“Jessie’s story is a reminder that the civil rights movement did not push society to a better version of itself with a singular, vast wave toward freedom,” Valerie Hill-Jackson writes. “Rather, little ripples of courage fashioned it with one person, one schoolteacher, at a time.”
“Throughout a trailblazing career that spanned half a century, (Flemmie Pansy Kittrell) worked to enhance food security and to improve both diets and children’s health—under the umbrella of home economics,” Brandy Thomas Wells writes.
After an injury dashed his hopes of playing professionally, former Alcorn State baseball standout Brandon Rembert found his niche in the MLB.
“The state of Florida ignited a controversy when it released a set of 2023 academic standards that require fifth graders to be taught that enslaved Black people in the U.S. ‘developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their benefit,'” Rodney Coates writes.
“The fact that Black and white Americans have different views on the police are not accidents,” Rashad Shabazz writes. “This reality is built on a long history of police targeting people of color. Indeed, policing in the United States was established on the practice of controlling specific populations.”
Three Jackson residents are suing to stop House Bill 1020, saying the new law violates the Mississippi Constitution and dilutes local voting power with unelected, state-appointed judges.
Duvalier Malone believes democracy is at stake due to voter-suppression efforts and suggests that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act should pass to rightly protect the voting rights of U.S. citizens.
“This historical trauma must be addressed. It functions as a persistent sickness, a deadly virus—in the family, in the African-American community and in the larger society,” Psychologists Taasogle Daryl Rowe and Kamilah Marie Woodson writes. “The establishment of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice begins a long-awaited process of healing from the unspeakable and unacknowledged acts in our history, whose echoes can still be heard today.”
Dr. Karla McCullough, executive director of the Juanita Sims Doty Foundation, says Mississippi should embed core “humanizing factors” into our varying service support systems to improve relations and engagement within our communities, especially communities of color.
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