OurTupelo

WASHINGTON — Holiday gatherings and major life events have come with an empty seat. Certain dates on the calendar meant time at a cemetery, standing before granite stones.

They are a relatively small group of people, scattered across different states, but they share a common bond that stretches back decades: Each had a family member die violently in the struggle for voting and civil rights, victims on a long and difficult path marked by blood that ended when the country seemed to mature into the nation of its creed.

But 61 years later, and as the country marks its 250th anniversary, those sacrifices are in question. In a series of decisions over the past dozen years, including one in April, the Supreme Court has effectively dismantled the law that their family members died to see enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“My mother’s blood is on that bill. We were always proud of that, and now it’s gone,” said Anthony Liuzzo, whose mother, Viola Liuzzo, died on an Alabama highway between Selma and Montgomery while driving marchers in 1965.

Critics of the law argue that times have changed, a point Chief Justice John Roberts made in a 2013 decision that was the first major step in rolling back the law.

Survivors of lost loved ones disagree, pointing to the speed with which Republican-led state legislatureseliminated majority-Black congressional districts after the court’s April ruling, which severely weakened a section of the law that had protected voting rights for minority communities. They feel anger and sadness that a milestone political victory decades ago has been reversed, but they are committed to keep fighting.

A church bombing and a chunk of concrete

Lisa McNair was born Sept. 19, 1964. Her older sister, Denise, died in the Sept 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The church had been a central organizing point for civil rights protest.

The explosion killed Denise McNair, 11, Addie Mae Collins, 14, Carole Robertson, 14, and Cynthia Morris Wesley, 14. Nearly two dozen others were injured. Three Klansmen were convicted years later.

One of Lisa McNair’s early memories of her sister was of the box that their grandmother kept from the funeral home. It included Denise McNair’s shoes, a purse and a rock-sized piece of concrete that had been embedded in her skull.

The crime brought the civil rights struggle onto the national stage and outraged Democratic President John F. Kennedy.

The times were tumultuous, McNair said, but it seemed the nation was heading in the right direction. Most of her life, “I’ve seen advances” on television, in commercials, with interracial marriages, civil rights and voting rights, “a plethora of rights that we got over the greater part of my lifetime.” But that has changed, she said.

McNair, 61, said she is “physically sick” about the Supreme Court decision and subsequent actions by lower courts and legislatures.

“I am constantly working to pray my way through it, so I can get up and go to work in the morning and do what I need to do. But I just want to ask every white person I see, What more do you want?” she said. “Why do you hate us so?”

They left for Freedom Summer and never came home

Michael Schwerner, known as Mickey, came from a family in which human rights activism and challenging social norms were expected. He was in Mississippi in 1964 as part of Freedom Summer when he, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney vanished one day in June while investigating a bombing at a Black church.

Their bodies were found weeks later, buried in an earthen dam in a rural area of Neshoba County. Schwerner, 24, and Goodman, 20, were white; Chaney, 21, was Black.

Stephen Schwerner, who died earlier this year and was a social activist in his own right, told The Associated Press in a 2023 interview that as soon as the family heard his younger brother and the other men were missing, they knew they were dead.

“Our family was very out front in the media that the only reason there was international attention was two of the young men were white,” said Stephen’s daughter, Cassie Schwerner. “Had all three of those young men been Black, they would have ended up absent from our history and our narrative.”

Cassie Schwerner, executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, said her family has followed voting rights through their ups and downs. That includes the 2013 Supreme Court decision that allowed states and counties with a history of discriminatory voting rules to make changes without prior approval from the Department of Justice.

The court’s April decision, she said, brought rage “and a good deal of sadness — not for me and my family, but for this country.” There is, she said, work to be done on multiple fronts.

Rights paid for in blood turned out to be fragile

Tamara Orange said among her many thoughts when she heard of the Supreme Court decision in this year’s Voting Rights Act case, there was relief — “relief that my dad is not here to see that; that Jimmie Lee Jackson is not here to see it; that Viola Liuzzo is not here to see it,” she said. “I’m relieved for them because to me, it’s as though the sacrifices that were made were done in vain.”

Her father, James Orange, was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize voting rights protests in Marion and Perry County, Alabama, in 1965. When juveniles joined the effort, he was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Concern arose that Orange was going to be taken out of the jail and lynched.

A protest to intervene ended with Jackson, a 26-year-old Black church deacon, being shot in the stomach by a state trooper while Jackson tried to shield his mother and grandfather.

His death was the catalyst for what became the Selma to Montgomery march and “Bloody Sunday.”

Orange stayed in the movement all his life and died in 2008, Tamara Orange said. But even after the Voting Rights Act passed, “He would say, be careful or we’re going to lose it.”

‘We got bad news for you’

Anthony Liuzzo had just turned 10 when his mother, 39, left their middle-class neighborhood in Michigan and headed for Selma, Alabama. She had cried as she watched scenes from “Bloody Sunday” on television.

Viola Liuzzo participated in a portion of the second march and then helped drive other civil rights protesters around the Black Belt region of the state. On March 25, 1965, she was driving one protester between Selma and Montgomery when a vehicle pulled alongside and fired into the car.

The phone call came around midnight. Anthony Liuzzo remembers the caller asking his dad, “Is your wife Viola? We got bad news for you. She’s been shot.” When his father asked whether she was all right, the caller said “No, she’s dead,” and then hung up.

An informant for the FBI quickly identified members of the Ku Klux Klan as her killers. The three men charged would escape conviction on state charges but be convicted in federal court.

Anthony Liuzzo and his siblings lived with the lost birthdays and other missed milestones. His comfort was that the voting rights she had died for had become a reality. But the April ruling by the Supreme Court and the subsequent rush by Republican-led legislatures in several Southern states to eliminate congressional districts represented by Black lawmakers left him angry and distraught.

Even so, he said he is still proud his mother had the courage to go to Selma “when others sat in their pretty little houses.”

One morning, the Klan returned

The inscription at the bottom of Vernon Dahmer Sr.’s tombstone reads simply: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

It is a message that embodies his life’s work and the story behind his death.

Even after Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, not every state was eager to implement the new law. In Mississippi, it came with a “poll tax.” The amount was $2, but in a world where a farmworker’s wages might only be $5 a day, that was substantial, said Dahmer’s son, Dennis Dahmer Sr.

The elder Dahmer, 57 at the time of his death, was a successful businessman who owned a store, sawmill and farm near Hattiesburg. He also was a civil rights leader and NAACP president in Ford County. He offered to pay the $2 for Black residents who wanted to register to vote.

He had already been under scrutiny by the local Ku Klux Klan. There was harassment and there were threatening phone calls. The windows were shot out of his store, but no one challenged him directly because his sons were always present and armed.

That seemed to trail off after Johnson signed the law.

“The Klan quit calling,” Dennis Dahmer said. “They quit shooting out the windows, so my family thought that all of this was behind us.”

That changed in the early hours of Jan. 10, 1966, when two carloads of Klansmen showed up. They firebombed the house and adjacent grocery store and began shooting at the house. The elder Dahmer shot back, using his ample arsenal to fight off the attack.

His wife and the three children who were home survived, but he suffered severe injuries from inhaling the smoke and fumes from the flames. He died later that day.

Dennis Dahmer was 12 as he stood next to his dad’s hospital bed. He wondered why some people wanted his father dead just for trying to help Black people vote.

A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Sam Bowers, was convicted in 1998 for the attack and sentenced to life.

Like the families of other survivors, Dennis Dahmer’s family has witnessed the methodical dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

“Finally, they basically turned it into a relic,” he said.

His plan now is activism, to speak out and promote the need for a massive voter turnout. He also wants to remind people of the price that certain families paid for everyone to have the right to vote and be represented by someone of their choosing.

“We’re living in a time when America has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1960s that I grew up in,” he said. “People say, are we going back? Hell, we’re already there.”

Mississippi Today Ideas is a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

— Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 

For 250 years, America has wrestled with the meaning of these words. 

The history of one small Mississippi Delta town offers a window into how we’ve grown into these ideals.

Benjamin Grubb Humphreys was a founding father of the Magnolia State. A planter, slaveholder, military officer and politician, Humphreys helped build the antebellum Mississippi we read about in history books.

When his family’s Claiborne County plantation fell on hard times in 1846, Humphreys steamed up the Yazoo River and selected a plantation site near Roebuck Lake. The rich Delta soil surrounding it, farmed by the Choctaw for centuries and opened to settlement through the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, was an ideal spot for a plantation. 

Humphreys named his new plantation after the Choctaw phrase for a home in the woods: Itta Bena. 

As war approached, Humphreys devoted himself to the Confederacy, serving with distinction at Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Chickamauga. 

After the war, Humphreys returned to Mississippi politics and became the state’s first post-war governor. Like many members of Mississippi’s planter class, he sought to restore the social hierarchy that had defined his successful antebellum life. 

As governor, Humphreys opposed ratification of the 13th and 14th Amendments and enacted the infamous Black Codes. These laws imposed harsh restrictions on newly freed slaves and helped establish the segregated order that would dominate Mississippi for generations after the war.

Gov. Humphreys and his contemporaries rebuilt the post-war South, characterized by sharecropping, disenfranchisement and discrimination that dominated the Delta for decades.

Five miles west of Humphreys’ old plantation site stands a historical marker commemorating the 1925 birthplace of Riley B. King in a sharecropper’s home. 

Born in the cotton fields of Itta Bena, King learned the hard realities of a sharecropper’s life early on. In the blazing Mississippi sun, children would spend long days chopping cotton, picking cotton and singing about it alongside the adults. 

Orphaned by age 9, Riley bounced across the state, moving from Itta Bena to Kilmichael, then to Lexington and eventually to Indianola. 

Religion was a big part of Riley’s life. Early on, he was enthralled by a preacher’s unconventional delivery, which included using a guitar in his sermons. While he continued to move and change jobs, the music stayed with him. 

By the time he was 20, King had progressed to performing on street corners. And as soon as he learned that playing the blues yielded more tips in his open hat than the old religious standards, he escaped life in the fields and moved to Memphis. There, the hardships of his upbringing became a source of opportunity. 

King’s first job off the farm was serving as a disc jockey at WDIA. Soon after, calls and fan mail flooded into the radio station addressed to the personality they knew as “The Beale Street Blues Boy.” The nickname stuck and was eventually shortened, creating the name history remembers: B.B. King. 

Born into extreme poverty and surviving on his own as a kid, King used talent, discipline, persistence and a surprisingly positive outlook on a hard life to escape his situation and master a form of music deeply rooted in the suffering and endurance of the Mississippi Delta. 

Years later, King reflected on the role the blues played in his life in his autobiography. 

“As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion. Blues were about feelings. They seem to bring out the feelings of the artist and they brought out my feelings as a kid. They made me wanna move, or sing, or pick up Reverend’s guitar and figure out how to make those wonderful sounds.” 

Widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in history, this great-grandson of slaves carried Mississippi’s music to the world stage and became one of the most celebrated musicians in America.

In 1946, as King fled the Delta, the Mississippi Legislature continued taking steps to keep society segregated. That year, lawmakers authorized the creation of the Mississippi Vocational College as a separate institution for Black students. 

After local protests prevented the school from opening at the old Greenwood Army Air Base, legislators selected another, more remote, location six miles to the west. And in a twist that could only take place in the Mississippi Delta, old plantation land in Itta Bena was transformed into an institution of higher learning for the descendants of the enslaved. 

Dr. James Herbert White was recruited to lead that institution when it opened in 1950. 

Also the son of sharecroppers, White envisioned something greater than an isolated vocational school designed to preserve the state’s “separate but equal” vision. White devoted himself not simply to constructing buildings and classrooms, but to constructing hope. 

Dr. White dreamed of building a true institution of higher learning that could lift students into lives of opportunity, dignity and excellence. Under his leadership, the school became Mississippi Valley State College, reflecting a vision that had grown well beyond its vocational beginnings. Today, the university nicknamed “The Valley” continues to produce educators, professionals, athletes and leaders whose influence extends far beyond the Mississippi Delta.

Take a Sunday drive through the Mississippi Delta, and you’ll notice historical markers everywhere. 

A few miles north of Itta Bena, there’s a marker on the banks of the Tallahatchie River memorializing the site of Emmett Till’s 1955 death. A couple of hours south, another one describes how Gen. Ulysses S. Grant used Mississippi College’s Provine Chapel as a field hospital during the Vicksburg campaign. Everywhere in between, marker after marker tells the story of how events from the front pages of American history played out across the Delta. 

What other stretch of soil could intertwine the stories of a plantation owner, a musician, an educator and the president of the United States? 

Four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln gave voice to an understanding of the American experiment that would eventually transform a thousand different corners of America, including Itta Bena. 

Standing among the graves of those who died preserving the Union, he returned to the Declaration of Independence and its central claim that all men are created equal. Lincoln acknowledged that America remained engaged in unfinished work, bringing the nation’s actions into closer alignment with its founding ideal. It was work to which he ultimately gave his life. 

Lincoln’s greatest contribution to those of us looking back across 250 years of the American experiment, though, may have been the challenge he left behind. Speaking to a generation enduring circumstances far worse than our own, he called on his countrymen to show an “increased devotion” to the cause of liberty. 

Itta Bena, Mississippi, offers a remarkable view of the American experiment today because it demonstrates that Lincoln’s challenge did not end at Gettysburg. Slowly but surely, generations of Americans accepted the responsibility of enlarging the promise contained in the Declaration.

Today, the only visible evidence of Benjamin Humphreys’ plantation is an aging historical marker at the intersection of Humphreys Street and Mississippi Highway 7 in downtown Itta Bena. 

Glance east while reading it, and you can picture the columned porch of a plantation home still rising above the Delta landscape. Walk a few minutes in any direction, and you are standing in fields once worked by Humphreys’ slaves nearly two centuries ago. 

But other than those fields stretching to the horizon, neither Humphreys, Jefferson nor Lincoln would recognize much of the small Delta town today. Those fields that once supported a plantation produced one of the most celebrated musicians in American history and gave rise to a state-supported, historically Black university. Free elections have taken place across the Delta for decades now, with candidates from all parties up and down the ballot. 

The meaning of Itta Bena was not settled at the time Benjamin Humphreys founded it. As the American story unfolded, it eventually outgrew the antebellum world that created it.

The window it offers into the American experiment is one of hope.

Viewed through the lens of history, the American experiment in self-government is much more than a battle over political opinions. Every generation inherits an unfinished country. Progress isn’t just a debate over who wins elections; it is about what we choose to build. 

If the United States of America someday celebrates a 500th anniversary, it will not happen because Americans agree on everything. We never have, and we never will. It will happen because generation after generation of Americans accepted Lincoln’s challenge, overcame their differences and devoted themselves to preserving a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

In the Mississippi Delta, those fading historical markers tell the story of how previous generations helped our country achieve those founding ideals. Hopefully, the historical markers that have yet to be placed will say the same about us someday.

Nason Lollar was born in Leflore County. He currently serves as principal of Germantown Middle School in Madison County. Over his 26-year career in Mississippi’s public schools, he has served as a teacher, coach, assistant principal and principal. He holds a doctor of education degree from William Carey University and is the author of “The Five Principles of Educator Professionalism: Rebuilding Trust in Schools.” A husband and father of four, he writes about education, leadership, Mississippi history and life in his spare time. 

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com.

Immigrants arrested within the country are entitled to a bond hearing within 90 days of detention, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Thursday. The court, which covers Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, held that unjustified detention beyond this period would violate the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.

More than 58,000 immigrants held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have petitioned federal courts across the country, challenging their detention. Nearly 600 of those petitions have been filed in Mississippi. The federal judge assigned to all of their cases, David Bramlette, has not decided on the merits of a single one, leaving hundreds of detainees in limbo. Some have been held in Mississippi for more than a year. 

The decision Thursday was made by a panel of three judges, which means the government will have an opportunity to seek a rehearing of the panel’s decision by the full appeals court.

Earlier this year in a separate case, the same court had interpreted the federal statute invoked by ICE to deny bond hearings en masse.

For decades, federal courts across the U.S. had distinguished between people arrested and detained at the border while trying to enter the country and people who had already been living in the United States for years. Those arrested inside the United States were automatically provided bond hearings by ICE. Bond hearings are the stage at which an immigration court would determine whether the detainee was dangerous, or posed a flight risk. 

But in 2025, the Trump administration began enforcing a mandatory detention policy, meaning most people would be denied bond hearings and be held in ICE custody until an immigration court decided whether they should be deported or allowed to remain in the country. 

As a result, federal courts across the country were flooded by constitutional habeas corpus petitions by ICE detainees challenging their continued detention without bond hearings. The decision on Thursday said the situation was creating “enormous difficulties” for district courts. 

In February, the conservative New Orleans-based appeals court became one of two circuits upholding this mandatory detention policy. It held that federal law did not make any distinction between where people had been arrested and how long they had been living in the U.S.

On Thursday, the same court, while agreeing that the statute made no distinction, held that ICE could hold detainees “for ninety days but no longer” without a bond hearing, because continued detention without justification would violate the Constitution. 

The case decided on Thursday came before the court on appeal when judges in Texas granted bond hearings to three ICE detainees who had filed habeas petitions. Federal immigration authorities challenged those decisions, arguing they had the right to hold those detainees without providing them with bond hearings.  

The three petitioners, who were all detained by ICE during traffic stops, had entered the country more than a decade before, resided in the United States and were fathers to U.S. citizens. When Texas judges granted their habeas petitions after months of detention, the government had argued that they were not entitled to due process and had no right to a bond hearing. 

The court upheld that freedom from detention is a fundamental right the Constitution provides to all human beings within American jurisdiction, not just U.S. citizens. Referring to the Board of Immigration Appeals, the court said Thursday, “Even though the BIA reinterpreted the meaning of statutory language, the Constitution has not changed.”

Mississippi fire service leaders are raising concerns about first responders mental health as the state’s suicide rate remains above the national average. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mississippi’s suicide rate is 15.09 deaths per 100,000 residents, compared with the national rate of 14.4. Newly released data from the Mississippi Violent Death Reporting System showed that 426 people died by suicide in Mississippi during 2024, accounting for about 43% of the state’s violent deaths. Mississippi’s suicide rate has remained above the national average for several years, according to CDC data. 

Mental health professionals and first responders say the firefighter deaths, coupled with the state’s suicide statistics, underscore the need for earlier intervention, greater awareness and less stigma around seeking help. They said trauma, major life changes and isolation can increase suicide risk for some people. 

Kyle Hill, president of the Mississippi Fire Chiefs Association and Lamar County fire coordinator, said four firefighters in Mississippi died by suicide over the past year. He said the deaths reflect the emotional toll of the job. 

“We’re supposed to be the heroes in the community or the people in the community that are supposed to be there to serve,” Hill said. “How do we do that if we’re affected by it, too?” 

Hill said first responders routinely encounter traumatic situations that can leave lasting emotional scars, particularly calls involving severely injured or deceased children. He said House Bill 1190, passed in 2024, created the Mississippi First Responder PTSD and Suicide Prevention Task Force to help address gaps in mental health support for emergency responders. 

Hill said stigma surrounding mental health often keeps first responders and others from seeking help. 

“We’re supposed to be big, strong men or big, brave women, and you’re not supposed to talk about those things,” Hill said. “You’re supposed to deal with it. You need to be able to have resources available so you can talk things over and express your emotions.” 

Hill encouraged first responders who are struggling to use confidential employee assistance programs or reach out to human resources, another department or someone they trust if they are uncomfortable speaking with a supervisor. 

He said no one should feel they have to face a mental health crisis alone. 

Suicide affects Mississippians of all ages 

Although first responders face unique occupational risks, mental health professionals say many of the same challenges — including stigma, isolation and major life changes — can affect people across Mississippi. 

Labethani May, director of suicide prevention at the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, said suicide prevention begins with addressing mental health long before someone reaches a crisis. 

“We talk about mental health because you can’t address suicide without addressing mental health,” May said. “People don’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I’ve had enough.’” 

May said the department is studying why more children are dying by suicide in Mississippi. She said bullying, online harassment and social media can contribute to suicide risk among some young people, although the department continues to research the trend. 

“All of our kids have access to devices,” May said. “It’s hard for parents to really guard and monitor what their children are seeing.” 

According to the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, suicide is the third leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 24. 

May pointed to the 2022 death of 16-year-old Walker Montgomery as an example of how online exploitation can escalate into a mental health crisis. Investigators said Montgomery died by suicide after someone using a fake identity targeted him in a sextortion scheme on Instagram. 

“They’re manipulated into situations,” May said. “Unfortunately, because they’re not able to process that mentally and emotionally, sometimes we see tragic things like deaths by suicide.” 

May said suicide also affects older adults. She said people 65 and older may face increased risk during major life changes such as retirement, the death of a spouse or children moving away because those transitions can affect a person’s sense of identity and connection. 

She said behind the statistics are families whose lives have been shaped by suicide. 

Turning experience into prevention 

For Beaumont resident Tina Brown, suicide has affected multiple generations of her family. 

Brown’s father died by suicide when she was in eighth grade. Years later, Brown said she experienced suicidal thoughts after learning she had exhausted her financial aid with three college classes remaining before graduation.

“When I found out that I was going to have to pay and they didn’t inform me of that, I became very depressed,” Brown said. “I’m like, ‘All this hard work.’” 

Brown said reaching out to friends and asking herself what she could learn from the situation helped her through the crisis before those thoughts progressed. 

She told her father’s isolation also taught her to recognize warning signs in others. 

“By me observing depression, by me just recollecting my father and how he was always alone — he isolated everyone — those are some signs that we should look for,” Brown said. 

Brown now teaches emotional regulation skills to others. 

The Mississippi Department of Mental Health offers free suicide prevention programs, including Shatter the Silence and Mental Health First Aid, to help people recognize warning signs and respond to mental health challenges. 

Anyone experiencing a mental health crisis can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline or chat online at 988lifeline.org. 

With the Fourth of July and America’s 250th birthday this weekend, 19 people from around the world gathered for a ceremony that would unite them as United States citizens.

The naturalization ceremony took place Thursday at the Two Mississippi Museums in downtown Jackson.

The ceremony is the final step in obtaining U.S. citizenship. Before the ceremony, potential citizens must submit an application; give their biometric information, if required; be interviewed by a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services officer; and take English and civics tests. If successful, they recite the oath of allegiance and receive a certificate of naturalization at a naturalization ceremony.

Though 20 people were naturalized on Thursday, 19 were present at the Jackson ceremony. Often, the naturalization ceremonies take place at federal courthouses, but with the American birthday celebration approaching, this ceremony was held at the Two Mississippi Museums.

Some, such as Nikitaben Narendrasinh Kosada, 28, have called the U.S. their home for years.

“This country has given me the opportunity to grow and build my future here,” she said.

Originally from India, she was accompanied by her boyfriend. They went to lunch to celebrate, and have plans to go out of town for the Fourth of July.

Karina Baker, 46, is originally from Peru. She moved to the U.S. with her husband, who is on active duty in the U.S. military.

“It means a lot, because I love this country,” she said.

“It gave me my husband, gave me my daughter, gave me the opportunity to show that we are good persons.”

She, her husband and daughter went to the Civil Rights Museum, which is part of the Two Museums complex, to celebrate. She also has two older children, one in Connecticut and the other studying in Peru.

Cecilia Ortiz, 47, is also from Peru and also originally came to the U.S. for love. She now lives with her son. She celebrated by grabbing food and visiting the museums.

The ceremony was a special and meaningful day for her.

“I have great friends, great people around and it’s just very moving to be part of this nation now,” she said.

“I feel blessed, I feel happy, I feel very honored to be part of this great nation.”

After the oath was said and certificates distributed, the entire room stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and listened to a performance of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”

U.S. District Judge Kristi H. Johnson, who administered the oath, congratulated the group and implored them to exercise their new rights and privileges and practice citizenship.

“You chose to join this nation. Your journeys, experiences, talents and aspirations will help define what America will become in the next 250 years,” Johnson said, acknowledging the upcoming holiday.

She added, “In many ways, today’s ceremony captures the very essence of the American story. A nation founded on ideas continues to renew itself through the people who choose to embrace them.”

BILOXI — More than a year ago, federal cuts to health-related grants threw into uncertainty Mississippi’s only advocacy group devoted to serving the needs of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders statewide, and they are still figuring out how to recover.

In Biloxi, a five-person staff at the nonprofit Boat People SOS helps primarily Vietnamese residents with interpretation and translation, including for medical appointments. With over 4,000 Mississippi Vietnamese on the Gulf Coast, the team said their small size makes it hard to keep up with the community’s needs. Losing nearly $500,000 in federal funds made meeting those needs that much more difficult.

“Overnight, we lost the ability to sustain these positions and the vital support they provided to some of the most underserved families on the Gulf Coast,” said Jane Nguyen, executive director of the branch with offices in Biloxi and Bayou La Batre, Alabama.  

Following efforts by the Trump administration to terminate federal grants, President Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a year ago. Together, these efforts have resulted in widespread cuts to health funding nationwide that will be felt for years to come, including at the local level.

On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, community health workers are trained to perform medical interpretation training while also managing their clients’ full cases. They schedule doctor appointments, arrange transportation and show up at appointments to interpret in-person. But with limited staff, health worker Lien Nguyen says she can get behind on appointments. 

“Sometimes, we have to turn some people down,” she said.

On any given day at the office, Lien Nguyen might split her time between preparing for a Boat People SOS event like its back-to-school fundraiser, handling a domestic violence case or even going through someone’s mail to see what’s important and what can be thrown away. One colleague spends most of his time on immigration questions, and another goes to court hearings and medical visits. As a team, they are often the first call someone in the community makes when they need help with language access across a wide range of issues. 

Beyond this year, Jane Nguyen said she doesn’t know how this vital work will be funded.  

A major grant came through the former state Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity. That office was later downsized and folded into a different group last year, partially in response to Mississippi State Auditor Shad White’s report of mismanaged funds. Nguyen was forced to rapidly find additional grants or private funding to cover the shortfall. After several months of uncertainty, her efforts and support from the national W.K. Kellogg Foundation allowed the Biloxi office to maintain its staff, while one of the three workers in the Bayou La Batre office went down to part time. 

The most recent cuts come after the program has already shrunk. For three years, the Biloxi staff were supplemented by two rotating Americorps workers who assisted on the administrative side. But in April 2025, the Trump administration cut Americorps funding. 

“We’re in a huge transition period now,” Nguyen said. “Very small office but a lot to do, so we have been struggling with capacity.”

With fewer staff members, it takes longer for patients to get seen, health workers said. When they schedule a patient’s appointment, they commit to being present the full length of time, including unpredictable waiting times and the appointment itself. Tai Nguyen, another community health worker with no relation to Jane or Lien, said he can be booked for as many as 15 interpretation cases a week, the majority of which are health-related. 

Tai Nguyen said he doesn’t know if his position will be funded for next year. If not, he’ll go back to working in the real estate business full time, but he’ll have to leave behind a roster of clients who have come to rely on him and the other staff members. 

Many of their clients don’t have family or friends nearby who have time to handle tasks like going through mail or setting up appointments, Nguyen said.

This is true for one long-time client of the Biloxi office, 73-year-old Thieu Ngo. A Medicare agent recommended he see Boat People SOS for help getting settled in Mississippi shortly after he moved to the Gulf Coast roughly two decades ago.

Ngo, a retired construction and home repair worker, only knows a few phrases in English. He doesn’t have family in Mississippi, and most of the friends he knew here have since moved away. Ngo credits community health workers with helping him apply for Medicare and handling his medical visits, including family doctors and specialists like his lung and heart doctors. 

He prefers to have an in-person interpreter, Ngo said in Vietnamese. When he’s at the hospital without one, providers will turn to a virtual interpreter, but that is not effective for him. 

“The hospital let me hear the machine,” he said. “I hear it, I don’t understand anything.” 

Confronting challenges and meeting needs

The Gulf Coast is home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese individuals in Mississippi. Many families trace their roots to the first waves of refugees who came to the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, drawn to the region’s thriving seafood industry. Families stayed and expanded, some working in a shrimping business that has since struggled to compete with international exports, and others shifting to the casino industry or to open restaurants and bakeries. 

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore up the Coast, leveled homes and destroyed the boats many families depended on to maintain their livelihood. Five years later, the BP oil spill hit a community that was still rebuilding. Fishing closures related to the spill resulted in a 60% decrease in shrimp catch in 2010, a Natural Resources Defense Council report said.

In the wake of the hurricane, national organizations like Boat People SOS set up temporary offices to provide direct aid, and then stayed as challenges compounded. At the time, no organizations helped the Vietnamese-speaking community navigate insurance claims, post-disaster unemployment or interpretation in general.

“We came down here during Hurricane Katrina to help the recovery efforts, and ended up finding a huge population of Vietnamese along the Coast and no resources available to them,” Jane Nguyen said. In 2025, that “temporary” office celebrated its 20th anniversary.  

Boat People SOS works with a variety of partners within the local area and throughout the state, including local churches and a few Vietnamese-speaking healthcare providers. 

They often refer residents who speak primarily in Vietnamese to places like the Singing River Health System’s Biloxi clinic for primary care. Nurse practitioner Cynthia Le has worked at Singing River for over 20 years and is now at the Biloxi clinic, while Dr. Andy Doan joined last year. For pediatric care, they may refer people to the Coastal Family Health Center, a Gulf Coast federally qualified health center that operates on a sliding fee scale, charging patients based on their ability to pay. 

Angelica Trieu is a pediatric nurse practitioner at Coastal Family Health, working down the street from the hospital where she was born. She often sees Vietnamese patients who recently immigrated to the area. 

To communicate with patients who may feel uncomfortable speaking in English, Trieu’s clinic relies on BoostLingo, a service that offers virtual medical interpretation. That platform allows providers to call a language interpreter via tablet or smartphone and choose between a phone or video call. Along with LanguageLine Solutions, used by the Singing River Health System and Ochsner Health, BoostLingo is one of several interpretation services available globally. 

Trieu has heard from some clients that the virtual interpreter’s speech is hard to understand. Other times, connection issues and glitches in the software interrupt important conversations between patients and providers. 

One Chinese patient who communicated with Trieu through BoostLingo told her after the consultation that she understood Trieu’s English better than the interpreter’s Chinese. With her Vietnamese patients, Trieu speaks to them directly. 

“A lot of my other patients that have utilized (BoostLingo) with an in-person translator would say the tablet just doesn’t make sense,” she said. For Trieu, it seemed like the quality of interpretation varied between calls. 

BoostLingo Director of Quality and Compliance Rocío Treviño acknowledged the difficulties of maintaining a large bank of virtual interpreters while outlining its standards. Every medical interpreter has to have three years of experience in medical interpretation in addition to the standard certifications, she said. 

Sometimes, parents ask their children to help them understand what is said during their appointment. With patients who speak Spanish, Chinese or another language, Trieu tries not to rely on children to translate, no matter how old they are. 

As someone who interpreted for her parents in high school, she remembers what it’s like to not know medical terms and doesn’t want misinterpretations to affect her patients. Trieu said she has seen other providers in the clinic use non-medical translation apps, like Google Translate, but that she avoids doing so because she has seen how inaccurate those services can be. 

“I like to treat my patients how I would want my family to be treated,” she said.

Some researchers have found that apps, while convenient, can be worse than having no translation at all. Iris Feinberg is a health literacy and language access researcher at Georgia State University. Her team has conducted research on how the Google Translate app compares to a trained interpreter in clinical conversations, including for Vietnamese patients. Data showed that Google Translate was nearly seven times more likely to make errors than the human interpreter in those settings.

Across the 14 conversations sampled, the interpreter was better at conveying not just what the doctor said but also the clinical significance of the words, Feinberg said. Meanwhile, Google Translate incorrectly translated messages that could create a real problem for someone’s health. 

“The doctor could be saying something that could happen to you if you don’t take your medicine at night. And then it could be translated as ‘don’t take your medicine at night,’” she said. 

Barriers beyond language

Outside of interpretation, one of the biggest challenges in getting patients to the doctor is transportation, several advocates and people who work in healthcare told Mississippi Today. While there is a public bus system through Gulf Coast Transit, coverage of rural areas is limited. Even in the Gulfport-Biloxi metro area, some buses only run once every two hours. 

The majority of Boat People SOS’s clients are on Medicaid or Medicare, said Tai Nguyen. Medicare offers patients a certain number of non-emergency rides a year, which can range from 12 to unlimited, depending on the patient’s plan. The service is free but can be slow, and drivers often don’t speak Vietnamese, which can lead to communication barriers when they pick up the patient. 

Some patients, like Ngo, avoid using the service because they can’t speak with the driver. He has his own car, but after some procedures, he’s not allowed to drive home alone. In these cases, he’ll order a taxi instead because all he needs to do is give the driver an address, he said. 

The Boat People SOS office policy is to not provide rides and instead meet patients at the hospital or clinic due to liability concerns if there is an accident. Tai Nguyen schedules a patient’s ride three days in advance through a transportation broker and interprets if the driver runs into any issues the day of. 

Rules matter, but Tai Nguyen has made an exception for a patient who had no one else to turn to. The patient had run out of Medicare-covered rides but urgently needed to see his eye doctor. He had also just gotten in an accident and didn’t have a vehicle to drive, so he called Nguyen’s cellphone. 

“If I wasn’t there, he would have just missed that appointment, not knowing what can happen to his vision,” Nguyen said. 

Health worker Lien Nguyen also has made an exception to drive a patient. The ride was scheduled for two hours before the transportation service started operation at 7 a.m., and the broker canceled it without informing the patient. When the doctors called Nguyen from the Pascagoula hospital 30 minutes away, she realized her patient wasn’t going to make it to his appointment unless she got him there. 

“I took it upon myself, just went to his house, pick him up, and drove him to hospital, because he’s been waiting for that surgery,” she said. 

Both community health workers said that with more funding, their patients would benefit from a vehicle owned by Boat People SOS they could use to reliably drive patients to their appointments.  

Coi Nguyen, a former Boat People SOS staff member who now works part time in health insurance, independently volunteers to do much of the same work. She drives some of the people she takes to the doctor’s office and interprets their medical visits. First, she makes sure patients who ride with her understand the risks. In 15 years living in the Gulf Coast Vietnamese community, she’s seen transportation be a persistent issue. 

“They said that they cannot come to the appointment, nobody drive them,” she said. “So then now they cannot use the service even though the government pay, you know?”

Boat People SOS after this year

While having a few more staff would be “really, really good,” Tai Nguyen praised the small team’s ability to make the most of what resources they have. 

“That’s sort of the mentality, we’re still going to get the job done regardless of what it takes,” he said. 

For Ngo, who relies on Lien Nguyen for all his doctor’s appointments, a future without Boat People SOS would be difficult. He said that he would need to find someone else who speaks Vietnamese to help him, but doesn’t know who he would turn to. 

“If he had a choice or was able to make the government change, he would like for it to have funds for us to help people like him,” Ngo said through Nguyen as his interpreter. 

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com. 

SENATOBIA – Nearly three weeks after police fatally shot a 1-year-old boy outside a Mississippi Walmart, state and local law enforcement agencies have offered few details about the incident and refused repeated requests to release public records. 

Kohen Wiley, the toddler, was with his 19-year-old mother and her friend when they were accused of shoplifting a box of diapers, his family said. Senatobia police responded, and Tate County sheriff’s deputies, who were already present at the Walmart, went to assist them. During the resulting confrontation, one of the officers shot into the women’s vehicle as it drove away. 

At a press conference Wednesday, attorneys for the boy’s family said their pleas for body-worn and dashboard camera footage and surveillance video from the Walmart where the shooting took place have been denied. They said authorities told them evidence would be shared after the shooting was investigated, a process that could take months.

On Thursday morning, I visited the Senatobia Police Department to ask for one document in particular – the incident report describing the shooting. 

Incident reports are routinely filed by law enforcement officers to document the basics of situations they responded to. They are unique because Mississippi public information law specifically requires agencies to make those reports public, regardless of any active investigation. 

These reports often include the names of officers who respond to a 911 call, details of who made the call and a description of how the officers responded. So far, authorities have not released any of those details about the Walmart shooting. 

When I arrived at the Senatobia police station, I was introduced to a sergeant who said Hampton was his last name. I asked him if I could read the incident report related to the June 14 shooting. He refused my request, saying he could not “release, show or divulge” anything related to the incident because it was part of an ongoing investigation. 

I tried unsuccessfully for several minutes to explain the law and convince him that he was required to disclose the document. “Well, I’m not gonna stand here and debate with you all day long about public records law,” Hampton said.

I said, “Sir, it is the law.”

“I just told you what is gonna go on,” he said. “If you don’t agree with that, you’re far more than welcome to go, look into your laws. You’re welcome to run it up the chain even further.”

I asked him for his name, so that I could quote him. That led to this exchange:

“Sergeant,” he answered.

That’s your first name?

“Sergeant.”

You’re not willing to share your full name?

“Sergeant.”

Is that your full name?

“Sergeant.”

Could you share your full name, please?

“I just told you my name. Sergeant.”

Your first name is Sergeant?

“Sergeant.”

OK, and what’s your position at the police department?

“Sergeant.”

I have since filed a request with the state’s public safety department, which is investigating the shooting and has the Senatobia police incident report. In the request, I cited the section of the Mississippi Public Records Act that says, “Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to exempt from public disclosure a law enforcement incident report.”

Chad Kincaid is working on a road construction crew – and like many Mississippians, he’s doing what he can to stay cool as a heat dome lingers over the state. He’s taking more breaks, keeping cool drinks on hand and getting shade wherever he can with temperatures in the 90s and humidity that makes it feel even muggier. 

“It was pretty manageable to deal with at first,” Kincaid said Thursday. “Then all of a sudden within a two-week span it just got incredibly hot.”

Kincaid’s coworkers on Jackson’s North State Street agreed, telling Mississippi Today that the crew had to start arriving at the site at 4 a.m. — an hour earlier than their usual start time — in order to finish their 10-hour days before it gets too hot. 

“It affects you mentally,” Kincaid said. “It gets so hot that sometimes you can’t think straight.” 

Mississippi is just one of several states stuck in the heat dome affecting the central, southern and eastern portions of the U.S. — a weather phenomenon where hot air is trapped in the atmosphere due to high pressure. 

Jake Johnson, who works alongside Kincaid, said he prepares “like an athlete” year round to be ready for hazardous conditions that may arise by working out and eating healthy foods. 

“This is a strenuous job,” Johnson said. “So you pretty much want to keep yourself up so that way, when you get to this point of the year, you are really conditioned to handle circumstances that come with this.”

The National Weather Service began to warn Mississippians last week, issuing heat advisories for the incoming weather. Throughout the Fourth of July weekend, temperatures could reach the  mid-90s and the heat index will reach above 110 degrees in some areas of the state.

Some communities have already reacted to the heat. Laurel’s Salvation Army is opening a cooling center over the weekend. Bolivar County Transportation Agency and Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi partnered with local content creator Pam Chatman to host a “Beat the Heat Event,” providing a cooling center and supplies to people in need.

However, many counties across the state have not addressed the ongoing heat issues.

A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that 2,300 Americans died from heat-related illness in 2023. This year, nine children across the U.S. have died of heatstroke in a car.

Heat exhaustion has become a concern for many. Heat exhaustion — sometimes known as sun stroke — occurs when a person’s core temperature reaches 101-104 degrees. If left untreated, it can lead to heatstroke, a potentially fatal form of heat exhaustion.

Jim Pollard, public affairs manager for American Medical Response ambulance service, said children and older adults are particularly at risk for heat related illness. 

“As you age, the body’s ability to sense drastic changes in temperature declines,” Pollard said. “The body surface area for kids is greater for their mass compared to adults. They absorb heat faster than adults.”

American Medical Response recommends people stay properly hydrated, wear loose lightweight clothing, and avoid high-energy activities during the heat of the day. It is also recommended that people experiencing heat exhaustion symptoms should move to a cooler area and contact 911 if needed.

Today’s column comes with this caveat: I become a soccer or futbol fan once every four years. I find the World Cup fascinating, even when I don’t always understand the intricacies of what I am watching.

That probably put me firmly in the majority among the crowd of roughly 300 who watched the U.S. defeat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 on the 18-foot wide, outdoor TV screen at Fondren Yard in northeast Jackson. We were of all ages, all races, male and female, with one trait in common: We pulled for Team USA. We left happy, sort of. 

That’s because perhaps we had two things in common. The second: We often disagreed with the inconsistent officiating of referee Raphael (no kin to Santa) Claus. We will get to that.

First, the scene: It was festive. Many in the crowd wore red, white and blue. Some of us, especially those of us with little or graying hair, approached the game with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. We were buoyed by the American team’s impressive play in this year’s World Cup group stage, yet we were mightily concerned about our history once we have reached the knockout stage. We had won only once in knockout stage history, 2-0 over Mexico in 2002. (All together now: USA! USA! USA!) Other than that, we were 0-6-1 and had not scored more than one goal in any of those seven matches. Where the World Cup is concerned, we have been like Casey Stengel’s original New York Mets, back when the great Casey plaintively asked, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

There was also our previous World Cup record against European teams to consider: only three victories and six draws against 15 defeats. Even the original Mets had a better winning percentage.

But those are just stats. We had other numbers on our side. Our population is somewhere around 346 million. Bosnia and Herzegovina, part of the former Yugoslavia, has a population about 3.4 million. Surely, we can find more soccer phenoms out of 346 million than they can out of 3.4 mill. Can’t we?

If not, maybe we can borrow. Actually, we have borrowed. Our coach, Mauricio Roberto Pochettino Trossero, is from Argentina. Our leading scorer, Folarin Balogun, was born to Nigerian parents, in Brooklyn, New York, but grew up in London. He owes his U.S. citizenship to birthright citizenship, something President Donald Trump wants desperately to end. (If a vote on birthright citizenship had been taken at Fondren Yard last night, Trump most assuredly would not like the result.)

Balogun also owes his U.S. citizenship to airline officials in New York, who refused to let his mother fly home when she was seven months pregnant with the child she would name Folarin.

Wednesday night, Balogun was often being grabbed and held by the opposing players who were quite physical in defending him. What Balogun needed was one of those old tear-away jerseys Johnny Musso used to wear when he played football for Alabama. Balogun would have needed at least 20 of those tear-aways against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Nevertheless, early on, he broke free to score an apparent goal only to have it disallowed for offsides. Later, he scored again to give his team a 1-0 lead, which only seemed to provoke the Bosnian players to increase their relentlessly physical defense of him.

And that’s what made what happened in the match’s 64th minute all the more incomprehensible. Balogun and Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic were battling for the ball when Balogun stepped on Muharemovic’s ankle. After a video review officials ruled that Balogun had done so maliciously and presented him a red card, soccer’s version both disqualification and suspension. Boos rang out both in Santa Clara, where the game was played, and in Fondren Yard.

To these untrained eyes, the foul looked far more inadvertent than malicious. To say the least, the sentence did not fit the crime. Not only was Balogun forced to leave the game and not only will he be ineligible for Team USA’s next match against Belgium, but the U.S. had to play the last 36 minutes of the match with 10 players vs. Bosnia’s 11.

Claus, the referee, would have to have been an accurate mind reader to make such a potentially game-defining call. Otherwise, how could he determine that Balogun’s foul was intentional rather than accidental? Granted, soccer refs need some mind-reading ability in order to differentiate between the almost constant flopping that goes on and real injuries. (It should be noted that Muharemovic kept playing after appearing as if he had been mortally wounded.)

Whatever, the U.S. seemed in some real trouble at that point. I mean, 10 vs. 11 is hardly fair. Somehow – and thanks largely due to German-born Malik Tillman’s remarkable penalty kick in the 82nd minute – our guys prevailed. They were both resilient and valiant and whatever other heroic terms you want to use, and will now continue their World Cup quest Monday night in Seattle against Belgium. 

You should know Belgium easily defeated the U.S. 5-2 in a pre-World Cup match, and the U.S. will be without Balogun. Also, despite Wednesday night’s victory, the U.S. World Cup record – especially against European teams – remains abysmal.

But as Al Michaels said during the most unlikely U.S. sports victory of all-time, the miracle that happened on ice, “Do you believe…?”

In Fondren, for one night, we surely did.

McADAMS — Parents of seven male students are suing the Attala County School District, the county and 13 other defendants, alleging that the boys’ constitutional rights were violated when they were strip-searched at McAdams High School. 

The boys, all McAdams High students, were individually escorted into a room on Feb. 10 and made to strip naked or nearly naked, squat and, in some cases, bend over, for an inspection by a school resource officer and colleagues, according to the federal lawsuit filed on June 15.

Three plaintiffs told Mississippi Today they were told by district officials a bathroom vape detector had triggered the search, but no e-cigarettes or other contraband was found.

“We are here seeking justice for our children,” Arma Cooper, who is suing the district on behalf of her son, said Wednesday. Her son is referred to as B.C. in the lawsuit. “I am deeply saddened by the actions of our educators, our district, to allow such things to happen and violate our men.” 

“My son will never be the same.”

Attorney Keith French, who is representing the plaintiffs, said the incidents violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. He contends the incident also violates the boys’ 14th Amendment rights, which grants freedom from government invasion of their “intimate bodies.” 

French also alleges school employees violated the Mississippi Torts Act, which protects residents from “offensive touching or invasion,” among other violating behavior.

The lawsuit accuses school resource officer Leroy Wise, who is also a sheriff’s deputy, and colleagues of apprehending students near the bathroom without sufficient explanation or consent. Principal Dietrich Harmon, who is also a defendant, allegedly monitored the detained students while the searches were underway. 

Other defendants include Superintendent Rhyne Thompson and 10 unnamed staffers.

Mississippi Today reached out to the Attala County School District multiple times for comment.

“Right now, we can’t discuss anything that’s in litigation,” said April Jones, who serves as the assistant business manager for the district and answered a call routed to the superintendent’s office. Nicholas McClain, the district’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment. 

District officials acknowledged the incident broke school policy, according to the lawsuit.

The Attala County school board mandates that employees “take reasonable and conventional measures to maintain control and discipline students.” Those measures may include “force, restraints, and ‘on-the-spot’ correction,” the district’s personnel handbook states.

French, the attorney representing the students, said the strip searches were “grossly disproportionate to any legitimate school-safety need” and “sexually invasive.”

The lawsuit contends that students did not consent to the searches and were threatened with suspension if they did not comply. The students were released to their classes after the searches.

“When we send our children to school, we give the school our trust. We do not give them dominion over our bodies,” French said. “And if the response is denial, delay, minimization or damage control, as (the Attala County School District) seems to be doing, then what they’re really saying is your child’s pain is inconvenient and the institution matters more than they do.”

Some of the students reported anxiety, violent behavior, sleep disruptions and social withdrawal after the incident, the lawsuit states. Some have sought counseling and medical care as a result. Three parents told Mississippi Today their sons quit their athletic teams soon after the strip searches because the SRO also patrols school sporting events.

‘I was told there was nothing to worry about’

Penny Ellington could tell something traumatic had happened before her son talked about the search. While driving her son, referred to as K.H. in the lawsuit, and his younger cousin home from school, Ellington heard the boys having a tense conversation about something that happened earlier that day. She thought there may have been a fight.

As she merged onto the main road home, her son began to describe being strip-searched by the school resource officer. 

His story spurred tears she struggled to suppress as she drove, Ellington said. She didn’t want her son to see her cry. 

She recalled her experience being assaulted as a child. Then, she said, she thought about how she couldn’t save her son from danger at his school.

Over subsequent weeks and months, Ellington said, she noticed K.H. withdraw from friends, activities he used to enjoy and other hobbies. He would lie in bed under the covers in the dark.

“And you don’t know whether to trust somebody grown or not because you don’t know if they got your interests at heart,” she said. “I didn’t want for my child to be assaulted, but he was assaulted.”

Chitina Johnson’s son, referred to as D.L. in the lawsuit, didn’t go to classes for the rest of the week after the searches. He said he felt sick each morning, and Johnson wanted him to rest. Now, he goes home to use the bathroom during the school day, she said.

Three parents told Mississippi Today that district officials reached out to them about “an incident” on Feb. 10 but assured them their children were cleared of wrongdoing. They said they got the runaround when they reached back out after their children described the graphic details of the searches. Three parents received apologies, others didn’t.  

“I was told there was nothing to worry about, that it was handled. He was trying to rush me off the phone almost,” Tiffany Greer, whose son is referred to as A.G. in the lawsuit, said of a conversation with Attala County schools Superintendent Rhyne Thompson. 

“My child was really going to the bathroom and he had to be treated like a prisoner,” she said she kept thinking afterwards. She said she was particularly angry when she heard that her son was threatened with suspension if he did not expose his genitals for an officer to search.

“If there’s no changes, my child wants to move districts,” Johnson said. “I’m looking to see if there are changes in the district, too.”

“The personnel changes should have happened immediately anyway”

Six of the plaintiffs told Mississippi Today they are hoping for accountability and for district officials to explain why the strip search happened. They said they still don’t understand how a vape detector siren set off a chain of events that led to the alleged violation of their children’s constitutional rights.

“It makes it hard to just be comfortable and okay with sending your child to school knowing that it has taken place,” Greer said. “Because then you have all kinds of questions like, ‘Has this happened before or will this happen again?’”

Mississippi Today reporter Devna Bose contributed to this report.