OurTupelo

TUPELO – Mississippi residents who spoke on Tuesday at the first of several public hearings on redistricting around the state urged lawmakers to not redraw electoral maps, calling the effort a needless power grab aimed at diluting Black political power in a state with a sordid racial history.  

The Republican-dominated joint House and Senate committee on redistricting kicked off its slate of public hearings in a nearly packed room at Itawamba Community College in Tupelo. Leaders of the committee say the hearings will allow lawmakers to solicit feedback before making recommendations on new voting maps to the full Legislature in a likely special session this fall. 

The push to redraw maps comes after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the Louisiana Callais case in May. The ruling gutted part of the Voting Rights Act and, by removing protections for minority districts, cleared the way for Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw political lines in their favor. 

President Donald Trump, who is working to protect a slim GOP majority in Congress in this November’s midterm elections, has pressured states his party controls to redraw maps, and many have already complied.

In Mississippi, the joint House and Senate committee is expected to do the bulk of the work of redrawing Mississippi’s legislative, judicial and congressional voting lines. But with Mississippi having had its federal midterm primaries months ago, it appears unlikely congressional maps would be redrawn for November’s federal election.

Only 10 of the 20 members on the state joint committee were in attendance on Tuesday.

The room was dominated by Mississippi residents who oppose redistricting. Many of those who spoke said the Callais decision doesn’t require Mississippi to redraw its maps, and that doing so would create confusion for voters and impose a financial cost on localities. They also said hard-won progress to increase Black representation in Mississippi since the Jim Crow era would be eradicated. 

The Reverend Jeffrey Gladney, pastor of a Church in Shannon, said redrawn maps would “eliminate Black districts” and attack “Black voices that represent the Black community.”

“If maps are redrawn, they will split neighborhoods, divide communities, take away resources from already weakened communities,” Gladney said. 

Jim Newman, chairman of the Lee County Democratic Party, said the Legislature should redistrict after the next U.S. Census in 2030 rather than rushing to redraw maps at President Trump’s urging as states such as Texas have done. 

“Y’all are looking for a power grab, plain and simple,” Newman said. “It didn’t have to happen. But the president asked for it, and by God, everybody bends over to take care of the president. And it’s not any different here in Mississippi.”  

Teresa Roberts said redistricting would impact the social and economic well-being of “marginalized people.” 

“These are people who need us, who need you, and you are going to take away what little strength they already have,” Roberts said. “Shame on you.”

Katie Gilbert said she came straight from work to attend Tuesday’s hearing. She was raised in Tupelo and went to Tupelo High School. She said redistricting would contribute to the “brain drain” flight of young people out of Mississippi.

“We wonder a lot of times why we have a brain drain in Mississippi, why a lot of educated young folks leave this state. It’s because of decisions like this that are leaving us in the past,” Gilbert said. “Mississippi has a very dark history, but we do not need to continue on with a dark future. Equitable maps lead to a stronger Mississippi.”

Walter Jones said his family lived down the street in Chicago from the family of Emmett Till, a Black youth whose murder in Mississippi helped spark the Civil Rights Movement. He said moved to Mississippi because of the progress the state had made in overcoming its history of racial discrimination, but he now wonders whether he made the wrong move.

“I came down here because things have changed. Mississippi was becoming a great place to stay. People was people. Everybody like everybody,” Jones said. “If this is what y’all want to do to Mississippi after all the hurt and struggles y’all went through to get to where we’re at today, I made a bad decision.”  

Only one person in attendance, Mike Walker, appeared to speak in favor of redistricting.

“All I’ve heard up here today is bashing these elected representatives for what they’re trying to do,” Walker said. “So let me ask you, what color is your soul? It’s a soul thing people. It ain’t Black or white. It’s a soul thing.” 

Many civil rights leaders, Black lawmakers and voting rights advocates believe the hearings are a pretext for the Legislature moving to dismantle majority-Black districts and weakening Black political power in the state.

Democratic Rep. Rickey Thompson of Shannon, who is not on the joint committee but attended the hearing, said he doubted his Republican colleagues would take community feedback into account.

“They already have their plans together,” Thompson told Mississippi Today. “They’re just going through the motions.”

Republican leaders believe that when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Callais decision, it ended an improper practice of allowing for the consideration of race in drawing political maps.  

Since the Callais decision, some GOP leaders in Mississippi and Washington, D.C., have called for heavy partisan gerrymandering, including redrawing of incumbent U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s district to help oust him, the state’s only Black member of Congress and only Democrat.

Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law school professor who is the Democratic nominee challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly in this year’s midterms, attended the hearing and mingled with attendees. He said the hearing showed Mississippians didn’t want a redistricting process that inflamed racial and partisan divides.

“I thought it was very powerful to see people stand in front of a bunch of legislators and ask to have a say. My sense as a lifelong Mississippian is that our diversity is such a strength,” Johnson said. “The notion of having representatives chosen by a cross-section of our population is something that makes us stronger.” 

The committee is encouraging the public to participate in future hearings. The public can offer comments at any of the seven remaining public hearings, or submit written comments to Ted Booth, the committee’s attorney, at ted.booth@peer.ms.gov.

Below is the schedule of the future planned redistricting hearings. Each will start at 6 p.m. 

• Aug. 27 at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Southaven 
• Sept. 1 at Delta State University in Cleveland 
• Sept. 8 at Alcorn State University in Natchez 
• Sept.10 at Meridian Community College in Meridian 
• Sept. 17 at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg 
• Sept. 22 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport 
• Oct. 1 at the state Capitol in Jackson

Mississippi Today is pleased to welcome Blake Barnes as its new multimedia producer.

Barnes joins a multimedia team responsible for collaborating with reporters and editors to produce social videos based on Mississippi Today’s reporting. He will also contribute to the production of the newsroom’s video podcasts, as well as long-form video projects. He began work Monday.

The hire reflects Mississippi Today’s commitment to reaching audiences and creating impact across multiple mediums.

Barnes most recently served as a producer at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, where he directed Everlasting: The New Generation.

He grew up on a farm in Ludlow, Mississippi with a family of storytellers. He attended East Central Community College, then Delta State University. He’s called Jackson home for the last five years.

“I’ve always loved Mississippi,” said Barnes. “This is my home, and I think telling stories is a way I can help push the state forward. I’m looking forward to the opportunities Mississippi Today will offer me in this way, and continuing to tell and to preserve these local Mississippi stories.”

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.    

In the U.S., the number of billion-dollar disasters is increasing each year. Wildfires, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and extreme weather events are hitting communities with increasing frequency and severity, placing more Americans at risk of losing their homes, livelihoods and financial stability.

Mississippi offers a clear example of this growing threat. Over the past decade, the state has faced a steady drumbeat of tropical storms and hurricanes, not always direct hits, but often just as damaging. In 2020 alone, multiple storms, including Hurricane Zeta, Hurricane Sally and Tropical Storm Cristobal, brought flooding, storm surge and widespread power outages. In 2021, Hurricane Ida tore through the region, causing severe flooding and fatalities even after making landfall in Louisiana. 

These are not rare, once-in-a-generation events. They are recurring disruptions that strain infrastructure, delay recovery and test the limits of state and local response systems.

In recent years, Mississippi also has been hit with other disasters, ranging from tornadoes to ice storms to droughts.

Yet, instead of preparing for this reality, the Trump administration stopped tracking these disasters to advance an alternate-reality narrative and an out-of-touch ideology cooked up by a Beltway think tank. Dismantling the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA, the very system millions of Americans rely on when disaster strikes, is not something a president can do alone. Congress has the power to stop it, and right now, too many members are choosing not to.

This follows a familiar pattern. Promises to put Americans first have repeatedly translated into gutting programs that actually serve the public, while costly, high-profile political priorities move forward unchecked. The rhetoric may win headlines. The consequences, however, fall squarely on American communities.

FEMA is not an abstract federal agency. It is one of the most widely relied upon forms of federal support in the country.  Around 94% of Americans live in a county that has received FEMA assistance since 2011. From 2017 to 2023, $267.7 billion in disaster aid and reconstruction supported communities across rural and urban areas, in red states and blue alike.

 If FEMA disappears, what happens to your community after the next wildfire, flood, hurricane, tornado or terrorist attack?

Last year, Trump said, “I’d say after the hurricane season we’ll start phasing [FEMA] out.” Interesting delay from an administration so confident that FEMA is not essential. The same overconfidence already resulted in multiple “fire-first-then-realize-the-wrong-people-were-fired” moments. Let’s remember that there is no serious plan to replace FEMA’s capabilities.

Without FEMA, disaster response responsibilities shift to state and local governments that are already stretched thin and to families who cannot afford to wait for help that may never come. 

Ben Smilowitz, of Rockville, Maryland, witnessed the bungled Hurricane Katrina response while managing a Red Cross Client Service Center in Gulfport. Soon after, he launched Disaster Accountability Project – SmartResponse, an independent watchdog, to confront the root causes of the failed Katrina response and maximize the impact of billions of dollars of disaster relief and humanitarian aid.

DAP – SmartResponse has successfully advocated for the release of millions of dollars of disaster relief and recovery funds after Superstorm Sandy, investigated deficiencies in emergency planning surrounding 19 commercial U.S. nuclear power plants and improved the transparency of nearly $2 billion dollars of disaster relief donations after disasters in the U.S., Haiti and Nepal. DAP’s reports, advocacy and op-eds have been covered by global news media 

Prior to starting DAP – SmartResponse, Ben had a background in civic engagement and issue advocacy. He wrote successful legislation in Connecticut and created a youth cabinet in Missouri. Ben is an Echoing Green fellow, studied political science and nonprofit management, and holds a law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law.

The Jackson City Council has approved rezoning for the long-vacant YMCA on Fortification Street.

The council approved the rezoning from light industrial to community mixed use. The plan is to eventually approve a mixed-use housing and recreation site called Prado Conservatory according to the developer Gabriel Prado, president and CEO of PraCon Global Investment Group.

“Their vote gives us the opportunity to save a property that has been dilapidated for years and transform it into something meaningful for Jackson. Our commitment to this city is long-term, and we believe Prado Conservatory can become a signature example of what is possible when vision, persistence and private investment come together,” Prado said in a statement.

The YMCA closed in 2017 and has sat empty since. PraCon plans to convert the existing YMCA building into about 60 multifamily units and add approximately 100 more units in a new five-story building. 

The YMCA building sits along the Pearl River and PraCon said that part of the property’s appeal will be its proximity to the river, which could be revamped in the coming years thanks to a proposed flood-control lake project

For decades, Jackson Metro area officials have debated how to address flooding along the Pearl River. While indicating support for a version of the controversial project, federal officials recently said that a final environmental impact study is needed before any final decision is made about the design. Environmental groups have criticized the project saying it would destroy wildlife habitats downstream, and have also pointed to much cheaper flood control alternatives.

However, advocates of the project say that in addition to better controlling the river’s flooding, the project would open up new recreational and economic development opportunities.

“Prado Conservatory is an incredible fit along with the Pearl River Flood Control Project and the larger vision creating Jackson’s riverfront. Bringing new housing, recreation and private investment to a long-vacant property on the Pearl River creates exactly the kind of momentum that can help turn the riverfront into a destination and a catalyst for growth,” said Jeff Rent, President & CEO of the Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership

PraCon has become one of the Jackson Metro area’s most prolific developers with projects including Topgolf in Ridgeland, Prado Lofts in Jackson and a potential foray into data centers.

“Prado Conservatory is another demonstration of our confidence in Jackson and our determination to complete projects that others may have already given up on,” Prado said.  

Mississippi Today, in partnership with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times, has won a National Edward R. Murrow Award for the podcast “Abuse of Power: Beyond the Goon Squad.”

The project features more than 70 interviews with former inmates and officers at the Rankin County jail. Reporters from Mississippi Today and The New York Times discovered a system in which guards ordered beatings, inmates who participated were rewarded, and those trying to raise an alarm about the system for more than a decade were ignored. 

The podcast allowed people who experienced abuses by the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department to tell their stories in their own voices. 

“Mukta Joshi, Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield took their in-depth and impactful reporting about abuses at a Mississippi sheriff’s office to another platform, allowing listeners into the world they witnessed and wrote about,” said Debbie Skipper, Justice Team and Special Projects Editor at Mississippi Today. “Their podcast demonstrated the hurdles they had to overcome and their concern for protecting the people who dared to challenge a system stacked against them. It opened the eyes of a community to what was going on behind the walls of the sheriff’s office and jail and empowered residents to seek solutions.” 

The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) oversees the Edward R. Murrow Awards, which honors work in broadcast and digital journalism. Among the most prestigious in news, the Murrow Awards recognize local and national news stories that uphold the RTDNA Code of Ethics, demonstrate technical expertise and exemplify the importance and impact of journalism as a service to the community. 

The award will be presented at the Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala on Oct. 12 at Gotham Hall in New York City. 

Only one Mississippi baseball team in history has advanced to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and the Little League World Series, which turns 74 years old this month and saturates August ESPN programing.

The Hub City’s Pineview Little League All-Stars, an all-Black team, first won the 1977 Mississippi Little League championship at Biloxi. How that Hattiesburg team advanced from Biloxi, to the South Regional Championship in St. Petersburg, Florida, and finally to the Little League World Series is a fascinating story, one well worth telling 49 years later.

This will be mostly from first-hand perspective. I covered that Little League World Series for the Hattiesburg American, where I was the 24-year-old sports editor. I remember telling my bosses we should cover the Little League World Series and being somewhat shocked when they agreed. 

So off to Pittsburgh I flew, rented a car and drove to Williamsport. The Hattiesburg team, which included future Major Leaguer Charlie Hayes and future Southern Miss football great Andrew Mott, was already there, along with coaches Boot Walker and Kenny Fairley.

The truth is, I had already missed the biggest story, which was how Hattiesburg won the South Regional, defeating a Tampa team that featured a fearsome 12-year-old pitching phenom named Dwight Gooden. Yes, that Dwight Gooden, the future Dr. K, who seven years later would win National League Rookie of the Year, unanimously, winning 17 games and leading Major League Baseball with 276 strikeouts.

Hattiesburg and Tampa, on opposite sides of the bracket, cruised through the tournament until the championship. Both trounced everyone they played. Hayes, a future Major League third baseman, pitched a two-hit shutout in Hattiesburg’s opening victory over Louisiana. Gooden threw a no-hitter in Tampa’s opener. Each team won two more games to set up the championship showdown. To hear Hattiesburg players and coaches tell it, nobody, except them, expected Hattiesburg to win. Gooden, who was huge and muscled for 12, had overpowered everyone he faced in tournament competition. He hadn’t given up so much as a hit in tournament play. He was already a well-publicized cult hero in Tampa and had a huge following in St. Petersburg where a crowd of hundreds cheered the Tampa team.

Back then, Gooden threw strictly fast balls that few 12-year-olds could touch. Hayes was different. He didn’t throw as hard as Gooden, but had mastered a curve ball that made his fast ball seem all the faster.

“I threw mostly curves against Tampa,” Hayes would tell me years and years later. “It kept working and I kept throwing it.”

Hayes threw a one-hit shutout. Hattiesburg scratched across one run. The Hub City team, many of whom had never been out of state before, won 1-0 and were now headed for Williamsport. There’s a story there, too. When the team’s bus driver learned he wasn’t on the travel list for Williamsport, he headed back to Hattiesburg and took the team’s travel money with him.

So after beating Dwight Gooden, the team celebrated at the motel with baloney sandwiches and Kool-Aid. Motel vans carried them to the airport the next day, and it was on to Williamsport. Only two of the Hattiesburg players had ever been on a plane. Not many more had ever been out of state before that week.

But they were in Williamsport by the time I got there and already had been fitted for their new World Series uniforms – green jerseys, with yellow trim, which read “SOUTH” in huge capital letters on the front. The Hattiesburg boys wore them proudly. Understand, these kids were mostly from poor families. Says Hayes, now 61 and living in Houston, “Most were like me, and I was on public assistance, food stamps, all the time I was growing up.

“People asked me why I wore two pair of thick socks under my uniform socks at Williamsport,” Hayes says. “It was because my baseball cleats were hand-me-downs, a size and a half too big.”

Some of the Hattiesburg players used gloves borrowed from fathers or uncles that seemed far too big for their hands. But believe this: Those little kids could play ball and they could even more hit. In one state tournament game, all nine starters hit home runs in the first three innings of a mercy-rule victory. 

Mott, the team’s catcher, and Hayes were both home runs waiting to happen. Mott had homered in every tournament game until the championship game at Tampa. 

“But our best player wasn’t me or Mott,” Hayes said. “The best player on the team was Ernest Charles Walker, our centerfielder. Man, he could do everything.”

At Williamsport, Hattiesburg would need to win three straight games to get to the nationally televised championship game, which everyone assumed would be against perennial champion Taiwan. Hattiesburg faced the West champs from El Cajon, California, a San Diego suburb.

Hattiesburg ran into a buzzsaw named John Osborne, the El Cajon pitcher.

Hayes pitched well for Hattiesburg. Osborne, a tall, strapping 12-year-old who easily could have passed for 14, pitched better. He allowed only three hits and struck out 15 of a possible 18 batters.

Hattiesburg battled. Down 3-0 going into the last inning, Mott singled and later scored Hattiesburg’s only run. But with the bases loaded, Osborne struck out Hattiesburg’s last hope.

That dropped Hattiesburg into the consolation bracket, which they easily won with two straight lopsided victories over Spain and Ohio. In the consolation championship game, the Hattiesburg team pounded out 20 hits to win 9-2. The next day, they watched Taiwan, as expected, defeat California 7-2.

As it turned out, the Hattiesburg players hung out mostly with the Californians and Taiwanese in the Little League village, where each team had its own cabin. You may wonder about the language barrier. The Taiwan players did not speak English. The California and Hattiesburg players did not speak Mandarin Chinese.

“But baseball has a universal language and there were interpreters,” Mott says.

One encounter stands out in my memory. A player from Spain poked a player from Taiwan, and asked him, “Pitcher?”

The Taiwanese player shook his head. “Shortstop,” he said, then smiled. “Home run hitter!”

The Taiwan players hit lots of those. One of Mott’s favorite Williamsport memories was from a Hattiesburg practice, which was interrupted several times by balls landing in the infield, hit from another diamond across the way.

“Where are those balls coming from?” one of the Hattiesburg coaches asked.

“That’s Taiwan taking batting practice,” an outfielder told him.

Says Mott, “So Coach Fairley gets me and Hayes to take batting practice and hit balls over into the Taiwan practice field, which we did.”

The Hub City team’s Little League World Series experience didn’t end in Williamsport. No, they rode a bus to Washington D.C., where they toured the city and had breakfast with President Jimmy Carter. Later, the same day, they were on to Baltimore where they watched the Orioles play a night game against the Kansas City Royals.

Forty-nine years later, Hattiesburg players cherish all those memories. They didn’t get to play Taiwan. They didn’t get to play on national TV. Only one of them, Hayes, went on to play professional baseball. Hayes played 14 Major League seasons with 10 different teams, including the 1996 World Series champion New York Yankees. Indeed, Hayes caught Mark Lemke’s out when the Yankees defeated the Atlanta Braves to win it all. Hayes hit .262 for his career with 144 home runs and 740 runs batted in. He is one of only 12 in history to play in both the Little League World Series and the Major League World Series.

Hayes, 61, lives in Tomball, Texas, a Houston suburb, where he operates a baseball academy and follows closely the career of his youngest son, Cincinnati Reds third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes.

Mott, who led the nation in punt return yardage at Southern Miss, still lives in Hattiesburg where he deals will injuries that required 21 surgeries from his football career that included a stint in the Canadian Football League after USM.

Hayes insists Mott would have been a Big League catcher had he decided to pursue baseball instead of football. “Mott could really catch,” Hayes said. “He had the pop time, could hit for power and he was fast.”

When told what Hayes had said, Mott said, “Maybe I wouldn’t be so beat up.”

Both Hayes and Mott say they still watch the Little League World Series every year when it comes around. “Brings back so many memories,” Mott says.

Could that Hattiesburg team of 1977 compete with the current World Series teams?

“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” Mott says. “We were fundamentally sound and, man, we had some athletes.”

State and national GOP strategist Henry Barbour runs through likely and confirmed candidates for Mississippi races this year and next, running down the ticket from U.S. Senate, stopping just shy of dog catcher.

Ed Blackmon Jr. was 16 years old, locked in a Canton jail cell with the roar of a poultry truck engine still fresh on his mind, when he decided to become a lawyer. 

The police had just jailed him and dozens of others on trumped-up charges of participating in a parade without a permit after orchestrating a mass protest in the middle of the Civil Rights era in support of voting rights for Black Mississippians. 

The demonstrators had only marched 30 yards from a local church when police put them in handcuffs, hauled them off in a poultry delivery truck that still had chicken dung in it, and threw them into the Madison County Jail to face the bogus charges.

While lying on the hot jail floor during the summer, the young protester encountered someone who would change his trajectory in life, arguably the course of Mississippi. Blackmon met Carsie Hall, a sharp-dressed NAACP attorney who defended protesters during Freedom Summer. 

“Carsie walked up to the cell, and he told us, ‘Don’t worry about it. On Monday, I’m getting y’all out of here.’ At that moment I said, ‘I want to be a lawyer.’” 

Hall followed through on his promise, and law enforcement released the protesters from jail. Blackmon graduated from law school in Washington, D.C., a few years later. 

Now 78, Blackmon has spent his life using the law to build Black political power in Mississippi: suing to dismantle at-large electoral districts, redrawing legislative maps to more than double Black representation in the Legislature and even engineering the state’s first majority-Black judicial subdistricts. 

But the U.S. Supreme Court has largely unwound the Voting Rights Act, which made much of Blackmon’s work possible, in its recent Callais decision. The landmark decision has cleared the way for Southern states such as Mississippi to dismantle majority-Black political districts. 

Both House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann have created committees to explore redistricting over the summer and fall. Gov. Tate Reeves has indicated he will likely call a special legislative session before January for lawmakers to redraw the state’s legislative districts. 

The Canton attorney and former legislator of 40 years says he’s watched this movie play out before, and Blackmon knows how it ends: not well, but it’s not forever. 

“Mississippi is a good example for the rest of the country,” Blackmon told Mississippi Today in an interview at his law office. “The country right now is where Mississippi is, where Mississippi’s been for a long time.” 

When Blackmon first returned to his hometown after law school, very few Black officials were elected to local or state offices, including in Canton. A reason Black candidates faced steep odds of winning office is that local candidates had to run in at-large districts, a voting system in which officials represent an entire city or county rather than a specific slice of it, such as a ward or district. White politicians used this system to effectively prevent Black candidates from winning office. 

Blackmon filed a federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act to force the city of Canton to create proportional, single-member districts, which divide a city or county into distinct pieces, each electing its own candidate. This way, a concentrated minority population in one area of a city had a real chance to elect someone of their choice.

The litigation was successful, and he successfully replicated these lawsuits in cities across the state. But these lawsuits took precious time, money and effort to tackle bit by bit. 

By 1984, Blackmon was elected to the House himself, one of only a handful of Black legislators at the time. To his surprise, the speaker appointed him to the Apportionment and Elections Committee, which had jurisdiction over redistricting. 

During the 1992 redistricting cycle, Blackmon realized he had a golden opportunity to attempt to redraw the entire state at once by working from within the political system rather than using the courts to challenge the maps district by district. 

He fought to substantially redraw the 122 House districts and overhaul the map by creating more majority-Black districts.

But his plan got a cold reception, even with other Black legislators, because, like their white colleagues, they also wanted to protect their districts and not have to campaign in a new area.

“At the end of the day, we’re  selfish politicians just like everybody else,” Blackmon said. “You want to protect your district. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. You want to protect your district, and that’s it.”

Blackmon pressed ahead and took his own legislative map and traveled with Carroll Rhodes, his friend and fellow attorney, to the U.S. Department of Justice, which at the time still had to approve, or “preclear,” any changes to Mississippi’s election maps. 

The Justice Department was able to compare it to the Legislature’s map, which it rejected. This sent the fight back to a three-judge federal panel, which told lawmakers to either draw new maps themselves or have the courts do it for them. 

The panel’s threat coincided with an ongoing battle for House speaker, arguably the most powerful position in state government. With the House divided over who should be speaker, Blackmon suddenly found he could wield new power when Speaker Tim Ford needed to secure more votes to continue serving.   

He struck a deal with Ford: Blackmon could secure him nine votes for speaker, in exchange for control over redistricting, a Black speaker pro tempore, Black committee chairs and secretaries. 

Ford won the speakership. Blackmon got his maps. The next election, Black representation in the Legislature more than doubled, from 21 members to 47.

Looking back, Blackmon said one regret of his was not building enough flexibility into those maps to keep evolving them as Mississippi’s political landscape changed. 

LISTEN: Veteran lawmaker: ‘The most depressing legislative session I’ve ever seen’

He planned to gradually reduce the concentration of Black voters in some districts over time, spreading them into more districts to make them competitive rather than packing them into a smaller number of safe seats.

But when he attempted to “unpack” the majority-Black districts into more competitive ones, his own Black colleagues, who were by then protected incumbents, didn’t want their districts touched.

Now, the Legislature could be on the verge of reducing the number of majority-Black seats in the Capitol, erasing a lot of Blackmon’s work, though the longtime legislator said he thinks it would take a lot to fully eradicate the system he helped build.  

Blackmon said he isn’t counting the fight as over,  just paused. He points to his sons, state Sen. Bradford Blackmon and state Rep. Lawrence Blackmon, as evidence that the work continues, even if progress now comes in smaller increments than the sweeping changes of the 1990s.

The elder Blackmon said the next generation will have to continue this fight and learn from his successes. He believes when the pendulum swings back toward opportunity for Black candidates to make gains, they have to seize it. 

 “It may not even be in my lifetime, but I guarantee you it will swing,” Blackmon said. 

Joseph Cranney is a reporter with the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Learn more about the center’s work here. 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.

After two months of silence from law enforcement officials on the police killing in June of a 1-year-old boy in Senatobia, the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus is demanding “direct, timely and ongoing updates” on the state-run investigation meant to determine if any officers involved will face criminal charges.

Veronica Shanell, the grandmother of Kohen Wiley, the Black toddler shot and killed by Senatobia police in a Walmart parking lot, said nobody from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had contacted the family. That includes Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, who was holding him in her arms in the front seat of a car when he was shot.

“I am asking if anyone seen something please say something. If anyone know somebody that was there please have them to inbox me,” Shanell posted on Facebook Monday. “I just want answers that’s all!”

In an open letter published Monday, Rep. Kabir Karriem, chairman of the caucus, called the “lack of meaningful” communication by the authorities “unacceptable.”

“Kohen’s family should not have to fight the State of Mississippi for information about the investigation into their child’s death,” Karriem, a Columbus Democrat, wrote in the two-page letter. It was addressed to state Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, which oversees the MBI. 

Karriem’s letter demands that a liaison for information between the agency and the family “be established immediately.” Wiley, 20, has said that police fired three or four shots at the Ford Fusion driven by her friend, who was wounded in the shooting. The two of them were suspected of shoplifting a pack of diapers and baby clothes. Neither has been charged with any crime, Shanell said.

“Tell the family what can be shared, what cannot and what they should expect next,” Karriem wrote. ”But do not leave them in silence.”

In records, the MBI said it had erroneously released, the name of a Senatobia officer, Sgt. Hunter Foster, was listed as the subject of its investigation. The Senatobia City Council placed Foster on leave two days after the June 14 shooting, but no one involved has said whether Foster fired his weapon.

Foster, who is white, directed a racially offensive remark toward a co-worker two days before the shooting, according to an internal complaint Mississippi Today obtained last month.

At a previous department, Foster was accused of exaggerating the risks that a car posed to officers during their response to a suspicious vehicle call, an incident that resulted in a federal civil rights lawsuit against that police department. 

Foster claimed that the driver had almost run over another officer, though surveillance footage shows no evidence that the car nearly hit, or even drove toward, any of the officers.

Martin Zummach, a Southaven lawyer who has represented police accused of excessive force, said Monday that he had been retained to represent Foster following the Walmart shooting, but declined to discuss details of his actions.

“I am very convinced that Hunter will be cleared of any allegations of wrongdoing in this unfortunate event,” Zummach said.

 
In a statement released the day of the shooting, the MBI said that officers had attempted to stop the car, but that “the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.”

An MBI spokesperson declined to say anything else on Monday about the actions of the police or the status of their investigation. At least one key witness has yet to be interviewed by law enforcement agents.

Desirae Smith, an eyewitness, posted a video from the Walmart parking lot that showed officers scrambling on foot moments after the gunfire. The video was widely shared on social media along with her name and published by news outlets, including CNN, in late June. Smith said neither state investigators nor local law enforcement had contacted her.

“I just think they’re not bothered by it because ain’t nobody really bringing up the baby’s name anymore,” Smith said. “They’re just letting it fade away.”

The Senatobia Police Department and the MBI have declined multiple requests to release footage of the incident captured on police body-worn cameras, though Tindell told Senatobia aldermen that his agency had obtained that footage. Walmart declined to release its surveillance footage, saying that it had been turned over to the MBI.

Karriem said the case reveals “broader concerns” around Mississippi’s rules for releasing body-camera footage, a subject he pledged the Black Caucus would address during the next legislative session.

House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, whose committee enforces compliance of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, violated the insider trading and transparency law, a NOTUS review of congressional financial records indicates.

Guest, a four-term Republican from Mississippi, was more than six months late disclosing three stock sales made by a family trust fund owned by his wife, Haley, involving shares of the oil giant Chevron, the lodging platform Airbnb and the cosmetics company e.l.f. Beauty.

By law, members of Congress must publicly disclose individual stock trades within 45 days of a trade’s execution. These include trades made by or on behalf of themselves, their spouses and their dependent children.

Guest’s STOCK Act violation is the seventh such violation this month by members of Congress.

It also comes less than a month after the House passed a bill, the Stop Insider Trading Act, that would in part ban federal lawmakers from buying individual stocks altogether. Guest voted for the bill, which is now pending in the Senate.

In a message Friday to the clerk of the House of Representatives, Guest wrote that he didn’t learn until Thursday of the three stock sales made on Dec. 16.

“A compliance firm missed them, discovering the oversight while preparing my annual House disclosure,” Guest wrote, adding that he’s notified House Ethics Committee staff and has “initiated additional compliance review.”

Guest indicated that each late sale was worth between $1,001 and $15,000 — lawmakers are only required to disclose values in broad ranges — and that the stock sales were made “at a loss.”

In an email to NOTUS, Guest’s chief of staff, Jordan Downs, said the congressman “does not have any decision-making role” in the trust and “was not consulted on these, or any other, transactions made by the trust.”

This is the second time Guest had violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions. In 2021, he was more than eight months late disclosing sales of ExxonMobil and BP stock by a family trust benefiting his wife, Business Insider reported.

Guest’s committee is empowered to fine — and to waive fines — for STOCK Act scofflaws. The standard penalty for first-time violators is a $200 fine.

Guest “intends to pay” any late-filing fine and “doesn’t believe there will be any need to recuse” himself from the committee’s consideration of it, Downs said.

In the House, other STOCK Act violators during the past year include Reps. Michael Rulli (R-Ohio), Shri Thanedar (D-Michigan), Tracey Mann (R-Kansas), Julie Johnson (D-Texas), Linda Sánchez (D-California), Julia Letlow (R-Louisiana), Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Lisa McClain (R-Michigan), Pat Ryan (D-New York), Sheri Biggs (R-South Carolina), Derek Tran (D-California), Donald Norcross (D-New Jersey), Tim Walberg (R-Michigan), Rich McCormick (R-Georgia), Ritchie Torres (D-New York), Troy Nehls (R-Texas), Dan Meuser (R-Pennsylvania), Jonathan Jackson (D-Illinois), George Whitesides (D-California), Val Hoyle (D-Oregon), Austin Scott (R-Georgia), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), Kelly Morrison (D-Minnesota), Christian Menefee (D-Texas), Daniel Webster (R-Florida), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), Laurel Lee (R-Florida) and Scott Franklin (R-Florida). Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Oklahoma) was also late, although his office denies it.

Senators who’ve violated the STOCK Act during the past year include Sens. Alan Armstrong (R-Oklahoma), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), Katie Britt (R-Alabama), Susan Collins (R-Maine), John Hickenlooper (D-Colorado), Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) and John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania).

This story is provided by a partnership between Mississippi Today and the NOTUS Washington Bureau Initiative, which seeks to help readers in local communities understand what their elected representatives are doing in Congress.