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As a young Presbyterian minister serving a church in Davenport, Iowa, Rims Barbour accepted a call to come to Mississippi in 1964 as part of the Civil Rights Movement to help register Black Mississippians to vote. 

As part of that effort, he rubbed shoulders with legends of the Civil Rights Movement. Now 89, Barber is something of a legend himself as he and his wife of almost 50 years, Judy, continue to advocate for the needy. 

Judy, who went to the same Chicago high school as Rims, also ventured to Mississippi to be a social worker for the state Department of Health. Together, they never left Mississippi. They raised a blended family and never stopped working to improve the lives of Mississippians.

Over a two-day period, Judy and Rims Barber answered questions from Mississippi Today Ideas. The first day of the interview was in the sanctuary of Fondren Presbyterian Church in Jackson, where the Barbers remain active. The second day was at their home in Jackson.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Mississippi Today Ideas – I appreciate you taking a few minutes. It’s a real honor to sit down and discuss issues with y’all. First of all, tell me a little bit about what y’all have been doing. I mean, what do you do, and why do you do it?

Rims Barber – Well, I came to Mississippi in 1964 with the National Council of Churches to support Freedom Summer work, and really got involved with some of the local people who were brave in the face of the terror that was there, and was impressed with the work they were doing and wanted to be supportive of them. And so I’ve been trying to support local community groups.

We did a lot of voter registration. We did, you know, community organizing. And out of that came programs like the Child Development Group of Mississippi. The Head Start program in our state came out of those community meetings where people said one of the main things they wanted was better education for their children. And one of the main things we worked on was healthcare. 

It’s interesting that Mississippi was the last state to get in the Medicaid program in January of 1970. They put the children in Medicaid, but didn’t put their mothers on. And it was a very limited program, and we were working with community groups who wanted to expand that program and ended up filing a suit to get the mothers involved, to make the state offer services to those mothers, and won that lawsuit. We worked over the next number of many years in expanding that program from its base, which was probably 70,000 people in the state, to 700,000 (enrolled in Medicaid), which is what it is currently.

Judy, my wife, when she was working with the Health Department, had contacts in all the counties, and we could get stories from them about what their needs were and why they should be eligible for Medicaid and why they should get transportation services and housing services and things like that, and advocated for public policies that would try and meet their needs.

One of the early things I got involved with was the election of Robert Clark as the first Black legislator in the (20th) century. Robert was the only Black legislator in the Mississippi Legislature for eight long years. He was elected in 1967, and the next Black to get elected was in 1975. And I worked with (state Sen.) Henry Kirksey on developing the plans that enabled the increase in Black people getting elected, and it’s made a great difference.

We’ve had a strong Black legislative caucus, and I’ve tried to help them whatever way I could to fashion pieces of legislation that would meet the needs of their folks, and they could identify the needs.

Mississippi Today Ideas – I forget the exact phrase, but behind every great man, there’s a great woman, and you and Ms. Judy have been a team for a long time.

Rim – We’re a team. 

MT Ideas – How long y’all been married?

Judy Barber  – Almost 50 years, in September, yeah.

MT Ideas – You’re a social worker by training?

Judy – Yep. And they needed a director of social work in the Health Department although they did not know what to do with her.

MT Ideas –  And then y’all sort of teamed up, got married, and made your life in Mississippi for a long time. What made you decide to stay here?

Judy – The people, the local people. 

Rims – So impressed with the local people and what they were doing and trying to make life better in their community. You know, through the political process change the way the Democratic Party selected its leaders across the nation and helped bring about the Voting Rights Act, which made a big difference for many communities

MT Ideas – You were part of so many historic moments in the Civil Rights Movement. You were involved in the march after James Meredith was shot, You were also at Selma when people were killed.

 Judy – You were still in Iowa, but you came down. You were sent down to house the people who actually made the march. Actually, that was significant for me because Viola Liuzzo was shot to death (in Selma) and she left two kids at home and was trying to help people do the right thing. And I thought, “That should’ve been me. I should’ve been doing that.” And that sort of triggered my getting more involved in things.

MT Ideas – You’re a Presbyterian minister by training. What made you want to get involved?. What made you decide to come to Mississippi?

Rims – I  was at a church in Davenport, Iowa, and involved in some of the local events. You know, even in that area there were questions about residency. As some of the big companies in that particular area brought in Black executives, they needed to find a place to live, things for their children, et cetera, and I got involved with that sort of stuff.

And then we had a call from the National Council of Churches that came out and invited ministers to come to Mississippi for Freedom Summer to assist in the programs, and I bought into that, and I came and was so impressed with the people working to make changes in their lives and in their communities that I have stayed for the rest of my life. (He briefly returned to Iowa to get his personal financial matters in order before moving permanently to Mississippi.)

It’s been my life’s work. I worked for the Delta Ministry from ’65 to ’76, and then with the Children’s Defense Fund from ’77 to ’89, and then I’ve kind of been on my own with a nonprofit organization to work with local people on public policy issues. And now I’m getting old and going blind, so it gets harder and harder to keep doing the work.

MT Ideas – And Ms. Judy, you help him.

Rims – She’s my eyes. Seeing eye person.

MT Ideas –  I would just say in a general sense you advocate for the needy.

Rims – We worked closely with the development of the Coalition for (Citizens With) Disabilities and for the Mississippi Immigrant Alliance, I was there for the formation of the ACLU chapter and the League of Women Voters. We offered office space for them, and also for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance.

In (1983), I guess it was when Bill Allain was running to be the governor, somebody said he had a boyfriend encounter. And since I had the Gay Alliance in my office, the telephone was ringing. People would say, “Is Bill Allain there?” You never know. And I’d say, ‘“No, he has his own office.” So we’ve had that kind of fun stuff.

MT Ideas – And your training, as we talked about, was as a social worker, and you came here to work with childcare and initiating some of those programs in Mississippi. I mean, I guess your beliefs were just – sort of – simpatico. So y’all were a natural fit?

Rims –  Yeah. I fell in love. It’s been a wonderful time together.

Judy – You have so many interesting people that come to your office. Well, the office is now closed, but it was just a hub for people wanting to know what’s going on in Mississippi. 

MT Ideas – Do you have any stories about some of the people you met along the way?

RIms – I  had a long relationship with Robert Clark doing some of his legislative work. We gave him an office on Farish Street with a secretary and a typewriter and that sort of stuff. And people would come. Black folks across the state thought he was their legislator because he was the only Black one there, and people would call and ask him for help. And we worked together for those eight years.

You know, we used to have two state teachers associations. One was the Black Teachers Association and the other was the white Mississippi Education Association. They got merged, and we worked with the merger of the Black and white Democratic Party folks, and I was on the committee that was involved in that merger in 1976 when we finally put it all together and got the blessing of the national Democratic Party.

MT Ideas – Was Ms. Hamer involved in that?

Rims – Absolutely. Oh, yes. Ms. Fannie Lou, I remember sitting in her carport shelling peas. Shelling peas. and talking about voter registration.

MT Ideas – You didn’t learn to shell peas in Chicago, did you? 

RIms – No, I didn’t.

Judy – Probably from your immigrant grandmother. 

MT Ideas – As you said the Democratic Party was split and work was done to bring it together.

Rims – Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer and others worked from ’64 to ’76 in order to get that accomplished. Everything takes a long time. You can’t do anything quickly in this state, but you can persevere.

I helped Robert Clark initiate kindergarten legislation and compulsory attendance legislation back in 1968, and those didn’t pass until William Winters’ 1982 Education Reform Act. So it just took forever, but we got it accomplished. And it made a difference and people are better off today than they were back then.

MT Ideas –  Going back to Robert Clark for just a second. He was there as the only Black legislator for eight years. Did he ever just want to give up?

Rims – Well I don’t want to say give up, but it had to be a difficult transition. He didn’t have a seatmate. Everybody else in the House of Representatives had a seatmate, but he was on his own, in a desk all by himself and didn’t have assistance of any type in getting legislation put together. So that’s why we set up an office that he could come to, and just to get out of the Capitol and do some real work before he went back.

MT Ideas –  And then there were the legislative lunches?

Rims –  He’d go to those luncheons and nobody else would sit at the table with him, so he ate all the desserts. And his wife wasn’t happy about that. His wife was not happy that he gained so much weight. But his sons are now – one is a judge up in Holmes County, and the other took his seat in the Legislature.

MT Ideas –  I’ve known y’all for a good long while. Now there’s a lot more people in the Capitol who advocate for needy people. When y’all were doing it in the mid-’90s there weren’t a lot of people doing it.

Rims – When we started doing it in the ’60s and ’70s, there was nobody else. And eventually more people got involved, and we put together a coalition of folks who would share their goals and we could help each other. So that was very important.

MT Ideas –  Y’all may not remember this, but the first time you caught my attention, it was in the mid-’90s. It was a joint legislative hearing, a public hearing, and you testified. I can’t remember the issue, but I’m sure you testified on behalf of needy people. I remember the chair looking at you and saying, ‘Mr. Barber, you’re not from Mississippi, are you?’ Do you remember that at all?

Rims – Oh, yeah, I remember that.

MT Ideas –  And you said?

Rims – You’re right. I’ve only been here at the time it was over 20 years. Yeah. I was a carpetbagger.

MT Ideas –  Ms. Judy, when y’all first got married, which would’ve been in 1976 right here in this church, you just kind of jumped right in and worked with him on all these issues from the onset? Did you continue to have a day job?

Judy – Somebody had to pay the bills. But besides that when you have two children and he had two children, and there’s meals to cook and food to fix. 

But I worked for a community health center, and now I’m on the board for Dr. Robert Smith’s Community Health Center, and that’s a real pleasure. And that’s important. The community health centers have made a real difference in the state.

MT Ideas – People who participated in the Civil Rights Movement were arrested or suffered violence. Were you ever arrested?

Rims – Yeah. I was arrested a half a dozen times, I guess. I was only beaten once. There were other incidents of people throwing Molotov cocktails at our house. Not here. It was in Canton.

MT Ideas – Where were you beaten?

Rims – The Madison County Jail. It had to do with taking young Black children to public schools to desegregate the white schools in Madison County. That was illegal. And I got a ticket for that. And I remember that a couple of times when I’ve got traffic citations, what they did was they would put me in jail until they could get a justice of the peace to come and set bond or that sort of thing. I would sit there for hours waiting for something to happen.

And I guess part of the concern that people have today with the immigration issues is that all the police people in the state of Mississippi have to cooperate with the immigration service. That’s part of a new law passed this session. People getting a traffic ticket may have to sit in jail and wait for ICE to come and check their documents.

So that could be going back to some of the same old things that we had in the ’60s. You know, what my button says, “Nobody is free until everybody is free.” You have to be able to work with everybody who has been discriminated against in order to free everyone. We must be together. You can’t separate us one from the other.  And so we work with the LGBT people. We work with the immigrants, we work with the disabled – and anyone else who’s been oppressed.

MT Ideas –  Y’all have any plans to slow down?

Rims – I can’t help but being slow in many ways because my eyesight is going, and I have to slow down. And we go up to Baptist Fitness Center every day

MT Ideas –  When you were in the Madison County Jail, did you have any lingering impact  from that?

Rims –  No. It just was interesting to watch, you know, the sheriff had to work himself up to be mean, and then he had to work himself back down to go home and pet the dog and hug his wife and stuff. Just came across as an average, ordinary guy. Yeah, it’s not easy being the oppressor.

MT Ideas – I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about what’s going on now. But before I do that, let’s go back to ’64. In ’64, you left your home in Iowa to come down here to Mississippi to work for civil rights and to help register people to vote. And the Voting Rights Act was passed in ’65. It’s made a tremendous difference. What did you think when the Voting Rights Act passed?

Rims – Oh, I was just really excited. Soon after it passed, the federal government set up an office to register people to vote in Canton on Peace Street. And we registered hundreds and hundreds of people through that office because they had been turned away by the sheriff at the courthouse in times past. And being able to go in there and just register, my gosh, it was wonderful. And they made a great difference.

You know that soon we had a Black mayor, Black city council, Black superintendent of schools, Black police chief, you know, and that made all the difference in the world to the people. And it eventually led to a point where Mississippi had, I think, the highest percentage of Black elected officials in the nation.

MT Ideas –  But now we recently had the Louisiana decision from the United State Supreme Court that has been in the news and by most accounts guts the Voting Rights Act. What do you think about what’s going on now? 

Rims – I think it’s awful. I had a conversation yesterday with one of the lawyers who had helped draft parts of that bill, and he was pretty upset about the whole thing. You know, I mean, it was a well-written bill that enabled people to get real change, make it come. And if they do away with that. I mean, I remember in ’64, I think it was, when the state government moved all the congressional districts from east to west rather than north and south, so that it divided up the Delta into three or four different districts, and there was no way you could get anyone elected who would represent the Black population. But we got that changed.

Then Robert Clark ran for it and lost. The incumbents had these ads on TV saying, “He’s not one of us.” Oh, dear. Well, then Mike Espy ran for it and won. And then when  Bill Clinton became president, he made Mike Espy secretary of agriculture, and so that seat was vacated, and Bennie Thompson won that year.

MT Ideas – So how did you know the attorney who helped draft the legislation?

Rims – Herman Derfner worked here for a while in the late ’60s, and I worked with him when he was doing election law. He’s living now in Charleston, South Carolina. And he said that the South Carolina Legislature wants to do away with the one Black congressman from South Carolina, but they’re liable to mess up and end up with two Democrats instead.

MT Ideas –  Anything else you want to add?

Rims – I’ve been so blessed to have been able to work with really great people who live here and have worked to change their communities. And in fact, through the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, changed the way the United States elected people to office.

MT Ideas – And you’ve been blessed to have a partner for all those years. Yes.

Rims – Oh, my it is 50 years now.

MT Ideas  – Thank y’all.

Judy – Thank you.

RIms – Yeah. Thank you, Bobby.

“Voter Voices” is a series of Mississippians sharing their thoughts on voting rights, the state’s history of voter suppression and the new gerrymandering push embroiling Mississippi, the South and the nation after the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Louisiana case gutted the federal Voting Rights Act’s requirements for majority Black districts.

For Margaret Ann Niven, 72, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais induces nothing less than raw fury.

Niven, who is white, views the ruling and subsequent calls from some Mississippi Republicans to gerrymander electoral maps as an extension of a public policy agenda that harms Blacks residents.

“They intend not to have any Black representation in the state,” Niven said. She said she believes the Legislature’s failure to expand Medicaid is also a policy that disproportionally harms Black Mississippians.

Both chambers of the Republican-dominated Legislature passed bills to expand Medicaid in 2024, but they ultimately couldn’t agree on a final proposal amid fierce opposition from Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

The potential elimination of majority Black electoral districts should the state Legislature choose to redraw electoral maps is a gut punch to those raised under a certain progressive optimism, Niven said while recounting her childhood.

Niven was born in Greenville before her family moved just over 35 miles east to a tiny unincorporated community in the Arkansas Delta called Jerome. She often spent summers back in Greenville with her grandmother, and the family became devoted readers of Hodding Carter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning progressive journalist who covered Jim Crow-era Mississippi.

“That especially influenced my mother in the way she dealt with us, concerning race relations and voting,” Niven said.

In Jerome, her grandfather owned a store that served as the town’s only polling location. On the morning Niven’s mother set out to vote during the 1960 presidential election, she dressed herself and her children in their fanciest attire.

As they approached the sidewalk outside the store, they passed several Black men standing outside. Her mother paused and said, “I want you all to know that I will be voting for Mr. Kennedy.”

Before settling in Jackson as an adult, Niven became a librarian in the Arkansas Delta. Most of the students she interacted with were Black, an experience she believes most proponents of the current redistricting push lack.

“I worked in the Arkansas Delta, which was very poor, and at some point, over 90% of my students (were) Black. And I had grown up in the little town, and my parents had told us we had to speak to every single person on the street that we passed, so we had to treat Black people as well as white people with respect,” Niven said. “I realized how lucky I was.”

While Mississippi’s Republican leaders are considering state-level redistricting after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that reduced protection for minority voters, the decision could also have an impact on Mississippi’s smallest governing bodies, including school boards.

The Louisiana v. Callais decision gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which required states to draw districts to provide more minority representation. Now, Gov. Tate Reeves and other Republican leaders say they want to gerrymander Mississippi’s electoral districts.

But the Callais decision will likely touch all levels of government. Attorneys and advocates warn that the state’s education system could also be affected if legislative and county districts are redrawn.

In the South especially, race and political parties are correlated. That means, in many cases, weakening Democratic voting power in Mississippi also means narrowing the pathway for Black people to get elected. 

“Everybody’s talking about Congress and Republicans trying to maintain a majority,” said state Rep. Bryant Clark, a Democrat from Pickens. “One of the things going unseen is that this goes all the way down to school boards.” 

A majority of school board members in Mississippi are elected, not appointed. The elected school boards most at risk of losing Black representation are those in areas without a majority-Black population or areas with slim majorities.

“It won’t be the most immediate thing, and it’s not going to happen with fanfare, but … I would expect over the next few years, we’ll see local bodies redistrict school boards,” said Amir Badat, a voting rights lawyer based in Mississippi. 

John Spann, a historian who focuses on civil rights, said the future of the state’s public school students — 45% of whom are Black, the largest single demographic — are at stake. 

Mississippi’s fourth-grade reading gains over the past several years have drawn national attention. But part of what makes those gains so pronounced is that improvements have been shared across demographics. 

That means if Mississippi’s Black students fall behind, Spann said, the state falls behind.

“When the school board is representative of the areas in the counties and communities they represent, you see more resources for the children who are enrolling in public schools,” he said. “Our education system is not at the bottom anymore because of the investment over time in these children. 

“We see there’s progress happening, and I would love to see Mississippi continue to rise. We can’t do that if we allow different things to distract us and move us back.”

READ MORE: FAQ: Mississippi redistricting. Why does it matter? What’s being considered?

A direct impact to school boards

The most direct impact of the Callais decision on schools, Badat said, is that it removes protections against racially discriminatory redistricting applied to school boards.

As of 2024, about 12% of lawsuits across the country pertaining to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act are related to schools, according to the University of Michigan law school’s database.

One such case is in DeSoto County, a fast-growing area in north Mississippi that borders Tennessee. The Legal Defense Fund is arguing that the way the county’s current districts are drawn splinters Black representation. The result is that none of the 25 county offices, including the school board, are currently held by a Black representative, even though the Black population has grown from 12% to 36% since the 2000 Census, according to the organization.

“What we heard from testimony around Black representation on the school board is that there are huge disparities in discipline, graduation rates and test scores,” Badat said. “Voters said the school board isn’t responsive to the needs of the Black community.”

The makeup of city councils and county boards of supervisors also impacts schools because schools are partially funded by property taxes. These boards decide those rates. 

Spann worries about similar scenarios in other up-and-coming areas across the state.

“Budget priorities, consolidation, curriculum, and disciplinary policies could all be affected by a lack of representation,” he said. “I’m worried about places like Gluckstadt, Hernando and Olive Branch. If things were to change in Mississippi, would Black children there have a voice?”

Mississippi school boards that don’t represent their student bodies don’t always make decisions in the best interest of their schools, Spann said. 

“Historically, all-white boards were making sure that funds were being halted and making sure schools in some ways remained desegregated,” he said. “You see funding going to private schools. You see this in the Delta, where in the past money has literally been diverted from building new schools for predominantly Black areas.”

Some counties in the Mississippi Delta where private academies popped up after desegregation orders in the 1970s still have majority-white school boards governing majority-Black student bodies. 

Carroll Rhodes, an attorney who has spent most of his career litigating redistricting cases in Mississippi to help elect more Black candidates to office, said if local bodies redraw voter lines in the favor of white voters, it could undo decades of progress.

“It would be regressive,” he said. “Not just for education, but regressive for our society if that were to happen.”

State education policy in the balance

School boards aren’t the only government bodies that make decisions about education.

If legislative seats are redrawn without considering Black voters’ representation, it could mean fewer Democrats at the state Capitol and an easier pathway for conservative education policy. 

This past legislative session, Republican House Speaker Jason White’s push for school choice barely succeeded in his chamber because of pushback from a few members of his own party and strong Democratic opposition, and died in the Senate.

“We’ve already heard from state Republicans that they want to redistrict,” Badat said. “With fewer Black lawmakers fighting against defunding public education, expanding school choice would be more achievable. You worry the gains we’ve made might be eroded.”

Clark, who’s been in state government for more than two decades, said if some of the Republican-backed education policies proposed this past session had succeeded, it would’ve wreaked havoc on the public education system.

Now, with the potential of losing Democrats at the state Capitol, Clark said, “I’ve lost sleep thinking about the repercussions of this decision and the far reaching effects it can have.”

Clark’s father, the late former Rep. Robert Clark, was the first Black lawmaker elected to the Mississippi Legislature in the 20th century. Clark said his father decided to run for the Legislature after unsuccessfully trying to make improvements in Holmes County schools, where the majority-Black student body was led by an all-white school board. 

A former teacher, Robert Clark was later made the House Education Committee Chairman, ushering in an era of education reforms alongside then-Gov. William Winter. Under Clark’s decade of leadership, the House passed the historic 1982 Education Reform Act that led to a number of improvements to public schools.

“There’s a saying: A rising tide lifts all boats,” Rep. Bryant Clark said. “When Mississippi made those big investments in education in the ’80s, that’s when we made tremendous strides economically in the state. This could take us backward.”

As teachers finalize their contracts for the upcoming school year, their salaries will reflect a $2,000 raise the Legislature passed this year. However, special education teachers might notice something missing: their additional $2,000 bonus. 

Mississippi Department of Education officials said this week that they’re still trying to get clarity from the Legislature about who that money should go to.

Raising teacher pay was one of the top issues of this year’s legislative session. After months of back and forth, lawmakers agreed to give all Mississippi teachers — some of the lowest paid educators in the country — a $2,000 raise across the board and special education teachers an additional $2,000 supplement.

READ MORE: Lawmakers strike deal on lower, $2,000 teacher pay raise. Educators say they ‘desperately need’ more

According to Senate Bill 2103, those eligible for the supplement include “any licensed special education teacher employed by a school district on a full-time basis and specifically providing special education instruction.”

The Mississippi Department of Education’s appropriations bill allocates $14.6 million for the bonuses.

But state education officials aren’t sure whether that includes ”self-contained” teachers who spend their school days exclusively teaching students with disabilities in one classroom, inclusion teachers who support students with disabilities in their general education classes or other personnel who work with students with special needs.

“The words that were said did not reflect the intent, in my opinion, of who was to receive the salary supplement,” state Superintendent Lance Evans told the state Board of Education at its June 17 meeting. “It was my belief, it was for self-contained teachers to receive this.”

He said there’s been confusion within the department because of the lack of specificity in the law. The agency sent a letter on May 18 to the chairmen of the Education and Appropriations committees in the House and Senate for more details. 

Rep. Karl Oliver, a Republican from Winona and chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handled the Mississippi Department of Education’s allocation this year, said lawmakers and attorneys are working on clarification letters.

“We’re still working on the intent of the language,” he said. “We’re still discussing that, exactly what the intent is, to make sure we’re all on the same page. We really collectively have not gotten together and reviewed that.”

He couldn’t say when they’d get back to the state education agency with answers. 

Sen. Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg and chairman of his chamber’s Appropriations committee, was unfamiliar with the situation but said, “I remember that the intent of the Legislature at the time was for that additional supplement to be given to those teachers who are teaching special education courses in special education classes, and I’ll leave it at that.”

House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, had a similar understanding.

“It was only meant for teachers that are actually teaching special education classes,” he said. “I don’t think inclusion teachers were intended to be included, but that’s just my knee-jerk reaction.”

Kelly Riley, executive director of Mississippi Professional Educators, said many teachers have called her with concerns.

“In fact, I had one this morning,” she said. “It appears numerous districts are waiting to provide supplemental contracts for the supplement. I’m hoping [the Mississippi Department of Education] receives clarification soon.”

While the general teacher pay raise is a recurring amount and changes the teacher pay scale, the supplement is a one-time increase. Kymberly Wiggins, MDE’s chief operating officer, said teachers will receive the general raise in their monthly checks starting in July, the start of the new fiscal year. But the money for special education teachers’ bonuses would likely be sent to districts in two payments over the school year.

The agency is tentatively planning on disbursing the special education bonuses in October and April. But before then, they’re hoping to get clarity from the Legislature. 

“We need emphatic, explicit language,” said Wendy Clemons, MDE’s chief academic officer. “We’re trying to be good stewards of these funds. We want to make sure we do the right thing.”

Evans said at the meeting that the agency could potentially be on the hook to initially cover the difference if more people qualify for the money than what’s been allocated. That’s one of the questions the agency hopes the Legislature will answer, Wiggins said. 

“We are hopeful about hearing something back pretty quickly,” she said. “We’re addressing business managers and teachers at districts. Certainly, there are concerns. We’re just awaiting information.” 

The agency is also trying to clarify details about the school attendance officer raises, but those positions are paid for within the agency, not by districts.

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Roger Wicker and other top national security figures, were voicing strong reservations Thursday — and some outright condemnation — of the Trump administration’s agreement to end the fighting in Iran.

The memorandum of understanding signed by President Donald Trump started a 60-day negotiating clock to reach a final deal on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. While Trump allies noted the agreement is not final, the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran’s sale of oil and the plan for a $300 billion fund to rebuild Iran and its economy were met with criticism from Republican leaders and conservative influencers, including some close Trump supporters.

“President Trump has pursued peace through strength. I hope the intermediaries working on this deal are not undermining that objective,” said Mississippi’s Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has urged Trump to keep up the pressure on Iran and last month warned against striking a bad deal.

“The $300 billion fund for the reconstruction and economic development of Iran — though not funded by U.S. taxpayers — would make Iran’s payoff under President Obama’s 2015 deal look like a pittance by comparison,” Wicker said, referring to the Democratic administration’s Iran agreement that Trump withdrew from during his first term.

The criticism from within Trump’s own party — though hardly unanimous — comes as he is trying to bring an end to the unpopular war fewer than five months from midterm elections, where Republicans are facing headwinds in their effort to hold their narrow majorities.

Trump calls his critics ‘fools’

Wicker’s points were backed by a number of his colleagues, many of whom supported the war when it began.

“History demonstrates giving billions of dollars to the theocratic lunatics who want to kill you is an exceptionally bad idea,” said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch supporter of the war. “And so I hope we don’t do that.”

Trump on Truth Social called his critics “fools” and said the $300 billon payment to Iran by the United States is “fake news.” The interim pact promises a $300 billion fund for postwar reconstruction. It’s not clear where that money will come from — but Trump said, as Wicker noted, the U.S. would not contribute.

“All there is for the U.S. is Success, Lower Oil Prices, and Victory,” he posted.

Some senators question financial provisions

As the memorandum was released to Congress on Thursday, several Republican senators said it left them with questions, many of them about its financial provisions.

Majority Leader John Thune and South Dakota colleague Sen. Mike Rounds were seeking clarity on how financial incentives to Iran and conditions barring funding terrorism would be enforced, because “right now, a lot of money’s going to go to Iran,” Rounds said.

To be sure, there were Republicans more closely aligned with Trump’s America First policies in the Senate and elsewhere who were giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Sen. Roger Marshall stressed the point in the memorandum that supporters say gives the U.S. the upper hand. In a social media post, the Kansas Republican said one of the most important provisions “lays out a key commitment that strengthens regional security and ensures that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

Louisiana GOP Senate candidate John Fleming, who has focused on Trump’s most loyal supporters ahead of a June 27 Republican primary runoff, said that means Trump has suggested that the U.S. will strike Iran again if it does not live up to the agreement.

“The criticism may be worthy if there isn’t follow-through,” Fleming said. “He’s using the speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick in offering them plenty of help, but at the same time he’s got that stick ready if they don’t live up to their agreements.”

MAGA voices send a warning

Still, some of Trump’s strongest supporters in conservative media have warned against the agreement.

Conservative radio host Mark Levin suggested a strategic rethinking to hold off on an agreement with Iran until after the midterms.

“We should consider slow-walking the enemy, building up our munitions, our oil reserves, get the price of gasoline down, get through the midterms, then knock them out,” he said in a social media post. Instead, the U.S. seemed to be “rushing to a deal, building up their oil industry” and agreeing to governments “transferring billions to them.”

Right-wing social media influencer Laura Loomer, who has long supported Trump while also promoting conspiracy theories, was more pointed in her criticism.

“Who is giving the President tainted, pro-Islamic intel?” she posted on X.

What all the critics shared is an abiding distrust of the Iranian regime, no matter their relationship to Trump.

“It does smack of the kind of appeasement,” said former Vice President Mike Pence, whose relationship with Trump was fractured after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Bottom line. I don’t trust the Iranians.”

___

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

Trustees of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board moved one step closer Thursday to adopting a new funding model for public universities that would tie a portion of state money to graduation rates, student retention and workforce outcomes. 

The 12-member board that governs the state’s eight public institutions unanimously accepted a proposal that has two main parts. The first would determine the amount of money universities need for campus operations including administrative costs, facilities, academic programs and support for student services. The second part would make state funding contingent upon university performance goals tied to state priorities. 

Under the proposal, which still requires final approval by the board, universities could earn additional state dollars by improving measures such as degree completion, student retention and producing graduates that earn competitive wages. The performance metrics would vary between Mississippi’s four research universities and the four regional universities. 

Trustees said the proposal would guide future budget requests to the Legislature and align student success with the state’s workforce needs. The IHL Board is expected to continue discussions of the new model during its scheduled meeting in August. It is unclear when the board will make a final decision on adopting a new funding formula.

“The acceptance of this framework will help us as we move forward in making sure our universities are providing students with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in the Mississippi marketplace,” Steven Cunningham, president of the IHL Board of Trustees, said in a statement Thursday. “We have put a great deal of time and effort into getting to this point, bringing us closer to where we need to be with regard to a strong funding model for our universities.”

Since October, trustees have worked with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a nonprofit higher education consulting firm, to develop a new funding model. The consulting firm gathered feedback from legislators, economic and workforce officials and university presidents to produce a report for trustees by the end of this month. The IHL board has the final say in deciding what the new formula will look like. 

The IHL Board currently uses a “base-plus” formula that allows universities to receive equal state funding percentages regardless of enrollment growth or metrics around post-graduation student success. 

These budget amounts are based on the prior year’s allocation. Universities submit budget requests to the Legislature each year for new programs or initiatives. 

Some lawmakers have expressed concerns that a performance-based funding formula could penalize Mississippi’s historically Black universities because it doesn’t take into account the decades of underfunding or the additional challenges many students encounter in completing college. 

The Mississippi Division of Medicaid filed papers Wednesday asking a bankruptcy court for permission to withhold a scheduled roughly $2.4 million payment to Greenwood Leflore Hospital. But hospital officials say a missed payment could force the struggling facility to close by June 30 and derail a proposed agreement for the University of Mississippi Medical Center to take over its operations. 

In a motion filed in federal district court the same day in a separate case, Greenwood Leflore Hospital asked a judge to order the Division of Medicaid to make the June payment as scheduled or for the case to be sent back to chancery court. The hospital’s attorneys argued the agency is seeking to bypass a chancery court order in March that forced the division to temporarily stop collecting money owed by the hospital. 

Attorneys warned if the 25-bed hospital, which has faced serious financial challenges since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, does not receive the payment, it will collapse before it can finalize an agreement with UMMC and irreparably harm people who depend on the facility for healthcare services. The hospital, which is owned by the city of Greenwood and Leflore County, expects to complete the agreement by Aug. 1, according to a Wednesday court filing. 

“The Division of Medicaid has lost sight of the fact this hospital is maintaining access to physician clinics, emergency room, inpatient and surgical care for the residents of the Central Delta region of the state,” Gary Marchand, a consultant advising the hospital’s board and former interim CEO, said in a written statement to Mississippi Today. “We have no other words.”

The Division of Medicaid wrote in a court filing that the hospital owes “somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million” and contended it has the right to withhold the money because the chancery court’s order applied only to those tied to 2024 supplemental payments and does not prevent the agency from withholding the payments for the current year. 

Matt Westerfield, a spokesperson for the Division of Medicaid, declined to comment, saying it would be inappropriate to do so during litigation.

On Thursday, the board for the Institutions of Higher Learning, which governs Mississippi’s public universities, approved the proposed transfer of Greenwood Leflore Hospital to UMMC. 

“UMMC intends to utilize the facility to expand healthcare services and create additional training opportunities for students, residents and fellows in a community hospital setting,” said John Pearce, the agency’s senior associate commissioner for finance. 

UMMC declined to comment.

Greenwood Leflore Hospital’s financial challenges have intensified this year. To stabilize its operations, the hospital in April laid off 86 staff members, closed clinics and filed for bankruptcy. Hospital and local officials said the changes were intended to ensure the hospital can continue to provide healthcare while it negotiated the possibility of a large health system taking over its services.

On June 7, the hospital filed a bankruptcy court document outlining a plan for the donation of its operations and facilities to UMMC, the state’s only academic medical center. Under the proposal, UMMC will not be considered a successor to the Greenwood hospital and cannot be held liable for debts not covered by the agreement. 

In a court filing, Greenwood Leflore Hospital wrote the transfer of its operations to UMMC is the only viable option to continue providing quality healthcare to Leflore County and the surrounding areas of the Delta. 

“The economic and regulatory headwinds adversely affecting all community hospitals are insurmountable impediments that in the judgement of the Board of Commissioners and senior management of GLH, make GLH’s long-term viability unsustainable,” a June 7 filing states. 

The bankruptcy judge would have to confirm the plan before it could take effect. 

The Wednesday court filings escalate an ongoing dispute between the state agency and the Greenwood public hospital over how quickly the hospital must repay debts that stem from a program designed to supplement hospitals’ low Medicaid reimbursements. 

The payments, which began in 2024, initially provided a financial boost to the hospital. But they were later recalculated using updated patient volume data as part of a routine process that found the initial amount of funding was too high. That discrepancy occurred because state officials did not account for declining patient volumes after the hospital closed its labor and delivery and intensive care units in 2022.

In June 2025, Medicaid notified the hospital it would recoup $5.5 million from the hospital’s 2024 payments.

Hospital officials have repeatedly warned that the debt repayment could force the facility to close, prompting a Hinds County chancery judge in March to direct the division to temporarily suspend collection efforts.

In its Wednesday filing in bankruptcy court, Medicaid said it would continue reimbursing the hospital for routine medical claims. It also said that if the court orders payments to continue, strict safeguards should be put in place to dictate how the funds are spent. Attorneys said the hospital should only be allowed to use the money for expenses necessary to “literally ‘keep the doors open.’”

“Voter Voices” is a series of Mississippians sharing their thoughts on voting rights, the state’s history of voter suppression and the new gerrymandering push embroiling Mississippi, the South and the nation after the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Louisiana case gutted the federal Voting Rights Act’s requirements for majority Black districts.

Reena Evers-Everette witnessed rage at Black voting when she was just a child.

Before she was born, her father, Medgar Evers, fought the Nazis in World War II. After years of fighting, the war ended, but the hate didn’t. 

He marveled at the fact he and other Black soldiers had fought in a war that should have granted them all the rights of citizenship, but when they returned home they had to fight racism all over again that barred Black Mississippians from restaurants, restrooms and voting booths.

Medgar Evers was ready to fight again. Black soldiers were good enough to bleed and die for their country, but now they couldn’t vote? They couldn’t be equal citizens?

By the time he celebrated his 21st birthday in 1946, he was fed up. He and his brother, Charles, and other Black veterans marched to the Newton County County Courthouse to cast their ballots in the election. 

But when white men saw them, they aimed their guns at the Black men in uniforms. The Axis soldiers had failed to kill them. Now it seemed a Mississippi mob wanted to finish the job.

Being turned back made Medgar Evers even more determined to keep fighting. Months after his daughter, Reena, was born in 1954, he became the first field secretary for the state NAACP. Those duties included helping Black Mississippians cast ballots — a constitutional right they had long been denied.

Some of Medgar Evers’ friends, Lamar Smith and the Rev. George Lee, were gunned down because they dared to help others register to vote. Another friend involved in voting work, Gus Courts, survived an attempted assassination and fled to Chicago, where he called himself a refugee from terror.

After Charles Evers encouraged Black Mississippians to vote, he, too, was run out of the state.

Medgar Evers stayed. He fought for voting rights and against “second-class citizenship.” He headed up a boycott of Jackson stores that refused to serve Black customers at the lunch counter or let them try on clothing.

Once, Evers-Everette picked up the phone and heard an angry caller say that he planned to kill her father. The call shocked her and made her realize that his work had made him a target.

READ MORE: FAQ: Mississippi redistricting. Why does it matter? What’s being considered?

On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation on television, saying, “It ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal. … This is not the case.”

Hours later, early on June 12, an assassin gunned down Evers in front of his family.

“He never stopped being a soldier — a soldier for justice,” said Evers-Everette, who was 8 at the time and now serves as executive director of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute that is named for her parents.

“Voting is a sacred right, the most important right for us in our democracy, and now some want to steal that right away,” she said. “I hope and pray that people will join me in the fight to protect the right to vote so that it can never be taken away in Mississippi or anywhere else.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law two years after Medgar Evers was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and after countless other people had been threatened, brutalized or killed in their efforts to secure full access to the ballot for Black people in the U.S. The federal law led to significant changes, including the redrawing of federal, state and local voting districts that increased Black and Latino representation in elected offices.

The U.S. Supreme Court this spring handed down a ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case that weakened the Voting Rights Act and prompted several states, mostly in the South, to draw new maps that are eliminating some majority-Black congressional districts.

This is the first story in a series revisiting Winter Storm Fern.

Every few winters in a global climate pattern, the South falls victim to jet streams blowing weather down from the North, delivering cold fronts to the states least ready for them.

In January, those elements culminated in Winter Storm Fern. Despite large winter storms in recent years, such as in 2021 and 2023, Fern delivered a force and persistence Mississippi hadn’t seen in decades. Months later, as north Mississippians still search for their footing, public officials are wondering what to take away from the catastrophe. 

State agencies largely stand by their response to a generational storm – the rest fell in Mother Nature’s hands, they argued. But some local officials and residents are unconvinced, pointing to days-long wait times for supplies like water. Regardless of blame, the storm’s scars are forcing Mississippi leaders to reconsider its readiness for winter weather. 

Facing over 5 inches of sleet and wind chills that brought temperatures to single digits, power suppliers across Mississippi succumbed to the conditions, leaving nearly 300,000 in the dark, state officials said. Power and water outages lasted weeks for many, and endured over a month for some.

At least 30 people in the state died, making Winter Storm Fern one of the deadliest natural disasters in Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina. Reported damages in the state – which totalled $416 million in public infrastructure and another $128 million in insurance claims from homes and businesses – stretched nearly 300 miles apart, hitting 33 counties between the southwest and northeast corners of Mississippi. 

For many, there’s only one event Fern compares to – the Great Ice Storm of 1994.

Karla White, a nurse and single mother in Tishomingo County, was just a toddler then, but heard stories of the Great Ice Storm from her parents. Now with three children of her own – ages 10, 11 and 13 – White is wondering how to piece her life back together. 

As the storm crept in on Jan. 23, families like hers across north Mississippi idled anxiously indoors. They were soon surrounded by a chorus of cracking tree limbs. 

“The sound of the trees exploding, I don’t think I’ll ever get that out of my head,” White recalled. 

There, they turned piles of the blankets into beds atop concrete floors. They couldn’t find food for the first two days, White said. Each morning, the lights would come on at 6 a.m., and the family would have to occupy itself –  “just driving around town or sitting” – until the evening.  

“Yeah, it was bad,” White said. “It was so bad.”

After four nights with little sleep, a county official found them a generator, and the family returned home.

But the house they came back to was hardly how they left it. Water pipes had burst under fluctuating pressure from the cold weather, disconnecting their taps and flooding the inside of the trailer. What clothes the family hadn’t left with were drenched, and, without running water, they at times had to substitute their toilet with a bucket.

All told, it took 51 days before White’s power returned, and another four days to get the pipes fixed. Her landlord, she said, refused to fix either issue. White, recovering from a knee injury, hadn’t worked in weeks, and her surgery was delayed by the storm. 

Watching YouTube tutorials, the family tried to attach spare poles they found laying in nearby yards, but none were the right fit. Eventually, White got her tax return and paid a professional $1,800 to make the repair. 

With her kids’ schools closed for over two weeks, the family stuck to a basic routine: At night, they huddled around the space heater and TV the generator managed to power. During the day, they would either search for food or hang out by the mobile shower and laundry units in town. 

In May, weeks after getting the power and water back on, Fern’s aftermath landed one more blow on White. After not working for months and paying thousands of dollars in home repairs, generator fuel and bottled water, the single mother’s expenses climbed out of her reach and her car was repossessed. 

White finally had her surgery and is getting ready to return to work, but told Mississippi Today over the phone in June, “ I still feel like we’re in survival mode.” 

“ As soon as our power got cut back on, I’m having surgery,” she said. “Now when I’m fixing to get to go back to work, I don’t have a car anymore. I could have at least, you know, maybe done DoorDash or home health or something. I haven’t not had a car in like 15 years. 

“I mean, it’s surreal. It’s real life, you know?”

While an extreme example, White’s story reflects the kinds of struggles thousands in north Mississippi endured. 

In the months since, state officials have started to ask what lessons, if any, Fern left them with. The question they underscore, though, is whether Mississippi can afford solutions to a problem that only rears its head every 30 years. 

‘This was like our hurricane’

In February 1994, a powerful winter storm enveloped most of the entire eastern United States. National media reports on the disaster’s impacts, though, zeroed in on one place in particular.

“The Feb. 9 storm, which at one point stretched like a frigid belt from Arkansas to Maryland, has had the most lingering effect here in northern Mississippi,” read an article in the New York Times’ March 6, 1994, issue, tucked between items on the latest from the Bosnian War and the Tonya Harding Olympics scandal.

Official estimates vary widely, but hundreds of thousands of Mississippians lost power in the Great Ice Storm of 1994. The 6 inches of ice that fell crushed the state’s timber industry, incurring over $1 billion in damages, local reports said. Greenville, Oxford, Cleveland and several other cities lost power to their water systems. 

The Bolivar Commercial’s then managing editor, Wayne Nicholas, said the aftermath looked like “Mother Nature went on a bombing run.” The Associated Press’ Phillip Moulden later wrote, “Nothing like it had happened in almost half a century, longtime residents recalled. In terms of dollars, nothing like it had ever happened.”

That is, until 32 years later. 

Both the spectrum and degree of damages from Winter Storm Fern were historic. Severing electricity to roughly 10% of the state, Fern also revealed a litany of critical facilities, such as health care centers and water utilities, with vulnerable power sources.

The storm impacted over 150 public water systems, serving over 170,000 people, state records show. Many more homes lost running water because they rely on private wells that require electricity.

Of those systems, 126 issued a boil water notice; 118 systems ran on backup power or went without power as they waited for outside help. At least 25 counties sent requests to the state for generators, fuel or bottled water because of an outage or insufficient backup power at a water provider, according to Mississippi emergency response data. Some public water systems, such as the one in Tippah County, were down completely for over two weeks, local officials said. 

From Jan. 22, the day before Fern hit, to Jan. 28, 19 hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other health care centers requested backup power support, state emergency records show. At least seven of those facilities saw their backup power supply fail, necessitating immediate help from the state. 

In Tippah County, a hospital and two nursing homes also went without running water for over a week. Several prisons, sewer systems, fire and police departments and 911 systems lost power during the storm and didn’t have sufficient backup supply, records show. 

Most consequentially, at least 30 people in the state died in the storm’s aftermath, and another 114 were injured. Of those, at least seven people died from extreme cold, and another seven were killed in fires, state and county records show. Other causes of death included inhaling toxic gas fumes and losing power to a dialysis machine. In Lafayette County, an elderly man died trying to refill his generator and falling on the ice. 

Even after the icy precipitation receded on Jan. 25, freezing overnight temperatures persisted through the whole next week. Travel remained impossible for many as officials slowly chipped away at the slippery roads.

Charles Keel, a truck driver who lives in Batesville, hunkered down with his wife, son Jacob and four dogs before the storm hit, equipped with enough gasoline and firewood to last four days without power. It turned out that wasn’t nearly enough. 

“It was a very, very miserable ordeal,” Keel said. 

After running out of fuel on the fourth day, the couple decided to drive to Greenwood, but only after using a chainsaw to carve through a labyrinth of fallen trees and limbs to reach the main road. 

In Greenwood, Keel said he waited in line for nearly three hours at a Tractor Supply store to refill his gas jugs. The couple spent about three days in a hotel in the Delta before heading back to Batesville, and they slept in a camper in the front yard that the generator kept warm. Between the hotel – including for his four dogs – fuel and traveling, Keel said he spent about $3,500 that week. 

“If (the store) hadn’t gotten propane in when they did, we’d have probably froze to death,” he said.

Like many in the state’s rural areas, Keel also lost running water because his private well is hooked up to an electric pump. He said he went to the local Love’s gas station to take a shower, but only did so a couple times because it cost $17. 

In total, Keel went 15 days without power, and he estimates he went through nearly 200 gallons of fuel. But about 10 days in, after officials reopened U.S. 55 for travel, the trucker had to return to work. 

“I couldn’t go without a job for three weeks,” he said. 

Through the ordeal, Keel said his wife grew frustrated with their situation – “(She) got mad, said I didn’t prepare enough,” he said – and after he got back on the road, she moved in with another man who did have power, Keel said. 

The Batesville man said he was frustrated with both how long it took officials to clear the highway and to restore power, saying it felt like they were focused more on denser populations rather than the kind of rural areas where he lives. 

“ I’ve driven all over this country, and I ain’t never had an interstate shut down more than a few hours,” Keel said.

In the emotional days and weeks that followed Fern, Mississippi lawmakers questioned the state’s response, wondering why more resources weren’t prepositioned closer to impacted areas. 

“I hope you remember how my people were cold, and we as a state, we failed them,” Sen. Rita Parks, a Republican from Corinth, said in a speech on the Senate floor on Feb. 12. “I’m included.”

Since then, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency clarified that it did move supplies before the storm to Camp McCain, a military station in Grenada. Moreover, MEMA said it was in contact with local responders days before the storm to see what needs they had – specifically checking for generators, one of the biggest shortfalls in what places needed versus what they had.

“I had asked and evaluated, ‘Hey, do we have any nursing homes, any water systems that don’t have generators on them?’” MEMA’s executive director, Stephen McCraney, told Mississippi Today. “I was told, ‘We’re all good.’ It wasn’t the case.”

MEMA’s director of external affairs, Scott Simmons, later confirmed that the agency also reached out to the Mississippi Department of Corrections and the Mississippi State Department of Health before the storm about their backup power needs. 

Despite those conversations, a number of critical facilities under the purview of both MDOC and the Health Department had power issues directly before or after Fern hit. 

The state’s efforts, some local officials said, weren’t enough. While Camp McCain, for instance, is about 100 miles north of MEMA’s headquarters just outside of Jackson, it’s still over a two-hour drive from hard-hit places like Ripley, Corinth and Iuka. 

“The state, they should have staged heavier equipment closer to where they knew we were gonna get hit,” Tishomingo County emergency director Peyton Berklite said. 

For comparison, MEMA stages equipment closer to the Gulf Coast to prepare for hurricanes, Berklite said. 

“Well, this was like our hurricane,” she said. “They knew about where the line was projected to come in to be ice versus rain. They could have brought more equipment and staged it closer.”

Iuka, the county seat of Tishomingo County and where Karla White lives, is as far as one can drive from the state capital while still being in Mississippi. At one point, a truck full of supplies headed to Tishomingo County from Jackson couldn’t reach its destination because roads into the county were blocked from nearly every direction, Berklite said. The truck never arrived, she said, and instead the county got a different shipment from Atlanta. 

In Yalobusha County, emergency director Stewart Spence said it took “at least” two or three days to receive supplies like water and tarps during the early parts of the storm response. 

“Something that should have been available, it took days to get stuff like that in,” Spence said, while adding the state’s response speed picked up as time went by. 

He echoed Berklite, wondering why the state didn’t spread out more supplies throughout north Mississippi before the storm.  

From Jan. 21, just before Fern hit, to Jan. 31, MEMA received 661 resource requests from local entities. A majority of those were for generators, fuel, beds, water, meals and clearing debris. 

Records Mississippi Today requested included response times for a small sample of those requests, 84. On average, it took about two days for MEMA to complete or deploy resources for a request, an analysis found. While a majority took less than two days, some resources took as long as six days to reach local officials after they made the request. 

“There are a lot of conversations that need to happen around: When is the National Guard deployed, when does MEMA deploy, when does (the Mississippi Department of Transportation) deploy,” Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill said. “We heard for five days, MEMA can’t get there because the roads are too dangerous. And they were, but had we pre-deployed supplies and people, we wouldn’t have had to wait five days to get water.”

While acknowledging there are improvements local governments can make as well, Tannehill said there should be clarity on what individuals and city officials need to do to prepare versus what falls in the state’s hands. 

“I think we have to chart a path from here so that every community knows, what is my responsibility, what is the state’s responsibility, what can I count on, what do I need to prepare for myself?” the mayor said. “That was just not clear. It was very, very difficult to be the leader of a community where very few have power and very few have water for a period of time, and help is not on the way.”

Most local officials who spoke to Mississippi Today said that, once the storm hit, MEMA did as much as it could have given the amount of ice and debris on the roads. 

Marshall County emergency manager Jason Motz, for instance, said generators got to him “surprisingly fast” given the extent of damages in rural areas. 

“(The state is) supporting the rest of us local emergency managers, so they understand that role and do a pretty good job of getting things where they need to be,” Motz said. “No one can have everything. Anytime you have a large-scale event like that, it’s going to take multiple agencies and support from other areas, whether it be federal or state or local.”

Local officials commended MEMA, the National Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for providing life-saving assistance, such as helping to power and run warming centers and checking on elderly residents. And as one added, many of the first responders were dealing with the same issues as those they were serving. 

“During this ice storm, government really did work for the people,” said Tom Lindsay, emergency director for Tippah County, one of the hardest hit areas. “ They worked really hard.  That’s something that the people really probably didn’t understand. People would call me and say, ‘I haven’t had power in 14 days,’ and I kinda smile and say, ‘Yes, ma’am, I haven’t either.’” 

In the northeast corner of the state, officials had to deliver supplies on a Chinook helicopter when roads weren’t drivable, Alcorn County emergency manager Evan Gibens said. 

Gibens said it took four to five days after the storm to get their first load of outside resources, emphasizing that resources from MEMA, such as a generator for a storm shelter there, “very much helped save lives.” 

Asked if he agreed with other local officials about the lack of pre-positioned supplies, Gibens deferred to those “above his pay grade.”

“That would be a question that you would have to ask to the state on why those assets weren’t pre-staged ahead of time,” he told Mississippi Today. 

Mississippi’s ‘kryptonite’

After criticisms of their response to Fern rang loudly through the state Capitol, leadership at MEMA and the Mississippi Department of Transportation sat down with Mississippi Today to give their perspective. 

Both agencies emphasized the human nature of disaster response. The state’s responders, many of whom were living without power or water themselves, were being thrown into dangerous conditions – dark skies, long hours, freezing temperatures and cars driving past them on icy roads with drivers who ignored caution. 

McCraney, MEMA’s chief since 2021, pointed to the public perception of disaster response versus reality. He echoed the slogan often used by emergency responders around the country, “The first 72 (hours) are on you.” McCraney’s point was that individuals have to be able to handle a disaster’s initial impacts themselves because the state can’t be everywhere, especially when a storm has a footprint as wide as Fern. 

After Katrina hit in 2005, Gulf Coast residents adjusted their lives to prioritize hurricane preparation, McCraney said. To better handle ice storms, north Mississippians will need to adapt similarly, he said.  

Putting it more plainly, McCraney said MEMA isn’t funded to be a first responder.

“I think our response was spot on,” he said. “(To) those who wondered, ‘Where’s MEMA? Why aren’t they here?’ We’re not a first responder. If you want me to be a first responder, fund me.”

As for power failures at critical facilities, MSDH told Mississippi Today that while it assesses backup power capacity for the state’s healthcare facilities, it does so through “interval” surveys that include inspecting equipment.

“Facilities are responsible for ensuring their emergency systems are operational, validated through mandatory training and testing, and updated to reflect their specific facility-based risk assessments,” the department said in a statement. 

The department also oversees the state’s drinking water systems. When asked about obstacles for maintaining backup power for water systems, MSDH pointed to funding and the expertise needed to know what a system’s needs are. 

Among Fern’s greatest impacts was its grip on north Mississippi’s roads. Frozen roads filled with fallen tree limbs made in-person contact of any kind a tall order, let alone for rescue missions or supply drops.

As such, few received more criticism from the public than MDOT and its executive director, Brad White. In a March interview, White defended the agency and acknowledged its shortfalls. 

Before Fern came, MDOT put out the largest amount of road pre-treatment in the agency’s history with 206,000 gallons of brine. MDOT said its total storm response and preparation, including debris removal, cost over $25 million. 

Part of the issue, White said, was freezing rain washed away the brine before it could set in. Another issue, he said, was MDOT’s 900 road maintenance employees – which White said was half the size it was in 1994 – were divided between plowing 15,000 miles of impacted highways and bridges, and clearing debris for first responders such as ambulances to rescue victims. 

“ To say our folks were overwhelmed, I think would be an understatement,” White said. 

Progress clearing the roads slowed because after plowing ice during warmer temperatures in the daytime, the roads would refreeze overnight. 

“ We would put the salt out and start plowing, and it kind of starts turning the ice into slush that you could plow off,” he described. “When the sun would go back down that slush would refreeze in a way that it looked like a skating rink.”

It wasn’t until Jan. 28, five days in, when the temperature stayed above freezing long enough for MDOT to make a notable difference clearing the roads, White said. 

Looking back, the agency head listed a few lessons he took away from Fern: Given the chance to redo things, White said he would’ve sent more of MDOT’s decision-makers to north Mississippi to have a better idea of what was happening “on the ground.” 

He said MDOT will also look to increase its capacity for storing salt, as well as buying dump trucks equipped with snow plows that can be used year-round. White added it would help if the state Legislature allowed him to better pay the agency’s staff – starting pay is just around $29,000, he said. 

The agency later said it plans to request salary bumps to recruit and keep maintenance crews. As far as funding for other upgrades, MDOT said it was still calculating a number. 

“There’s not really a single figure – likely somewhere in the millions – as it comes down to everything from materials and equipment to actual buildings to properly store these materials in a way that makes the most justifiable sense to taxpayers,” MDOT said via e-mail. 

As for MEMA, it’s unclear what changes, if any, it plans to make or request from lawmakers. 

Parks, the Corinth senator, told Mississippi Today in March she had met with MEMA, and that the agency promised to locate more personnel and resources to north Mississippi to better handle future winter storms. 

MEMA declined to verify Parks’ account of their conversation, but said it will complete an “After Action” report to discern what improvements it can make.  

“If we do see another Ice Storm event approaching in the future, we will take the lessons learned from Winter Storm Fern and apply them to planning and prepositioning,” Simmons, the agency’s spokesperson, said. “But each event is different.”

McCraney and White cautioned against overreacting to a “generational” event. If, after the 1994 storm, the state had invested in all the resources and equipment it needed for that disaster, those supplies would have just sat around for the next three decades, they argued. 

“ It doesn’t make sense for us to spend that much of the taxpayers’ money on something that may come around every 30 years,” White said.

McCraney agreed, saying “you’d just be burning money” buying materials the state only needs that often. MEMA, for instance, owns 150 generators and rents however many more it needs because of the cost of maintaining and storing additional supply. 

But Mississippi’s reflection of its response to Fern has just begun. 

The state’s Public Service Commission is holding a summit in Tupelo, June 23-24, to ensure “Mississippi communities, utilities, and local governments are better prepared for whatever the next storm brings.”

Sen. Scott DeLano, a Republican from Biloxi, also told Mississippi Today lawmakers would have hearings over the summer to look back at the response. 

Officials are confident changes will come, similar to the months and years after Katrina. But for now, it’s unclear what deficiencies officials will take on, and what the state will chalk up to a “generational” event. 

Despite Mississippi’s long track record responding to disasters – everything from hurricanes to tornadoes to flooding – Fern proved to be the state’s “kryptonite,” McCraney said.

“If Mother Nature only gave me snow, it would’ve been a whole lot easier,” he said. “But Mother Nature gave me ice.”   

SENATOBIA – A crowd of family and friends gathered outside a Senatobia Walmart Wednesday to honor the life of a 1-year-old killed in a law enforcement shooting and to demand justice and accountability. 

The night before, police fired tear gas in an attempt to disperse protesters from the same location. 

Toddler Kohen Wiley’s father, who asked that his name not be published to maintain his privacy, told Mississippi Today his son’s smile, eyes and personality were some of his most notable qualities. He said Kohen meant the world to him. 

“Can’t get him back, you know what I’m saying?” he said Wednesday. “It hasn’t hit me yet.” 

Kohen was in the car Sunday with his mother and a family friend in the parking lot of Walmart when police officers and Tate County sheriff’s deputies responded to an alleged shoplifting and tried to stop the car. State officials said the driver drove in the officers’ direction and nearly hit one, leading an officer to fire at the car. 

Kohen’s mother said that before the shooting she tried to tell officers a child was in the car, according to national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, part of the legal team representing the child’s family. 

Family members said the woman and family friend did not shoplift and were buying diapers. Kohen died from his injuries and the family friend was critically wounded.

Shaquita Norwood, Kohen’s cousin, said she feels disgust and sadness that her children did not have the opportunity to spend more time with Kohen.

“It’s hurtful because the baby didn’t have a chance to live life,” she said.

Norwood, who was at the Tuesday night gathering, said she believes the use of tear gas was unnecessary because the demonstration remained peaceful and included many children. She said the gas burned her 12-year-old child’s eyes and irritated her 4-year-old’s nose.

Family and friends taped posters to the wall near the store’s garden center Wednesday, calling for the release of body camera and video footage and for criminal charges against the officer who fired the weapon. They also displayed photographs of Kohen and his family.

A Walmart representative asked the demonstrators to remove the posters from the store’s facade but said he would allow them to construct a memorial at the site, where family members would be able to stay for limited periods of time. He then asked the press to leave the property and said they would be cited for trespassing if they did not leave. The Tate County Sheriff’s Department and Senatobia Police patrolled the Walmart entrance and parking lot throughout the day. 

WAPT reported on Tuesday the officer involved in the shooting was put on administrative leave.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which investigates shootings involving law enforcement, will present findings to the attorney general’s office. 

In a Sunday statement, the Senatobia Police Department said the office is committed to full transparency. 

“As the investigation progresses and facts are verified, we will share as much information as possible,” the statement said. 

The Tate County Sheriff’s Department acknowledged the incident in a Tuesday post to social media. 

Marquell Bridges, the president of the grassroots organization Building Bridges Coalition who is acting as a spokesperson for Kohen’s family, said protesters attended a Tuesday Board of Aldermen meeting to request the release of video footage and the termination of the officer involved in the shooting. He said the board did not vote in favor of either request. 

Protesters then gathered at Walmart, where law enforcement used tear gas in an attempt to force those gathered out of the area after about an hour. Video footage shows officers in riot gear. 

Bridges said the demonstration at Walmart was peaceful, and that protestors remained all night, dancing and making videos, even after police used tear gas. 

“We’re showing real Black power, Black unity and Black love,” he said. 

In a statement, the city of Senatobia acknowledged that many questions remain about the shooting. 

“We respectfully ask our community to avoid speculation and the spread of unverified information while the investigation is underway. Please allow the investigative process to take its course so that the facts — not rumors or assumptions — guide our understanding of this tragic event.”

For many Senatobia and nearby residents, the news of Kohen’s death struck a personal chord. Many people said they believed the shooting represented a broader pattern of excessive law enforcement force against Black people. 

Christine D., a Walls resident who asked that her last name not be published for fear of retaliation, said she did not believe there was any justification for the use of deadly force. She said she traveled to Senatobia Wednesday to support any demonstrations.

She used to live two minutes away from the Walmart. Her young children are biracial, and when she heard the news of Kohen’s death, she couldn’t help but think of her own children, who were near his age when they lived in Senatobia. 

“I worry about the world that exists right now,” she said. “This isn’t the world that I want for them. I knew that I had to fight for them. I’m fighting for their future.”

Phisa Smith, a Senatobia resident who was filling her tank at a nearby gas station on Wednesday, said she wants the police officer involved in the shooting to be held accountable. While she said she did not know whether the shoplifting allegations were true, she argued that the offense was not serious enough to justify shooting at a vehicle, especially given the current economic challenges many people in Senatobia are facing.

“A child was killed here that had a chance to live a productive life,” she said. “It was taken away from him.” 

Jennifer Tinnel of Crenshaw, an Amazon worker who frequently stops at the Walmart in Senatobia on her way home from work, said law enforcement presence at the store Wednesday scared her. 

Tinnel, who is Black, has three sons. Learning of Kohen’s death on social media made her think of her family and the racism they have experienced.

“That could have been my child,” she said.