Mississippi Today
On this day in 1927
Sept. 22, 1927
St. Louis native Josephine Baker became the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture. She played the lead role of Papitou in the French silent film, “Siren of the Tropics,” who, like Baker, found her true calling as a performer.
The film’s success led to other starring roles, an autobiography, the creation of a doll in her likeness and even a toothpaste commercial.
At age 11, Baker had witnessed racial violence in East St. Louis, “watching the glow of the burning of Negro homes lighting the sky. We children stood huddled together in bewilderment … frightened to death with the screams of the Negro families running across this bridge with nothing but what they had on their backs as their worldly belongings.”
After working in some choruses on Broadway, she traveled to Paris, where she became the most successful American entertainer working in France. Picasso drew paintings of her, author Ernest Hemingway spent hours talking to her in Paris bars. During World War II, she aided the French Resistance by socializing with the Germans while secretly gathering information that she transmitted to England, sometimes writing the information in invisible ink on her sheet music.
After the war, she received the Croix de Guerre, the medal of the Légion d’honneur and other medals. When she returned to the U.S., she refused to appear before segregated audiences, despite being offered up to $10,000 ($110,000 in today’s money) to perform. She fought to prevent Willie McGee’s execution in Mississippi, and in 1951, the NAACP honored her with a “Josephine Baker Day” and a parade of 100,000 in Harlem.
In 1963, she became the only official female speaker at the March on Washington. She adopted a dozen children in her lifetime from countries around the globe. She called her children the “Rainbow Tribe.” She played Carnegie Hall in 1973, the Royal Variety Performance in 1974 and a revue celebrating her 50 years in show business in 1975.
After rave reviews, she died unexpectedly after experiencing a cerebral hemorrhage. More than 20,000 attended her funeral, where she received full French military honors.
Diana Ross portrayed Baker in her Tony-winning Broadway show, an HBO movie told her life (for which Lynn Whitfield became the first Black actress to win an Emmy for Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Special), and she was depicted in the TV series, “Lovecraft Country.”
In 2021, Baker was inducted into the Panthéon in Paris — the first Black woman to receive this honor.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Meet the 2 Candidates for Mississippi Supreme Court’s Nov. 26 Runoff Election
On Tuesday, Nov. 26, voters will determine who will hold one of central Mississippi’s three seats on the nine-member state Supreme Court. This 22-county area includes Hinds County and Jackson.
Justice Jim Kitchens is seeking a third, eight-year term on the high court. State Sen. Jenifer B. Branning is the challenger.
The state Supreme Court often has the final say in cases involving criminal, civil and death penalty appeals, questions on the state’s laws and constitution, and legal issues of public interest. It hears appeals from lower courts, such as the chancery and circuit courts. The court decided 260 cases in 2023 and issued rulings in 2,656 motions and petitions.
The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today compiled information about each candidate to help you make an informed decision at the polls.
Admitted to Mississippi Bar: 1967
Residence: Crystal Springs, Copiah County
Relevant experience: Completing second term as Supreme Court justice; 41 years as practicing attorney, including nine as district attorney of Copiah, Walthall, Pike and Lincoln counties.
Campaign finance: As of Oct. 10, his campaign committee has raised $288,502, mostly from trial lawyers, and spent $189,675, leaving the campaign with $98,827. Read the latest report here.
Statement of economic interest: Kitchens and his wife are partners in a real estate company, Kitchens Properties, LLC, in Copiah County. Read the latest report here.
Kitchens was first elected to this seat in 2008, after more than 40 years practicing law, which includes nine years as a district attorney across four counties. He is one of two presiding justices, who have the most years on the bench, following the chief justice. Presiding justice is a role on the court’s executive committee that includes administrative duties, such as enforcing the court’s deadlines, and presiding over panels during oral arguments.
Campaigning at the 2024 Neshoba County Fair, Kitchens stressed his experience in the courtroom, especially on criminal cases, and promised impartiality.
Kitchens said he is “the guy that carries his oath of office around in his pocket as a daily reminder of what he swore to do. That oath teaches me that I’m not supposed to care whether people before the court are rich, poor, Black, White, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent. And I don’t care.”
Mississippi College of Law Professor Matthew Steffey described Kitchens as a “middle-of-the-road centrist.” On the bench, Kitchens’ dissents have keyed in on what the justice called oversteps in judicial power and scrutinized prosecutorial decisions.
Kitchens wrote a partial dissent on the decision about House Bill 1020, calling the creation of the court in Hinds County a “fiction of convenience that overreaches our judicial function, and of ultimate importance, our constitutional duty.” He also joined a dissenting opinion in the case that killed Mississippi’s ballot initiative.
Ensuring defendants who can’t afford representation have court-appointed lawyers is a theme throughout Kitchens’ career. He was the chair of the Public Defender Task Force, which was created in 2000 to study and make recommendations on the public defender systems in the state. In a 2018 interview with Mississippi Today, Kitchens expressed support for a more well-organized and adequately funded state public defender system for Mississippi.
The bulk of Kitchens’ campaign donations through Oct. 10 have come from trial lawyers. In addition to Mississippi attorneys, the campaign also received contributions from lawyers as far away as Oregon and Pennsylvania. In the three months since the July finance report, Kitchens’ campaign raised over $200,000, more than it had previously raised in the entire race. He has also received an endorsement from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group specializing in civil rights litigation.
Admitted to Mississippi Bar: 2004
Residence: Philadelphia, Neshoba County
Relevant experience: State senator since 2016.
Campaign finance: As of Oct. 10, Branning’s campaign committee has raised $665,624, including a $250,000 loan from the candidate, and spent $343,728. The campaign reported a balance of $319,876, which left a discrepancy of about $2,000. Read the latest report here.
Statement of economic interest: Branning is listed as member, owner, stockholder or partner in several companies located in Philadelphia, including her law firm, Branning Properties, LLC, and Triple E Investments. Read her latest report here.
Republican state Sen. Jenifer B. Branning is running on a platform to represent Mississippians’ conservative values on the Supreme Court, she said at the 2024 Neshoba County Fair candidate forum.
Branning has no judicial experience. Since she joined the Mississippi Bar in 2004, she has practiced as an attorney, primarily representing businesses through her private practice in areas including real estate development, banking and agribusiness. She has also served as a special prosecutor in Neshoba County, a guardian ad litem in Neshoba and Winston counties, and as a staff attorney in the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Division of Business Services & Regulation.
Branning described herself as a “Christian conservative.” She has been endorsed by the state’s Republican Party and the National Federation of Independent Business Mississippi PAC, a special interest group for small businesses. She has been outspoken about overturning Roe v. Wade and supporting the state’s abortion ban, and about reducing taxes on businesses. Branning is also a member of the National Rifle Association. On criminal justice issues, Branning has voted in favor of mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crimes including shoplifting, motor vehicle theft and fleeing law enforcement.
In the state Senate, Branning chairs the Highways and Transportation Committee. She has touted her record on lowering taxes and reducing regulations on farmers and small business owners.
Branning comes from multiple generations of business owners in Neshoba County. Her grandfather, Olen Burrage Jr., owned and operated a truck farm, hauling timber and corn, according to previous news reports.
Her election committee has received contributions from political action groups including Truck PAC, Mississippi Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Stores Association PAC and the Mississippi REALTOR PAC.
Much of Branning’s campaign funding, however, comes from the candidate herself. She kicked off her campaign with a $250,000 candidate loan. She has also bankrolled her previous senate campaigns, with candidate loans as high as $50,000 in 2018. This year, her campaign committee also received funding from other Republican politicians and their campaign funds, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, the Committee to Elect Jeremy England (state senator), Harkins for MS (state Senator Josh Harkins), and Friends of Jason White (Mississippi House speaker).
Branning did not acknowledge or return the candidate questionnaire from The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1915
Nov. 25, 1915
A week before the silent film, “Birth of a Nation,” premiered at an Atlanta theater, William Simmons, along with 15 other men (including some who lynched Leo Frank) burned a cross on Stone Mountain, Georgia, signaling the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan.
The movie’s racist portrayals of Black Americans prompted outrage by the NAACP and others, leading to huge protests in towns such as Boston and the film’s closing in Chicago.
Despite these protests, the movie became Hollywood’s first blockbuster, making as much as $100 million at the box office (the equivalent of $2.4 billion today). In the wake of the movie, the KKK became a national organization, swelling beyond 4 million members.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Mississippi Hospital Association’s Roberson discusses Medicaid expansion outlook under Trump, other 2025 legislative health care issues
Richard Roberson, president and CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association, tells Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender a new Trump administration would likely approve Mississippi Medicaid expansion work requirements. He says revamping the state’s certificate of need laws is likely to be a major issue before lawmakers, and he discusses a new alliance of hospitals that left the MHA and formed a new organization.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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