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Double jeopardy does not apply, the state’s Court of Appeals narrowly said, when it ruled a former Ole Miss student acquitted by a judge should be tried again for the near fatal stabbing of a Tennessee man in 2019. 

Union County Circuit Judge Kent Smith had ruled in 2023  that the prosecution violated Lane Mitchell’s constitutional right to compulsory process – specifically to command the victim to testify as a defense witness –  in issuing an order of acquittal of attempted murder. The appeals court ruled the acquittal was not based on the evidence.

The 5-4 ruling sent the case back to the trial court. Appeals Court Judge John Weddle, formerly the district attorney of counties in northeast Mississippi, recused himself. 

Mitchell’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment about whether he will appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

District Attorney Ben Creekmore recused himself from the case in 2021, which led the attorney general’s office to appoint two of its attorneys to prosecute the case. A spokesperson from the attorney general’s office confirmed the office would appoint prosecutors for a new trial.

In 2019, the then-18-year-old Mitchell stabbed Collierville resident Nathan Russell Rogers at the Tallahatchie Gourmet – a restaurant where Rogers had been a regular customer and visited after hiking in the area. 

Mitchell said during trial and in court records that he believed Rogers had a weapon and he feared for the safety of a female waitress and his father who was working as a bartender. However, Rogers was unarmed. 

Video footage from the restaurant also captured the leadup, stabbing and its aftermath. Stills from the video showed how Mitchell grabbed a knife from the bar and held it behind his back and watched for a few moments. As his father and Rogers began to struggle, Mitchell came up from behind Rogers and stabbed him three times in the neck. 

Rogers nearly bled out and needed immediate surgery. As a result of the stabbing, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was placed under his father’s conservatorship, according to court records. 

Mississippi Today reported that Mitchell went on to attend another college in Tennessee and would have attended graduation  before his trial. 

Four days before trial, the defense tried to subpoena Rogers to testify. But when trial began and a jury had been impaneled, he did not show up. The defense filed a summons with a Tennessee court for him to be taken into custody and delivered to Union County, but the summons was never served.  

The Shelby County probate court in Tennessee, which oversees Rogers’ conservatorship, quashed the request to bring Rogers to court in Mississippi, ruling that he was a disabled person who is incapable of testifying in any legal proceeding, including the one in which he almost died. 

The Court of Appeal’s order notes that the defense did not attempt to appeal the probate court’s decision or ask for a continuance to appeal – ways to get Rogers to testify. 

The appellate court’s majority opinion written by Judge John Emfinger focused on whether the court had the ability to hear the case and whether state law provided a valid way for the state to appeal. 

Section 99-35-103(a) provides a way for appeals when an indictment is dismissed before a decision is made on the merits of the indictment.

“We find that subsection 99-35-103(a) does not contain any such limitation,” Emfinger wrote in the majority opinion. “Instead, it plainly and unambiguously applies to all efforts to dismiss a charging instrument, for any reason, at whatever time it may be filed.”

The majority also found that dismissing the indictment doesn’t prevent subsequent prosecution for the same offense. In appeal documents, Mitchell’s attorneys have said retrying him would violate his protection against double jeopardy. 

Judges Jack Wilson, Anthony Lawrence III, David Neil McCarty and Amy Lassitter St. Pé joined the majority order. 

Another focus of the decision was whether Judge Smith was correct to dismiss Mitchell’s charge and acquit him. 

Smith identified the conservator, Bob Rogers, who is also the victim’s father, and his attorney as members of the prosecution team. During trial the judge bemoaned some of those actions, including how Bob Rogers was an impediment to the case and helped his son avoid testifying. 

The Court of Appeals disagreed, saying Bob Rogers and his attorney were not part of the prosecution team, noting the state Supreme Court has determined that team consists of the investigative and prosecutorial personnel. The court also noted that Bob Rogers, as the conservator, was acting in his son’s best interest.

In a dissent joined by Judges Virginia Carlton, Deborah McDonald and Latrice Westbrooks, Chief Judge Donna Barnes argues the court does not have authority to hear the state’s appeal, so it must be dismissed. 

The statute in which the state appealed has limited exceptions, and interpreting it as the majority does disregards plain reading of the statute and Mitchell’s constitutional rights, according to the dissent. 

Timing of when an indictment can be dismissed matters because it can bring up concerns about double jeopardy – the protection of being tried twice for the same offense. Jeopardy attaches when a jury is impaneled or a trial begins where guilt may be imposed, which is what happened in Mitchell’s case. 

In a separate dissent, Judge Latrice Westbrooks agreed with Barnes and emphasized the trial court’s constitutional and procedural rationales to enter a judgment of acquittal for Mitchell. 

Westbrook said that it’s the state’s responsibility to ensure its primary witness is available and present to testify, and allowing the ruling would be a “double standard.” This is in contrast with how a trial may proceed if a defendant fails to appeal, she wrote. 

Like Barnes, she disagreed with the majority of justices that the state had a legal means to appeal, including potential concerns of double jeopardy. 

“The majority’s refusal to properly recognize the limits of our jurisdiction over an acquittal turns decades of constitutional law and criminal procedure on its head.” 

Ambition Preparatory Charter School will expand to become the second charter high school in the state. 

The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board approved the expansion at its Monday meeting, while a handful of Ambition Prep students and administrators watched in the audience. 

The school, which was opened by executive director DeArchie Scott in August 2019, currently serves kindergarten through eighth grade. The expansion will make Ambition Prep Jackson’s only charter high school.

Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School in the Delta will start expanding into high school grades next year to become the state’s first charter high school, and while the board authorized RePublic Charter Schools to open a high school in 2018, the charter network did not ultimately open one.

The board’s move is one that parents have been asking for since the school opened, Scott said. 

“We are excited about the decision,” he said after the meeting. “It’s going to have a huge impact on our students. We’ve been telling our families who have been asking for this since kindergarten that we just have to see how we’re doing, and given our results, this is the right time.”

According to the charter authorizer board’s annual evaluation of the school’s performance, Ambition met expectations in the vast majority of categories during the 2023-2024 school year, though it did fall short in at least one instance of employee credentialing and had a high chronic absenteeism rate at 24%.

Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the authorizer board, said she “couldn’t be more happy” that the charter’s expansion was approved. It’s the first school to take advantage of the board’s new expansion framework — Karmacharya said that Ambition put forward a strong plan and has set an example for other charters. 

“Expanding grades will provide educational opportunities for students in communities that have been traditionally underserved and allow for students to continue their education in a structured and high performing school as evidenced by results on annual performance reports,” their expansion report reads. “Ambition Prep is committed to character development, leadership, and college readiness for all scholars now and in the future.”

Kyson Bailey, a rising 7th grader at Ambition, was one of the students in attendance at the Monday meeting. He said he’s looking forward to attending high school at Ambition in a couple of years. 

“It’s a good opportunity, just them building on what we have,” he said. 

The high school will open in fall 2027, and construction on new classrooms will start in January.

U.S. Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi is campaigning to lead the House Homeland Security Committee, according to the congressional news website Punchbowl News. 

Guest, a Republican who has represented the state’s 3rd Congressional District since 2019, is one of four GOP members competing to lead the influential committee, according to the news outlet. 

The House Republican Steering Committee will meet on Monday night to pick the next Homeland Security Committee. 

The committee chairmanship opened up because the committee’s previous chairman, U.S. Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee, announced he would resign from Congress as soon as the House passed President Donald Trump’s latest spending bill, which he signed into law on July 4. 

“I look forward to the possible opportunity to work alongside President Trump as Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security,” Guest told Mississippi Today in a statement. “As the former Vice Chairman of the Committee and the current Chairman of the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, I have unique leadership experience to bring to this role.”

The Mississippi Republican currently leads the House Ethics Committee. During his time chairing the bipartisan committee, he has successfully authored and pushed for a resolution to expel former New York Congressman George Santos from the House chamber. 

He also led the Ethics Committee during its investigation and subsequent report into the alleged misconduct of former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. Gaetz resigned from Congress before the committee’s work concluded on Gaetz, which meant the committee no longer had jurisdiction to investigate the Florida Republican.  

President Donald Trump in 2024 nominated Gaetz to become attorney general, which prompted bipartisan pressure for the committee to release its report on the Florida congressman, even though Gaetz was no longer a member of Congress. Trump eventually withdrew Gaetz’s nomination. 

The committee eventually voted to release the report, but Guest objected to the decision and wrote that it deviated from the committee’s longstanding traditions.  

Should Guest become the new House Homeland Security Chairman, it would mean two Mississippians would become the top party leaders on the committee. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is currently the top Democrat on the committee. 

Thompson served as chairman of the committee from 2007 to 2011, and from 2019 to 2023.

Before Guest became a member of Congress, he was a district attorney in Madison and Rankin counties.

A federal judge has temporarily paused enforcement of the state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs from Mississippi public schools and universities.

U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate on Sunday approved the request for a temporary restraining order sought by a coalition of civil rights and legal organizations on behalf of students, parents and educators.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Mississippi Center for Justice are representing the plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit alongside other groups on June 9 against the state’s education boards. Wingate heard arguments on June 24 from top lawyers from both organizations, as well as Special Assistant Attorney General Rex Shannon, who represented the state-agency defendants. 

Shannon objected to the temporary restraining order in court and argued the plaintiffs didn’t have legal standing to file the lawsuit. He also admitted his office was limited in the arguments it could make because of the litigation’s compressed schedule.

The order is in effect for 14 days, and allows Wingate to extend it for an additional 14 days. Next, the plaintiffs plan to seek a preliminary injunction — a longer-lasting court order that would continue to freeze the state law. 

The state could appeal Wingate’s decision to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, though it’s unclear if they will do so.

“In this Court’s eye, these accounts appear to reflect a broad, chilling effect across public institutions and community organizations,” Wingate wrote in his order, of individual reports about the impact of the bill. “The evidence, at this stage, demonstrates a clear and ongoing deprivation of constitutional rights in a manner not compensable by money damages — thus warranting injunctive relief.”

In April, legislators passed House Bill 1193, which prevents public schools from creating diversity, equity and inclusion offices, engaging in “divisive” concepts and hiring people based on their race, sex, color or national origin. The State Board of Education and the Institutions of Higher Learning recently approved policies that create a complaint and investigation process for violations to the law. 

Local school boards have to create their own policies, too, which MCJ attorney Rob McDuff argued in court would be a lengthy and arduous process. 

“This statute would throw our schools into chaos if it’s allowed to go forward,” he said. “As we approach the fall semester, teachers are preparing their lesson plans … people need to know that at least for the moment, enforcement of this law is going to stop while the court further considers the issues.”

Joshua Tom, ACLU of Mississippi’s legal director, said the law’s vagueness was unconstitutional. 

“‘Engage’ is not defined,” he said. “How does a teacher or student ‘engage’? Do a mandatory reading? Talk about it in class? What if they go on a field trip and one of the concepts is introduced. Is that engaging? It’s not clear.”

He also noted that the statute was already making an impact — in an effort to comply with the law, the University of Mississippi withdrew its funding from Oxford’s annual Pride Parade a few weeks ago and prohibited university departments from marching in their capacity as professors, he said. 

Professors and school officials have publicly criticized the bill and asked for clarification about its enforcement. One top Jackson Public Schools official submitted questions asking if celebrating Black History Month or if one of the district’s core values, “equity,” would lead to compliance violations.

Both parties will be back in federal court on August 5 to make their cases about a preliminary injunction.

The dichotomy that is Jason White was on full display during a speech he delivered during a recent lunch meeting of the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government.

Some at the meeting most likely cursed House Speaker Jason White because of his work to eliminate the Mississippi income tax and because of his unapologetic support of sending public funds to private schools.

Darn that Jason White.

But many of the same people would praise the first-term Republican speaker for his past support of expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance for primarily the working poor and for his support of restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies.

Thanks, Jason White, some might say, perhaps begrudgingly.

But those people should give White some credit. It was no small feat for White to publicly voice support for Medicaid expansion as he campaigned in 2023 to gather the votes to win the speakership. Before then it was rare for a Republican politician in Mississippi to even utter the words “Medicaid expansion.” Theoretically, White could have been putting his political future on the line.

But in 2024 after being elected speaker by his Republican caucus, White made a good faith but ultimately unsuccessful effort to pass an expansion bill. The proposal was defeated for multiple reasons.

But White has not ruled out the possibility of Medicaid expansion being revisited.

He said the state still needs to help struggling rural hospitals and to work to increase the number of Mississippians who have health coverage. And to achieve those goals, Medicaid expansion, despite changes made to the program in the so-called federal “Big Beautiful Bill,” appears to still be the best mechanism to help struggling hospitals and to ensure health care coverage for poor, working Mississippians.

Another proposal that many Republican leaders, including Gov. Tate Reeves, have opposed that White has embraced is restoring voting rights for people who have been convicted of felonies. In Mississippi people convicted of some crimes, even some relatively minor ones, lose their voting rights for life.

White recently said that he supports “addressing barriers to suffrage for those … who have served their time … paid their debt to society, paid all fines and fees. We are looking for a way to remove barriers for those folks to reengage with the community and be able to vote.”

But many of the same people who would support White’s efforts in health care and in expanding voting rights would curse the considerable political capital he spent to pass a bill that is intended to phase out Mississippi’s income tax, which accounts for about 30% of the state’s general fund revenue.

While White has stepped outside of the Mississippi Republican policy boundaries on some issues, he is right in line with many of his Republican colleagues on the issues of tax cuts and even of providing public funds to private schools. As a matter of fact, White admits he is more of an advocate on the private school voucher issue than many of his fellow House Republicans.

White’s background might help explain his diverse political philosophy.

White was elected as a Democrat in 2011 from a rural district where it would have been difficult for a Republican to win. The district was held by a Democrat — Mary Ann Stevens — who was voting with the burgeoning House Republican caucus. White ran as the candidate of the Democrats, who were desperately trying to maintain their House majority. He won, but the Democrats lost.

After that pivotal election, White saw the handwriting on the wall and changed parties. With that party switch, the Republican majority redrew House boundaries to create a district where White could win as a Republican.

But it is reasonable to assume that in many ways, White is still the person he was when he ran as a rural Democrat.

He is still from a poor, rural area where health care is at the top of mind — and where, often, health care is nearly non-existent.

And in his day-to-day activities, White, an attorney, crosses paths with people convicted of felonies who have paid for their mistake and want a chance to reenter society. That reentry for many includes voting.

And yes, there are struggling schools in the rural area where White lives in Holmes County.

Rightfully or wrongfully, White sees private school vouchers as a way for students trapped in struggling schools to have a better chance.

Many believe that it is wrong-headed thinking to take money from the struggling public schools that need all the help they can get, and that may be a reason to curse White. For others, though, his support of Medicaid expansion is a reason to praise him.

Shelves half-filled with books lined the walls of the muggy Bailey APAC Middle School library, where a handful of volunteers assembled equipment, painted ceilings and sorted through boxes.

One volunteer, wiping sweat from his brow, was Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools.

Jackson Public Schools held its annual Beautification Day on Friday. The event brings community members into schools to help prepare them for the first day, just days away. Greene joined hundreds of volunteers across the city.

After all, he was the one who established the event when he arrived at the district in 2018 — a district that was facing a potential state takeover and had lost some trust from its community.

“There’s no way to revitalize a district and do the heavy lifting that we needed to do without some kind of spark,” he said. “We were looking for those sparks — painting a mural or planting some flowers or helping a teacher to set up a classroom. This was an effort to create some shared ownership in our schools.

“You want families to feel like this is their school, because it is.”

That shared responsibility is essential, especially as federal education funding wavers, Greene said. 

Voters had just approved a $65 million bond issue to pay for repairs and new classrooms in the district when Greene arrived in 2018. But he quickly realized Jackson Public Schools, which has many decades-old buildings, needed “two, three, maybe even four times more than that.”

“While I’m thankful, we’ve seen over time, the needs were just much, much, much greater,” he said. 

As the district focuses on taking its schools to the next level, Greene said, the state needs to continue consistently and fully funding education, and the community needs to keep supporting its schools at events like Beautification Day. 

Bailey in particular was humming with excitement on Friday morning. This year, students will be returning to the school’s original location where it was built in 1938. The school was closed for a few years while undergoing renovations, but in a few days, it will reopen as a 4th to 8th grade school after absorbing Wells APAC Elementary School.

For Rose Wright, a longtime history teacher at Bailey, it’s a homecoming.

“What I love about Beautification Day is that these are their children, and these parents are coming to help us help them,” she said, cutting decorations for her classroom. “I am just really excited to be at home.”

Outside in the sultry July heat, a group of dads dug up dead vines. Though it’s not his first time helping out during Beautification Day, Justin Cook, an attorney at the Mississippi Office of the State Public Defender, took off work this year to help prepare the school. He’s got two kids, a 5th grader and an 8th grader, who will learn in the new building.

“I thought it was important to do everything I could to make the transition easier,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be hiccups, and whatever we can do as parents and stakeholders to have that growing pains be as minimal as possible is essential.”

Events like Beautification Day, Greene said, don’t just deepen the relationship between the community and the district. They also show students that the community is invested in them, which is integral to their success. 

“I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and so I know what it means to be in a community that is kind of dismissed,” he said. “I’ve found that here, there’s a great deal of pride — even where we as a school district had not delivered. The fact that we even have this kind of activity absolutely signals to young people that people care about you.”

Students roamed the school grounds and hallways, stepping around wood planks and cardboard boxes, peering into their new classrooms.

Kayley Willis, who will be in the 5th grade at Bailey this year, saw her school for the first time on Friday morning and explored the building with friends Anasia Hunter and Farah Malembeka, both rising 6th graders. 

“It makes us feel proud that we actually have people who care about the school enough to come down here and help out,” Hunter said. “It really feels like they care.”

Tangled finances, thousands in personal loans and a political contribution from a supposed investor group made up of undercover FBI informants — this was all contained in a months-late campaign finance report from Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens. 

Owens, a second-term Democrat in Mississippi’s capital city region, is fighting federal bribery charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. At the same time, his recent campaign finance disclosure reflects a pair of transactions that correspond with key details in the government’s allegation that Owens took money from undercover informants to pay off a local official’s debt.

Regarding payments from Facility Solutions Team — the company name used in the FBI sting — to former Jackson City Councilwoman Angelique Lee, Owens allegedly stated the need to “clean it out,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in November.

“[L]ike we always do, we’ll put it in a campaign account, or directly wire it,” he said, the indictment claims. “[T]hat’s the only way I want the paper trail to look.”

Agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with Owens and other officials, and after his arraignment last year, Owens responded to the charges, saying, “The cherry-picked statements of drunken locker room banter is not a crime.”

Throughout 2024, a non-election year during which federal authorities allege Owens funneled thousands of dollars in bribes to Jackson’s city officials, Owens loaned his campaign more than $20,000, according to his campaign committee’s finance report. He’d won reelection in late 2023.

Owens and his attorneys did not respond to questions about his campaign finance report.

Owens’ report, filed May 30 – months late and riddled with errors – is the latest example of how Mississippi politicians can ignore the state’s campaign finance transparency laws while avoiding meaningful consequences. It’s a lax legal environment that has led to late and illegible reports, untraceable out-of-state money that defied contribution limits, and, according to federal authorities, public corruption with campaign finance accounts serving as piggy banks. 

Enforcement duties are divided among many government bodies, including the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The commission’s executive director, Tom Hood, has long complained that the state’s campaign finance laws are confusing and ineffective.

“It’s just a mess,” Hood said.

Owens filed the annual report months past the Jan. 31 deadline, after reporting from The Marshall Project – Jackson revealed he had failed to do so. He paid a $500 fine in April.

He was also late filing in previous years, paying fines in some years and failing to pay the penalties in other years, according to records provided by the Ethics Commission.

The report, which Owens signed, is full of omissions or miscalculations, with no way to tell which is which. The cover sheet of the report provides the total amount of itemized contributions and disbursements for the year — $44,000 in and $36,500 out. But the body of the report lists the line-by-line itemizations for each, and when the Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today summed the individual itemizations, the totals didn’t match those on the cover sheet.

Based on the itemized spending detailed in the body of the report, Owens’ campaign should have thousands more in cash on hand than reported. In the report’s cover sheet, Owens also reported that he received more in itemized contributions during the year than he received in total contributions, which would be impossible to do.

While the secretary of state receives and maintains campaign finance reports, it has no obligation to review the reports and no authority to investigate their accuracy. Under state law, willfully filing a false campaign finance report is a misdemeanor. Charges, however, are rare.

Owens is the only local official in the federal bribery probe — which is set to go to trial next summer — who remains in office. The government alleged that Owens accepted $125,000 to split between him and two associates in late 2023 from a group of men he believed were vying for a development project in downtown Jackson. Owens accepted several thousand dollars more to funnel to public officials for their support of the project, the indictment alleges. The use of campaign accounts was an important feature of the alleged scheme, according to the indictment.

Owens divvied up $50,000 from Facility Solutions Team, or FST, into checks from various individuals or companies — allegedly meant to conceal the bribe — to former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s reelection campaign, the indictment charged. 

Lumumba accepted the checks during a sunset cruise on a yacht in South Florida, the indictment alleged. His campaign finance report, filed earlier this year, reflected five $10,000 contributions near the date of the trip, with no mention of FST.

Lumumba, who lost reelection in April, has pleaded not guilty. 

While the indictment accused Owens of saying that public officials use campaign accounts to finance their personal lives, state law prohibits the use of political contributions for personal use. 

The indictment alleges Owens accepted $60,000 — some for the purpose of funneling to local politicians — from the men representing themselves as FST in the backroom of Owens’ cigar bar on Feb. 13, 2024. On his campaign finance report, he listed a $12,500 campaign contribution from FST two days later, the same day the indictment alleges he paid off $10,000 of former Councilwoman Lee’s campaign debt. Lee pleaded guilty to charges related to the alleged bribery scheme in 2024. 

Also on Feb. 15, 2024, the campaign finance report Owens filed shows a $10,000 payment to 1Vision, a printing company that used to go by the name A2Z Printing, for the purpose of “debt retirement.” Lee had her city paycheck garnished starting in 2023 to pay off debts to A2Z Printing, according to media reports. No mention of Lee was made in the campaign finance report filed by Owens. The printing company did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaigns are allowed to contribute money to other campaigns or political action committees. If Owens’ committee used campaign funds to pay off debt owed by Lee’s campaign, the transaction should have been structured as a contribution to Lee’s campaign and reported as such by both campaigns, said Sam Begley, a Jackson-based attorney and election law expert who has advised candidates about their financial disclosures.

The alleged debt payoff on behalf of Lee is not the first time Owens has described transactions on his campaign finance filings in ways that may obscure how his campaign is spending money. Confusing or unclear descriptions of spending activity are common on campaign finance reports across the state.

Owens previously reported that in 2023, he paid $1,275 to a staff member in the district attorney’s office who also worked on his campaign. The payment was labeled a reimbursement, which Owens explained in a May email to The Marshall Project – Jackson was for expenditures this person made on behalf of the campaign, “such as meals for volunteers/workers, evening/weekend canvassers, and election day workers.”

State law requires campaigns to itemize all contributions and expenses over $200. Begley said he believes Owens’ committee should have itemized any payments over $200 made by anyone on behalf of the campaign. 

Upfront payments, with the expectation of repayment by the campaign, might also be considered a loan, according to a spokesperson for the secretary of state. Campaigns are barred from spending money to repay undocumented loans.

The state Ethics Commission has addressed undocumented loan repayments in several opinions, outlining the required documentation to make repayments legal.

Since 2018, the Ethics Commission has had the power to issue advisory opinions upon request to help candidates and campaigns sort through laws that Hood, the commission’s executive director, said aren’t always clear.

The commission has issued just six opinions in seven years.

“I was surprised in the first few years that there weren’t more,” Hood said. “But now it seems to be clear that for whatever reason, most people don’t think they need advice.”

Don’t know about you, but I spent most of Thursday — from well before dawn until mid-afternoon — watching The Open, played this week in Northern Ireland at a golf course known as Royal Portrush.

A more appropriate name for the par-71, 7,300-yard course would be Hell on Earth. Wind, rain, the rugged terrain, narrow fairways, dense, unforgiving rough, deep bunkers and severely undulating greens combine to make the course about as difficult as any imaginable.

One hundred and fifty six of the most accomplished golfers in the world competed Thursday. The golf course was the clear winner. Only 32 — about one in five — broke par. Three did not break 80. Hattiesburg native Davis Riley, an incredibly gifted golfer and the only native Mississippian in the field, shot 77. Brooks Koepka and Colin Morikawa, winners of seven major championships between them, each shot 75.

What would your average 12-handicapper shoot at Royal Portrush? He or she would not break 120. Hell, he or she might not finish.

I write from some experience. Eight years ago, I joined a group of eight Mississippians on a golfing tour of Ireland. We played seven world class golf courses in nine days, six in Ireland and one in Northern Ireland. All were links courses, abutting either the Irish Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. All were brutally hard. Yours truly became all too familiar with a prickly vegetation called gorse, which ate several of my golf balls over the course of nine days.

The hardest of all the courses was the one in Northern Ireland: Royal County Down, just across the border from Ireland in a little village called New Castle. Apparently, an age-old argument in Northern Ireland rages over which course is hardest of all: Royal County Down or Royal Portrush. Most experts side with Royal County Down. My take: Royal County Down is far and away the most difficult golf course I have ever played, and we played it from the member tees (6,400 yards) not the championship tees (about 7,200).

When our two foursomes headed to the first tee at RCD, we decided to have some fun with the starter. When it was our turn to play, we went to the back of the championship tee. 

“What’s the course record?” I asked the starter.

“From those tees?” he asked back, appearing rather astonished. “Sir, you should not play those tees. The course record from the championship tees is 70. Rory McIlroy shot that. But last time Rory played here, he shot 80.”

We immediately marched up to the forward tees. “Any other advice?” I asked the starter, who replied, “Steer clear of the bunkers, my friend. They are very deep and they will break your heart.”

They absolutely did. I must admit my main concern often wasn’t whether or not I could launch my ball out of those bunkers; no, it was whether or not I could climb back out of the bunkers myself. They were that deep – and they were often hidden from sight until, after a search, you located your ball in one. All sand traps have rakes; these needed ladders.

At Royal County Down, about 90 miles south of Royal Portrush, we seemingly experienced all four seasons during one 18-hole round. We were alternately cold, warm, dry, wet, dry and wet again. We changed in our and out of rain suits and sweaters so often we could have used a changing room. And, all the while, the relentless wind blew and blew and blew.

“Is the wind aways like this?” I asked a course ranger at one point after my cap had blown off for what seemed like the 20th time.

“Ah, lad, ’tis but a breeze today,” the ranger said. 

It reached the point that we Mississippians would make our double and triple bogeys, head for the next tee, survey the situation and say, “Ah, lads, what fresh hell have we here?”

Nothing in Mississippi prepares you for links golf. In America, we refer to any golf course as “links” — as in, let’s go hit the links. We are in error. Links comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “hlinc,” which means a ridge. It evolved to refer to the rough, grassy area between the land and the sea. And, yes, there are often ridges and dunes involved. Trees are scarce and sometimes just plain absent. Said McIlroy of Northern Ireland’s rugged terrain, “Many have tried to replicate our bunkers, but it is impossible for man to replicate creations of nature.”

The other six Irish courses we played – Waterville, Tralee, Ballybunion, Old Head, The European and Portmarnock – were all links courses and all really, really hard. None was as brutally difficult as Royal County Down.

And yes, there were times we asked ourselves: “Why did we pay all that money to put ourselves through this wringer?” But then you would hit that one shot, the soaring 5-iron with the wind that left you an eagle putt. That, or you would stop and gaze at one of those amazing vistas over the Atlantic Ocean or the Irish Sea. Or you and your partners would sit in the 19th hole recounting the round over tall pints of Guinness, telling fresh stories and laughing like school kids. 

The famous English golf writer Bernard Darwin called it the kind of golf people play only in their most ecstatic dreams. Yes, but your score, if you can count that high, is often a nightmare.

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.

My parents were born in 1945 Tylertown in southwest Mississippi. Despite being raised in rural homes where overt racism was served up as often as turnip greens or buttermilk biscuits, Dad and Mom refused to pass down to their children the generations-old heirlooms of animus and fear. No racist jokes. No slurs. No stray remarks about knowing one’s place and no lamentations about lost traditions or unwelcome changes. And whom do I have to thank for this gift that changed the trajectory of my life?  Uncle Sam and the United States Air Force.

As it did for so many young men from small farms in far-flung rural counties, the military and ROTC provided Dad with a pathway to college and a career after graduation.

Upon graduating from Ole Miss in 1967 with an obligation of active-duty military service (and a two-week-old baby, me), the Air Force sent my father to Texas A&M to obtain a master’s degree in computer science and start down the road toward becoming a military officer. When he left College Station, the next stop was officer training school.

An important thing happened during that period between completing his formal education and being sent off to Vietnam. The Air Force confronted Dad with the hard truth about racism in our country and our military – and they made it crystal clear that it would not be tolerated from Air Force officers.

More times than I can count, Dad has told me the story of a crusty officer barking out, “In the United States Air Force, there is no white, there is no black, there is only Air Force blue!” That same officer told Dad and other young officers from the South that their particular brand of prejudice might be quickly cured by a glimpse at the scores from IQ tests administered to all in attendance.

And as Dad moved through the mandatory “race relations” component of his training, another important thing happened. He got to know the Black officers from his squadron. He ate meals with them. He learned to play handball with them. He figured out that they wanted the same things he did.

As Dad puts it, “They just wanted to marry a pretty girl, get promoted, drink a cold beer once in a while, and maybe take a decent vacation.”

Dad didn’t like everything they said to him in that class, and he admits that he sometimes got angry. But on the handful of occasions when I have discussed with him how it came to be that he and Mom ended the cycle of overt racism in our family, he consistently has credited the fact that the Air Force told him hard truths about who he was and afforded him the opportunity to discover the painful reality that what he was told around the dinner table in Tylertown was a source of pain and oppression for those new friends about whom he cared deeply – and with whom he shared table as an adult soldier.

The training Dad experienced was part of a national effort in the late 1960s and early 70s to address racial division and inequality in our military. On March 5, 1971, the secretary of Defense announced that the effort would be expanded to require every member of the armed forces to attend classes in race relations.

As part of that historic effort, the Defense Race Relations Institute trained 1,400 race relations instructors in a single year. According to the New York Times, a bibliography of “100 of the most important works on the Black man in America” was contributed to the Institute in hopes of educating soldiers on the challenges confronting our country.

As a direct beneficiary of that historic effort, I am deeply disturbed by the fact that the difficult and important lessons the United States Air Force taught my father would be illegal today, 55 years later, if presented in any Mississippi school or university.

Mississippi’s new anti-DEI law prohibits requiring “diversity training” in our schools and universities and defines that term as “any formal or informal education, seminars, workshops or institutional program that focus on increasing awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” (Emphasis added by me). 

In a world where we still are plagued by bias and racism, and at a time when we remain deeply and violently divided, Mississippi politicians have outlawed efforts to increase awareness and understanding of issues that are as complicated today as they were when I was a young boy. They have made illegal conversations and lessons that our armed forces – not Harvard University or the University of Virginia – deemed central to the security, morale and identity of our nation.

Sticking our heads in the sand, or elsewhere, and “protecting” our children from our painful and violent past does them, and Mississippi, no good. It shortchanges and underestimates young people who are fully capable of talking about hard things, fosters the stereotype of Mississippi as a place where ignorance and injustice flourish, and is a slap in the face of all those like Dad who did the hard work of grappling with the truth and fighting for our freedom to tell it.             

Cliff Johnson is a civil rights lawyer and law professor in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson is a graduate of Mississippi College and Columbia University School of Law, and he speaks frequently on the intersection of law, politics and religion.      

This story from Reasons to be Cheerful is one in a series about the confluence of capitalism, conservation and cultural identity in the Mississippi River Basin. It is part of Waterline and is sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation.

Dorothy Grady pulled at a tuft of green fronds sprouting from one of an array of soil-filled buckets sitting in the driveway of her house. A plump carrot, five inches long and brilliant orange, popped out.

Nearby, a sage shrub grew from another bucket, and scallions crowded a squat grow bag. In about three weeks, Grady would kick off the spring growing season on the land she cultivates around Shelby, Mississippi, including two plots at the now-closed middle school across the street, a small grove of peach and pear trees up the road, and five acres outside of town. She was ready to start planting eggplants, melons, tomatoes and a cornucopia of other produce that would soon end up in the homes of 127 nearby residents. 

Shelby, a few miles east of the Mississippi River, is surrounded by flat, fertile farmland. But Grady’s vegetables and fruit are some of the only crops around that make it to local plates. The vast majority of Mississippi Delta farms are devoted to commodity crops like soy and corn.

Grady is one of almost a dozen local growers supplying produce to Delta GREENS, a collaborative research project that is delivering fresh ingredients to residents of Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties with diabetes and monitoring the health impacts. This “food is medicine” project is one of a number of initiatives that are supporting farmers and expanding the market for locally grown produce in this western Mississippi region. The benefits run in both directions: At the same time that community members are getting access to these nutritious ingredients, the small-scale farmers who grow them are getting a leg up.

“What we’re trying to do is build cooperative development amongst the farms,” says Julian Miller, founding director for the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for Social Justice in Jackson, a co-principal investigator for Delta GREENS, and a long-time local food advocate in the Delta region. “Ultimately, we want to be able to give them the capacity to scale and capture the broader market.”

The 200-mile-long Delta region, on the fertile floodplain sandwiched between the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, has a rich agricultural history. Once known for growing cotton, today the area is dominated by ridged fields growing commodities that will be processed into animal feed or ethanol.

In the past, many Delta residents cultivated fruits and vegetables, says Miller, yet over time, pressures like farming mechanization and loss of land eroded the practice. Miller, a fifth-generation Delta resident who grew up a few miles away from Shelby, never saw anyone with a vegetable garden. “That tradition was lost, as far as growing your food,” he says. 

Today, despite the abundance of fertile land, very little of it is dedicated to edible crops. About 90 percent of the food people eat in this region is grown elsewhere and imported. “That’s the irony,” Miller says.

And even imported fresh food can be hard to access. As of 2021, 63 of Mississippi’s 82 counties were classified as food deserts, meaning there is no grocery store or option to buy fresh ingredients in the immediate area.

Significant health and economic inequities overlay this region. In Bolivar, Sunflower and Washington counties — where the Delta GREENS study is focused — almost a third of residents live at or below the poverty level. Meanwhile, the rate of diabetes is twice the national average.

This confluence of public health disparities, economic inequity and lack of food sovereignty has fueled an effort to reestablish food-growing traditions, led by growers like Grady. A child of sharecroppers, Grady recalls her family always kept a garden when she was growing up, exchanging veggies and fruits with neighbors.

She has been involved with growing the local food movement in the Delta since the 1990s, when she first started working on farm-to-school garden projects.

In addition to helping establish hundreds of community gardens at schools and churches around the region, she’s also expanded her own growing operation, now supplying her harvests to residents in and around Bolivar County. Last year, the peach and pear trees she keeps yielded about 30 bushels of fruit, which went to local schools and was distributed through produce boxes for participants in the Delta GREENS study.

These weekly produce boxes are helping to address one of the structural challenges of developing the local food system in the Delta, explains Miller: the lack of a consistent market. While many residents are interested in eating more local produce, growers don’t have a reliable pathway to sell to the public. But nutrition- and food-security projects that source produce from local farmers are helping those agricultural businesses scale up.

About 40 miles northeast of Shelby, Robbie Pollard is busy planting and tending to more than 10 acres of fruit and vegetable plants. 

Pollard grew up around farming — his grandfather grew commodity crops. But he says he didn’t know anything about cultivating food until he tried growing his own in his backyard. It turned out to be a calling, he says, and he soon left his job in IT to pursue it full time.

Farming fruits and vegetables is more complex than commodity crops, explains Pollard. For one, it’s more labor intensive — weeding, tending and harvesting by hand. Unlike commodity farmers, who deliver their crops directly to local co-ops, distribution is harder for fruits and vegetables, Pollard says: “We have to find our own markets.”

Pollard has found a range of ways to distribute his produce through his farm, Start 2 Finish, and his associated healthy foods initiative Happy Foods Project. Today, he is one of the main growers supplying for Delta GREENS, as well as similar projects that provide households with regular local food boxes, including another food prescription project, Northern Mississippi FoodRx, in conjunction with the University of Mississippi. This summer, he’ll also be distributing through a mobile market, and he recently started selling through a grocery store with a focus on local products that opened in the city of Clarksdale in May.

Produce prescription boxes have given him a way to steadily expand his farm by reinvesting each year in incremental upgrades. He’s progressed from doing all his work by hand, to having a tiller, then a small tractor. He’s now leasing 46 acres of cropland. Last year, he grew four acres. This season, he put in more than 10, with plans in the works to expand hydroponic and aquaponic capacity. Soon, he hopes to work with other local growers to try a range of different techniques across the acreage.

Tyler Yarbrough, Mississippi Delta project manager for the nationwide organization Partnership for a Healthier America, has worked alongside Pollard on a range of projects building out the region’s local food movement, including some that provide households with produce for a limited amount of time — like Good Food at Home, which has supplied about 500,000 servings of produce to local families through weekly boxes, each household eligible for 12 weeks at a time. Through these shorter-term projects, growers are able to take steps to become more stable, while building a demand for local produce among consumers.

“You can leverage it to bring on the consistency, and to further bring those markets into your orbit,” Yarbrough says.

While produce box models have yielded success, they have the most impact for farmers when they’re paired with other initiatives, according to Yarbrough. What’s key is to give growers flexibility with funding so they can build up over time.

“It can’t just be one thing,” Yarbrough says. “It needs to be coupled with funds for these farmers to actually build their capacity on their farm. It needs to be coupled with connecting all the dots with the market. It has to be a holistic approach.”

Within the Delta region, the local food movement still faces many barriers, according to Natalie Minton, a University of Mississippi researcher who is working with Pollard to study the local food market, and on North Mississippi Food Rx. Growers struggle to find — and afford — workers. And without a reliable market, growing their business is very difficult.

There are also environmental factors. Beyond extreme weather, like drought and severe storms, growers face challenges related to the dominant commodity cropland. Pesticides and chemicals routinely used on commodity crops drift, harming food crops.

Yet, Minton says the roots of change in the local food system are taking hold. The success of farmers like Pollard is showing how specialty farming can be a viable career.

For projects that rely on grants and outside funding like Mississippi Fresh, another major challenge is working with federal programs, according to Miller. Trump administration cuts, including to subsidies that support buying from local producers, are straining local food systems. Delta GREENS is funded through the National Institutes of Health, and Miller says there is uncertainty around whether support will continue. 

Despite the uncertainty, the local food movement in the Mississippi Delta is notable because it is so locally driven, says Marlene Manzo, of HEAL Food Alliance, a food justice coalition that works with groups across the country, including Mississippi Fresh. Manzo says that the growth of the local food supply within the Mississippi Delta shows the power of working at a small scale to make changes that really respond to the community.

“What we do know is building collective power within our communities and in regional systems can really make a large, lasting impact,” she says.

Grady sees a shift happening in the community. She knows more people, including her family members, who are starting to grow some of their own food. One former student is now a chef in a nearby school district. He’s keeping a garden and using the ingredients in the school kitchen.

“The interest of other people wanting to do this kind of work was the greatest reward of it all,” she says.

Elizabeth Hewitt is a freelance journalist based in the Netherlands. She’s interested in how policy-making impacts lives, and likes to write about local solutions to big problems.