OurTupelo

Eric Marter doesn’t remember much about his mother but her loss is one his family has felt for decades. 

On Jan. 13, 1976, he said it felt like any other day when he left for his Catholic school in Gulfport and his younger brother Kevin stayed home with their mother Edwina. Then he remembers he and his brother staying with family friends and being told his parents had to go out of town. 

Days later, his father and a priest told them their mother was dead. 

When Marter was older, he learned details about his mother’s murder and some about the man responsible for her death: Richard Jordan. 

Jordan, 79, the state’s oldest and longest serving death row inmate, has had multiple trials and execution dates set that have come and gone. He has continued to fight his death sentence through appeals and a lawsuit challenging the state’s use of lethal injection drugs. Each time, Edwina Marter’s family has testified in court and endured hearing about details of her death again. 

Marter said he hasn’t made Jordan’s legal process a major focus in his life. He doesn’t have interest in witnessing his execution set for June 25 at Parchman, and neither does his father or brother. Instead, Marter’s uncle is expected to attend with his family. 

But he still wants to see the sentence carried out and believes it should have happened sooner, not almost 50 years after the fact. He also believes Jordan’s execution would guarantee that he has no chance of leaving prison. 

“I don’t want him to get what he wants,” said Marter, who is 59 and lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. 

“If you want to spend the rest of your life in jail, then I would rather you not get that, and if that means you get executed, you get executed.” 

Edwina Marter grew up in Metairie, Louisiana, with two sisters and a brother. She went to college at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she met her husband Charles.

They started their family in Louisiana and later relocated to Gulfport, where Charles Marter worked as a banker. Their next son, Kevin, was born on the Coast. 

In 1976, Jordan, a Vietnam veteran whose attorneys say suffers from PTSD, was desperate for money and thought of kidnapping someone and demanding money. He called the bank where Charles Marter was the commercial loan agent, and found the man’s address in the phonebook. Jordan went to their home, impersonating an electric company worker to get 34-year-old Edwina Marter to open the door. 

Once she did, Jordan took her and left her younger son unarmed. He had her drive to the DeSoto National Forest where he shot her in the head when she tried to run away. Afterward, Jordan called Edwina’s husband to demand $25,000 in ransom money. He was not successful in getting it and was arrested. 

Marter said his family moved back to Louisiana after his mother’s death and did not live in Mississippi again. His father did not mention his mother’s death.

“He did the best he could and the way he knew how to raise two boys by himself was to make sure we didn’t get in trouble,” Marter said. 

Milestones like graduations, marriage and children came along. Marter became a banker like his father, and his brother joined the Army. Somewhere along the way, Marter said he wondered what it would be like if his mother were around for them. 

“I don’t really try to dwell on it too much,” he said. 

In 1976, Jordan went to trial and received a death sentence, only for it to be overturned multiple times due to questions about the legality of Mississippi’s death penalty law. It wasn’t until 1998 and four trials later that the sentence stuck. 

Charles Marter, who is now 88, testified in several of the trials. Neither of the Marter sons attended the early trials, and the adults didn’t share much details with them. Once Eric Marter was older, he said he asked for more information about his mother’s death from his aunts and uncle. 

With his own sons, Marter told them that their grandmother died when he was young. When they had questions as they were older, Marter shared some basics about what happened.  

Over the years, Mississippi and Louisiana reporters have spoken with Edwina’s family members about Jordan’s multiple trials and death sentences, appeals and executions that have not been carried out. 

In reflecting after Jordan’s 1998 conviction, Charles Marter told the Sun Herald that his family was elated about the first conviction, only to become less confident after multiple trials.

Mary deGruy, Edwina’s older sister, praised the work of then-special prosecutor Joe Sam Owen, who worked on Jordan’s case for over 25 years. 

“This is just something that stays on your mind forever,” she told the Sun Herald in 2001.  “We just hope and pray that one day (Jordan) will die in prison. They just need to follow through with the death penalty.” 

DeGruy, a distant relation to Andre deGruy, director of Capital Defense Counsel, died in 2022 at the age of 86. 

Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport is set to receive much-needed upgrades and improvements after receiving more than $4.1 million in Airport Infrastructure Grant and Airport Improvement Program funding from the Federal Aviation Administration. 

The grants, announced this week by Sen. Roger Wicker, are part of a larger $21 million award for infrastructure improvements for airports across the state. 

“Upgrading local air travel is an investment in the future of Mississippi. This funding will bring necessary advancements to our airport systems and provide more business opportunities for Mississippians. I look forward to these improvements being made to spur economic development in our great state,” Wicker said in the announcement. 

Last week, U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., announced some of the federal grants, including $158,334 for Hawkins Field, the smaller joint civil-military public airport under the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority and located in northwest Jackson.

The Jackson airport also received an $8 million Airport Terminal Program grant from the FAA last year, Wicker announced in February of 2024. That money was slated for terminal rehabilitation, including placing escalators, elevators, HVAC systems, generators, passenger boarding bridges and baggage belts.

In previous legislative sessions, Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, has authored legislation requesting millions of dollars for upgrades to the Jackson International airport, though the bills died in committee. The legislation that he introduced, he said, was for urgent repairs to the airport’s elevators, escalators and cooling towers. 

“Parts are not easy to find for that. That system for the escalators is about 50 years old, and they aren’t easily available,” Banks said. “That’s why for the elevators at the airports, we cannot get those parts. Some of those parts are not readily available.”

Banks said that the airport is a major driver for Mississippi’s economy, and it’s important to invest into the services that keep travellers moving forward. 

“One of the things you have to realize Mississippi, about the Jackson Airport, known as Medgar Evers, is we have got to have an airport that is first class to bring in first class businesses and first class tourism. We’ve got to keep our airport up,” he said. 

Banks points to the state’s attempts to gain control of the airport as one reason why the legislation failed. In 2016, then-Governor Phil Bryant signed Senate Bill 2162, which aimed to wrest control from the five member Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, which is appointed by Jackson’s mayor, to a nine member board appointed by the state. 

The fight over the airport has been wrapped up in legal proceedings since then, with the city of Jackson alleging that this law is racially discriminatory and violates the Mississippi and the U.S. Constitution. In May of this year, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“JMAA might in fact continue to operate the airport for years to come. That is becauseafter the case wraps up here, there will likely be another appeal to the Fifth Circuit and perhaps a petition for U.S. Supreme Court review,” Reeves said in the decision. “And if all that litigation ends with a victory for the defendants, there will be an administrative process in Washington, D.C., in which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decides whether to approve a transfer from JMAA to the new, state-controlled authority. … For now, though, the status quo has been maintained.”

The man in a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat would rather be home sleeping, but instead he was sitting in a car in the parking lot of the plasma donation center, eating Cheetos and waiting on his brother and friend inside. 

His family members regularly give their plasma – the liquid component of blood used in a variety of medical applications – for extra cash, but he said he never will. 

“That’s not too much my style,” he said just before 10 a.m. Tuesday, wiping the sweat from his face with a gray washcloth. “I just like to go to work and go back home.” 

The 37-year-old man said he’s happy with his job at a car wash, which he’s held for most of his adult life after dropping out of school in the ninth grade. He wished not to give his name, but described the freedom offered through his occupation as “music to me.”

“I can just work the way I want to work,” he said. 

Many of the others who visited the Jackson ImmunoTek Plasma Donation Center on a recent weekday morning haven’t struck the same when it comes to earning a living in this part of the city. 

The plasma donation center, located at the intersection of McDowell and Raymond roads on the cusp of west and south Jackson, is one of the few signs of life in an otherwise neglected zone. Family members and friends pick up and drop off their loved ones; people walk to the center from nearby neighborhoods. 

It’s almost as busy as the Cash Savers, a discount grocery store catty-cornered from the biotech center, where people often take the pre-paid debit cards they receive in exchange for their blood to buy groceries. The intersection also includes a gas station, a Rally’s fast food restaurant, an empty store that locals say used to sell car parts and an AutoZone. 

“They put it in the right spot of town,” said the man waiting for his brother outside the center. The hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

He was describing the plasma center’s convenient location on two main thoroughfares, but he’s right for another reason: This area of Jackson has a high concentration of poverty, few economic opportunities and is rapidly depopulating. 

The dire economic situation is top of mind for the city’s new leadership, as incoming Mayor John Horhn has pledged to reverse these trends, telling attendees at the South Jackson Parade and Festival earlier this year that it would be the first thing on his to-do list. 

Similar promises came with the center’s opening in 2022 inside a former pharmacy that closed during the Great Recession. That year, ImmunoTek boasted that it could bring an estimated economic boost of $5 million a year for a “part of Jackson that is undergoing revitalization,” according to the Mississippi Free Press. 

The company did not respond to inquiries from Mississippi Today, so the center’s exact economic impact in the years since is unknown. For now, ImmunoTek remains one of the newest establishments operating in this part of Jackson and was likely drawn by the same data points that make other investors look elsewhere. 

“It’s amazing how the blood of a group of people was used as a commodity at the beginning of this country and how the blood of this same group of people is still being a commodity today by them having to sell it in order to survive,” said Fredrick Womack, founder of Operation Good, a violence prevention organization. 

Womack said when his group has encountered people walking to ImmunoTek from the surrounding neighborhoods, he’s attempted to intercept them and help them find stable, long term employment.

Studies have shown that plasma donation centers are more likely to be located in areas with higher rates of poverty. In Jackson, the ImmunoTek center is located in a census tract where the median household income was $29,500 in 2020, according to data compiled by the city of Jackson. And CSL Plasma, another plasma donation company, has facilities in south and northwest Jackson. 

“Regardless of how you feel about the community, businesses – for lack of a better word – match with the outputs of the demographic,” said Jhai Keeton, the director of Jackson’s planning and development department. 

Keeton has been working to bring more development to west and south Jackson, but he said recruiting businesses to the area has proven difficult due in part to the concentration of poverty, by which he means lower median household incomes, less spending power and declining property values. 

“What I would love for the greater community to understand is that economics is all about data,” he said. “Every individual needs to look at themselves as a dataset, and when you have 100 individuals in one neighborhood, they need to look at themselves as a collective dataset.” 

When it opened, the center offered a larger payout for a plasma donation than it does now, said Darian Little, a cook at Buffalo Wild Wings who had donated blood Tuesday to get money for groceries. He said he used to get $100 per session, but that now the center offers him $40 for the first and $70 for the second. 

Nonetheless, the facility remained consistently busy throughout the morning. In the 45 or so minutes it takes, and even with the lower going rate, a donor can still earn 10 times the state’s minimum wage of $7.25-an-hour. 

Several people had stopped in to ImmunoTek on their way to work. One woman wore a blue Waffle House shirt. Another left the facility wearing nursing scrubs and a blue bandage on her arm. 

Others came because it was their only source of income. As the morning wore on, the center’s parking lot started to fill up with people.

Anderson Wallace was sitting on the curb, waiting for his pulse to fall below 100 so he could make a donation. He has visited ImmunoTek four times a month since he arrived in Jackson from Brooklyn, New York, earlier this year to visit his mom. 

If Wallace had been able to find employment, he wouldn’t be here, he said. But he’s applied everywhere – Amazon, UPS, and various jobs through Indeed.com – with no luck. 

“It’s too tough down here,” he said. “I gotta go back to New York.” 

Two sisters whose electricity had gone out this morning after they were late paying the bill had also tried to donate, but their iron was too low, so the center turned them away. One of them shrugged when asked what they were going to do instead. 

Deonte Woodson’s iron was also too low, so while his partner was inside giving a donation, he sat on the hood of his car and soothed their baby. The 30-year-old said he has a couple of businesses, though he didn’t give specifics, and his partner aspires to be a TV reporter. But for now, they need to donate plasma to make ends meet.

“She ain’t doing nothing now, just being a housewife,” he said. “For right now, I try to handle all the bills and take care of the kids.” 

Ella Moore, a former Dillard’s employee, was waiting in her father’s car to pick up her 32-year-old son who was inside. Moore said her son is in between construction jobs. A few years ago, the young man tried to gain steady employment by starting his own mobile car wash, but he got into an accident, Moore said, leaving him without a car.

Moore grew up in Jackson and has raised her kids here, but she can’t make sense of the city. She said she used to shop at a corner store by her house, but a few months ago, a man came in holding a rifle, and the shopkeeper did nothing. She doesn’t shop there anymore.

“I think people just don’t care no more, because ain’t nobody really listening to them,” she said. “It’s like they ask you a question and they say they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do that, but in reality, they really don’t do it. You’re voicing your opinions on things, and there’s nothing happening.” 

When was the last time she felt Jackson’s leaders were listening? Moore pursed her lips. 

“Probably in the early 90s,” she said, citing an example of a skating rink on Terry Road that closed, then reopened after community uproar.

But a few years later, Moore went by the rink, and it was closed again. Now she feels like there’s nothing for her grandkids to do in south Jackson, she said, except for a small park up Raymond Road from the plasma donation center. 

She voted for Horhn, because she wanted to see change in Jackson, but she is skeptical that any will come. When she heard on the news that part of the Metrocenter Mall had a new owner, it just made her think about the last time people promised to redevelop the shopping center. 

“We shall see, we shall see, we shall see,” she said. “Cause that would’ve been a nice thing to have a skating rink right there, a water park for the kids. Another era.” 

MAYHEW, Miss. – A summer camp for girls in northeast Mississippi is designed to help produce the next generation of skilled construction workers.

FORGE’s Girls Construction Camp brought together 12- to 15-year-old girls last week for mentorship, interactive workshops and hands-on experience in the traditionally male-dominated field of construction. 

This is the program’s second year, and  24 campers participated, double last year’s number. The camp took place at East Mississippi Community College’s Golden Triangle campus.

FORGE is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing awareness of skilled trades among young people.

“We start out young, work with them as they grow, hoping to get more and more interested in construction and the skilled trades,” said Melinda Lowe, FORGE’s executive director.

Demand for workers in construction and other skilled trades is growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the U.S. will have an average of 663,500 job openings per year in construction and extraction until 2033. This field has a median annual wage of $58,360.

Christee Roberson is owner and founder of West Point-based Graham Roofing. She is also a founding member of FORGE and a trade partner for the camp. She and her team taught the girls about roofing. 

Roberson said it’s important to introduce construction and other trades to young people, especially girls.

“I think, being a female in the industry and never knew that this was something I could do, it’s important for sure to show other females that they can be in the trades, too,” she said. 

Aveline Webb, 12, of Starkville was a first-time camper. 

“We have been building our boxes,” Webb said. “We put up drywall. We’ve done roofing, electrical, plumbing, all the stuff that you would need to build a building.”

In addition to the lessons, the campers heard from guest speakers and worked in groups on a central project – building and decorating food pantry boxes. 

Jada Brown, 15 from Lowndes County, attended the camp last year and came back as student mentor.

“What I hope they take away is knowing how to build and wanting to want to do it in the future, and see themselves doing it,” she said. 

Lowe said the camp provides useful information even for those who don’t enter construction.

“We already have one young lady who has been helping her family replace some shingles that were damaged in a recent storm,” Lowe said. “We’ve had others who have fixed the stoppers in their sink, because they learned here how to fix that.”

The food pantry boxes will be placed in and around Lowndes County in the coming weeks.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday signed the vast majority of the state’s budget bills into law but vetoed a handful of the measures, which finalizes the state’s $7.1 billion budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. 

The governor wrote on social media that the budget is fiscally conservative and “essentially halts the growth of government.”

“In short, the $7.135 billion budget will help us get the job done on your behalf, and it will help us break new ground all across our state,” Reeves said. 

The budget for the next fiscal year is typically completed in the spring, but the Legislature adjourned its 2025 session earlier this year without agreeing on a budget due to Republican political infighting. The governor called lawmakers into a special session in May to pass a budget. 

The measures the governor vetoed were portions of the Department of Finance and Administration’s budget, parts of the Mississippi Development Authority’s budget, a portion of the State Health Department’s budget and a bill that attempted to give the Attorney General’s Office $2.5 million to combat human trafficking. 

The only bill the governor completely vetoed was a House bill that sought to allocate $2.5 million in excess revenues for the Attorney General’s Office to help victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation  

The state constitution gives the governor the power to set the parameters for what legislators can consider during a special session, not legislators. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and several senators argued that the legislation was outside of the governor’s special session parameters, but they passed it anyway. 

“All state action, including legislative power, must be exercised within the strict boundaries established by the Constitution,” Reeves wrote in his veto message. “Failure to recognize such limitations on power threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law — the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic.” 

The Mississippi Constitution also gives the governor the power to issue partial vetoes, or line-item vetoes, of appropriation bills, which the governor did for three other measures. 

One of those measures was a provision in the Mississippi State Department of Health’s budget that directed the state agency to send around $1.9 million to the Methodist Rehabilitation Center. 

After House members passed the bill, legislative staffers realized that the money could be a violation of federal law and regulations, placing Mississippi’s multi-billion-dollar Medicaid funding at risk. 

When the bill arrived in the Senate for consideration, senators were faced with the option of forcing the House back to the Capitol or sending a flawed bill to the governor for him to veto. They chose the latter. 

In the Department of Finance and Administration’s budget, the governor vetoed money for a project at the Mississippi Children’s Museum and LeFleur’s Bluff State Park. In the Mississippi Development Authority’s budget, Reeves vetoed $6.9 million for the Mississippi Main Street Revitalization Grant Program.

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

In Tunica County, Mississippi, wind energy is working.

Delta Wind, the state’s first utility-scale wind farm, has brought over $350 million in investment to the area and electricity to power 80,000 homes each year.

Wind projects are often among the largest taxpayers in the communities where they’re built. Delta Wind is expected to deliver substantial benefits for Tunica County, with tens of millions in projected tax revenue over the life of the project, typically 20 to 30 years, per industry standards.

This creates long-term, stable funding to support local public schools, road repairs, emergency services and other critical public needs. Landowners who host turbines also receive annual lease payments, generating new income while continuing to farm their land. This is what it looks like when a community embraces opportunity.

Across several rural Mississippi counties, energy developers have signaled interest in making substantial investments in renewable energy. In some communities, local officials are actively considering updates to zoning ordinances that could determine whether — and how — those projects move forward.

Policies aligned with industry best practices could support continued farm operations while unlocking major economic opportunities for these areas.

Mississippi isn’t standing still at the state level. Gov. Tate Reeves recently signed SB 3166, a law that incentivizes investment in renewable energy. It may be a technical policy, but the signal is clear: the state is ready to welcome new investment, especially in agricultural communities.

Recently, the governor also launched Mississippi’s “Power Play” initiative—a broader effort to reduce regulatory barriers, encourage private investment and position the state as a leader in energy policy and innovation.

Now it’s time for Mississippi counties to turn that momentum into action, while wind investments are still on the table.

Investments in wind energy strengthen our communities in so many ways — powering statewide economic development, providing new local tax revenue, offering steady income to landowners and farmers, all while maintaining existing agricultural operations right up to the base of the turbines.

Not long ago, opportunities like these were only available to our neighbors to the west — states like Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where wind now powers a significant share of the electricity supply and early investments in wind helped fund schools, strengthen infrastructure and diversify rural economies.

In a recent episode of WBUR’s On Point podcast, Samuel Davis, a sixth-generation rancher in Texas, said:  “Not every county, not every community, is blessed with oil and gas. People say, ‘Why don’t they just drill for oil?’ Well, they don’t have it, so you have to be resourceful. Every county, every school district has to use what they have.”

Thanks to advances in turbine technology, these same kinds of opportunities are now available to Mississippians. But realizing them will depend on local governments stepping forward to catch the wind while they still can.

This is a chance to bring millions in new tax revenue, land payments and jobs to more counties across the state. Tunica County showed what’s possible. It embraced the opportunity and helped launch a project that’s delivering homegrown power and investing in the future of its schools, families and local services.

The wind is blowing. The only question is: Who will catch it?

Jaxon Tolbert is a senior program associate at the Southeastern Wind Coalition, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that works to advance the wind industry in the Southeast. The coalition provides fact-based information on the economic opportunities of wind energy and promotes solutions that benefit residents and ratepayers. Tolbert leads onshore wind efforts across the central Southeast, including Mississippi.

Laughter erupts from the kitchen of Stewpot’s Teen Center as rising sixth grader Jamila Jeffries cuts a raw potato into thin slices. It’s lunch time, and she’s surrounded by other campers who are busy digging into french fries and stuffed-crust pizza. 

Jeffries is taking part in the recreational summer camp, and though it’s her first day, she said she’s already making friends.

“ I like how we get to cook and stuff. We get to learn about each other. We get to do new things every day,” Jeffries said. 

Stewpot Community Services is one of Jackson’s main meal kitchens and provider of shelters for people experiencing homelessness. Jeffries is one of about 150 children who are here for the summer camp, and she said spending time at Stewpot allows her the chance to do something other than being at home. 

“ It gives me time to breathe,” she said. “I get to relax and I don’t have to worry about anything happening here. I get to cook stuff. I get to enjoy myself.”

Yolanda Kirkland, Stewpot’s director of teen services, said that’s the point. She hopes to cultivate a welcoming environment where her campers can be comfortable.

“ It’s very important that people have places of rest,” Kirkland said. “I think when they’re in a place where they are loved, they can rest.”

Stewpot has held summer camps for children in west Jackson for more than 30 years. The seven week program is designed for students who are in kindergarten through 10th grade. Here, children from underprivileged communities can go on excursions with peers and take part in educational opportunities, such as weeklong camps at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and biology lessons in the garden behind the Teen Center. 

On this day, volunteers from Brilla Soccer Ministry are teaching a group of middle schoolers the basics of soccer, while others are headed to the Two Mississippi Museums. The next day, the teenagers will be headed to Spinners roller rink in nearby Florence for skating or the Margaret Walker Alexander Library. There’s a well-rounded calendar of activities which keeps them social while also opening their worldview.

“ I want the kids to know they do have a rich community in Mississippi,” Kirkland said. “Some of our students stay in one location. They stay around their neighborhoods. I try to expose them to what’s in Mississippi. I want them to know what they have in their state that’s unique.”

That includes trips all across the state, such as the Grammy Museum in Cleveland or the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum in Vicksburg. 

“We go everywhere if I can get there in our little mini-bus,” Kirkland said. “If I can get there and get back for 3:00, we’re gone.”

Verse Norris, a rising eighth grader, said he finds the summer camp fun because she’s introduced to something new every day.

“It is adventurous. You never know what could happen,” Norris said. “They take you somewhere fun and there’s a lot of other things to do, like cooking and gardening. You just do more stuff than you can at your normal summer camp.”

But Stewpot’s summer camp isn’t just about having fun. Nearby, in a building adjacent to the Teen Center, LaQuita White helps a young camper attach yarn to a craft project. Today, they’re learning about summer fruits. 

“Some of our kids don’t usually have things to do in the summer, and our camp keeps them engaged and thriving because we also do learning,” said White, director of children’s services at Stewpot.  “We do summer reading. We do STEM activities. We do a little math because we have JPS tutors who come weekly and do different educational activities with them.”

Studies have shown that children are at risk of losing vital reading and math skills during the summer months when they aren’t in school. Children who come from lower-income households, like many of the children that Stewpot serves, may find themselves at a greater disadvantage. 

“We are here for them, because some of our parents can’t afford to send them to a seven week summer camp, and so if we were not here, they’d probably more than likely just be sitting at home or at grandma’s house with nothing to do. No learning going on, no reading,” White said. 

White said that she wants her campers to thrive and grow, even as they age out of her program and into the teen group and beyond.

“Our big thing here is graduation. That’s the name of the game,” White said. “Educate, motivate, graduate. That’s our motto.”

Mississippi high schoolers no longer have to pass the U.S. history test to graduate.

The Mississippi State Board of Education voted Thursday to remove the requirement starting this fall. 

Department officials reiterated at the meeting that high schoolers would still have to take and pass history classes to graduate. 

Paula Vanderford, the education department’s chief accountability officer, said the agency has informally discussed releasing test resources to local districts if they want to create their own assessments. 

She said at a previous board meeting that getting rid of the test would save the state money.

The state board voted to open public comments about the decision in April after the Commission on School Accreditation voted to propose eliminating the test. Ultimately, it received 20 comments in support of the test’s removal, many of them from parents who cited their children’s test anxiety, and 16 against it, arguing that getting rid of the test would diminish the importance of the country’s history. 

U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker recently co-authored an editorial advocating against removing the U.S. history state test with board member Mary Werner, who voted against the decision at the meeting. 

“Our state has been making remarkable strides in education, and this progress is equipping the very Mississippians who will lead our state into the 21st century,” the editorial reads. “As they take on our future, we believe they should be as knowledgeable as possible about our past.”

Werner said after the meeting that she was “disappointed” in the board’s decision because the history test provided a measure of accountability for teachers.

Passing the state algebra I, biology and English language arts tests will remain a graduation requirement. The U.S. history assessment was the sole test not required by state or federal law. 

“Though the U.S. history statewide assessment will be eliminated starting next school year, it’s important to emphasize that students will still learn U.S. history and will be required to successfully complete the course to graduate,” said Dr. Lance Evans, state superintendent of education, in a press release. “Having fewer state tests required to graduate should be less taxing on educators, students and families alike.”

The Rev. Jeff Hood is “determined to let people know you’re killing my friend.”

Those are the people he’s grown close to before witnessing their executions — a dozen so far and a number that continues to grow as Mississippi prepares to put 79-year-old Richard Jordan to death and the death penalty continues being handed down in over half of all states, particularly the South.

Hood is a spiritual adviser who accompanies death row inmates to their executions, praying for them and sharing last words with them as a culmination of a months-, sometimes years-long relationship. 

By doing that, Hood said he can bring members of the public as close to the execution chamber as they can get and see the impact of the death penalty.  

To date, he has witnessed 11 executions: four in Oklahoma, three in Alabama, two in Texas,  one in Missouri and one in Florida. 

It’s something he may be called to do one day in Mississippi. Hood is not Jordan’s spiritual adviser, but he has communicated with a member of Jordan’s family and he plans to travel to Parchman to pray outside on June 25 if Jordan’s scheduled execution goes through, just as he did in 2022 for the execution of Thomas Loden, a Marine Corps recruiter who kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed a 16-year-old waitress. 

He and advocates have spoken out against Jordan’s scheduled execution, questioning whether it makes sense to see someone who is almost 80 as a safety risk and the fact it’s been 48 years since he was first convicted of capital murder in the kidnapping and death of Edwina Marter in Harrison County. 

He participated in a video released by the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Council in which Jordan shares his story and asks the state to commute his sentence to life without the possibility of parole. In the video, Jordan says he was a model citizen until he returned after three tours in the Vietnam War. His defense has argued that he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from the war, a view bolstered on the video by Jordan’s younger siblings — brother Houston Jordan and sister Nordeen Jones — who said he was kind and a role model to them. Former schoolmates, ministers and a retired corrections officer also appear on the video, talking about Jordan’s willingness to help others.

‘Whatever you did to the least of these’

Hood grew up in Georgia in a Southern Baptist family and studied theology. As he studied in Atlanta, he was part of organizing against the 2011 execution of Troy Davis, who maintained his innocence to the end in the murder of a Savannah police officer. 

Connecting with death row inmates and being present at their deaths is something he said he was called by God to do, saying the work aligns with Matthew 25:40: “(W)hatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” 

Hood can’t think of a group that embodies “the least of these” more than those sentenced to death. He said he shows them the love of God and encourages them to have the courage to live, even if they have weeks or months left and people want them to be executed. 

“It’s my job to make them hungry to live,” Hood said. “I think that is the greatest resistance possible.”

Innocence isn’t a requirement to work with someone, and he said he will love someone “irrespective of what they’ve done.” But Hood said that doesn’t mean there haven’t been difficult interactions or that he doesn’t think about victims’ families and the severity of death row inmates’ crimes. 

Hood sees how nearly 50 years of waiting for an execution has been torture for any victim’s family, especially the Marters. 

Eric Marter, the elder son of Edwina and Charles Marter, was 11 years old and his younger brother was 4 when their mother died. 

He said it’s been so long and he would have preferred Jordan to have been executed years ago. Over the years of his appeals, Marter said he hasn’t made his ongoing legal case and whether an execution happens a priority. 

“At this point in my life, maybe 30 years ago I may have had more interest in wanting him to be executed,”said Marter, who is 59 and lives in Louisiana. 

“But at this particular point, I don’t really want to waste my time thinking about him.” 

A ‘moral sacrifice’ to be in that chamber’

Spiritual advisers like Hood have been allowed to be in the room and stand alongside the condemned since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with a Texas death row inmate who sued for the right to have his pastor beside him.  

June 10 was the executions of Anthony Wainwright in Florida and Gregory Hunt in Alabama. As both of their spiritual advisors, Hood said the states put him in a position to have to choose whose to attend and break a promise. He was with Wainwright at his execution. 

The week before that, he was on the road and traveled from his home in Arkansas to Alabama and Florida to be with the men and organize against the death penalty with local advocates. From a virtual event streamed from his car June 6, Hood raised issues about violations of Hunt’s and Wainwright’s spiritual liberty and constitutional rights. 

Like Mississippi, most death penalty states use lethal injection, but others are starting to use lethal gas and firing range. Since 2022, Mississippi allows those methods along with the electric chair, but lethal injection is the state’s preference.

Jordan continues to challenge the constitutionality of the drugs Mississippi uses for lethal injection through a federal lawsuit. 

Last year, Hood witnessed the “horror show” execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama by nitrogen gas. The pastor remembers seeing Smith start to heave back and forth violently as soon as the gas hit his face, his veins looking like ants under his skin. Smith thrashed against the restraints, and Hood remembers crying – something not typical for him. 

Even if an execution has not been scheduled, Hood stays in contact with two dozen people on death rows around the country. Some call him several times a week and on specific days. 

His contact includes seven in Mississippi, including Willie Manning – for whom the state is seeking an execution date – and others who are still pursuing legal challenges such as Willie Godbolt and Lisa Jo Chamberlin. 

Chamberlin, convicted of two counts of capital murder in 2006, is the only woman on death row in the state, and Hood said he reached out to her knowing a bit about her story and that she needed help. What he found was someone who “desperately needed a friend” and whose mental health suffers because she is isolated. 

Unlike death row in Parchman where most of the men are together, Chamberlin is kept on her own in a maximum security unit in the women’s prison at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. Hood said that often means Chamberlin spends hours in her cell or time in the dayroom on her own. 

Ahead of Jordan’s execution, Hood has called out elected officials like Gov. Tate Reeves, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court for allowing executions to happen but not having to attend or witness them. 

“There’s a moral sacrifice it takes to be in that chamber,” Hood said. 

When he stands beside the condemned, Hood prays and tells them how sorry he is that he wasn’t able to stop the execution. And each time he leaves, he said it’s as if he leaves a piece of his soul behind. 

The next execution might be scheduled in a matter of days, weeks or months, so he doesn’t have much time to recover. Continuing to intervene in executions and speak out against the death penalty also makes him the target of threats and potentially puts his family at risk. Hood is married and the father of five children.

But Hood takes on the risks to his wellbeing and health and sees it as a privilege to work with people on death row and do something he cares about. 

“The spiritual adviser can either be silent about what is happening,” he said. “… (Or) they can speak up and resist the evil that is happening.”

The state of Mississippi and technology giant Nvidia have reached a deal for the company to expand artificial intelligence training and research at the state’s education institutions, an initiative to prepare students for a global economy increasingly driven by AI, Gov. Tate Reeves announced Wednesday.

The memorandum of understanding, a nonbinding agreement, between Mississippi and the California-based company will introduce AI programs across the state’s community colleges, universities and technical institutions. The initiative will aim to train at least 10,000 Mississippians using a curriculum designed around AI skills, machine learning and data science.

Mississippi now joins Utah, California and Oregon, which have signed on to similar programs with Nvidia.

“This collaboration with Nvidia is monumental for Mississippi. By expanding AI education, investing in workforce development and encouraging innovation, we, along with Nvidia, are creating a pathway to dynamic careers in AI and cybersecurity for Mississippians,” Reeves said. “These are the in-demand jobs of the future — jobs that will change the landscape of our economy for generations to come. AI is here now, and it is here to stay.”

The agreement does not award any tax incentives to Nvidia, but Reeves said the state would provide funding for the initiative. Still, he did not foresee having to call a special legislative session in order to pay for it. Reeves said officials and Nvidia were still determining the exact dollar figure the project would require, but the state would spend as much as it took to reach its goal of training at least 10,000 Mississippians.

Some of the funding may come from $9.1 million in grants to state institutions of higher learning through the Mississippi AI Talent Accelerator Program, which Reeves announced last week.

Nvidia designs and supplies graphics processing units (GPUs), and the Mississippi program will focus on teaching people to work with GPUs. The company has seen growing demand for its semiconductors, which are used to power AI applications.

Now the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Nvidia announced in April that it will produce its AI supercomputers in the United States for the first time.

Louis Stewart, head of strategic initiatives for Nvidia’s global developer ecosystem, said the Mississippi program is part of a larger effort to bolster the United States’ position as the global leader in artificial intelligence.

“Together, we will enhance economic growth through an AI-skilled workforce, advanced research, and industry engagement, positioning Mississippi as a hub for AI-driven transformation to the benefit of its communities.”