In late September 2020, eight Cameroonian asylum seekers reported suffering torture at the hands of facility and immigration officials at the Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez. Black immigrants’ lives are under attack—not only in Mississippi, but nationwide.
The Tennessee Valley Authority may have a big problem—and one that could soon spill over into Mississippi. The federally owned corporation manages the now-defunct Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis, Tenn., where environmental experts claim ash ponds have been contaminating groundwater said to be locally connected to the Memphis Sand Aquifer since at least 2017. This aquifer is the primary source of drinking water for the city of Memphis and serves other communities across the Mid-South.
Mississippi civil-rights hero Meredith C. Anding, Jr. exuded preternatural calm on the surface, but showed a fierce, almost primal determination to get what was his due: freedom and the respect that came with it. For this, Anding, who died on Jan. 8, 2021, at age 79, will be remembered down through the ages.
President Joe Biden is dissolved the 1776 Commission, a group that includes ex-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant. Former President Donald Trump appointed the committee late last year, tasking them with formulating a national plan for “patriotic education.”
“I’ve been promising God I was going to do this for over 50 years, but I was scared to do it because I wanted everybody to just like ole James Meredith, but I knew people didn’t like him. They didn’t want to hear him,” James Meredith, 87, says.
Trump’s Lost Cause creates its own brutal trap for those who will not acknowledge that he lost a standard, legal, legitimate election. Good losers aren’t happy about losing, but because they share a devotion to the community, they concede and move forward instead of burning everything down in a frenzied tantrum.
The University of Mississippi administration has broken its silence on the firing of Dr. Garrett Felber, a professor known for his anti-racism and prison decarceral work, suggesting that the national outcry within academia against the termination is “tied to the stereotypes of our institution’s past.”
The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors is holding out on both moving the Oxford Confederate statue and memorializing a lynched Black man there because he allegedly killed a white woman.
Everyone should know that this assault on our nation, this (somewhat) armed insurrection against our nation in which five people, so far, have lost their lives did not happen because of Donald J. Trump alone. It happened because, ultimately, too many conservatives are cowards.
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
info@mississippifreepress.org
tips@mississippifreepress.org
events@mississippifreepress.org
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).
