FOCUS: #MSWelfare/TANF Scandal • Jackson Water • Abortion • Race & Racism • Policing • Incarceration • Housing & Evictions
MFP Contributor
Shellie Brown Kemp was raised in Jackson, Miss., and returned to her hometown to pursue her musical career, which led to her recent appointment as the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra’s concertmistress.
In her 2021 book, “Nice White Ladies: The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It,” Jessie Daniels, a sociology professor at Hunter College, City University of New York demythologizes her family’s own fabrication of whiteness and what it means to be considered—at least in appearance—a “nice, white lady.”
Nearly three decades ago, most of the once-bustling businesses in downtown Laurel, Miss., had shuttered their windows, and the brick streets that criss-crossed the Pine Belt town’s center were void of pedestrians and drivers alike. Today, downtown Laurel is enjoying a resurgence thanks to locals and outside assistance. As always throughout its history, like that of other Mississippi towns, it’s complicated.
Marvin Hogan, founder of Friends of Children of Mississippi, battled for a more equitable education for all Missisippians for 53 years until his recent death on Nov. 6, 2021, at age 83.
“Civil War (Or, Who Do We Think We Are?)” mirrors the conflicted racial history of the South, arriving at no conclusions but demonstrating the need for an answer to the question its title poses: Who do we think we are?
Zines, which are small-scale publications based around texts and images, gained popularity through underground social-activism groups in the 1960s and 1970s. After seeing their usefulness and impact at the symposium, Parker thought the Oxford campus would be the perfect place to revive the medium in the form of a digital publication aimed at LGBTQ+ students and their allies.
In Susan Cushman’s novel, John and Mary Margaret forged a connection in the crucible of 1960s “Ole Miss,” just a few years removed from the bloody riot over the admission of James Meredith that killed two and wounded more than 300, but societal pressures kept them apart for decades. He was Black, and she was white.
Y’all Means All Natchez received its 501(c) status in late 2018 and began its work in earnest in 2019. The coalition’s reach soon broadened beyond its original scope of suicidal LGBTQ+ youth and expanded its outreach work to include the entire Natchez community.
I was 15 years old the first time someone said Emmett Till’s name to me, and I’d hear it countless times over the ensuing years. I say his name now for myself, proving my English professors’ belief that Emmett Till’s blood cries out to us from the pen of Mississippians. I say it even though the governor and half the Legislature might say that it’s proof of the nefarious “critical race theory” infiltrating Mississippi schools.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MS 39201
[email protected]
[email protected]
601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).