All results / Stories / Donna Ladd
EDITOR'S NOTE: Love, Good Deeds and the Jackson Zoo
One can't really have it both ways—everything can't be about race when you want it to be, but not when it makes you uncomfortable.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Jackson, Lil Lonnie Must Not Die in Vain
When Lil Lonnie died in his car near the home where a white supremacist shot down Medgar Evers in 1963 in front of his children, in a neighborhood where kids still have far too few opportunities or positive things to do, the young man was 22.
EDITOR'S NOTE: America, We Must Stop De-humanizing Our Children
As a child in the 1960s and 1970s, I was a bit of a freak of nature in my hometown of Philadelphia, Miss. You could call me sensitive or soft-hearted, or as the odd insult still goes, I had a bleeding heart.
Yep, JPS Takeover Is a Conspiracy. Prove Me Wrong.
The predictability of all this takeover hoohaa isn't lost on anyone who comprehends Mississippi's history of racial dynamics, white flight and victim-blaming.
From Trump to Weinstein: ‘This Way of Treating Women Ends Now’
Hell week for women started with Donald Trump telling employers they can cherry-pick access to birth control out of women employees' health insurance. It ended with a long line of Hollywood women collectively revealing mega-producer Harvey Weinstein's apparent habit of, um, "indiscretions."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Our Journalism Seeks Solutions Over Blame and Partisanship
I'm a journalist to find solutions for issues such as youth crime. And that means seeking the various causes first to get there. That is why the journalism in the Jackson Free Press is different.
EDITOR'S NOTE: 2017 is a Year to Be Thankful ... Really
Look, it's been a tough year. Donald Trump's election last November was the precursor to so much hell breaking loose on the national and international stages.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Media, Cops: Choose Crime Solutions Over Perp Shows
It has never occurred to me to call up the police and ask them to stage a special "perp walk" so I can send someone to photograph someone accused of a crime. And I would certainly never request the depraved privilege of capturing images of a juvenile accused of killing another child.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Trump Crashes Mississippi’s Coming-out Party
Inviting Trump is a lurid distraction from what the civil-rights museum finally admits about Mississippi, even using state dollars to tell these truths. Maybe that's why Bryant invited him.
Truth and Pandering as Mississippi History, Civil Rights Museums Open
When the 90-year-old man slipped into the open seat next to me, the opening ceremony for Mississippi's duo of history museums was about to start.
Lean In to Greatness, Jackson
Jackson is judged unfairly, it is called names and, when we stand up for ourselves to people who want us to shut up and comply (ahem, Legislature), the pushback gets even tougher. How dare we talk back, call them out and aspire for greatness?!?
Jackson Tragedy: The RNA, Revisited
It's hard to have a conversation with just about anyone about Chokwe Lumumba without hearing "RNA" at least once.
Coming Home to the Washington Addition
Linda Knight was only 18 when she snuck into the Afro Lounge on Lynch Street one night in 1973 and met the man who would take her out of the Washington Addition.
A Hunger to Live: The Struggle to Interrupt the Cycle of Violence
Several members of the “Undivided” crew told their story recently in Sheppards Brother Park in the Washington Addition.
Ceasefire in the City? How Police Can (and Cannot) Deter Gunfire
In 2015, Precinct 2 Commander Jarratt Taylor helped execute a massive enforcement effort called Metro Area Crime Elimination, or MACE for short, promised to be a local version of the national Operation Ceasefire model.
‘Police vs. Black’: Bridging the ‘Racialized Gulf’
Oressa Napper-Williams' son Andrell was a victim of gun violence twice. The first time was when he was 16 and a student at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Harlem.
Living the Dream in Post-1523 Mississippi
Progressive thinkers here are working to leave hate-drenched politics behind, to get enough people motivated to vote to use our purple demographics to send a strong message at the polls that we're not playing that old-time religion of hate any longer.
Of Love and Orlando
The day before a gunman massacred 49 mostly Latino men and women at the gay club, Pulse, in Orlando, I was wandering through the Brooklyn Pride festival in New York City. It was right around the corner from my rented apartment in Park Slope where I stayed to do more crime-solutions reporting.