Two beautiful women are about to leave Jackson—and leave a huge void in the creative community here. One of them introduced me to the other of them; without them, the Jackson Free Press might not have been, or at least not what is has become.
I met Sherri Williams at our very first Lounge in Hal & Mal’s last summer, back when the Free Press was a skeleton plan and I just wanted to get some folks together for a little salon (without the clean-up) like I used to do in New York. Somehow the woman with her ear to the ground, and a Clarion-Ledger reporter, heard something new was up. She came by with some friends, including the late Ruma Haque, whom I only had the pleasure of talking to a couple of times before she died.
Sherri, however, I would get to know well and come to love and will miss dearly now that’s she left us for another job in Ohio. I didn’t mention the Free Press to her—she was the competition, after all—but I did tell her I wanted to help build creative community here, and specifically to bridge a gap between the races. She immediately set out to help me, forwarding me addresses and phone numbers. It was Sherri who first told me about a benefit for writer Charlie Braxton, who’d lost many of his belongings in a fire. There I met Jolivette Anderson, who is moving this month to Indiana.
Jolivette, too, is a remarkable woman that we’ve written about several times. For her spoken-word nights. For her arts work at Lanier High School. For just being outspoken, activist, happy, inspirational Jolivette. For being selected “Best Poet” by JFP readers. At our big Best-of party in January, I put Jolivette on the spot, asking her to present one of her poems to the 200-plus people in attendance. She blew them away with a breathtaking and poignant poem about her parents and growing up black.
Quite simply, I can’t quite imagine Jackson without these two women who are so strong and central to the arts scene here. I hope the Clarion-Ledger works hard to fill Sherri’s shoes quickly; without her, people across the state would know so much less about African-American culture. And without Jolivette, our conscience really, the rest of us are going to have to work a little harder to make sure we understand what’s going on around us. Both of these women are megaphones of thought and understanding in Jackson, and it will be a bit quieter without them here. Woe be us.
Speaking of women we miss, the JFP is very proud of contributing editor Lori Herring, who is no longer living in Jackson but is still contributing to our magazine. She won first place in the Associated Press awards for Mississippi and Louisiana in the Lifestyles category for her Clarion-Ledger series, “Mississippi has the Blues,” which she wrote last year while still on staff there. Way to go, Lori!
The Clarion-Ledger also recently lost another woman reporter, Theresa Kiely, who resigned in early May.
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.
