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MFP Contributor

Author: Donna Ladd

Headshot of Kayode Crown, wearing a grey sweater and black rectangle glasses
MFP Voices

A New ‘Sheriff’ Is Reporting Unconscionable, Bipartisan Jail Practices in Mississippi

Our new journalistic sheriff is on Mississippi criminal-justice beat to make sure that this problem, and related ones, stay front and center until solutions are engaged. No more closing of the eyes, kicking the problem down the road and media ignoring it. Reporter Kayode Crown is determined to not allow that to happen, and as of Jan. 15, he is a full-time reporter at the Mississippi Free Press.

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Jefferson Comprehensive Health Center’s mobile unit team with the Sheriff
MFP Voices

Stop the Presses: Nation Notices Excellence in Mississippi

Editor Donna Ladd writes: “We do this cause/solution-driven journalism to serve our communities, our people and to actually help move needles in our state. We are here to celebrate local efforts and to expose inadequacies that make conditions worse for traditionally marginalized Mississippians. But we are also fans of challenging the narratives of our state outside the state lines.”

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MFP Voices

Tis the Season for Believing in Mississippi’s Potential

We need your investment in our vision for it to grow and to care for our people—Journalism costs money. But what I want you to know today is that each of you is part of this movement to gather up Mississippians past or present, and those who want to see us succeed, to believe and take collaborative action toward shared progress and change for all our people.

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BWC Voices

The Hate They Censor: Purging KKK Truth and Angie Thomas to Bury Lessons of History

Donna Ladd writes that young adults reading a book that explains the origins of the Klan in Pulaski, Tenn., and how it became a white-terrorist “Invisible Empire” under Nathan Bedford Forrest is unacceptable in white suburbs in Kansas, we learn. They don’t think teenagers can handle the truth about white terrorist and vigilante groups burning schools and killing and beating teachers here in Mississippi and beyond to stop Black advancement.

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An abandoned and broken Central Academy yellow bus parked under a large tree
BWC

White Flight in Noxubee County: Why School Integration Never Happened

Central Academy was one of Mississippi’s dozens of segregation academies that opened in the 1960s in anticipation of a final Supreme Court mandate, while many others were “founded in 1970” soon after the Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education decision finally ended legal public-school segregation. They demanded and often got public funding even as they excluded Black children and openly taught racism to many of today’s prominent white Mississippians and decision-makers.

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