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Driving Mr. Biden: The JFP Interview with the Vice President (Encore)
In 2006, the Jackson Free Press drove then-presidential hopeful Sen. Joe Biden around the capital city to get him off the beaten path and talk about issues facing everyday Mississippians. Due to his new role as vice president, we are moving the narrative of that visit back to the top of the site for an encore.
You Are a Jacksonian If ...
1. You eat at Hal & Mal's more than once a month.
4. You shop at Video Library or Video Café before you go near Blockbuster.
The Myth of a Red South?
Alternet is discussing several polls and news articles that seem to indicate that Bush does not have the South all sewn up: "But as the election draws nearer, polling trends show that just isn't the case. The Raleigh News & Observer North Carolina came out with a poll this week showing George Bush ahead by a mere three points, well within the 4% margin of error. ... Witness Rassmussen's poll numbers for Arkansas, where Bush and Kerry are tied at 46%. There's also Virginia, where Bush leads Kerry by three points, 49% to 46%, with a five-point margin of error. Numbers like these rule out the notion that the South is 'Bush country.'" I just think the choice of "red" to indicate conservative states is hilarious. Who came up with that?!
I Want Justice, Too: Brother Wants Mississippi Cold Case Murders Re-opened
The Jackson Free Press teamed with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. to follow an Army vet and Mississippi native on his journey back home, looking for justice for his little brother who was killed by the Klan in 1964. This is his story—and it helped send James Ford Seale to prison.
James Ford Seale: A Trail of Documents Tells the Story
James Ford Seale was walking tall and chewing on a cigar as he appeared before a subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American Activities on Jan. 14, 1966, at 11:35 a.m. in the Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
The JFP Interview with Joey Lauren Adams
Filmmaker Joey Lauren Adams, 39, is a fan of drinking Budweiser and driving along flat Arkansas highways looking at cypress trees, not necessarily at the same time. The first time I interviewed her, for a hoity-toity celebrity magazine in New York City in the summer of 2001, she was home in North Little Rock from her adopted city of Los Angeles, hankering to live in the South again. But as a successful and respected actress—she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her starring role in "Chasing Amy"' and is a charter member of director Kevin Smith's hipster actor posse—her life and business were far from Arkansas.
We Are Family: A Klan Child Fans A Different Flame
Photos by Kate Medley
Little Shirley Seale was in her room at the back of her wood frame house when she saw flames through her window. The Natchez girl, who was 5 in 1968, stared out at the green cow pasture that opened up beyond the window. She could see dozens, maybe a hundred people, wearing mostly whitebut some black and redchoir-like robes with pointy hoods covering their heads. A cross decorated the front of each robe.
Fighting Back In Klan Nation
When Mary Geraldine Briggs heard a horn blaring outside her small house, under shady oak trees on Highway 84 in Roxie, Miss., she would go get the shotgun and head to the door to protect her family. The horn was the signal from her husband, Rev. Clyde Bennie Briggs, that a carload of Klansmen was on his tail again. His wife was instructed to do anything she needed to do to protect herself and their six kids, and the one on the way. She was armed and ready.
snark >:-(
As if having charges dropped against the woman who allegedly stayed in the house with their beaten-to-death young relative wasn't bad enough, the family of Heather Spencer was hit with a March 26 Clarion-Ledger article that was riddled with errors, including one of the most chilling fashion. Ledger reporter Nicklaus Lovelady actually gave the last name of the victim to the mother of George Bell, who has admitted to bludgeoning Spencer to death last year, referring to Robbie Bell as "Robbie Spencer."
The Crime: May 2, 1964
The last time Mazie Moore ever saw her boy, 19-year-old son Charles, he was standing in front of Dillon's gas station on Main Street in Meadville, trying to thumb a ride with his friend, Henry Dee, also 19. Mazie had gotten a ride to the doctor and figured she would pick them up when she came back by there.
Snark
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann's office sent out a bizarro, mistake-riddled press release this week that, ultimately, seemed to avoid taking a position on what to do about "felon voting." The release complained that of the "50,000 criminals which are incarcerated at our expense," "only 12,000 are prohibited from voting." It then added: "Meaning, 38,000 felons are allowed to vote on state officials as well as the judges and district attorney's (sic) who sent them to prison. The release said that the following are not allowed to vote currently: "criminals convicted of murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, false pretense, purgery, forgery, embezzlement or bigotry." Bigotry? Purgery?
Dredging Up the Past: Why Mississippians Must Tell Our Own Stories
It was warm under the mammoth magnolia tree on the north side of the Neshoba County Courthouse, just yards from where the Confederate soldier stood on his marble pedestal until a storm knocked him over and broke his arm off a few years back.
Back from Philly, Whew
Todd and I got back yesterday from the AAN national convention in Philly (Pa., not my Mississippi hometown). It's good to be homewhere it's actually cooler than it was in the Northeast, believe it or not. As usual, we worked hard (Todd gave a presentation; I coordinated one; and I did board meetings and the like), and met lots of folks. One thing that is cool is how accepted and welcomed Mississippi is in the alternative-newspaper world after only five years of membership. People really admire what we're doing with diversity and online (blogging way back in 2002, oh my), and are impressed with the native talent that we are blessed to have working for the paper. The best moment for the JFP were the awards we wonincluding two first places. The big one was the community service award we won for our team's investigative work (and blogging) over the last three years that helped put James Ford Seale in jail. That meant a lotand felt a whole lot like Mississippi standing up to publicly face and confront our past. It's very different from having "outsiders" assume we haven't changed; it's great to give them award-winning evidence that we are actively evolving.
For the Kids
A few months ago, I picked up a copy of The Clarion-Ledger's VIP Jackson magazine and flipped through. I was shocked at how few black VIP Jacksonians I saw in the stories, party pics and advertising.
Factcheck.org: Cheney & Edwards Mangle Facts
A few factcheck.org report just in: "Getting it wrong about combat pay, Halliburton, and FactCheck.org Cheney wrongly implied that FactCheck had defended his tenure as CEO of Halliburton Co., and the vice president even got our name wrong. He overstated matters when he said Edwards voted "for the war" and "to commit the troops, to send them to war." He exaggerated the number of times Kerry has voted to raise taxes, and puffed up the number of small business owners who would see a tax increase under Kerry's proposals.
Poll: Alternative news gaining influence over TV, dailies
AP reports: "People are turning increasingly to alternatives such as the Internet for news about the presidential campaign, shifting away from traditional outlets such as the nightly network news and newspapers, a poll found. Young adults were leading the shift, with one-fifth of them considering the Internet a top source of campaign news for them, said the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. About the same number of young adults said they regularly learn about the campaign from comedy shows like 'The Daily Show' and 'Saturday Night Live.' ... Nightly network news was named as a regular source of campaign news by 35 percent, down from 45 percent four years ago, and newspapers by 31 percent, down from 40 percent. ... Four years ago, young people were far more likely to have said they learned about the campaign from nightly network news, 39 percent, than the Internet or comedy programs. Now, all three are cited about equally as sources of campaign news. ... Comedy shows like "The Daily Show"are making fun of what they see as the insufficiency of news programs, especially those on cable," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. He said that highlights the need for more traditional news shows to learn how to appeal to younger adults."
Two Lakes Letter About JFP ... in the Northside Sun
John McGowan's company is definitely obsessed with the JFP's comprehensive coverage of their conceptso much so that they sent a letter to the Northside Sun about it that appeared today. The letter complains, rightly, that we (I, actually) used the word "chemicals" instead of "wastewater" in the Most Intriguing 2009 write-up about Mr. McGowan (which I have already corrected both in the paper and in the online story here). However, the paper is not pointing to Adam Lynch's original story about the Galveston Bay incident, or to Mr. McGowan's statements about environmentalists, which were in this story in the JFP last fall. I apologize again for using the wrong word in the Intriguing write-up, and I encourage everyone to read Adam's story for a fuller picture.
Best of Jackson 2008
Best Bartender: Trevor Palmer, Club Fire - Club Fire's got to be a hectic place for a bartender. Hundreds of sweating, dance-crazed bodies are thirsty for a drink on Thursday's ladies night, and you know every fan at Fire's live-music weekends has to have a drink in hand to fully enjoy the show. Some people thrive in that environment, and Trevor Palmer is one of those people. Serving as both manager and bartender at Fire, Palmer puts us lethargic folk to shame. But ladies, you do know all those free drinks you're getting weren't Palmer's way of saying he likes you; women drink free on Thursdays.
Tough Questions for David Banner
A Jackson rap star talks frankly about young criminals and crime hysteria in Jackson.
Creating a 'Brand of Passion' for Voting
New York Times reports: "WHILE partisan political ads continue to dominate attention, a rapidly growing number of nonpartisan campaigns from recently created groups are trying the tactics of Madison Avenue pros to register new, and especially young, voters. Today, Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan voter-registration group started by the television producer Norman Lear, will raise two giant billboards in Times Square, showing Christina Aguilera and André 3000 with their mouths held shut, next to the message, 'Only you can silence yourself.