Ellington

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. Gov. Phil Bryant signed a bill Tuesday authorizing the state to sell several new specialty license plates, starting July 1. One of them features the Stennis Flag, a proposed state flag design that Jackson artist Laurin Stennis created.
2. A Hattiesburg woman confronted Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood last Tuesday over yearbook photos from the 1980s that show members of his college fraternity wearing blackface.
3. To date, no political prowess has organized the force necessary to eliminate the Mississippi Delta region's systemic poverty and economic blight. Some, however, fought harder than others.
4. Several times a week, anti-abortion protester Coleman Boyd stands outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Fondren and broadcasts recordings of his children's voices for women to hear as they arrive for their appointments.
5. State Rep. Mark Baker, a Republican candidate for Mississippi attorney general, is pledging to take the state's recently passed abortion ban all the way to the Supreme Court.
6. A Mississippi man who burned a cross in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Covington County recently pled guilty to federal charges.
7. If Mississippians make state Rep. Mark Baker their next attorney general, he vows to fight so that religiously affiliated adoption agencies that accept state funds can continue to legally discriminate against LGBT families.
8. Mississippi State University libraries recently announced that it has digitized and transcribed audio recordings of the Citizens Forum, a broadcast once helmed by the segregationist Citizens Council, and made them available online.
9. The Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act permits Mississippi's 25 electric cooperatives, also known as ECMs, to offer high-speed service to their rural customers—many of whom currently lack access to broadband internet.
10. Jackson residents can now use an online data portal to see how the city is spending their money and planning to change Jackson.

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