A group of civil rights organizations wrote a letter to Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office Tuesday asking for an explanation for why the agency declared that Wednesday would be the final day that elections workers could process mail-in absentee ballots. 

Representatives from Disability Rights Mississippi, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the state conference of the NAACP said that Watson’s office, which oversees state elections, unilaterally counted Friday, November 29, as a business day, even though the state government considered that day a holiday. 

The questions from the three organizations come at a time when incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens and Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning remain locked in a tight race for a seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court as absentee ballots are being counted. 

The reason for the questions surrounding what the agency considers a business day is that current state law allows local election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots for five business days after Election Day, as long as the absentee ballots were postmarked by the date of the election. 

Though the United States Postal Service conducted business on Friday November 29, Gov. Tate Reeves declared November 28 and November 29 state holidays because of Thanksgiving. 

“The decision to count Friday, November 29, 2024, as a ‘business day’ disregards Mississippi law, which will lead to voter confusion and undermine the ability of Mississippi voters to participate in the electoral process,” the letter said. 

The decision to count November 29 as a business day, means that December 4 is the deadline for local officials to process the mail-in ballots — not December 5 as originally planned.

Watson’s office declined to comment. 

The secretary of state’s office also published a 2024 elections calendar this year that stated December 5 – not December 4 – would be the deadline for local election workers to process absentee ballots, though the calendar is for planning purposes only. 

Neither candidate in the Supreme Court runoff has conceded the race yet, and county officials have until Friday December 6 to certify the results and transmit them to Watson’s office. 

A federal appeals court ruled last month that Mississippi’s process of accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day violated federal law, though the ruling did not apply to this year’s election.

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

Anyone who has read this column regularly through the years knows my love of history, Mississippi sports history in particular. That passion only increases when it involves my hometown, Hattiesburg.

This Saturday night, the undefeated Hattiesburg High Tigers will play Grenada for the State Class 6A Championship. Should Hattiesburg win, it would mark the school’s first state football championship in precisely 100 years. That’s right: On Dec. 5, 1924, undefeated Hattiesburg defeated Louisville 20-14 at Laurel for the state championship.

Hattiesburg High has won several state championships in other sports, but the 1924 championship remains the school’s only state football crown. And boy oh boy, is there some history there.

Let’s start with this: Hattiesburg businessmen chartered a 12-car train from Southern Railway for the 30-mile trip to Laurel. What’s more, they had the cars decorated in school colors, purple and gold. According to reports in the next day’s Hattiesburg American, more than 3,000 Hattiesburgers — nearly 1,000 on the train — made the trip, especially impressive since the entire town’s population was then just over 13,000 in the 1920 census.

More than 5,000 fans in all attended the championship game, at the time the second largest crowd to attend a sporting event in Mississippi history, second only to an Ole Miss-Mississippi State football game at the State Fairgrounds in Jackson.

Since there were no stadium lights back then, the state championship game was played in the afternoon. When the victorious Tigers and their huge following arrived back in the Hub City at 6:47 p.m. they were greeted by all the town’s industrial whistles and police and ambulance sirens. Hattiesburg telephone operators reported nearly 2,000 calls from alarmed residents wondering what in the world had happened to cause such a ruckus. A parade led by the mayor through downtown Hattiesburg drew a larger crowd than the parade that celebrated the end of World War I, the Hattiesburg American reported.

“The Tigers of Hattiesburg were in possession of the city,” the American reported the next day. “The sweet taste of victory sent the crowd of more than 3,000 into a riot of cheering … This kept up until late in the evening.”

So much history: Two of the Tigers heroes that night were brothers Gerald “Gee” and Harvey “Hubby” Walker, who would go on to become football and baseball stars at Ole Miss and then on to play Major League Baseball. Gee Walker was an American League All-Star who batted .353 in 1936 and remains the only player in Major League history to hit for the cycle (home run, triple, double and single) on Opening Day, which he did, in that order, in 1937 with the Detroit Tigers.

For the Hattiesburg state champs of 2024, Gee Walker caught the passes that his brother Hubby threw. Hansel Batten, a sturdy, handsome youngster, was the Hattiesburg running star who scored two touchdowns, including the game-winner. Batten would go on to star at Ole Miss, where he was teammates again with the Walker brothers. Batten played both running back and linebacker and captained the Ole Miss football team. After that, his story takes huge turn.

Batten would become the sports editor and sometimes news reporter of the Hattiesburg American, often writing about the sport he once played so well. Tragically, in 1932, Batten was the victim of an apparent murder. Tom and Venie Jones, a husband and wife, were charged with the crime. The husband was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but later granted a new trial and acquitted. The wife was acquitted after a series of trials. The story of Batten’s mysterious death and the trials that followed is covered in a fascinating podcast series “Reckless on the Rails” by Ellisville journalist/historian William T. Browning that can be accessed here. I highly recommend.

A much happier story is that the modern day Hattiesburg High Tigers, coached by Tony Vance and quarterbacked by his son Deuce Vance, will play for a second state championship 100 years after the historic first. Former Mississippi State standout Michael Fair coaches Grenada, which enters the championship game with a 14-1 record. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. Saturday night. 

It should be a terrific game. One thing is certain, should Hattiesburg (13-0) win, the Hub City will have a hard time topping the historic celebration that occurred 100 years ago this week.

Columnist Rick Cleveland is a 1970 graduate of Hattiesburg High and a former sports editor of the Hattiesburg American. His father, Robert “Ace” Cleveland, was sports editor of the Hattiesburg American when Rick was born. Ace Cleveland, a four-sport letterman at Hattiesburg High, earned his nickname when the Hattiesburg American referred to him as Hattiesburg High’s “ace placekicker.” It stuck.

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

The U.S. Navy is transforming a costly flub into a potent weapon with the first shipborne hypersonic weapon, which is being retrofitted aboard the first of its three stealthy destroyers.

The USS Zumwalt is at a Mississippi shipyard where workers have installed missile tubes that replace twin turrets from a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive. Once the system is complete, the Zumwalt will provide a platform for conducting fast, precision strikes from greater distances, adding to the usefulness of the warship.

“It was a costly blunder. But the Navy could take victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get some utility out of them by making them into a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.

The U.S. has had several types of hypersonic weapons in development for the past two decades, but recent tests by both Russia and China have added pressure to the U.S. military to hasten their production.

Hypersonic weapons travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, with added maneuverability making them harder to shoot down.

Last year, The Washington Post reported that among the documents leaked by former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was a defense department briefing that confirmed China had recently tested an intermediate-range hypersonic weapon called the DF-27. While the Pentagon had previously acknowledged the weapon’s development, it had not recognized its testing.

One of the U.S. programs in development and planned for the Zumwalt is the “Conventional Prompt Strike.” It would launch like a ballistic missile and then release a hypersonic glide vehicle that would travel at speeds seven to eight times faster than the speed of sound before hitting the target. The weapon system is being developed jointly by the Navy and Army. Each of the Zumwalt-class destroyers would be equipped with four missile tubes, each with three of the missiles for a total of 12 hypersonic weapons per ship.

In choosing the Zumwalt, the Navy is attempting to add to the usefulness of a $7.5 billion warship that is considered by critics to be an expensive mistake despite serving as a test platform for multiple innovations.

The Zumwalt was envisioned as providing land-attack capability with an Advanced Gun System with rocket-assisted projectiles to open the way for Marines to charge ashore. But the system featuring 155 mm guns hidden in stealthy turrets was canceled because each of the rocket-assisted projectiles cost between $800,000 and $1 million.

Despite the stain on its reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers remain the Navy’s most advanced surface warship in terms of new technologies. Those innovations include electric propulsion, an angular shape to minimize radar signature, an unconventional wave-piercing hull, automated fire and damage control and a composite deckhouse that hides radar and other sensors.

The Zumwalt arrived at the Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in August 2023 and was removed from the water for the complex work of integrating the new weapon system. It is due to be undocked this week in preparation for the next round of tests and its return to the fleet, shipyard spokeswoman Kimberly Aguillard said.

A U.S. hypersonic weapon was successfully tested over the summer and development of the missiles is continuing. The Navy wants to begin testing the system aboard the Zumwalt in 2027 or 2028, according to the Navy.

The U.S. weapon system will come at a steep price. It would cost nearly $18 billion to buy 300 of the weapons and maintain them over 20 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Critics say there is too little bang for the buck.

“This particular missile costs more than a dozen tanks. All it gets you is a precise non-nuclear explosion, some place far far away. Is it really worth the money? The answer is most of the time the missile costs much more than any target you can destroy with it,” said Loren Thompson, a longtime military analyst in Washington, D.C.

But they provide the capability for Navy vessels to strike an enemy from a distance of thousands of kilometers — outside the range of most enemy weapons — and there is no effective defense against them, said retired Navy Rear Adm. Ray Spicer, CEO of the U.S. Naval Institute, an independent forum focusing on national security issues, and former commander of an aircraft carrier strike force.

Conventional missiles that cost less aren’t much of a bargain if they are unable to reach their targets, Spicer said, adding the U.S. military really has no choice but to pursue them.

“The adversary has them. We never want to be outdone,” he said.

The U.S. is accelerating development because hypersonics have been identified as vital to U.S. national security with “survivable and lethal capabilities,” said James Weber, principal director for hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies.

“Fielding new capabilities that are based on hypersonic technologies is a priority for the defense department to sustain and strengthen our integrated deterrence, and to build enduring advantages,” he said.

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