OurTupelo

CLEVELAND – The Black student found hanging from a tree Monday at Delta State University died by suicide, according to the state medical examiner’s office. The Bolivar County coroner had earlier drawn the same conclusion and determined no sign of foul play.

The body of Demartravion “Trey” Reed was discovered shortly after 7:30 a.m. in a tree beside pickleball courts and dorms on the Cleveland campus.

In the hours and days after, many students and staff have felt besieged as what seemed like every few minutes their cellphones buzzed with new rumors and speculation. The campus was rattled.

What students and faculty saw and heard did not resemble a Cleveland they know.

It was a hot late summer day when Reed’s family joined Delta State University President Dan Ennis and local law enforcement for a press conference Wednesday. Across campus, students still pulled up to empty parking spots closest to their classes, loitered outside the student union and brought food to friends in the library or to their dorms.

Eight students and three faculty members interviewed by Mississippi Today shared a mix of fear, hope, grief and numbness.

One longtime Delta State employee and father said what took place was hard to put out of mind. He saw the body hanging when he approached the pickleball courts Monday morning, with police patrol car lights flashing nearby.

He said it remains the worst thing he’s seen during 14 years of working on campus. 

“I just hope it gets better before it gets worse,” said “D,” who works as a groundskeeper and gets to work around 4 a.m. He wished to go by a nickname for fear of retaliation at work.

“You’ve got to take care of yourself,” he said. “That’s all you can do.”

A Delta native, he said Cleveland and Delta State are generally safer than nearby cities. He looked out on the main drive where a Cleveland police car followed a Delta State police car in a ring around the main quad. They maintained a moving perimeter.

He said he doesn’t trust local law enforcement and is skeptical of their statements that there was no evidence of foul play. The state medical examiner on Thursday confirmed the cause of death hanging and the manner of it was suicide.

It’s been a hard three weeks for the young father, whose son died three weeks ago from gun violence in a nearby city.

“I hate it,” he said of Reed’s death. “He was almost 21 years old. You can’t act like it didn’t happen.”

A different kind of Delta

Leticia Stevenson of Clarksdale is studying at Delta State to become a teacher. She said she was “a little freaked out” when she heard what happened.

“I was thinking to myself: Where is the public safety at?”

Her family 45 minutes away wanted her to withdraw from school, but she said she is determined to get her education and work in her dream field.

Her older relatives brought up the history of lynching. 

She’s been leaning on her faith and has been keeping the Reed family in her thoughts. Despite the fear that she felt at first, she said she is looking forward to finishing her fall semester.

Cleveland is a lot more peaceful than where she grew up in Clarksdale, she said. The campus has been welcoming and locals are friendly, she’s found.

“It’s a small town,” she said.

For another student from Madison, the hanging similarly provoked fear. The student, who said she wanted to remain anonymous because she’s looking to get hired for a job on campus, found out about the death from an email blast when she was leaving a morning class.

She said she was nervous about attending school in the Delta given “its reputation” of crime. But has found Delta State to be a laid back, secure and warm environment. She has never felt it was dangerous because campus and city police are always patrolling.

One eight-year Delta State employee was in the cafeteria when he found out about Reed’s death.  He saw a number of students and faculty clustered near each other following the developing story. He found himself conversing with several students that day.

“There’s just a lot of unknown. There’s still a lot we’re going to know,” said the employee, who did not want to give his name because of fear of retaliation in his administrative role. “I’m waiting for the process to work its way out.”

He said he feels comfortable on campus. He said Delta State and Cleveland are the kind of places where people know each other and tend to trust each other regardless of race and status. If your car is in a ditch, several cars will stop to ask if you need help, he said.

“It’s not a big campus,” he said.

Delta State’s enrollment in fall 2024 was 2,654, making it one of the smallest public universities along with Mississippi Valley State University and Mississippi University for Women. More than most other public universities in the state, Delta State draws primarily from nearby counties and cities.

Cleveland, with a population of roughly 10,000, has branded itself “A Different Kind of Delta” in tourism brochures as part of an effort to showcase the city’s charm. Unlike most other cities in the Mississippi Delta, Cleveland boasts a significant middle class and an engaged junior chamber of commerce. Its downtown rarely has an empty storefront, which is not the case in nearby cities and towns in the long-impoverished region.

‘Always looking around at my surroundings’

DSU student Paris Ricks said the news coverage has been hard to watch. Reed’s death was a tragedy that she struggled to understand.

“It’s sad,” Ricks said. “I’m still concerned, but I do feel safe.”

She first heard about Reed’s death while scrolling through social media. It later came up in conversation with family and friends on campus. Relatives wanted her to visit home and check in regularly.

Delta State is a mostly “chill” campus, she said. Ricks likes seeing familiar faces across campus. Her rural, Delta high school was also small but lacking the excitement of Cleveland and Delta State. Here, she can go to a bowling alley, a Tex-Mex restaurant, a downtown arts center and several boutiques and restaurants. There’s plenty of live music, too.

Despite feeling protected in Cleveland, Ricks takes extra precautions.

“Walk home in groups, especially if it’s at night,” she said. “I’m always looking around at my surroundings.”

One student who was carrying flyers for a student election said he has had trouble sleeping. He didn’t want to share his name because of the election.

While he didn’t know Reed personally, the student had come across him at events on campus. 

“As a young Black male, I’ve never encountered any racial hate incidents or racism,” he said.

He acknowledged the unfortunate significance of the hanging taking place in what he referred to as a PWI, or predominantly white institution. 

At Delta State, nearly 49% of students were white, 42% were Black and 9% were classified as another race in 2024. Among non HBCUs in the state, it boasts the highest Black student population.

According to “JJ,” a current Delta State student who studies humanities and social science, a bigger conversation should be had about mental health.

“I just thought it was sad that he took his own life but I still want to wait till we get all that information,” said JJ, who didn’t want to give his last name because he will join the job market when he graduates in a couple of months.

A north Mississippi native, he said Delta State wasn’t a far college move. This week, his parents have called up each day to express their concerns. Like other parents of Delta State students, they have been expecting a visit as well as regular calls.

“It’s a chill campus and not much happens so when something like this happens, it’s kind of crazy in a way,” he said.

JJ said he doesn’t think what happened should discourage high schoolers from applying to and attending the university.

“You hear a lot of stuff about what they thought happened, and it’s not true,” he said.

A viral TikTok on Monday by a former Delta State University student who falsely claimed to be a relative of the deceased dominated timelines across the country and world. The young man spoke to a culture of racial killings and incidents on campus and in the city, which is neither backed up by crime statistics, local news reports or the experience of nearly all students interviewed on campus.

The video, which has since been taken down, alleged without evidence that Reed was the victim of a modern day lynching. Scrolling through social media applications, videos from across the country echo the same theory.

Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell told Mississippi Today that the rush to judgment in this case was “a gross misrepresentation of where we are in Mississippi.” 

It’s unfortunate that people and politicians began calling this a “lynching” before there was any investigation or determination regarding what happened, he said. “It’s frustrating.”

“Suicide is such a tragic situation. I don’t know anybody that hasn’t been impacted by it,” he said. “We  need to do more to raise awareness and for those who need help to get help.”

JJ said he believes that it was a suicide and has been keeping the family in his thoughts. He hopes more students take advantage of the mental health resources and counselors on campus. They really helped out a good friend of his, who was struggling with the transition to college.

Delta State offers free consultations for professional counseling for students, faculty and staff. Counselors are available to help those struggling with anxiety, depression, grief, anger, trauma, adjustment to college life and addiction, among other mental health challenges. Free sessions were recently made available to students with the announcement of Reed’s death.

The campus is still tightknit and “relaxed,” JJ said. He’s glad he chose to attend Delta State when he was a high school senior rather than a bigger school where people feel more disconnected from classmates.

“It’s still home,” he said.

Jerry Mitchell contributed to this report.

If you or someone you love is having thoughts of suicide or mental distress, call or text 988, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. Communications are confidential, and a trained counselor can connect you to resources.

Sam’s Town Casino in Tunica is closing after over 30 years.

What was once one of the country’s largest casino markets is now down to five operating in the area with the closure of its largest casino. The Tunica market has been declining for years, largely from competition in neighboring states and other gambling options becoming available. Harrah’s Tunica, which was previously the largest casino in the market, closed in 2014. 

A majority of Mississippi casinos are now located along the Coast and developers are looking to build more there. Gambling became legal along the Mississippi River and the Coast in 1990. It has since grown to an over $2-billion industry according to the American Gaming Association. Mississippi’s 28 casino properties employ around 37,000 people and provide tax revenue to the state and cities they are in. 

Nationally, in-person gambling still brings in more revenue. However, the online gambling sector is rapidly growing. In Mississippi, only in-person or on-site sports betting in a casino is legal despite attempts at legalization of mobile sports betting and studies showing students are finding workarounds to place bets online.

Entergy CEO answers data center questions

We’ve heard from Mississippians recently about their concerns over three large data centers being built in Mississippi.

A major concern is potential electricity rate hikes from the power-hungry centers. Other areas across the country have seen rate increases attributed to data centers.

Last week Mississippi Today sat down for a Q&A with Haley Fisackerly, CEO of Entergy, about the impact of the data centers. He said Mississippi learned lessons from other states before it landed its first data centers, and that they will not cause electric bills to spike in Mississippi. He said rates were already likely to increase in coming years as power companies upgrade antiquated infrastructure, and having large new companies helping foot the bill will lower costs to consumers for new plants.

“First of all, rates were already going up,” Fisackerly said. “The investments were going up. Inflation is driving all of our materials up. Natural gas costs have been higher. Now those are dollar-for-dollar patch throughs that we don’t make profits off of. But that trajectory we were showing is being lowered. So there’s still going to be rates going up.  Everybody’s rates are going up. 

“… Rates are not going to be as high as they otherwise would’ve been.”

Read the full Q&A here.

You can reach me at marketplace@mississippitoday.org to share your thoughts.

Times recognizes Mayflower Cafe, Duffs still richest Mississippians, other news

• The New York Times named Mayflower Cafe one of the 50 best restaurants in the country. The historic downtown Jackson restaurant may not be the only Mississippi restaurant getting attention. The Michelin Guide is releasing an American South edition that will cover six states, including Mississippi. 
• Soybeans are Mississippi’s top row crop but soybean farmers face growing uncertainty in the midst of continuing trade wars. China is the largest soybean buyer but has bought less and less from the U.S. after the U.S. implemented new tariffs in 2019. So far, China has not placed any orders here this year.
• The Duff brothers are among the 400 richest people in the United States and the only billionaires in Mississippi. The brothers have been on the list since 2019. Tommy Duff has been in the news recently as he considers a run for the governor’s office in 2027.
• As local residents call for more environmental protections, AVAIO announced last week that it had begun work on its Brandon data center. 
• The Foundation for the Mid South announced over $500,000 in grants to support workforce development in Mississippi. According to the foundation, the investment is intended to help grow job opportunities and strengthen local economies. Mississippi Today was one of the grantees.

More than three years after a federal judge ordered receivership to manage the Hinds County Detention Center and the county responded with a drawn-out legal pushpack, the receiver will finally take control of the jail next month. 

U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ordered a receiver in July 2022 over conditions that led to seven deaths the year before. He appointed Wendell France Jr., a public safety consultant who worked as an assistant jail warden in Maryland. 

France will take “operational control” Oct. 1 to fix ongoing unconstitutional conditions like understaffing and the state of facilities at the Raymond jail. He will remain in place no longer than necessary and transition operations and powers back to the county. 

Reeves issued the order after the most recent court monitor report compiled from visits to the jail and review of documents. There have been significant changes made since 2022, but ongoing problems remain, the monitors found. 

They gave county officials credit for permanently closing A Pod, a dangerous housing unit, and moving about 200 detainees to the privately operated Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in the Delta. Meanwhile, the remaining housing areas have deteriorated, the report states. 

Monitors identified staffing as the biggest problem and an impediment to proper supervision for detainees. Nearly 250 people are needed to operate the housing units, but less than a third of the positions are filled, the report notes. 

As justification for his order, Reeves wrote “‘the severity and immediacy of the current and ongoing constitutional violations at [the Raymond Detention Center], the failure of less extreme measures to ensure inmate safety, the need for compliance with the court’s orders, and the lack of leadership at RDC necessary to ensure compliance.’”

Sheriff Tyree Jones said his office has been working closely with the receiver for the last several months and will continue to work with France when he takes operational control. 

Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Thursday. 

France previously started work at the jail in November 2023 and was preparing to take operational control at the beginning of the next year, but he had to stop after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay in favor of the county. 

The county has opposed receivership, arguing that it has made improvements and improved jail conditions. 

Hinds County officials appealed the receivership, which was dismissed last year. While a panel of the 5th Circuit agreed with Reeves’ ability to appoint a receiver, it ordered the judge reevaluate the scope of the receivership, notably authority over budget and related financial matters. 

Reeves has issued a new injunction and redefined the scope of the receivership in his June order. 

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the county alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with changes to address jail conditions. 

There was back and forth over the years about whether the county was complying with the decree. In 2021, seven detainees died in the prison, which prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt twice and hold hearings about whether to order receivership. 

In court and filings, county attorneys have argued that leaders were working with the consent decree and spending millions of dollars to repair the jail. There were also plans to build a new facility, which is currently under construction in Jackson.

D.D. Lewis, the great football linebacker, will be remembered at Mississippi State as one of the university’s most beloved athletes who happened to play on some of the school’s most abysmal teams. He died on Sept. 16 after being hospitalized for 12 days in Plano, Texas. He was 79.

In 1967, playing for a State team that did not win a single SEC game and lost nine of 10 overall, Lewis was named the SEC’s most outstanding defensive player and a first-team All American. He really did not make every tackle. It just seemed that way.

There was some football justice for Lewis. After playing for such dreadful teams at State, he was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, the so-called America’s Team for whom he became a cornerstone of their famed “Doomsday Defense.” He played in five Super Bowls and earned two Super Bowl rings. Overshadowed by linebacking teammates such as Leroy Jordan and Chuck Howley, Lewis never made the Pro Bowl. Legendary Cowboys coach Tom Landry, upon his retirement, called Lewis “the most under-appreciated player” in Landry’s 29 years with the team. 

But D.D. — a good and treasured friend to this writer — was so much more than that. He was a charming man who oozed charisma, despite admittedly battling inner demons for much of his life. He was the 14th of 14 children who grew up in poverty in the area of north Knoxville, Tennessee, where many families from Appalachia settled. 

Born a month after the end of World War II, D.D. was named for two American heroes of that war: Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur. His was not a happy childhood. He was abused, both physically and mentally, as a young boy.

“I stayed in trouble, both at school and at home,” he once told me. His mother once told him there was no use in doing his homework because he was never going to amount to anything. As a young teen, he was arrested more than once.

D.D.’s path out of all that was football.

“Seems as long as I can remember, I was always striving for attention,” he told me in 1988. “I was a problem student, always getting into trouble and running with the wrong crowd. For a long time, that was my way of getting attention.”

Then he found football. Football was his way out. Hitting people — hitting them really hard — brought him acclaim. At Knoxville’s Fulton High, he gained the attention and status his mother had told him would never come. His name was in the newspaper headlines. Sportscasters raved about him on radio and TV. College coaches recruited him. They praised him. They wanted him. For the 14th of 14, that meant so much.

Paul Davis, the head coach who successfully recruited him to Mississippi State, would later call him “the best linebacker I have ever seen.”

But here’s the thing: The more praise D.D. received, the more he feared losing it, the more he feared failure. And that drove him to be better, to hit harder. He told me he had a recurring nightmare.

“I’d be playing linebacker and a big hole would open up in the line,” he said. “And here’d come the running back, and he’d just flatten me.”

That rarely if ever happened in real life. D.D. was a tackling machine. When he retired from the Cowboys at age 36, he had reached the playoffs in 12 of his 13 seasons. He had appeared in 27 playoff games, an NFL record at the time. Indeed, even today, only Jerry Rice and Tom Brady have played in more playoff games. Peyton Manning, too, played in 27.

D.D. was at his best when it mattered most. In a 1975 NFC Championship victory over the Los Angeles Rams, he intercepted two passes. He had four interceptions total in playoff games, the most ever for a linebacker.

Sports writers loved him because he was so honest, such a good quote. Indeed, D.D. was the guy who said, “Texas Stadium has a hole in the roof, so God can watch his favorite team play.”

D.D. could tell a story, too. He once told one about Dandy Don Meredith, the Cowboys quarterbacking star who later sparred with Howard Cosell in the ABC Monday night TV booth.

“We were on a flight back from New York after beating up on the Giants,” D.D. said. “Drinks were flowing. Everybody was having a good time. And then we hear this loud explosion outside the plane, and the plane starts bucking and then the lights go on and off. The stewardesses were crying. I look around and some of our players are crying and some are praying. And then I looked across the aisle at Dandy Don, and he’s smiling. He took a big swig of his drink and then a big drag off his cigarette and said, ‘Well, boys, it’s been a good ‘un.’”

Of course, the jet eventually landed with one good engine, and D.D. enjoyed a pro career in which he never experienced a losing season. He was dependable and he was durable. He missed only two starts because of an injury. He played through aches and pains that would have sidelined most. He retired in 1981, mostly because there wasn’t a joint in his body that did not hurt. After 26 years of football, beginning with peewee ball at age 10, the whistles quit blowing and the “high” of competition, of victory and championships and all the glory that came with it disappeared. His identity had been football, and football was gone.

D.D. was lost. Years later, he would tell me he replaced the “highs” of football with alcohol and pain-numbing drugs.

“It wrecked my life, it wrecked my marriage, it almost wrecked my relationship with my two daughters,” he said.

It didn’t help that the business he entered after football — the booming Texas oil business — went bust. He was broke. He even sold some of his Cowboys memorabilia, including his last helmet, to pay some bills.

“I am a lucky man,” he told me before his 2001 induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. “I got sober. I found the church, and there I found the Lord.”

He also reunited with an old college sweetheart, whom he married and settled down with in more ways than one.

“People ask me if I am sorry that I missed all those years with D.D. when he was a big football star with the Cowboys and all that,” Diane Lewis, his second wife, said. “No, I’m not. The D.D. I married was a loving, sober, God-fearing, gentle man. He wasn’t always that.”

D.D. became a fertilizer salesman who traveled the roads of central and east Texas, selling something his customers really needed. 

“I’m a shit salesman now,” D.D. once told me. “If you’re going to be a shit salesman, be a good one. I try to be.”

He told a story about one of his customers, a farmer who did not recognize him from his football days. They became good friends. Later on, the farmer was astounded to learn that his friend had once been a big football star for America’s Team. D.D. had never told him. D.D. never tooted his own horn.

“The man liked me because I was D.D. the fertilizer salesman, not because I had played in Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys,” he said. “You can’t imagine how much that meant to me.”

“Perfection is not the standard” when it comes to desegregation, the  attorney for Rankin County School District told a federal judge this week as he sought to end a four-times-amended desegregation order the system has been under for 55 years.

The district is “practically unrecognizable,” John Hooks said Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson. There aren’t “Black” and “white” schools in the district with mostly Black and white staff and students.

But plaintiffs who sued the district in 1967 for maintaining a segregated school system weren’t convinced. And their attorneys through the Legal Defense Fund had experts in tow along with student and faculty data to provide evidence for what they long experienced: vestiges of a dual school system that treated Black students and staff differently.

“They want it gone so they can do what they want to do here,” one of the plaintiffs, Janie McLaurin-Wheaton, said of the district’s most recent effort to free itself of the desegregation order.

A hearing was called to determine whether Rankin County School District should be released from its desegregation order. U.S. District Judge Kristi Johnson can call for the case to go to trial or rule on the issue.

Three years before most Mississippi schools integrated, Black parents and students sued the school district for maintaining a segregated school system for Black and white students.

The federal court set down a plan for the district to integrate in 1970, 1973, 1978, and 2012. In 2019, the district was able to prove to the court that facilities and busing were equitable for Black and white students, leaving student and staff assignments, extracurricular activities and student discipline still out of compliance with the court order.

“Every nook and cranny of the district’s operations have been inspected by the DOJ and the (Legal Defense Fund),” Hooks said of the Department of Justice and the legal aid group representing the interest of Black parents.

First outlined in the 1970 order and further clarified in the 2012 order, the district had to maintain a balance of Black and white students in each school that was within 20 percentage points in either direction of their percentage districtwide.

In the last five years, the white student population in the district has decreased from about 68% to 63% while the Black student population has increased from 25% to 29%. 

At Flowood Elementary in the last 10 years, the Black student population has increased from 23% to 34%, the white population has decreased from 66% to 42% and the population of students of other races has increased from 11% to 24%.

“After six decades, the Rankin County School District has arrived,” Hooks said. The district was looking forward to integrating “not just in fact but also in law.”

He also acknowledged the courage of the plaintiffs, who he said “are in large part why we’re here today.”

More than an old piece of paper

McLaurin-Wheaton remembers when she joined the lawsuit against the school district as a Brandon student 58 years ago. She also recalls a teacher calling her “negress” and white female students shoving her in the restrooms.

She and her mother joined the suit because she wanted the quality public education then reserved only for white students in the county. As a result, she was able to secure positions that were out of reach previously for Black applicants at the Rankin County Tax Assessor’s Office.

“It’s crazy that it’s still going on,” she said outside the courtroom. “It’s something my children had to go through, and now my grandchildren.”

In court, McLaurin-Wheaton was joined by Angela English, head of the Rankin County NAACP.

“It’s been 55 years since the 1970 court order, and here we are in court about the same things,” English said. “It is important that we hold the school district accountable. There are still multiple school districts that are segregated and Black (applicants) that are being overlooked in the hiring process.”

A desegregation order is more than just a request for annual reporting. Parents and community members can invoke it to seek to put a stop to discriminatory practices in their district. 

It put a stop to the disproportionate jailing of Black students at Meridian Public School District for throwing spit balls and for other minor infractions while white students with the same disciplinary background got off with lighter sentences. It forced an Arizona district to continue offering a Mexican American Studies course to engage a large Latino student population after the district pulled it.

The Department of Justice under President Donald Trump has signaled willingness to release more school districts from desegregation orders. More school districts were released from desegregation orders during Trump’s first administration than under the past four presidents.

With Copiah County School District’s release from its desegregation order in August, Mississippi now has 29 districts remaining under such orders. In the last 10 years, Justice Department officials have visited Rankin County schools at least twice to check for progress.

What they knew

In the cross examination of Assistant Superintendent Amanda Stocks, the plaintiffs’ attorney pointed out the district checked the references for a white applicant for a job but not the Black applicant, who was not hired for the position despite receiving the same score after her interview as her white counterpart. 

An investigative report undertaken by Erica Frankenberg, a researcher on racial desegregation, found the district had missed between 20 and 30 opportunities to diversify its staff, passing on qualified Black applicants in favor of white ones.

The district currently has one Black teacher in the gifted and talented program.

McLaurin-Wheaton said she encouraged a Black person to apply for a music teacher position at the schools in Pigsah but was told after a few weeks with no response by the district that the position had been already filled. English said the district had not started recruiting for teachers on the campus of Jackson State University until last year. 

“Some leadership positions are not open to Black staff,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney.

In some cases, Stocks argued, the district hired Black applicants for different roles than what they had applied for. Therefore, she said, the data about teacher hiring was not entirely accurate. She also noted the district’s recent efforts to recruit from Historically Black Colleges and Universities through targeted radio ads.

The plaintiffs also questioned her about why 24 of the 25 approved inner-district transfers to Pisgah High School were white, resulting in the school falling out of compliance by having an overrepresentation of white students the following year.

Stocks attributed the change in part to state law that allows district employees to transfer their kids to the community schools where they work.

Florence Elementary and Middle, Flowood Elementary, and Pisgah Elementary and High schools fell out of compliance this year by 1-3 percentage points. In past years, they have similarly fallen out of compliance with white students overrepresented, except at Flowood Elementary, where they were underrepresented.

‘In Good Faith’

The plaintiffs’ attorneys also raised the issue of white students overrepresented on the cheer team as well as part of other student extracurricular activities and student programming. 

Florence High and McLaurin High schools each has one Black cheerleader, while Puckett High School has none. Though Black students made up nearly 29% of the district student body in the 2022-2023 academic year, the Black student population of the gifted and talented program was about 12%, the plaintiffs’ attorney said.

The district offered statistics meant to demonstrate the district’s progress toward providing a quality education to minority students. 

Brandon Elementary was designated a National Blue Ribbon School for closing the achievement gap for Black students in 2021, Hooks, the district’s attorney, told the court. Black students post higher graduation grades and lower drop-out rates in the district.

Stocks also spoke of Teacher Leadership Training, an initiative in which faculty are “educated on matters of the heart,” on different ethnicities, “celebrating diversity,” and being “sensitive to other cultures.”

“I’m convinced the district will continue to do the work,” Stocks said. “Everything we do is done because we believe it’s right for our students and for our staff. Things have been brought to our attention and we’ve acted up on it in good faith.”

“Families feel welcome by teachers that look like them,” she added to qualify her support for encouraging diversity among the staff.

Mayors of cities across the Deep South gathered at the Jackson Convention Center Wednesday for the inaugural DELTA FEST conference, a gathering of financial leaders and partners for economic change. The three-day event intends to usher in a 10-year effort to build prosperous communities in Southern states.

The plenary was moderated by Alaina Beverly, executive vice president of the Black Economic Alliance Foundation, and featured mayors from Jackson, Little Rock, Birmingham and Montgomery. 

“Our Southern cities are home to Black communities whose legacies have helped to shape this great nation and whose culture continues to drive it,” Beverly said, introducing the panel. “Our Southern cities are the proof point for ways in which innovation and investing in solutions to expand economic opportunity can be used by the entire country.”

Jackson Mayor John Horhn, who took office July 1, said the first thing he’s tackling is restoring trust with the taxpayers and county, state and federal governments. In recent years, the city of Jackson has dealt with maintaining the water system, retaining control of the Jackson airport and pronounced areas of blight.

“We also had an accountability issue of being able to get things done, so our focus is returning to basic services delivery and also coming with a plan of action so that we know where we’re going,” Horhn said. 

Horhn said the city needs to create a “Marshall Plan” — taking the name from a U.S. economic aid initiative intended to help Europe recover after World War II — for rebuilding, one that addresses blight, affordable housing and public safety.

“We’re looking for partners who can help us. If you have money, we have a problem for you,” Horhn said. “If you have an interest in putting resources somewhere, there is something in Jackson, Mississippi, that you can see.”

For his part, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott said his administration created programs such as BUILD Academy, a 12-week initiative that educates businesses and entrepreneurs on how to scale up their operations. He said Little Rock has focused on underserved communities, which has transformed neighborhoods and cemented partnerships, leading the city to become a leader in job growth.

“Transformation means that we all have to be unapologetic about doing things that weren’t done in the past and not care about the future, only focus on the present,” Scott said. 

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin said local mayors need to get creative when thinking about the affordable housing crisis. According to Woodfin, in the last five years, the city has spent a little more than $16 million in critical repairs, new builds and down payment assistance for homebuyers, with $4 million of that provided by HOPE Enterprise Corporation. HOPE is a community development financial institution that aims to improve the financial well-being of underresourced communities in the Deep South. 

“We do that because it’s necessary. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, but we do it because we know it’s going to create opportunity and wealth for that new homeowner,” Woodfin said.

He also points to Birmingham Promise as an economic driver for wealth. The program provides tuition assistance for students who have graduated from a Birmingham school to attend any public two-year or four-year college or university in Alabama.

“When you graduate with a significant amount of debt from college, homeownership is probably not on your mind if your parents aren’t passing you the keys. This changes the game,” Woodfin said.

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said partnering with HOPE to expand low-interest financing for small businesses has led to a major revitalization.

“It has helped us give the level of motivation to some of our entrepreneurs that they can do it, that we are truly investing in them and we’re willing to partner with them because that strengthens our economy, and overall that strengthens our community,” Reed said. 

DELTA FEST was co-created by HOPE Enterprise Corporation and Yancey Consulting, and featured speakers from financial institutions such as Wells Fargo and Capital One. Bill Bynum, chief executive officer for HOPE, said the organization has been providing support and services to under-resourced communities for more than 30 years, but the path to prosperity cannot be paved alone.

“We need an ecosystem. We need people who provide technical expertise, who can open doors for contracts, who can level the playing field in these communities, and we’ve been doing that,” Bynum said. 

He said he and other leaders noticed that communities across the Deep South were not prioritized when it came to federal and state resources, which led them to creating DELTA FEST. Part of DELTA FEST’s goal is to connect people who have big ideas for economic growth to organizations that can help get those ideas off the ground. 

“We want to create an economy across the Deep South that opens up doors for opportunity for everyday people, regardless of where they live, who their parents were, their gender, their race,” Bynum said. “If we don’t equip people to thrive, to prosper, then we are not going to realize our potential as a country, as a nation.”

Opioid overdoses have killed thousands of Mississippians in the last decade, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch and the state Legislature have said the crisis requires effective, bipartisan solutions. 

But three years into managing money intended to address this crisis, state and local leaders have committed less opioid settlement money to prevent overdoses than every other state in the country — both in total dollars and as a percentage of settlement shares. 

Elected officials have reported using less than $1 million of the over $124 million in opioid settlement funds they manage for direct measures to combat addiction, according to public records Mississippi Today requested. The other 49 states, including ones receiving significantly less money, have allocated at least $3 million each from the lawsuits to address the public health problem.  

About $109 million of Mississippi’s money has been sent to the state government, according to a public record requested from Fitch’s office. The state has used roughly $20 million of that to pay the Ridgeland law firm of John Davidson, the attorney general’s outside counsel for the opioid lawsuits. 

The state Legislature controls the remaining $89 million. But lawmakers only this year created the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council, which is tasked with making recommendations about how to spend the funds to address the overdose crisis. The recommendations the Legislature approves are expected to be allocated in July 2026, when the next state budget goes into effect.

The rest of the money is with Mississippi’s towns, cities and counties. The localities have received over $15.5 million of opioid settlement money, according to a Mississippi Today investigation. Officials have spent $945,000 on strategies the settlement’s plaintiff lawyers recommend for curbing the crisis. 

They spent about $5.4 million on a variety of purposes not related to fighting addiction, such as routine government expenses, police body cameras and new city vehicles.

Fitch — unlike attorneys general in at least 34 other states — did not require any of the money local governments receive to be spent on addiction-related purposes, and she also did not require localities to report their expenses. 

Elected officials and Davidson expressed more urgency when arguing for this money in court. When the state filed a lawsuit in 2018 against companies that flooded towns with addictive and deadly opioid prescription painkillers, then-Attorney General Jim Hood and Davidson wrote that these dollars were necessary to respond to the “public health epidemic that these Defendants have created.” That lawsuit and other similar ones are expected to pay Mississippi around $421 million through 2040.

The public health crisis has ramped up in the roughly seven years since the lawyers wrote that. More people are dying of overdoses in Mississippi and the U.S. than in 2018, and there have been over 1,300 Mississippi drug deaths since the national settlement managers wired Fitch’s office the first payment in September 2022, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The state Health Department has counted more than 4,600 non-fatal overdoses in the first six months of 2025 alone. And Mississippians still have trouble finding resources. Many in the state with opioid use disorder aren’t treated with the gold-standard medications and can’t find safe sober-living options, according to recent studies. 

“There’s been three years now that people have been dying for no reason,” said Melody Worsham, a Harrison County peer support specialist for the Mississippi Recovery Advocacy Project. “They’re sitting on money while people die.”

After being presented with these findings in a letter, Fitch did not answer a question about whether she and the Legislature have done enough with the settlement dollars to prevent Mississippians from overdosing. 

Her chief of staff, Michelle Williams, said in a statement the public health crisis has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and the lawsuits themselves allow for some of the settlement money to pay for prior expenses made to address the epidemic.

She added that Fitch’s office was pleased the Legislature passed a law in the spring to start distributing most of the dollars with recommendations from the settlement advisory council. She said the office is looking forward to working with the committee’s members.

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker of the House Jason White did not respond to emails asking if the Legislature had done enough to address addiction with these dollars over the past three years. Davidson didn’t respond to a similar email. 

One factor that could have delayed Mississippi’s opioid settlement spending is that state elected officials altered the distribution plan as they were receiving the dollars. In 2021, Fitch and local government leaders agreed to a plan that would send 70% of the settlement funds to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for a new addiction medicine center. 

But the Legislature overrode Fitch’s contract. Lawmakers passed a bill this spring to create the advisory council that makes recommendations about which private and public addiction response projects the dollars should go toward — recommendations lawmakers can approve or reject. 

Dr. Caleb Alexander, a Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health epidemiologist who studies drug safety, said it’s a better plan for states to use the settlements for multiple addiction response strategies. 

“No one in their right mind, I think, would argue that the money should all be dumped in a single bolus,” he said. 

But he also said overdose deaths continue to be an urgent health crisis requiring swift action. While he expects states to take time to thoughtfully set up their distribution processes, he was surprised more Mississippi money hasn’t been used to address the emergency. 

“I think three years and less than 1% represents a problem,” he said.

Another reason so little money has been spent to address addiction has been Fitch’s communications with cities and counties controlling opioid settlement dollars, according to public health experts. Representatives for the attorney general’s office have repeatedly told the local governments they don’t have to document their spending or use the money to address addiction in letters, emails and legal opinions.

Attorneys general in states such as Utah and North Carolina provided detailed guides for local governments on how to prevent more overdoses with the funds.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, the former Office of National Drug Control Policy director, served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in many of the opioid settlement lawsuits. He said the local payouts weren’t meant to be spent secretly or for plugging budget holes. Rather, they were supposed to address addiction issues facing specific communities, while the state dollars could focus more on issues that impact large swaths of Mississippi.

“The whole goal of 100% of the funds is to use them in unison,” he said.

After her son died while struggling with addiction in 2019, Pine Belt resident Jane Clair Tyner has worked to make Mississippi addiction response resources more accessible. Her goal is to prevent more of the type of irreparable harm done to her family. 

She said she sees public service announcements throughout the state claiming that help is available for anyone with substance use disorder. But that wasn’t the experience she had with her son, at least for options that were affordable. 

Tyner said she wants Fitch and local government leaders to show a commitment and urgency to preventing more overdoses, and she wants them to be good stewards of this money.

“That is not at all what is being done,” Tyner said. “It’s being squandered.”

Andrea López Cruzado contributed to the data analysis of this story.

CLEVELAND — Videos of a Black student found hanging in a tree at Delta State University early this week have been turned over to investigators, the campus police chief said Wednesday, but the chief did not say what the videos show.

Chief Michael Peeler said he could not answer several questions about the investigation into the death of 21-year-old Demartravion “Trey” Reed of Grenada, Mississippi. The tragedy swiftly captured the scrutiny of the state and the nation, with some speculating that this was another example of Mississippi’s racist history of lynching of Black people.

However, the chief stood by his earlier statements that there appeared to be no foul play. Peeler said he was the second officer from the Delta State Police Department on the scene after Reed was found, and he saw the body.

Bolivar County Coroner Randolph “Rudy” Seals Jr. said Monday that Reed had no broken bones and did not appear to have been assaulted.

Mississippi’s Chief Medical Examiner Staci Turner was conducting an autopsy of Reed’s body, and preliminary results should be released within two days, Peeler said Wednesday.

Delta State President Dan Ennis recognized that this case touched a nerve, and he defended the school from accusations of racism.

“Richard Wright said that history comes on us, it surges up and it’s fused and tangled. And so, I acknowledge that this imagery is fused and tangled in people’s identities,” said an emotional Ennis. “Sometimes we can’t unknot it. We can’t untangle it, but here is one of the best places to start to pick at that knot, and to acknowledge that situation and build off of it.”

Law enforcement presence on campus increased after several people made threatening calls to the university. However, both Peeler and Ennis emphasized that campus is safe.

“At this point we don’t have any credible threats that I’m aware of and law enforcement will let me know,” Ennis said. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when someone calls the office and says that this is a terrible place, and that people should be hurt.”

Ennis also addressed a statement from the attorney for Reed’s family that the university did not reach out to them. He said the university had been in contact with the next-of-kin Reed listed on a contact form. Ennis did not reveal who those people were, but said the university would cooperate with any investigation into Reed’s death. 

“I also acknowledge that there is a distinction between next-of-kin and family, and I acknowledge that both next-of-kin and family are grieving,” he said.

Stacy Starling, Reed’s aunt, addressed reporters after the press conference but did not answer any questions.

“We just ask that you continue to just to lift us up in your prayers. We thank you, and God bless each and every one of you,” she said before joining other relatives and friends in a prayer circle.

Reed’s body was found hanging from a tree early Monday near the pickleball courts on campus. Reed’s race and the manner of his death triggered an outcry online about Mississippi’s history of racist violence and rattled the university’s community.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson called for the FBI to investigate Reed’s death. Reed’s family has retained lawyers Ben Crump and Vanessa Jones, and they are launching their own independent investigation.

Reed’s death is being investigated by police from Delta State and Cleveland, the Bolivar County Sheriff’s Department and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

9/17/25: This story has been corrected to attribute a quote about the campus not facing credible threats to Delta State University President Don Ennis. It also has been updated to add comments from Reed’s aunt.

Three multibillion-dollar data centers are being built in Mississippi.

People are concerned about pollution and electric bill increases that have been seen in data center hot spots around the country.

Entergy is providing power to two of the centers, Amazon Web Services in Madison County and AVAIO in Rankin County. Haley Fisackerly, the CEO of Entergy Mississippi, sat down for an interview with Mississippi Today to address some of these concerns.

The interview was conducted Sept. 9 and has been edited for clarity and length.

Mississippi Today: The main question we’ve been getting is about electricity rates. Are people’s electricity rates going to go up because of the data centers? You’ve said they won’t, but in other states they really have. Can you explain?

Haley Fisackerly: I appreciate the question because it actually is going to have an opposite effect on our customers. 

Growth is important because if you can improve your sales or your customer base, you have a greater base to spread your costs.

Our dilemma about a decade ago was that Mississippi was not growing. Our sister companies in Texas and Louisiana have seen significant growth. 

READ MORE: Brandon residents want answers, guarantees about data center

We recognized that we weren’t growing, the cost of services were driving up and we needed to invest heavily to improve reliability.  We especially have seen that post-COVID with supply chain challenges, inflation, and add to it now, tariffs. We had aging infrastructure, power plants that needed to be replaced, and we, the consumer, use electricity differently. So that means more investment.

When we had to make these investments, we saw our rates escalating dramatically. And we said, “We’ve got to do something about this now.” We do what we can to manage our costs, but we needed to really move that denominator. 

We looked at ways that we could find transformative growth. About eight years ago, somebody said data centers. This data center idea could bring new revenue into the business that would allow us to reinvest. 

We worked with the Mississippi Development Authority and the state to make the state more attractive for data centers. We talked to local counties to see who would have sites and during this time frame we started to impress Amazon Web Services. They saw a state that was really working to try to break down hurdles. Finally, in late 2022, early 2023, they threw out an opportunity, and that’s what brought AWS here. We are now able to bring in a large customer that is bringing in the volume we need. 

After that announcement, other data centers started looking at places in Mississippi and across the South. Most of the data center activity had really centered around northern Virginia, Ohio, Phoenix. Areas in the South were not, from a large-scale perspective, really looked at. There is available capacity, land, and you don’t have the population constraints they’re running into in the northern Virginia area.

Secondly, how do I know we’re protecting customers? We’re regulated by the Mississippi Public Service Commission, and we are required to make sure that any incremental cost by a large customer like that, they are covered by that customer and provide benefits to other customers.

Take AWS and AVAIO. We knew we were going to have to build two new power plants in the early 2030 timeframe. These are expensive. Because of AWS and AVEO coming in, we’re building new power plants and they’re going to be paying a majority of the cost. 

MT: Can I just jump in really quick with a clarifying question? You would have needed to build a new power plant regardless of whether a new data center was going to come in because of the aging infrastructure?

Fisackerly: It was aging. For example, the first plant we’re building is up in the Mississippi Delta.

We’re retiring a plant in Greenville that was built in the late 1950s. The new plant is a natural gas plant, too, but it uses 90% less water and is 50% more energy efficient. You can use less natural gas and get more output. It will be capable of burning hydrogen, which is a cleaner fuel, if and when hydrogen ever becomes economical, and capturing carbon. We are working on a second plant, too, and we’ll probably be eventually looking at additional ones. 

In addition to that, AWS said they wanted renewables. We’re deploying 650 megawatts of renewables that will be connected to the grid, that AWS is paying the incremental cost for.

When electricity flows, it’d be no different than when I pour water on this table. It’s going to flow in the path of least resistance. We put power onto the electrical grid and it serves all customers.

If AWS and AVAIO become larger customers, they’re going to pay a larger percentage. We need to build substations, upgrade transmission lines, and they’re having to pay for those costs. But the other customers are going to benefit from it because you’re improving import capabilities and making it more robust and resilient. We’re getting a better grid at a lesser cost. 

When power moves from a power plant it’s dispatched onto a transmission line then it’s moved to a substation and that voltage is downgraded through a substation to a lower voltage and put on distribution lines to serve customers. In the case of a large customer like this, they will only be transmission served. Power is going to move from the plants on the transmission lines to substations that they will own and pay for at the site. Other customers don’t have to pay for those. 

MT: But data centers just use a large amount of electricity. The supply that you need then is bigger than what you would’ve needed if it was just going to be residential. Doesn’t that increase the cost? 

Fisackerly: It increases the cost because you’re investing more. But because they’re using a larger percentage of it, just through that alone means they’re covering their cost. 

But those plants are there to serve everybody. Say they use X percentage of that plant. They pay their fair share of that percentage. Other customers are not having to pick that up. Plus, the data centers are having to pay certain premiums above that, too, to have the power available when they need it —  the premium, such as the renewables they want. So as we look at carbon capture, they’ll have to pay those incremental costs. We’ll get the benefits of the clean outputs, but they are paying those incremental costs.

MT: Data centers run 24/7. I’ve heard that they use diesel as backup, and they have a capacity on the AWS site. 

Fisackerly: That’s what AWS is doing. I’m not sure what AVAIO’s plans are. But they have backup in case there’s an emergency. They’re limited on how often they can run those under environmental requirements, but yes, that’s correct. 

MT: There’s been some concern in Mississippi because of what’s happening in Memphis with xAI putting up the unregulated turbines that they have. Do you have any concerns that AWS might do something similar?

Fisackerly: No, I do not. First of all, if you look where they’re building, they’re very isolated. They’re leaving a lot of woods around there on purpose, to hide and buffer it. Those backup generators will not run that often. They’re there in the rare event, a major storm. 

Keep in mind they’re not going to be served by the distribution system. The transmission system serves them. We rarely see disruptions on the transmission system because they’re larger wires with larger rights of way, whereas distribution lines are smaller wires running down streets and through neighborhoods. So that lessens a data center’s exposure, too. 

We’re a part of a market called the midContinent Independent System Operator. It’s a regional transmission organization where utilities dispatch all their power into that pool. If you ever had a situation like during the summer that transmission lines were lost, or a power plant went down, then we have certain reserve margins. If we got to a capacity shortfall, the data centers would be curtailed and they would probably run their backup generators. But those are usually very short-term periods. 

MT: Going to go back to the rates: I saw a video on social media over the weekend where someone said they had talked with (Public Service) Commissioner Stamps, and that he said rates were likely going to go up.

Fisackerly: First of all, rates were already going up. The investments were going up. Inflation is driving all of our materials up. Natural gas costs have been higher. Now those are dollar-for-dollar patch throughs that we don’t make profits off of. But that trajectory we were showing is being lowered. So there’s still going to be rates going up.  Everybody’s rates are going up. 

We have a large buyer who’s going to help contribute toward the cost of the grid that benefits all customers. We were hoping to bring in a big, transformative customer that’s going to help reduce cost. Rates are not going to be as high as they otherwise would’ve been. I can’t promise you they won’t go up. But the trajectory has drastically changed. 

In the legislation that approved the AWS deal, there are protections that mean AWS is required to pay the incremental cost to serve and provide benefits to customers. When we started talking to AWS the governor said, “This cannot harm other customers.”

Everybody was like, we’ve got to do this in a way that it benefits customers. And that’s what we did. We also learned from the other states that went before us. 

MT: Yes, they’ve had lots of issues.

Fisackerly: And no doubt that’s happened in other states. But the regulatory process here in Mississippi, especially in our experience with the Mississippi Public Service Commission, they’ve always been supportive of economic development, but they have also had strict requirements. You could go to other states where their policies may be different. 

There are some areas where they’ll say, we’re fine with you pushing costs onto customers to attract jobs and industry here. Mississippi’s taken a different approach. We want to be aggressive, we want to attract it, but we do not want you harming other customers. 

MT: There’s been a lot of reporting from Virginia and Georgia about rate increases there. What are some of the lessons that you took away from other states? 

Fisackerly: If you take northern Virginia and other areas where the most data centers were initially built, AI wasn’t really on the table. They were doing data storage. They would put a facility here and another one 5 to 50 miles over there. Machine learning comes in and the capacity they need is much greater. Now, at least from AWS’s point of view, they want to find land that’s isolated and outside of towns where they can get a campus and grow on that campus and quit being scattered. That reduces their cost to serve.

We sat down with the customer and said, look, if we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to front the cost to protect other customers, such as specific materials that were required. There are long lead times, it’s over a year in advance to get transformers.

AWS stepped up to pay the cost on those. And so that protects customers.

We learned lessons from other utilities. AWS and AVAIO have not served under traditional filed tariffs we have with the commission. Each one of them has a very specific contract. The contract protects the customers and the company by one long-term contract, termination fees and lots of balances up front. They have to put dollars up front to cover certain costs. Those things insulate and protect other customers. 

MT: I was looking at the timelines and read online that the new power plants would be completed in 2029, but the data centers were going to be done by 2027. What does that mean for consumers?

Fisackerly: First of all, they’re slowly ramping up so they don’t all slow it up. We will finish the Delta Blues Plant in the summer of 2028. And the second plant will be at the end of 2028. Plus, at the time when we negotiated them, we had excess. We always try to stay it along if power plants ever go down. You want to be able to grow with that. We’re ramping with them, AWS will phase in over time. AVAIO will also phase in. 

Also to protect customers, we can curtail that energy if there’s ever a demand on the grid and things of that nature. We can work with them to reduce our load, to help manage us through any type of load crunches or things of that nature. 

MT: It feels like everybody is looking at bringing in a data center. When you decided to build these two new plants, did you take into account that there was potentially going to be more? 

Fisackerly: You always want to try to plan for growth and have capacity for growth. We also have to have capacity, what we call operating reserves. You didn’t wake up this morning and put your order in for electricity, did you? 

MT: No. I appreciate not having to do that. 

Fisackerly: But I have to make sure the power’s there. For industrial customers we know exactly what they need every day. A residential customer, I don’t know what time you’re getting up, what time you’re turning on the coffee maker, what time you’re coming home. So we use data to make sure we have enough reserves capacity to manage through load swings.

When we do our supply plans, we plan to meet both what our needs are, what our reserves are that are needed to do that, and try to plan for growth. 

What is happening right now across the entire United States is not just data centers, we’ve got electrification and AI going on. An AI search uses 10 times more electricity than a normal search and more companies have deployed some sort of AI product. 

Every three years, we’re required to file our supply plans with the Mississippi Public Service Commission. It gives transparency to our regulators on the status of all our power plants, what we project our load growth to be and what we need in the future.

When we file these plans, we’re also saying here’s what we think our load forecasts are going to be and what we need to supply for. There’s a lot of planning around that.

MT: There was some controversy previously about changes (approved by the Legislature) to the Public Service Commission’s oversight. Could you give me some context for what was going on?

Fisackerly: AWS is a provider of data centers and AI to other customers whereas Meta and Google are doing it for their own use. 

A lot of your Fortune 500 companies have had a huge spike in demand for data centers and AI. They were quickly trying to find where they could go to meet the demand.

They needed to find a partner and a state where they could build and ramp these data centers up over three years. The traditional process here in Mississippi would have taken five to six years. We wouldn’t want this. We need to find some growth to come in to help Mississippi grow and all that.

So we sat down with the governor, the Public Service Commission, and leaders of the Legislature and said, “If we want to do this, what do we need to do?”

So the governor and the Legislature said, “We’ll pass legislation that one has to approve the incentives they’re providing for AWS, but also that would give approval to Entergy for the assets they would have to build and deploy to serve them.”

That process would’ve taken five to six years. Most of that would’ve been on the front end where we would have to go to the commission and seek something called a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity, a CCN. That basically says, “We’re going to need to make these investments because of this reason.” And that is a review process during which they agree to say, “OK, the Legislature who has authority over the commission who makes it, says, ‘We’re going to go ahead and grant that CCN.’” 

We reduced that on the front end. So that allowed us to accelerate that. 

There’s a perception that you circumvented oversight. We did not. If anything, I’m taking greater risk because now every one of those assets we build the transmission lines, substations and the power plants. Each one of them individually has to go in front of the commission for a prudency review. That review can come back and say these costs weren’t prudent. And if that’s found, we have to eat it. And that makes me a little nervous now because of that. 

We’re doing a lot of work on the front end, we have a lot of oversight. We use teams to negotiate the best contracts and the best pricing on materials, and the Legislature requires that the Public Service Commission hire an independent third party to audit it.

So it is true, it accelerated the front end of the process. But those things have to be reviewed and prudent and then put into rates have not been circumvented. If anything, I don’t have the assurances of that.

It just holds us more accountable to make sure as we build these things, we’re pricing on the best we can and we’re executing the best we can and covering our risks.

MT: I think there’s a lot of skepticism about what the benefits to a community will be from having a data center.

Fisackerly: Here’s where the benefits come. First, take Mississippi. We’re probably one of the most rural, most poor states in the nation, and we don’t see a lot of growth.

AWS committed to the state a minimum $10-billion investment and a minimum of 1,000 jobs. Based on those minimum numbers, that is going to be an estimated $80 million a year in ad valorem taxes to Madison County every year. 

Think about what that is going to allow them to do for aging infrastructure. We know that all these counties and cities are dealing with water, infrastructure, sewer and road issues. They now have incremental funding. Think about what they can bond with that.

In Mississippi, nearly half of the ad valorem taxes have to go to the local school districts. That excites me. Think of how we’re going to change young people’s lives.

While a lot of people debate if data centers create a lot of jobs, they still create higher paying jobs. We have brought a new sector to Mississippi. I hope it helps to calm down some of the brain drain we lose because we create opportunities. There is going to be some ripple effect, not the type of ripple effect you would see around a manufacturing facility. 

But what we have seen happen in Mississippi just since this: ABB, located in Tate County, is expanding. They make electrical components used not only at AWS or AVAIO but data centers around the world. Modine in Grenada County just announced a major expansion. They make the coal coils that are used in the cooling systems. They’re expanding because of that, creating more economic investment jobs going into those areas. 

We’re building a power plant in Washington County at $1.2 billion, and we’re going to pay ad valorem taxes to Washington County. It is the largest economic development project in the Mississippi Delta’s history. We will be building solar facilities in Bolivar, DeSoto and Tallahatchie counties. And the other one I think is in Washington County. That’s again bringing more ad valorem taxes and more jobs.

These things would not have happened without AWS. I think it’s going to bring huge benefits. And as a lifelong Mississippian who is invested here, grew up here, I’m excited to finally see Mississippi getting a part of something that a lot of other states haven’t gotten.

It is going to transform communities and young people’s lives, and that’s what I’m excited about. 

MT: I was talking with an engineer from Houston working on the Amazon data center. He comes in for two weeks and he flies out. I’m curious about the ability to attract talent to Mississippi. 

Fisackerly: We saw a similar thing when Nissan first came in. For the first year or two you could drive through that parking lot and see tags from other counties and even Alabama. You go drive through that parking lot, you’re going to see a lot more Mississippi tags and a lot more counties right here in the area.

So that will happen. Those data centers will probably bring in certain talent to train individuals. 

We recruited Continental, we recruited Nissan, we’ve recruited Milwaukee Tools. I’ve never seen a company like AWS, who’s come in and put dollars into the community colleges. They’re doing fiber optic and electrical technician training. 

But most of the jobs they’re going to need, there are technical technician-type jobs. They’re going to need some engineers, they’re going to need some management. If you look at it, 80% of the jobs we need now in the systems don’t require a four-year degree. They need technical training and they’re going to be high-paying jobs. They’re doing a lot of outreach to schools. 

It’s not going to happen overnight. There may be some dislocation because they’ve got to get facilities running. But I guarantee you any facility, we’ve looked and recruited here over time, they will grow it. And they’re incentivized, too by the benefits that the state provided them. And as a large employer myself, too, I want my people living and working in that area. Can’t force you to, but at the end of the day, once I have a choice and when I’m interviewing, that will be a factor. 

MT: One of the things that’s come up when I have talked with residents is that they are very concerned about the environmental impact of both the data centers and the increase in power that they’re going to need. I’m curious, what’s your response to that? 

Fisackerly: Let’s take the water issue. The state of Mississippi as part of the deal made a $215 million loan to Madison County. And you want to verify this with Madison County. I’m not the best one to talk about it, but my understanding is that it is to go support the infrastructure improvements, one of which is the wastewater treatment facility in northern Madison County that was under review by the EPA. The money that the state is floating through a loan to Madison County will go to enhance that facility and build a pipeline to Amazon where they will take the wastewater and treat it and run it through their facilities and recapture it and not tap the water supply there.

Two, the technology is changing quickly. The new chips that are coming out are using new ways of cooling. And, a reason why they also are so energy dependent is that those buildings are cooled, too. AWS will, based on the season, will also reduce their water demands based on when it’s easier to cool the building. 

They’re probably one of the most sustainable companies I’ve ever dealt with. They want clean energy to the point of what they’re doing there to do that loan is it will be paid back by AWS the fee in lieu of tax that they’re paying back to Madison County that then pays the state back. I’ve never seen that before. A lot of times when you’re recruiting industry here, it is, “Give me all the incentives you got and we’ll give it back to you through jobs and taxpayers or a tax ad valorem.”

They’re actually paying that loan back. And so that’s a huge benefit there. The AVAIO project is a much smaller project compared to AWS, but they even use a sustainability project. They’re capturing rain water. 

Part of our research was, “Let’s go see these data centers being built.” And what I saw being built out west and up in northern Virginia five, six, seven years ago compared to what’s being built today. These are very robust concrete buildings. The concrete dampens a lot of sound and makes them more energy efficient. So lots of things that go into it are very different.

 Even the aesthetics around it, they are really focused on how they’re seen from the road. The one up at Madison, that is an industrial complex. You look at the one in Ridgeland though, they’re purposely keeping a tree buffer all the way around that property. And hiding it. 

If you think about it, the state of Mississippi didn’t give anything up because we weren’t getting it anyway. What we got was a large capital customer coming to the state, making large capital investment, bringing large ad valorem taxes and jobs. 

MT: You probably can’t answer this one but I’ve heard that there’s another one coming to Madison. Do you know anything about that? 

Fisackerly: First of all, I can’t comment on any projects. I’m under NDAs. I’ll tell you this. We’re very busy. There are a lot of projects. And they will come as long as they pay the incremental costs and protect other customers. 

The way I look at it is we have four stakeholders. We have our customers, our employees, our communities and our owners. At the end of the day when it provides value to all four, then you do it. The moment one of those are harmed, you don’t do it. 

You have your big players but the interesting thing is there’s these other companies, and they call all the time. Our teams are overwhelmed with them. Some of ’em turn out legit like AVAIO did. And you have to weed through those.

Every one of our counties have economic development arms who are trying to recruit these things. We have to work with the data center companies, but we also have to have the counties see that, this one’s not really going to benefit you. It’s going to create more harm. So we try to work through that. Can’t serve ’em all, but we’ll do the ones that provide that value. 

Ole Miss and Mississippi State move to 3-0 and Southern Miss picks up a pivotal win over Appalachian State, plus the Saints finding new ways to lose and one singular high school performance that tested the record books.

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