All results / Stories

Sort By

Date

Authors

[Stiggers] Public Option Pledge

Smokey "Robinson" McBride: "Welcome to the Ghetto Science Team's Public Option Healthcare Rally, Picnic and Disco. It looks like change has opened Pandora's box of hypocrisy, seasoned with bigotry and intolerance."

A Taste of Something Sweet

My earliest memories come to me in pictures. The drawings and etchings in the huge old book of German fairy tales my grandmother read to me are clearer in my mind's eye than the stories they illustrated. I can see the glitter on the colorful advent calendar hung over my crib. Too tempting, I pulled myself up to its bright, sparkling colors and promptly yanked the calendar down on the floor. Screaming out my frustration, I brought my mother running.

Tease photo

Close Loopholes for Race Violence

In 2005, the Jackson Free Press went to Franklin County, Miss., with the brother of Charles Moore, one of two black teenagers killed by the Klan in 1964. We wanted to detail a case that probably only got attention in the first place due to three missing civil rights workers at the same time in the "Mississippi Burning" case that drew much more media attention over the years, probably because two of the victims were white.

Lessons From My Mother

Mothers have a habit of bestowing advice and rules to live by, often perpetuating old wives' tales or insensible teachings like: "Don't read in the dark. You'll go blind." (I really thought I was going to go blind after my mom caught me reading in the moonlight; I was scarred for many years.)

[Greggs] Not That Many Bullets

It used to be that when you wanted to lose it and shoot a bunch of the idiots hanging around you, you would say you were about to "go postal." It seems to me that after the recent uprising in school shootings we almost have to call it "going to school." Is this freaking anyone else out, or is it just me?

Media Literacy Project: Editors Speak Up

With the conclusion of the research from the Media Literacy Project, editors from the Jackson Advocate, Northside Sun, and Madison County Journal respond.

Remember Sanity

When I was given the opportunity to go to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity this past weekend, I jumped at the chance. I went to school in the Washington, D.C., area, and cut my activist teeth on Vietnam War demonstrations in the nation's capital and Equal Rights Amendment marches down Constitution Avenue to the west side of the U.S. Capitol building.

No. 34, July 12

<b><em>Overturning Brown</b></em>

The U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling makes one shudder at what else might be coming for minorities and women. It was the enforcement of school integration under the Johnson administration that set off white riots and murders generating the revulsion that resulted in passage of the Civil Rights Voting Act. Of course, it also resulted in the peculiar educational landscape of Mississippi, dominated by private academies and starved of funds for public education.

Tease photo

Stop Creating More Shortfalls

If State Auditor Stacey Pickering gets his way, the state could end up paying an extra $3 million for a bill that has already been paid.

[Balko] Getting Forensics Right

by Radley Balko March 14, 2011 After countless scandals in recent years, the problems with America's forensics system are finally getting some national attention. In December, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill to reform the country's crime labs. In January, ProPublica and Frontline teamed up for a year-long investigation into the ways criminal autopsies are conducted across the country.

It's About Jobs, Not ‘Obamacare'

Republicans managed to snag a U.S. House of Representatives majority last week, and many consider this a "mandate" to repeal health-care reform meant to hold insurance companies accountable and provide more people with health-care options.

[Hutchinson] Where Was the World When Haiti Really Needed It?

The heartbreaking and pathetic scene that I and a group of American visitors witnessed at the small beach town in Northern Haiti still haunts me. We had no sooner arrived at the beach when a contingent of Haitian police and local officials frantically waved away a throng of the town's residents who had poured onto to the beach to hawk food, trinkets, carvings and tattered clothing items—but mostly to beg.

[Stiggers] Bus-Driving Deacons

"Even though the cold-heartedness of people brings a chill to my soul, I will do my best to remain warm and sympathetic to the needs of others."

The Path of Least Drama

Everyone who reads me regularly knows that I despise the question "Why does she stay?" when asked about domestic-abuse victims.

[Stiggers] Bum Education, Double-Digit Inflation

Cootie McBride: "About a week ago, I spoke at a law and order conference. After what I thought was a convincing presentation, an affluent member of high society asked me: 'What causes law-abiding people to become so lawless and angry?'

Message For Our Time

Only the family of God can solve the problem of education in Mississippi. The Bible says that "You should train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it."

[Viewpoint] My Mississippi Delta

Being born in the Bolivar County hospital on a sweltering day in August is just about my chief claim to credibility as a writer. I was raised in the Mississippi Delta, which seems to produce writers and artists in staggering numbers. I have many ideas as to why this is true, but I've refused to write about the Delta much, because my feelings toward it run deep and very conflicted. There is great disparity in the Delta between the "haves" and the "have nots," although often it's only about who owns the seeds.

[Balko] Abolish Drunk Driving Laws

Last week Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo advocated for creating a new criminal offense: "driving while ability impaired." The problem with the current Texas law prohibiting "driving while intoxicated," Acevedo explained, is that it doesn't allow him to arrest a driver whose blood-alcohol content is below 0.08 percent without additional evidence of impairment.

GOP: Avoid Tea Party Kool-Aid

That Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and many Mississippi Republicans are aligning themselves with the tea party comes as little surprise. Bryant told The Clarion-Ledger last week that tea-party beliefs "are much like mine."

[Mott] Nearing Nirvana

I've always been fascinated with how my brain works. Sometimes, it's downright confounding. Take dieting, for example. I know exactly what I should be eating (and not eating), but I can talk myself out of doing what's good for me in a hot second.