A new guided missile Navy destroyer ship will be named in honor of former Mississippi governor and U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.

Current Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro made the announcement this week at the Surface Navy Association’s 37th National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia.

The USS Ray Mabus will be built at Pascagoula’s Ingalls Shipbuilding, and Mabus’ daughter Liz Mabus will sponsor the ship.

“I am honored to announce four new ships which represent the future of our fleet,” Del Toro said in a news release.

Mabus served as Mississippi’s governor from 1988 until 1992 and was 39 years old when first elected. Before then, he was the state auditor. He later became the nation’s secretary of the Navy from 2009 until 2017, making him the longest serving Navy secretary since World War I.

Mabus was a surface warfare officer on the USS Little Rock in the early 1970s. He was later the ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President Bill Clinton.

“Serving my country in uniform as a young LTJG aboard a guided missile cruiser and then, decades later, leading our naval services are the greatest privileges and most consequential times of my life,” Mabus, an Ackerman native, said in a news release. “The highest honor of my life is to know that sailors will defend our country and represent our values around the world for years aboard a ship bearing my name. That LTJG would never have imagined and this former SECNAV could not be more thankful, more honored, or more moved.”

According to the news release, during Mabus’s tenure as secretary, “the Navy went from building fewer than five ships per year to having more than 70 under contract. He championed the ‘21st Century Sailor and Marine’ initiative to build and maintain the most resilient and ready force possible. He directed the Navy and Marine Corps to change the way they use, produce, and acquire energy, setting an aggressive goal of relying on alternative sources for at least 50% of their energy by 2020.”

Mabus also, at the direction President Barack Obama, developed the plan, the bulk of which was passed by Congress, to restore the Gulf of Mexico after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and massive oil spill.

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

Jan. 16, 1959

The Minneapolis Lakers met the Cincinnati Royals in an NBA game before a crowd in Charleston, West Virginia. Local fans were eager to see their hometown basketball hero, “Hot Rod” Hundley, play alongside rookie phenom Elgin Baylor, but Baylor sat out to protest racism he and other Black players had experienced the night before. 

“The first thing I said was I was really hurt by that,” he recalled. “I thought about it and I said, ‘I’m not going out there. We’re not like animals in the circus or something and then go out there and put a show on for them.’” 

After arriving in Charleston, a local hotel had denied rooms to him and the two other Black players, Boo Ellis and Ed Fleming. Hundley exploded, telling a hotel official, “You listen to me! You know who this is? Now find us some rooms! All of us!” The official refused, and the Lakers relocated elsewhere. 

The indignities didn’t end there. When the team tried to eat at a local restaurant, they refused to serve the Black players, too. Upset by Baylor’s absence at the game, a local promoter urged Maurice Podoloff, the president of the NBA, to discipline Baylor, calling the player’s absence from the lineup “most embarrassing to us.” 

The NBA president responded, “I would find it hard to punish a man for trying to protect his self-respect and dignity.’’ 

Baylor became one of the best basketball players of all time, a talented NBA executive and an ambassador for the sport. But it wouldn’t be his last encounter with racism. That came when he worked with Donald Sterling, then team owner of the LA Clippers. 

After audio tapes revealed his racism, Sterling was banned from the league. Three years before Baylor’s death in 2021, the Lakers unveiled a statue of him outside the arena, and he published a book about his life in basketball called “Hang Time.”

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

Some top lawmakers in Mississippi’s Republican-controlled Legislature are prepared to make it easier for students to transfer between public schools but remain skeptical of sending more public money to private schools.

During the second week of Mississippi’s legislative session, key lawmakers were still assessing the appetite in their caucuses for what some call “school choice” bills. The term can refer to several different policies, including using taxpayer funds to pay for the private school tuition of students transferring from public schools.

Proponents argue parents should have greater autonomy over their children’s education, but some lawmakers still have unanswered questions about whether the policies would serve their intended purpose. Opponents say that taking money from public schools would add financial strain to a system that they argue has already been underfunded for decades.

House Education Chair Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, said children in some rural areas don’t live near any private schools, and that funding private school tuition with taxpayer money could undermine public schools attended by the most needy students.

“In certain parts of our state, we can talk about choice all day long,” Roberson said. “But there are no other choices for a lot of these kids, and it’s really not fair to the public schools in regards to this, because public schools are given a mandate to educate all kids. Private schools are not given that mandate.”

In a pre-session interview, Republican House Speaker Jason White said he hoped to see a “true choice” bill for students in the worst performing school districts in the state who can “find acceptance” at any other school, public or private.

Lawmakers with sway over education policy said they had not yet seen such a proposal drafted. Allowing for open enrollment, or portability between public schools, has prompted questions from some lawmakers about what mechanism the state would use to force school districts to cooperate.

Current law allows students to transfer between public schools, but both the sending and receiving school boards must approve the request. Some school districts oppose changing that process, stirring backlash on racial and economic grounds.

In early January, the Madison County School District, a high-performing district in an affluent majority-white area, distributed a 2025 legislative agenda that included opposition against open enrollment. The policy would have negative effects on “school culture” and decrease property values, the district claimed. It also warned that local county taxes would fund students whose parents pay no taxes in Madison County.

In a social media post, Rep. Jansen Owen, R-Poplarville, who sits on the House Education Committee, said the subtext behind the district’s statement was clear.

“I’m just going to say it: ‘negative effects on school culture’ sounds a lot like ‘we don’t want Black or poor kids coming to Madison County Schools’. Also, it’s important to note that thousands of children whose parents don’t pay property taxes are educated in MS public schools every single day,” Owen wrote. “Do we treat the kids who live in rentals, apartments, government housing, etc. differently? I vote no, but the (Madison County School District) has a different opinion. Shame on them.”

Opponents have argued, however, that much of the school choice movement is code for re-segregating schools either by race or economic class.

State Auditor Shad White said he would demand the district reveal how much in taxpayer funds it spent printing the agenda. A call requesting comment from the Madison County School District was not immediately returned.

The ferocity of the local debate takes place as advocates of school choice feel emboldened by the election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has floated a tax credit for programs that fund private school tuition.

Douglas Carswell, president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, applauded the school choice proposals supported by White and Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann this session. But he vowed to keep pressuring Republicans to approve vouchers funding private school tuition.

“Organizations like ours have played too nicey nicey with some conservatives or pretend conservatives and there’s been a symbiotic relationship with conservative think tanks and politicians where we pretend that the mediocre reforms they passed 10-15 years ago were of great consequence,” Carswell said.

Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, said he supports allowing students in F-rated school districts to transfer to other public schools.

There are three institutions in the state with that rating: East Tallahatchie Consolidated School District, West Bolivar Consolidated School District and the Midtown Public Charter School in Jackson.

“To do that we’re going to have to fully fund the students and make up on the state side the amount of taxes that are paid by the local citizen,” Hosemann said. “It’s usually about a 70/30 split, with 70 percent coming from the state.”

Hosemann said he and Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, would like any open enrollment bill to include a capacity requirement, a provision designed to ensure schools have enough space in the requested grade level to accept new students.

The Senate is not considering passing a bill that funds private schools with public money, said Hannah Milliet, Hosemann’s spokesperson.

Both chambers are looking into updating the state’s Education Savings Account program for children with disabilities, which helps cover the cost of private school tuition for those students. The changes could include pumping more money into the program and removing a cap on the number of students that can apply for the program

Roberson also said there are too many school districts in Mississippi and he hopes to pass a bill to consolidate some of them. He did not rule out the possibility of legislation passing this session to send public money to private schools and expects a fierce debate to ensue regardless.

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