Mississippi Today
‘A friend in a high place’: Alcorn State interim president could be latest internal hire by IHL
Alcorn State Univerity’s interim president appears to have at least some campus support if he wants the full appointment.
But if Mississippi’s public university governing board forgoes a national search and appoints Tracy Cook, it will mark the ninth time in 10 years that it has hired an internal candidate as a top leader.
One was a university president already. Some were acting or interim presidents when given the full appointment. Others had worked as commissioners within the Institutions of Higher Learning.
Cook, who was the vice president of student affairs when he was tapped as interim, did not respond to inquiries from Mississippi Today asking if he wants the job. But he has what it takes to bring life back to the waning campus, some students, faculty and alumni told members of the IHL Board of Trustees last week.
“The student body was given a questionnaire, and it was highly expressed that we would like Dr. Cook as our next president,” said Jordan Buck, the student government association president.
Some of IHL’s internal hires — like Nora Miller, who had served as Mississippi University for Women’s acting president, senior vice president for administration and chief financial officer before the board permanently appointed her the day of the listening sessions — have gone over without a hitch. But others have landed the board in hot water, sparking protests, accusations of favoritism and even bills to abolish IHL.
Just three presidents since 2014 have been hired from outside the state of Mississippi: Jeffrey Vitter at the University of Mississippi, Felecia Nave at Alcorn State and Daniel Ennis at Delta State University, who was appointed following a rare split vote. Nave, who IHL fired last year, was an Alcorn State alumnus.
Either way, IHL makes an unusually high number of internal hires for a public university system, said Judith Wilde, a George Mason University professor who studies presidential searches. She added internal hires are more common at private universities where presidents are often appointed on the strength of their connections.
“Having a friend in a high place who can help you is good for the candidate,” Wilde said. “I don’t know that it’s always the best for the institution.”
On the other hand, internal hires could mean that Mississippi’s universities are growing their own, which Bill Crawford, who served on the IHL board from 1992 to 2004, said is a sign of healthy institutions. He noted some of Mississippi’s most esteemed college presidents were internal hires, like Aubrey Lucas, who was president of Delta State before he led USM.
What makes the difference, Crawford said, is proper vetting. In Mississippi and across the country, university presidents are among the best-paid public officials.
“What you’re trying to do as a board is find the best person, and whatever means you can use to come up with that is what you oughta use,” he said.
John Sewell, IHL’s spokesperson, wrote in an email that the board’s goal is to find the right person for the position who can be prepared to lead on day one.
“Decisions of the Board are always made in the best interest of the institution,” he wrote.
IHL has not released a timeline for the Alcorn State search. At the listening sessions, Alfred Rankins, the commissioner and former Alcorn State president, said the board would decide what kind of search to conduct after hearing the community’s feedback.
When trustees meet for IHL’s regular board meeting later this week, they could likely discuss how to proceed during the executive session. Typically following the listening sessions, the board hires a headhunting firm and convenes a search committee of students, faculty, staff and alumni.
But even if IHL decides to conduct a national search, the board can change its mind.
IHL is constitutionally empowered to hire the university presidents, and board policies give trustees the authority to cut a search short at any time. That’s what happened in 2022, when IHL suspended its search to hire USM’s interim president, Joe Paul, after he received support during the listening sessions.
Paul’s appointment was largely applauded by faculty — including ones who had criticized IHL for empaneling a search committee with no rank-and-file faculty voices.
But at Jackson State University, IHL’s decision to name its deputy commissioner, Marcus Thompson, as president last year despite conducting a full-fledged national search drew ire.
At Alcorn State, Rankins, who was serving as deputy commissioner and had been acting president of Mississippi Valley State University, was an internal hire when he was appointed in 2014.
The following year, Cook came to Alcorn State to be Rankins’ chief of staff. Till then, Cook, an alumnus and one of Alcorn State’s best-ever football players, had spent his career working in various administrative levels in Jefferson and Claiborne county schools.
In 2018, Cook was promoted to interim vice president for student affairs, a position that came with a $20,000 pay bump. That same year, after Rankins became the IHL commissioner, Cook served on the advisory committee for IHL’s search for Rankins’ replacement.
In 2019, Cook was named vice president of student affairs permanently. He also oversaw enrollment management. Total enrollment at Alcorn State has fallen from 3,523 in fall 2019 to 2,894 in fall 2023, according to IHL and federal data.
Like Rankins, Cook is a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, which may have more college presidents than any historically Black fraternity in the nation.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
A Mississippi town moves a Confederate monument that became a shrouded eyesore
GRENADA (AP) — A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 — a figure that was tightly wrapped in tarps the past four years, symbolizing the community’s enduring division over how to commemorate the past.
Grenada’s first Black mayor in two decades seems determined to follow through on the city’s plans to relocate the monument to other public land. A concrete slab has already been poured behind a fire station about 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) from the square.
But a new fight might be developing. A Republican lawmaker from another part of Mississippi wrote to Grenada officials saying she believes the city is violating a state law that restricts the relocation of war memorials or monuments.
The Grenada City Council voted to move the monument in 2020, weeks after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis. The vote seemed timely: Mississippi legislators had just retired the last state flag in the U.S. that prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem.
The tarps went up soon after the vote, shrouding the Confederate soldier and the pedestal he stood on. But even as people complained about the eyesore, the move was delayed by tight budgets, state bureaucracy or political foot-dragging. Explanations vary, depending on who’s asked.
A new mayor and city council took office in May, prepared to take action. On Sept. 11, with little advance notice, police blocked traffic and a work crew disassembled and removed the 20-foot (6.1-meter) stone structure.
“I’m glad to see it move to a different location,” said Robin Whitfield, an artist with a studio just off Grenada’s historic square. “This represents that something has changed.”
Still, Whitfield, who is white, said she wishes Grenada leaders had invited the community to engage in dialogue about the symbol, to bridge the gap between those who think moving it is erasing history and those who see it as a daily reminder of white supremacy. She was among the few people watching as a crane lifted parts of the monument onto a flatbed truck.
“No one ever talked about it, other than yelling on Facebook,” Whitfield said.
Mayor Charles Latham said the monument has been “quite a divisive figure” in the town of 12,300, where about 57% of residents are Black and 40% are white.
“I understand people had family and stuff to fight and die in that war, and they should be proud of their family,” Latham said. “But you’ve got to understand that there were those who were oppressed by this, by the Confederate flag on there. There’s been a lot of hate and violence perpetrated against people of color, under the color of that flag.”
The city received permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the Confederate monument, as required. But Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes of Picayune said the fire station site is inappropriate.
“We are prepared to pursue such avenues that may be necessary to ensure that the statue is relocated to a more suitable and appropriate location,” she wrote, suggesting a Confederate cemetery closer to the courthouse square as an alternative. She said the Ladies Cemetery Association is willing to deed a parcel to the city to make it happen.
The Confederate monument in Grenada is one of hundreds in the South, most of which were dedicated during the early 20th century when groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy sought to shape the historical narrative by valorizing the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War.
The monuments, many of them outside courthouses, came under fresh scrutiny after an avowed white supremacist who had posed with Confederate flags in photos posted online killed nine Black people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Grenada’s monument includes images of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and a Confederate battle flag. It was engraved with praise for “the noble men who marched neath the flag of the Stars and Bars” and “the noble women of the South,” who “gave their loved ones to our country to conquer or to die for truth and right.”
A half-century after it was dedicated, the monument’s symbolism figured in a voting rights march. When the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders held a mass rally in downtown Grenada in June 1966, Robert Green of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference scrambled up the pedestal and planted a U.S. flag above the image of Davis.
The cemetery is a spot Latham himself had previously advocated as a new site for the monument, but he said it’s too late to change now, after the city already budgeted $60,000 for the move.
“So, who’s going to pay the city back for the $30,000 we’ve already expended to relocate this?” he said. “You should’ve showed up a year and a half ago, two years ago, before the city gets to this point.”
A few other Confederate monuments in Mississippi have been relocated. In July 2020, a Confederate soldier statue was moved from a prominent spot at the University of Mississippi to a Civil War cemetery in a secluded part of the Oxford campus. In May 2021, a Confederate monument featuring three soldiers was moved from outside the Lowndes County Courthouse in Columbus to another cemetery with Confederate soldiers.
Lori Chavis, a Grenada City Council member, said that since the monument was covered by tarps, “it’s caused nothing but more divide in our city.”
She said she supports relocating the monument but worries about a lawsuit. She acknowledged that people probably didn’t know until recently exactly where it would reappear.
“It’s tucked back in the woods, and it’s not visible from even pulling behind the fire station,” Chavis said. “And I think that’s what got some of the citizens upset.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: New Orleans sports columnist and author Jeff Duncan joins the podcast to talk about his new Steve Gleason book and the new-look New Orleans Saints.
Jeff Duncan went from the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Saturday to Jerry World in Dallas on Sunday where he watched and wrote about the Saints’ total dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys. We talk about both events and also about what happened in high school and college football last weekend and what’s coming up this weekend.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1899
Sept. 18, 1899
Scott Joplin, known as “the King of Ragtime,” copyrighted the “Maple Leaf Rag,” which became the first song to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music. The popularity launched a sensation surrounding ragtime, which has been called America’s “first classical music.”
Born near Texarkana, Texas, Joplin grew up in a musical family. He worked on the railroad with other family members until he was able to earn money as a musician, traveling across the South. He wound up playing at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, where he met fellow musician Otis Saunders, who encouraged him to write down the songs he had been making up to entertain audiences. In all, Joplin wrote dozens of ragtime songs.
After some success, he moved to New York City, hoping he could make a living while stretching the boundaries of music. He wrote a ragtime ballet and two operas, but success in these new forms eluded him. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in New York City in 1917.
More than six decades later, his music was rediscovered, initially by Joshua Rifkin, who recorded Joplin’s songs on a record, and then Gunther Schuller of the New England Conservatory, who performed four of the ragtime songs in concert: “My faculty, many of whom had never even heard of Joplin, were saying things like, ‘My gosh, he writes melodies like Schubert!’”
Joplin’s music won over even more admirers through the 1973 movie, “The Sting,” which won an Oscar for the music. His song, “The Entertainer,” reached No. 3 on Billboard and was ranked No. 10 among “Songs of the Century” list by the Recording Industry Association of America. His opera “Treemonisha” was produced to wide acclaim, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his special contribution to American music.
“The ragtime craze, the faddish thing, will obviously die down, but Joplin will have his position secure in American music history,” Rifkin said. “He is a treasurable composer.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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