MFP Impact, Media and Awards 2022
“[A]s the invaluable Mississippi Free Press tells us, the Lost Cause is still making mischief.” – Esquire Magazine MFP Impact, Awards and Media Coverage – 2022
Kristin Brenemen
February 7, 2023
“[A]s the invaluable Mississippi Free Press tells us, the Lost Cause is still making mischief.” – Esquire Magazine MFP Impact, Awards and Media Coverage – 2022
MFP has suffered immense growth in readers, journalistic reputation, impact and team size, even as we’ve had no staff turnover since 2020. Read our best and most-read stories.
R.C. Anderson, 65, went to prison more than 40 years ago after he drove his car to a house his friends burglarized in Madison County. He did not learn of the legal provision to erase the crime from his records until recently.
“Multiple prosecutors” are still examining the facts and making decisions about criminal charges in Mississippi’s sprawling welfare scandal that saw millions in funds meant for poor families go instead to wealthy celebrities, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White said on Thursday, Sept. 15.
Maurice Clifton, 57, spent over two decades incarcerated for aiding and abetting the sale of crack cocaine under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which treats one gram of crack cocaine as 100 grams of powdered cocaine. After he left federal prison on Jan. 10, 2020, he now advocates for the passage of the EQUAL Act, a law that will treat the two substances equally and possibly free 7,000 people.
The investigative report released last week starts the 49-day clock until June 2022, when Attorney General Merrick B. Garland can legally file a case against Mississippi in federal court in line with the Civil Rights for Institutionalized Persons Act.
Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable Co-convener and State Lead Cassandra Welchlin said increasing child-support debt for those in prison harms relationships.
John Knight, Terun Moore and Benny Ivey have all experienced life in prison and now mentor criminal-justice-system-involved young people as credible messengers with the Strong Arms of JXN, which launched in 2018. The Strong Arms of JXN gathers formerly incarcerated individuals devoted to showing young people alternate paths from the ones they at one point chose and have since turned away from.
Found dead on the side of a road in South Jackson, Tramaine Green was one of 128 homicides in Jackson in 2020. In her overview introducing the Hinds County chapter of our “(In)Equity and Resilience: Black Women Women and Systemic Barriers” collaboration with the Jackson Advocate, reporter Aliyah Veal tells one family’s story of navigating COVID-19, gun violence and being ignored by police through the pandemic—and the pandemic-magnified causes of crime and inequities that have long affected their path to success.
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.
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The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).