Latest stories

Subscribe

Wedding Dance Lessons

On your big day, don't step out on the dance floor with two left feet. Instead, invest a little money and time to make your first dance together as husband and wife a thing of grace and beauty.

Register Locally

For some couples, developing a bridal registry is one of the most exciting parts of getting married. It is their one opportunity to think about the special items they want to fill the home they will share.

Spring Renewal

Spring is a time of renewal. Flowers blooming, Easter, the birds and the bees doing their things—it all makes a girl want to shop for a new look and go dancing. At least that's what it makes this girl want to do. And so, this week I did.

Strenuous Liberty

I saw an earth-shattering tweet yesterday. The Fairview Inn in Belhaven was tweeting the link to their blog post heralding the Freedom Riders' anniversary. So what, you might respond. It's just a nice hotel doing good marketing.

Bracing for Destruction

Dave Collins of Collins Farms in Tallulah, La., sits in his office, staring across his desk at his older brother Curt Collins who sits in a broad blue sofa, holding a phone to his ear.

Out of Time

Once the drugs started to flow, it took only a minute for Benny Joe Stevens' lips to stop moving. He slipped out of consciousness, and soon his heart stopped.

A Newspaper Is Born

Never in the history of journalism, as we know it in the State of Mississippi, has any newspaper from its inception had such bold aims and purity of purpose as the MISSISSIPPI FREE PRESS.

[Stiggers] My Dog Bites Booty

"The Crime Watch Report News Brief is your source for information on suspicious individuals and activities in desirable suburban communities. Here's your Crime Watch News Brief reporter, I. M. Scared."

[Dickerson] Civil Rights Ain't Just History

Gov. Haley Barbour did the right thing by lobbying for a civil-rights museum.

Tease photo

Freedom Rides Again

Their Story, 50 Years Later

Hank Thomas walked up the steps of the Greyhound bus on a sunny day May 4, 1961. As he calmly surveyed its drab, blue-gray interior, the lanky 19-year-old black student from Howard University had no idea that in about two weeks he would come dangerously close to meeting his maker on its floor.

[Balko] How Bin Laden Won

In "The Looming Tower," the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to Sept. 11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden's motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the Sept. 11 attacks, was to draw the United States and the West into a prolonged war--an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.

Recreating the Rides

Forty college students got on the bus earlier this month and began tweeting and blogging about retracing the 1961 Freedom Rides from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans.

‘It Won't Be Long'

Before Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., telling the nation of his dream in 1963, Medgar Evers also had a dream. The civil-rights activist and NAACP field officer dreamt of a newspaper to reach the under-served black population of Mississippi as he tried tirelessly to recruit blacks to vote.

Common Struggle

The first time Lewis Zuchman saw Freedom Rider Hank Thomas was in 1961. Thomas was giving a television interview about the violence he had encountered in Anniston, Ala., while challenging Jim Crow laws. Thomas' conviction and perseverance inspired Zuchman.

Freedom's Main Line

When Robert Parker Adams was a teenager, he spent muggy Mississippi afternoons playing pinball at Jackson's Greyhound station at 219 N. Lamar St. It was just across the street from his school, Central High School.

‘Jail Not Bail'

Fred Clark always felt something was not right with how the South treated blacks.

Peter Zapletal, Puppeteer

The puppets Peter Zapletal makes are works of art, all unified by his craftsmanship. The sly smile on bunnies wearing striped suits in "Carnival of Animals" and the details in the construction of the robbers Fritz and Wolfgang that allows them to move in "The Breman Town Musicians" are just two examples of the way Zapletal uses art to bring stories to the stage.

Dancing with Eddie Griffin

Eddie Griffin has come a long way from choreographing Chiefs games in his hometown of Kansas City, Mo., at 16. What began as a dare to tell jokes at a local comedy club has led to dozens of film roles, including turns in "Undercover Brother" and the "Deuce Bigalow" franchise.

Bridging Sandridge's Divide

Malco Grandview Theatre may not be running Mark Sandridge's controversial campaign ad for Madison County Sheriff anymore, but his message has spurred debates about Jackson stereotypes and the responsibility of law enforcement officials to unite the metro area.

Echoes of Shoccoe

As the waters of the Mississippi River creep to a historic high, lapping at Vicksburg's ankles, some local residents are getting nervous about how long the city of Jackson has before it suffers the next round of its own flooding.