Nov. 14, 1960

Federal marshals escorted 6-year-old Ruby Bridges into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Day after day, whites jeered at the Mississippi native and three other Black children, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne and Tessie Prevost, who became the first to attend all-white elementary schools in the South. 

Many white families left the school in protest, but Barbara Henry stayed and taught Bridges. Norman Rockwell depicted Bridges’ entry in his painting “The Problem We All Live With,” and she received the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001. There is now a statue of her outside the elementary school, which bears her name. 

“I was an innocent child that knew absolutely nothing about what was happening that day,” she recalled, “but I learned a very valuable lesson — we should never look at a person and judge them by the color of their skin. That’s the lesson I learned in first grade.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday announced that state agencies are disbursing over $110 million toward economic development, infrastructure upgrades and workforce development around the state. 

The funding for the projects is coming from the state Legislature, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission and the federal government. 

“We’ve secured billions in new private-sector investment and created thousands of jobs across the state,” Reeves said. “The funding we announced today will go a long way toward continuing Mississippi’s economic momentum and will help create more high-paying job opportunities for Mississippians across the state.” 

The bulk of the spending will go toward developing and improving industrial sites, which are often used to entice manufacturing companies to locate or expand operations in the state. If these sites have adequate infrastructure near them, companies are more likely to locate there.

Despite new investment in the state, Mississippi continues to grapple with one of the lowest rates in the nation of people who are actively seeking work or employed, at 53.9%. 

State Economist Corey Miller said at a legislative hearing last week that one of the reasons Mississippi is also experiencing a relatively low unemployment rate of 2.8% is because people have stopped looking for jobs. 

Reeves said on Wednesday that Mississippi may have a low percentage of people looking for jobs because the state has a relatively low cost of living and some families can afford to have only one income. 

“If an individual doesn’t want a job, the government ain’t going to force them to get a job,” Reeves said. “And that’s just a reality.” 

Still, the governor believes Mississippi can improve its labor force participation rate by improving education and providing people with better work skills. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel incorrectly interpreted federal and state laws when it ruled that Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that are cast and postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days later, two groups argue as they seek a new hearing.

Attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans are asking the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling that a portion of the court issued Oct. 25.

The ruling did not affect the counting of ballots for the Nov. 5 election because the three-judge panel noted that federal court precedents discourage court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election.

However, the case could affect voting across the U.S. if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.

The attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans argue in court papers filed Friday that the panel of judges “incorrectly suggested that post-election day ballot receipt deadlines are a recent invention.”

“In fact, the practice of counting ballots cast by election day but received afterward goes back to the Civil War, when many states permitted soldiers to vote in the field before sending their ballots to soldiers’ home precincts,” attorneys for the two groups wrote.

Many states have laws that allow counting of ballots that are cast by Election Day but received later, the attorneys wrote.

“Far from making any attempt to preempt these laws, Congress has acknowledged and approved of them for more than five decades,” they wrote.

The three-judge panel of the conservative appeals court reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others.

Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his election law blog that the ruling by the appeals court panel was a “bonkers opinion” and noted that “every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”

Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

The list of states that allow mailed ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.

In July, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit over counting mailed ballots in Nevada. The Republican National Committee has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive that case.

Guirola wrote that Mississippi’s law does not conflict with federal election laws. The suit challenging the Mississippi law argued that the state improperly extends the federal election and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”

Guirola disagreed, writing that “no ‘final selection’ is made after the federal election day under Mississippi’s law. All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day.”

Although the Mississippi challenge was led by Republicans and Libertarians, there is bipartisan support for the state’s practice. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is defending the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Michael Watson, in the lawsuit. Both are Republicans.

Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.