a house across the way that had lost its first floor but thankfully had its second. We took some dry clothes and then started walking around to see if anyone else was in town. Not many were.

Finally we made it to the second floor of a friend’s home and collapsed for the night.

We were tired, dirty and very much in shock.  Our town was virtually gone.

Bio: Nikki Moon, a Realtor, moved to Bay St. Louis in early 2003 to purchase the Bay Town Inn after working 30 years in the hospitality industry in New Orleans. After losing the Inn on Aug. 29, 2005, she went back to New Orleans and worked there until retiring and rebuilding the Bay Town Inn in 2013.

Tougaloo College, the private historically Black institution located in north Jackson, is seeking its 15th president in the school’s 156-year history. Donzell Lee, the current president, will remain in his role until June 2026. 

In an email, Blondean Y. Davis, chair of the presidential search committee, told constituents last week that WittKieffer, a Chicago-based consulting and executive firm, will lead the process. The committee has also created a leadership profile outlining the qualities for a successful candidate. 

Earlier this summer, the committee led community listening sessions for faculty, alumni, board of trustees and students. The college’s next leader will be expected to expand enrollment, help with financial sustainability and elevate the national profile, according to the job profile. Applications for the role will be accepted through Oct. 10. 

Faculty and alumni have been dissatisfied with the school’s leadership for years. In March, the college’s faculty senate issued a series of no confidence votes for Lee, the office of the provost and registrar. 

In a memo, faculty cited lack of communication from Lee as well as failing to  acknowledge lingering concerns about provost Josiah Sampson III and registrar Pam England. The faculty senate voted no confidence in Sampson and England in May 2024. Lee was interim president of the university at the time. 

In April, Lee told the Clarion Ledger, the administration reviewed the concerns and worked toward “an appropriate path forward.” It is unclear if issues were resolved. 

In 2022, students voted no-confidence in the leadership of Carmen Walters, the college’s 14th president. That same year, a group called the Tougaloo College Alumni Coalition for Change created an online petition calling for Walters’ removal that garnered more than 1,500 signatures. 

The petition claimed the college had been without a full-time registrar for years. Faculty were leaving in a “mass exodus” and enrollment had fallen to its lowest point in 40 years. Enrollment under Walter’s tenure dropped to 713 students in Fall 2021, down by 8% from the previous year, Higher Ed Drive cites. In Fall 2023, there were 725 students enrolled at the college according to federal data. 

Founded in 1869, the college is recognized as an important institution in the Civil Rights Movement, serving as a refuge for activists and gathering space for organizers in Mississippi to plan sit-ins, protests and voter registration drives. The college currently serves roughly 600 students and offers more than 30 programs of study. 

Football starts this weekend, but it’s not every day we have a world champion in Mississippi. That’s what 17-year-old Rachel McAlpin of Brandon is after the world junior swimming championships in Romania last week. Of course, there’s also a football discussion, including the big State-Southern Miss game in Hattiesburg and what T.C. Taylor has in mind for an encore at Jackson State.

Stream all episodes here.

VICKSBURG – Makayla Shows pointed out a display cabinet in her dining room. It doesn’t have pottery, vases or fine china. Instead, it holds onesies, pacifiers and hospital bracelets. 

“Isn’t that the smallest urn you’ve ever seen?” Shows asked, looking toward the second shelf. 

Makayla and Carson Shows’ daughter Mazeigh died in 2023 in a hospital after she was found unresponsive at First Baptist Children’s Center in Brandon. She was 3 months and 3 days old. 

That year, deaths of  40 children were reported in day care centers across the U.S. But 16 states, including Mississippi, had incomplete numbers or no recorded data.

Day care deaths in the U.S. are rare, but complaints about injuries, neglect, abuse and unsafe conditions are more common. Together, they paint a picture of an industry without enough resources to guarantee safety for young children at a price that parents can afford to pay. 

Advocates and industry experts say the problems are driven by staffing shortages, low pay and a lack of oversight, and are indicative of a deeper problem: an undervaluation of caregiving and early education in the U.S.

The medical examiner’s report on Mazeigh’s death says she was put in an unsafe sleep position, on her side in a crib, at day care and that a worker a short time later found Mazeigh “unresponsive.”

Makayla Shows said several details from that day still haunt her. 

“I just remember them wheeling her out to the ICU, and she was already purple,” she recalled. “She didn’t look real. She didn’t smell like my baby.”

First Baptist Children’s Center did not respond to multiple requests for comment in recent weeks from Mississippi Today. 

Across the country, the industry is responsible for 11 million children under the age of 5 – the most critical years for learning and development, research shows. 

Many have long argued that the work of early child care deserves more respect and investment, and that the education that occurs – or doesn’t – in those early years is just as important as K-12 education. 

Like most systemic problems, the solution isn’t simple, especially in a country that values capitalism and limiting the government’s role in families’ private lives. Still, experts say it’s long past time to make child care consistently safe, functional and affordable, and the solution will require more than just the argument that it allows parents to go back to work. 

“Ultimately, if you want to move to a system where all families have the child care that they need and their children need to flourish and live the family life that they want to live, we’re going to need more than just attaching parents to the labor force,” said Elliot Haspel, a nationally recognized child and family policy expert based in Colorado. “We need to see child care as an essential part of our social infrastructure just like parks and roads and libraries and schools and all these other things that let our communities thrive.”

Unaffordable costs and unlivable wages

On a hot day in June, Shows scrolled through photos on her phone of her older daughter Luna Scott sitting on the floor with Mazeigh the morning before Mazeigh died. 

“Those were the last ones,” Shows said. “Sometimes I can go through them, and sometimes I can’t.” 

Luna, now 10, spent most of the morning running in circles around the kitchen table asking her mom if she can make cookie dough and whether they can all go swimming later. But when her mom struggles to find words to talk about Mazeigh, Luna quiets and walks over to put her arms around her mom, who tells Luna, “I’m fine.” 

“Those tears in your eyes says otherwise,” Luna remarked in a comedic drawl, and her mom laughed. 

They have each other, and Makayla and Carson Shows welcomed another daughter, Juniper, in 2024. But Makayla Shows struggles with the guilt of staying home with her children, something that is only possible because of the settlement they reached in the wake of Mazeigh’s death. 

“We don’t have money problems, we don’t have many bills, we have a beautiful child, we have all these blessings – and I feel guilty,” she said. “Because it wasn’t because we worked for it. It was because something terrible happened.”

On average, it takes 10% of a married couple’s median income to afford the nation’s average cost of child care, according to Child Care Aware, a national advocacy group. That number rises to 35% for a single parent. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded child care is unaffordable if it exceeds 7% of a family’s income. 

The U.S. has the highest child care costs in the world, according to the World Economic Forum – something that hasn’t translated into higher quality standards. 

Out of 41 high-income countries, the U.S. ranked second to last on child care policies, according to a United Nations Children’s Fund report. The report evaluated the accessibility of child care for young children whether countries had nationwide paid parental leave policies. It also assessed quality measures such as child-to-teacher ratios, minimum qualifications for teachers and affordability. 

Makayla and Carson Shows aren’t sure what they could have done differently. Back in the summer of 2022, they splurged on a small house in Brandon near Luna’s school and Mazeigh’s day care. Makayla took two weeks of unpaid parental leave after giving birth to Mazeigh before returning to work. It was as much time as the family could go without pay.

They made sure to include in their daughter’s day care notes that Mazeigh was only to be laid to sleep on her back – a long held public health recommendation that was especially important because she had torticollis, a condition that causes a baby’s neck muscles to tilt and can make a baby more susceptible to suffocating.  

At the time they thought the instruction was overly cautious, since the day care’s internal guidelines mandated employees only put infants to sleep on their backs, and national guidelines recommend the same.

Between 2017 and 2023, Mississippi child care facilities were cited at least 20 times for unsafe sleep practices, according to Mississippi State Department of Health records. It’s not a large number, but the fact that it happens at all is significant, said Grace Reef, president of the Early Learning Policy Group in Washington. 

“When there is a tragedy involving an infant in safe sleep, it points to training,” Reef said. “Does the provider understand safe sleep – not just the requirement but the reason for it?”

The center in Brandon did not respond to Mississippi Today’s specific questions about why Mazeigh was placed on her side that morning. 

The facility was fined $500 for failing to prevent Mazeigh’s death, an additional $200 for leaving children unattended that day and $50 for unsafe sleep practices. The facility agreed to stop caring for infants under the age of 1, according to a 2023 statement by the Mississippi State Department of Health.

“Infant care was suspended, pending our investigation,” the statement said. “The facility subsequently entered into a consent agreement voluntarily surrendering infant care of the program until further notice.”

Mississippi Today reviewed investigations into First Baptist Children’s Center by the Mississippi State Department of Health in the year leading up to Mazeigh’s death. The records showed no other deficiencies related to unsafe sleep practices and no other deaths. They also showed no other serious injuries that resulted in penalties.

Sometimes, low staffing and lack of oversight at U.S. day care centers result in tragedy. But more often, they result in less egregious but potentially lasting harm, such as bad teaching practices. 

A common example is the way many facilities encourage silence, even though research recommends engaging young children with back-and-forth exchanges, said Cathy Grace, who founded the Early Childhood Institute at Mississippi State University.

“I can’t tell you the number of child care facilities I’ve been in where it was ‘shh-shh-shh,’ thinking that what the school wants them to do is not talk, which may be, but that’s not good practice,” Grace said. 

According to Grace, problems arent’ unique to Mississippi, though the state has the lowest median hourly wage for child care workers at $9.44 and the second-largest percentage of early childhood educators living in poverty.

“If  you talk to people across the country, the answer’s the same,” Grace said. “We have very low salaries. That doesn’t promote longevity within the staff in many of the centers. Right now, we have fast food places and service places that actually pay almost twice as much.”

Public investment and other solutions

Many countries have struggled with child care, but the acuteness of the problem in the U.S. is unparalleled, said Haspel, the Colorado-based expert in family policy. 

“Where the U.S. really stands alone is that we haven’t done much to fix the problem,” Haspel said.

Much of it comes down to longstanding economic practices. 

“The way that free market economics works is: One person is making six cars every day, and eventually that person is involved in making 60 cars and then 600 cars a day,” Haspel said. 

“Their productivity goes up and so their wages go up and the profit goes up and that’s the whole system of how capitalism works,” he said. “It doesn’t work in care. The market can’t reward care because care will never meet the capitalist definitions of productivity in the same way.”

That means that parents are sometimes forced to put their children in subpar child care centers so they can return to work themselves. 

“With Luna, my whole life was completely different,” Shows said of her first daughter. “I was young, had no job, lived with my mom. But as an adult, when I was doing the right things, being a responsible adult, my child died. How do you reconcile that?”

Child care can’t become more safe and functional without public investment. That may seem counter to U.S. values, but examples of successful public investment in child care are starting to sprout up in red and blue states. 

In New Mexico, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham established an Early Childhood Trust Fund in 2020, investing $300 million largely from oil and gas revenue. By the end of 2024, the fund had risen to over $9 billion, a portion of which goes toward making child care free for most families. 

Vermont, which has a Republican governor and Democratic-controlled legislature, passed a small payroll tax in 2023 – three-quarters of which is paid by employers – that will generate about $120 million to increase salaries for child care workers and make the system more affordable for families. 

Republican-led Texas passed several child care bills this year, including one that turned $100 million in previously unallocated federal funds into child care scholarships to benefit nearly 95,000 children. 

This year, the Mississippi Legislature appropriated $15 million for child care vouchers for low-income families, which will help reduce the number of children on the waitlist after pandemic-era funds ran out. However, it won’t do anything to add resources or staff to facilities. 

Data around incidents like Mazeigh’s death are critical to forming state policies. That information is scarce, according to the only comprehensive national study about deaths in child care that was conducted in 2005 by researchers at the City University of New York Graduate Center. 

“Key to any effort aimed at reducing risks is gathering consistent, reliable data on fatalities, serious injuries, and near misses in child care,” the researchers wrote.

“Unlike fatalities or serious injuries in public schools, harms to children in child care have been largely invisible, with only a few gaining widespread media attention. This has hampered efforts to understand patterns and devise prevention strategies.”

While public discourse on the issue remains quiet, for parents like Makayla and Carson Shows, every day is a reminder of a future that won’t come to be. 

“Me and grief won’t be sharing cookies and a cup of tea,” Makayla wrote in her journal. “I will have to fight it off with blood, sweat and tears. People talk of acceptance, this is not one of those times. Losing your baby, your infant child, feels like the loss of the future. You don’t know who you are or what you are or what your goals were before. You only know after.”

Mississippi Today’s Gwen Dilworth, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield contributed to this report. 

The large number of Mississippians with voting rights stripped for life because they committed a disenfranchising felony was a significant factor in a federal judge determining that current state Supreme Court districts dilute Black voting strength. 

U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock, who was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush, ruled last week that Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts violate the federal Voting Rights Act and that the state cannot use the same maps in future elections. 

Mississippi law establishes three Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the northern, central and southern districts. Voters elect three judges from each to the nine-member court. These districts have not been redrawn since 1987. 

READ MORE: Mississippians ask U.S. Supreme court to strike state’s Jim Crow-era felony voting ban

The main district at issue in the case is the central district, which comprises many parts of the majority-Black Delta and the majority-Black Jackson metro area. 

Several civil rights legal organizations filed a lawsuit on behalf of Black citizens, candidates, and elected officials, arguing that the central district does not provide Black voters with a realistic chance to elect a candidate of their choice. 

The state defended the districts arguing the map allows a fair chance for Black candidates. Aycock sided with the plaintiffs and is allowing the Legislature to redraw the districts.

The attorney general’s office could appeal the ruling to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. A spokesperson for the office stated that the office is reviewing Aycock’s decision, but did not confirm whether the office plans to appeal.

In her ruling, Aycock cited the testimony of William Cooper, the plaintiff’s demographic and redistricting expert, who estimated that 56,000 people with felony records were unable to vote statewide based on a review of court records from 1994 to 2017. He estimated 60% of those were determined to be Black Mississippians. 

Cooper testified that the high number of people who were disenfranchised contributed to the Black voting age population falling below 50% in the central district. 

Attorneys from Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office defended the state. They disputed Cooper’s calculations, but Aycock rejected their arguments. 

The AG’s office also said Aycock should not put much weight on the number of disenfranchised people because the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that Mississippi’s disenfranchisement system doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. 

Aycock, however, distinguished between the appellate court’s ruling that the system did not have racial discriminatory intent and the current issue of the practice having a racially discriminatory impact. 

“Notably, though, that decision addressed only whether there was discriminatory intent as required to prove an Equal Protection claim,” Aycock wrote. “The Fifth Circuit did not conclude that Mississippi’s felon disenfranchisement laws have no racially disparate impact.” 

Mississippi has one of the harshest disenfranchisement systems in the nation and a convoluted method for restoring voting rights to people. 

Other than receiving a pardon from the governor, the only way for someone to regain their voting rights is if two-thirds of legislators from both chambers at the Capitol, the highest threshold in the Legislature, agree to restore their suffrage. 

Lawmakers only consider about a dozen or so suffrage restoration bills during the session, and they’re typically among the last items lawmakers take up before they adjourn for the year. 

Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of a list of 10 types of felonies lose their voting rights for life. Opinions from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office have since expanded the list of specific disenfranchising felonies to 23. 

The practice of stripping voting rights away from people for life is a holdover from the Jim Crow era. The framers of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution believed Black people were most likely to commit certain crimes. 

Leaders in the state House have attempted to overhaul the system, but none have gained any significant traction in both chambers at the Capitol. 

Last year, House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, advocated a constitutional amendment that would have removed nonviolent offenses from the list of disenfranchising felonies, but he never brought it up for a vote in the House. 

Wallace and House Elections Chairman Noah Sanford, a Republican from Collins, are leading a study committee on Sept. 11 to explore reforms to the felony suffrage system and other voting legislation.  

Wallace previously said on an episode of Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast that he believes the state should tackle the issue because one of his core values, part of his upbringing, is giving people a second chance, especially once they’ve made up for a mistake. 

“This issue is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Wallace said. “It allows a woman or a man, whatever the case may be, the opportunity to have their voice heard in their local elections. Like I said, they’re out there working. They’re paying taxes just like you and me. And yet they can’t have a decision in who represents them in their local government.”

Sharon Brown planned to release balloons in neighborhoods where Jacksonians had lost their lives to gun violence after she was hired to lead the city’s fledgling Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery in early June. 

Her goal was to show these communities that someone cares enough to meet them where they are. But she never got that far. 

Instead, the longtime community activist said she found herself swamped by the demands of the city’s bureaucracy, such as figuring out how to submit a purchase order for pens or reminding the police department to send her the names of relatives of the recently deceased, so she could bring them candles, flowers and a pamphlet with resources. 

What Brown did manage to accomplish in her month leading the office — cleaning a city-owned building that will be the site of a youth engagement center downtown — was through sheer will. 

“Their process impedes progress,” Brown said of the city. 

Acknowledging this reality, Brown was nonplussed when Mayor John Horhn let her go, along with other hires made by the outgoing administration under Chokwe Antar Lumumba, days after Horhn took office July 1.

“I came in doing the work, and I’m going to leave doing the work,” she said. 

Jackson officials say the office will continue working to decrease violence in Jackson through non-police interventions under a new name, the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. It will once again be led by Keisha Coleman, a trauma therapist who was allegedly fired in the midst of the city’s peace initiative by Lumumba’s chief of staff for speaking with Horhn at a campaign rally earlier this year. 

“We’re aligning with the current mayor John Horhn’s vision, but the mission is the same,” Coleman said, “and that is to create programming and support programming that is already happening in the community to reduce the likelihood of gun violence.” 

This restart comes as Jackson has recently experienced a spate of shootings that Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said are driven by gangs of young men.

In one of her first efforts back at the helm, Coleman is working with Jackson State University and other organizations in the city to host a gala this Friday in partnership with a student club, JSU Votes’ Girls Against Gun Violence. 

“If you know someone or if you have someone related to you who you know needs some type of help, come out,” JSU professor Jacobi Grant, who is working with the club, said at a press conference at City Hall on Monday. 

The gala will be followed by a brunch Sunday at the Two Mississippi Museums to discuss violence in Jackson’s Black communities. 

“Gun violence remains one of our most urgent issues facing families and young people,” Horhn said at the press conference. 

Lumumba launched the office in 2023 with $700,000 in grant funding from the National League of Cities, a nonprofit organization, to tackle the root causes of violence in Jackson such as poverty and trauma.

But that grant funding will end in September, so Coleman said she is working on more grant applications and a request for a little over $500,000 from the City Council. Coleman said she hopes to use those funds to host classes focused on parenting and job readiness. She also wants to create a “community consortium” to get input from neighborhood associations, faith leaders, mental health professionals and youth in the city.

“The message that we want to send is there is a seat at the table for every member of the community,” she said. 

Coleman said the council allocated $202,000 last year to renovate the defunct Mary C. Jones center to house youth engagement programming, but that she was unable to spend the funds. She hopes to regain access to that money. Her goal is to get the center up and running by next year – a timeline that she said makes the city’s building maintenance skeptical.

“I’m being optimistic saying we’re gonna be in there mid-fall, but when I say that the people doing renovations kind of give me a side eye,” Coleman said. 

When Brown led the office, she experienced similar frustrations with the delay in reopening Mary C. Jones, because she had a hard time finding a company to bid on the project. 

So she bought her own buckets and mops and rallied volunteers, including youth who were being mentored by Strong Arms of Mississippi, a credible messenger organization which received a grant from the office under Coleman. 

To Brown, the crisis of violence in Jackson is too urgent to wait for government processes such as requests for proposals or official death notifications. 

“If we’re talking about changing the trajectory of violence, people need to know that people really care,” she said. “The conditions have always been the same. We have always been in poverty, but what has changed is people don’t feel connected and loved anymore.” 

Since leaving the city, Brown has been working on renovating several homes in her neighborhood, “The Bottom,” to create unofficial respites. She’s linked up with the People’s Advocacy Institute – the nonprofit group founded by Lumumba’s sister, Rukia Lumumba – to start a new organization that aims to tackle violence not just in Jackson, but statewide. 

She’s calling it the Mississippi Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery.

Renee Gentry of Pascagoula will turn 58 next month. A few months after that, she’ll take her board examination to become a licensed practical nurse. 

“Everybody’s like, ‘You’re going back to school at your age?’” she said. 

Gentry spent 14 years working as a flight attendant, and said she’s also surprised she was able to make the career change. A vocation in medicine became possible when she enrolled in Singing River Health System’s medical apprenticeship program, the first of its kind in Mississippi. 

Singing River Healthcare Academy in Ocean Springs allows students to earn as they learn, pursuing certifications in a range of health careers at no cost while receiving a salary and full benefits. It combines classroom instruction with hands-on clinical training in hospitals and clinics, and many students accept jobs at Singing River locations after graduating. 

The apprenticeship program celebrated the opening of a dedicated building around the corner from the system’s Ocean Springs hospital this month, which will expand the program’s capacity from about 150 to 1,000 students a year, said Jessica Lewis, chief human resources officer for Singing River Health System. 

It was launched in 2021 as Singing River, like other hospitals, was facing critical staffing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Nurse vacancies skyrocketed across Mississippi in 2021 and 2022 as nurses retired, took jobs outside of hospital settings or accepted more lucrative travel nursing positions.

“We were having to shut down floors and beds,” Lewis said.

But the academy’s effort to train the staff the health system needs has paid off, she said, providing the staff necessary to reopen closed beds and resulting in lower workforce turnover rates. 

Gentry saw the effects of the health care worker shortage firsthand while working as a Singing River telephone operator and hospital lobby assistant at the height of the pandemic. Instead of pushing her away from the field, it inspired her to pursue a career in medicine. 

She joined the academy’s first class of medical assistant apprentices in 2022. She completed her clinical training at a surgery clinic and was hired on as a full-time employee at the clinic after graduating from the program. 

She decided to resume her studies at the academy this year to become a licensed practical nurse and bring a greater wealth of health care knowledge to people in her community. 

A new career in medicine was only possible for her because students receive a paycheck while attending school. 

“This program has opened up a lot of doors for a lot of people in this community, like me, that probably would have never had a chance to do this,” Gentry said. 

Students at the academy can train to become a certified nursing assistant, medical assistant, phlebotomy tech, pharmacy tech, surgical tech or licensed practical nurse. The licensed practical nurse program operates in partnership with Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, and the academy also offers classes to high school students. 

Because academy students have the opportunity to work in real-world clinical settings, they graduate with four to 10 times the clinical experience they would receive if they went through a traditional program, Lewis said.

Over half of the program’s students are single parents and nearly all are women, said Stephanie Utesch, the human resources operations director for Singing River. 

Accessibility is a cornerstone of the academy’s model. Fees for certifications are covered, and students receive supplies like scrubs and backpacks, assistance with child care and transportation, and financial literacy training. 

The program is supported by grant funding and requires a large investment from Singing River Health System, Lewis said.

“‘Earn as you learn’ is expensive, but we’re going to be showing the return on investment,” she said, gesturing toward retaining students as full-time employees and being able to offer higher quality patient care. 

The new facility includes two simulated hospital suites, an eight-bed clinical skills lab, high-fidelity simulation rooms, seven modern classrooms and a computer testing center. 

The academy recieved $8.5 million in state funding for construction of the new building, Utesch said.

It also has space for the program to grow. The academy hopes to add a medical billing and coding certification and a program for licensed practical nurses to become certified as registered nurses, or RNs.

Gentry said she hasn’t decided if she will pursue certification as a registered nurse if given the opportunity, though she’s been encouraged to consider it. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to take it one day at a time.”