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Culture

Madison Central Student Yasmine Ware’s ‘Oreo’ Podcast a NYT Contest Winner

“I talked to my teacher about how everyone was calling me an oreo because at the time, it was a very hurtful comment. I’d always been around mostly white people, and to be in this new Black community and to feel rejected by that community, a community that I really wanted to be a part of, was very difficult,” teenager Yasmike Ware explains about her award-winning “OREOntation” podcast.

Aliyah Veal July 28, 2021

Civil rights activists, from left, Bob Moses, Dave Dennis, Rita Schwerner Bender, Leroy Clemons, Myrlie Evers-Williams and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga

News

Continue Bob Moses’ ‘Unfinished Work’ With Voting Rights Bills, Biden Tells Congress

Congress should honor Bob Moses, the longtime voting rights leader who died Sunday at age 86, by continuing his work to protect voting rights, President Joe Biden said in a statement late Monday. Moses, a Harlem, N.Y., native, moved to the deep south in the early 1960s to lead voter-registration efforts in Jim Crow Mississippi.

Ashton Pittman July 27, 2021

Bob Moses stands in the old Mississippi Capitol in front of the old Mississippi flag with the Confederate canton showing. He is wearing a blue sports coast and looking downward

MFP Voices

Rest in Power, Bob Moses and Emmett Till: Younger People Will Continue to Pay Your Legacy Forward

Bob Moses, a civil-rights hero who fought white supremacy and sharecropper education with every tool at his disposal, died at age 86 on the same day that Emmett Till would’ve turned 80, had white supremacists not brutally murdered the 14-year-old in 1955. They both have long inspired young people to seek systemic change.

Donna Ladd July 25, 2021

Tate Reeves at podium with uniformed officers on either side

In-Depth

Governor’s Policing Surge in Jackson May Not Prevent Violence, Address Causes

Parts of Mississippi’s capital city is seeing a “saturation” of additional police presence that Gov. Tate Reeves promises will counter a spike in crime and violence that has worsened since the pandemic began. But violence experts warn that a swelling police presence may not be effective, and it actually harm communities.

Julian Mills July 20, 2021

In-Depth

Young Black Activists Helped Change The State Flag. They Intend To Change The State.

For the young Black Mississippi activists who organized the BLM Sip march in June 2020, changing the state flag was an important symbolic start. Now, they want to bring true racial justice to the Magnolia State when it comes to the areas of voting, criminal justice, education and more.

Nick Judin and Ashton Pittman July 15, 2021

MFP Voices

Al Stamps and Richard Middleton: The Yin and the Yang of Black Excellence

I am eternally blessed that my parents, my entire family, and my community taught me that there is not merely one way to be Black and that Black excellence manifests itself in a multitude of ways. Thus, while I’m sad to be commemorating two local giants, it’s only fitting that I honor them together as they are bookends of Black excellence. Al Stamps Sr. represents the Marcus Garvey/Booker T. Washington notion of the self-made, industrial man who uses his business not just to earn a profit but to feed thousands of Jackson State University students and all of West Jackson while being a blueprint of the benefits of Black ownership.

C. Liegh McInnis July 8, 2021

Crystal Welch and Senator Hillman Frazier, both wearing masks, stand inside the U.S. Capitol rotunda

In-Depth

‘No Compromise’: How Crystal Welch Changed the State Flag Debate in 19 Days

In June 2020, attorney Crystal Welch set out to stop an effort to replace the 1894 Mississippi state flag with the Stennis flag. Though the Stennis design did not include the Confederate Battle Flag, it featured an ode to the Bonnie Blue Flag, which once served as a symbol of Mississippi’s secession.

Ashton Pittman July 6, 2021

Words engraved on a stone plinth form a component of the Slavery Memorial by sculptor Martin Puryear, erected in 2014, on the Brown University campus in Providence, R.I., on Tuesday, May 4, 2021

MFP Voices

Centering Survivors: Why the Push for Reparations Is Always About More Than Money

The modern history of reparations is only a few decades old, but it already demonstrates that reparations are always about more than the money. If the process includes compensation, but ignores complementarity and consultation, the effort may fail to truly answer for the past.

Kerry Whigham July 6, 2021

MFP Voices

Racism and White Fragility: A History of Overlooking Black Valedictorians

I conclude that the decisions to force Black students to share top honors with white students result from a psychological discomfort known as “white fragility.” This is a state of stress experienced by some white people when they are presented with information about people of color that challenges their sense of entitlement. I maintain that when students of color are named top students in their graduating class, as Shepard was in 2016, white society may begin to fear that students of color are encroaching upon their social turf.

Jamel K. Donnor July 2, 2021

Madison Central Student Yasmine Ware’s ‘Oreo’ Podcast a NYT Contest Winner

Continue Bob Moses’ ‘Unfinished Work’ With Voting Rights Bills, Biden Tells Congress

Rest in Power, Bob Moses and Emmett Till: Younger People Will Continue to Pay Your Legacy Forward

Governor’s Policing Surge in Jackson May Not Prevent Violence, Address Causes

Young Black Activists Helped Change The State Flag. They Intend To Change The State.

Al Stamps and Richard Middleton: The Yin and the Yang of Black Excellence

‘No Compromise’: How Crystal Welch Changed the State Flag Debate in 19 Days

Centering Survivors: Why the Push for Reparations Is Always About More Than Money

Racism and White Fragility: A History of Overlooking Black Valedictorians

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