Mississippi Today
Jackson City Council VP resigns, admits to federal bribery charge
Jackson City Council’s vice president pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal bribery charge related to a proposed downtown development hours after resigning from her office.
Angelique Lee pleaded guilty to everything detailed in a bill of information.
Lee, who represented northwest Jackson’s Ward 2, admitted to a conspiracy to commit bribery by accepting โcash, deposits and other giftsโ valued at more than $5,000 from two federal agents posing as real estate developers from Nashville, Tennessee, who were attempting to influence her and reward her for her vote. She accepted those bribes from the undercover agents through an โunindicted co-conspirator,โ according to court documents. Twice they gave her a credit card to go shopping. โDon’t go too crazy but have an fโ great time,โ the bogus developer told her, according to testimony at Wednesday’s plea hearing.
In March, the โFacility Solutions Teamโ was one of three companies that bid to build a 335-room hotel across the street from the Jackson Convention Complex. That hotel was slated to include an open entertainment space and a parking garage.
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens II is listed as the registered agent for the Facility Solutions Team, which is a limited liability company.
The business’ address, the Downtown Cigar Company which is owned by Owens, was raided by the FBI on May 22, along with Owens’ office in the Hinds County Courthouse.
Lee’s attorney, Aafram Sellers, acknowledged the charges against his client are related to the hotel project.
Owens referred questions about Wednesday’s developments to his attorney Rob McDuff. McDuff told Mississippi Today in a statement that it is his understanding the federal investigation is not related to Owens’ work as district attorney.
McDuff acknowledged that Owens has participated in real estate business deals during the past 15 years, including owning two pieces of property in downtown Jackson.
โTwo gentlemen who claimed they were successful large-scale developers with their own development company raised with him the possibility of building a convention center hotel in Jackson,โ McDuff said. โHe believed them, and after multiple conversations, agreed to help them. It turns out they were operatives for the FBI.โ
According to the bill of information, Lee voted in favor of the real estate development project proposed by the Nashville developers and supported the closure of a road to aid that project.
โIt was further an object of the conspiracy to hide, conceal and cover up the nature and scope of the things of value that Lee received, including the true source and nature of the cash payments,โ court papers say.
She received a $10,000 electronic transfer from the FBI sources to pay off a portion of Lee’s campaign debt, a $3,000 cash payment on March 27 of this year, and $6,000 in credit card charges made at a โluxury retail store in the city of Jackson,โ according to the indictment. WLBT reported in July that Lee’s wages were being garnished to pay off nearly $21,000 in campaign debt.
Lee will have to forfeit any and all property or proceeds obtained through the criminal actions, including $13,654 in currency, a pair of Valentino wedge sandals, a Christian Louboutin tote bag, earrings, and other items.
In accepting her guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan III listed what she could no longer do, including holding office and serving on a jury. Lee’s voice broke as she acknowledged, โYes, sir.โ
Lee faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. She is scheduled to be sentenced at 10 a.m. Nov. 13.
Lee, 28, who has a master’s degree, defeated former Hinds County Sheriff Tyrone Lewis in a special election for the Ward 2 seat in 2020. She was elected to a full term the following year.
City Council President Virgi Lindsay released a copy of Lee’s resignation at a brief news conference Wednesday: โCircumstances that I am not at liberty to discuss at the moment have led to this decision,โ she wrote. โI will greatly miss working with each of you and I am proud of the work that we have done as a collective body for the city of Jackson and its citizens.โ
Lindsay said the council has to meet within the next 10 days to schedule a special election and the election will be held 30 to 45 days after that.
Owens was first elected as district attorney in 2019. At the time of the raids, he posted a statement on Facebook that his office continues to โwork on behalf of the citizens of Hinds County. That has been and will continue to be our primary focus.โ
Owens handled the state’s prosecution of people involved in a massive fraud case involving theft or misspending of millions of federal welfare dollars meant to help the poor.
The Terry native previously served as chief policy counsel and managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi office. He attended Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C., and worked for the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran as a legal intern for the Senate Appropriations Committee. Owens is a lieutenant intelligence officer in the Navy Reserves.
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) โ A Mississippi town has taken down a Confederate monument that stood on the courthouse square since 1910 โ 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 โthe King of Ragtime,โ copyrighted the โMaple Leaf Rag,โ 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 โfirst classical music.โย
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: โMy faculty, many of whom had never even heard of Joplin, were saying things like, โMy gosh, he writes melodies like Schubert!’โ
Joplin’s music won over even more admirers through the 1973 movie, โThe Sting,โ which won an Oscar for the music. His song, โThe Entertainer,โ reached No. 3 on Billboard and was ranked No. 10 among โSongs of the Centuryโ list by the Recording Industry Association of America. His opera โTreemonishaโ was produced to wide acclaim, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his special contribution to American music.ย
โThe ragtime craze, the faddish thing, will obviously die down, but Joplin will have his position secure in American music history,โ Rifkin said. โHe is a treasurable composer.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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