MFP Contributor
In rural Winston County, a stranger’s claim against a single acre of a family farm threatens a plan to build generational wealth for their grandchildren, the family says. Heirs’ property can leave owners susceptible to developers and timber harvesters: a common problem for Black families.
The Rural Performance and Production Lab’s goal is to support the development of new works focused on rural living, history, places and bodies. Artists will receive direct funding or a configuration of an on-site residency, coaching and support from a team of advisers over an 18-month period. The program supports artists living in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The nurse also owns Xperience Jxn Entertainment, an event company that started out of her need to put on exciting events in the capital city after hearing complaints about how there is little to do in Jackson.
“They can spend Jackson money in Jackson, and then we can also attract people from other cities to bring money to Jackson, spend money and leave money here in Jackson,” Singleton said. She also wants the money they spend to help people living with HIV.
Unlike many universities with a maker program, Belhaven includes an arts component, a point of pride for the school. Students will learn and work on projects of their own interests as it relates to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics). The program encourages students to seek connections between disciplines and foster an autonomous maker culture at Belhaven.
“I talked to my teacher about how everyone was calling me an oreo because at the time, it was a very hurtful comment. I’d always been around mostly white people, and to be in this new Black community and to feel rejected by that community, a community that I really wanted to be a part of, was very difficult,” teenager Yasmike Ware explains about her award-winning “OREOntation” podcast.
George Raymond was a teenager when he came to Mississippi from New Orleans to fight for Black freedom and voting rights. He could have been driving the car instead of James Chaney on Father’s Day, 1964, when the KKK killed three civil rights workers in Neshoba County.
In March 2021, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History announced that it has repatriated 403 Native American remains and 83 lots of burial objects to the Chickasaw Nation, the largest return of human remains in the state’s history and the first for the department. The repatriation started a year ago in January 2020 and is ongoing as the department is about halfway through the process.
Tragedy marred the first attempt to have a long-delayed 1970 Jackson State graduation, and the pandemic ruined the second attempt scheduled for the 50th anniversary in 2020. Graduates finally got to march in 2021, honoring might have been for Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, killed by police.
After completing this year’s application, Andrea Foreman said she wasn’t confident that she would win, but she felt that she’d at least get second or third place. She submitted two books, poetry and an essay for the application compared to the one piece of writing submitted the year prior. “In the back of my head, I was kinda anxious because I really needed the scholarship, and I needed to win,” she expressed.
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