MFP Contributor
“We had a village. We were taking care of our own. But when crack came, our entire way of life changed, and we are still dealing with the aftermath of the crack cocaine epidemic,” Meredith McGee says at the “Stand Up Speak Up: Rally 4 Peace” she organized in Jackson on May 6.
“I felt like if I went to Jackson, I could possibly build a team, and we can actually make some amazing things in Jackson, Mississippi, that would be world renowned. And I felt like once it got going, I would be seen as a big fish in a small pond and be one of the first people sought after as opposed to going places where it’s already built,” Curtis Nichouls said. So, he moved to back Jackson nine years ago and recently started a production company called Sweet Unknown South Studios.
The film “Far East Deep South” follows Charles Chiu and his family’s journey from California to Mississippi in hopes of finding answers about his father and the filmmakers’ grandfather K. C. Lou. While the family learns about the life of K.C. Lou and his contributions to the surrounding communities in Pace, Miss., just northwest of Cleveland in Bolivar County, they also learn some harsh truths about life for Asian Americans living in the deep South during Jim Crow.
Changing the gender wage gap statistics is a desired outcome as DSC Training Academy and Mississippi Coding Academy partner to open a new coding campus in south Jackson. The new academy’s location will operate out of the workforce development center on Interstate 55 South Frontage Road and will offer convenience for potential coders from south Jackson, Hinds County and the metro area, DSC Training Academy President Willie Jones said at a virtual press conference on April 8.
Director Tate Taylor has recognized the need and appetite for local Mississippians to get into the film industry. The realization led him to start Film Natchez, a nonprofit organization geared toward pairing Mississippians with professionals in the film industry.
Victor Hugo Green’s “The Negro Motorist Green Book” was the guidebook for African American roadtrippers during the Jim Crow era. The guide offered services and places that were friendly to African Americans, while also highlighting the dangers of travel with threats such as whites-only sundown towns. Author and journalist Deborah Douglas has published a new kind of civil-rights guide.
Karla McCullough is the executive director of the Juanita Sims Doty Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of Black residents in Jackson, with a focus on tackling the dehumanization of Mississippians of color. The Franciscan Sisters gave the foundation small grants between 2018 and 2019. But then in 2020, the religious group called her about their new grant project called “Seeding the Legacy.”
David Dennis Jr., who lives in Atlanta, Ga., is one of two recipients of the 2021 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which honors a journalist’s ability to cultivate greater understanding and empathy. The prize also supports freelance journalists with a cash award of $100,000 per recipient, the largest dollar amount for a journalism award. The Jackson native’s reporting on Black American culture and the intersection of race with topics such as politics, sports and entertainment drew him the honor. The prize, in particular, awards his 2020 Atlanta Magazine cover story “Ahmaud Arbery Will Not Be Erased” and Gay Mag’s “An Ode To the Black Women At Dillard’s.”
Flonzie Brown-Wright has been spearheading New Hope’s Black History program since 2010 after the church’s youth director Deacon Jim Adams approached her on behalf of Pastor Jerry Young. The church wanted to bring new energy to the program, she said, and it was her civil-rights background that drew them to her.
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