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Mississippi Today

Arts and humanities leaders visit Mississippi, come away with stories, ideas, affirmations

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In a memory quilt by Hystercine Rankin at the Mississippi Museum of Art, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson found a touchstone for a phrase that echoed throughout her recent Jackson visit: “the opportunity to live an artful life.”

“It’s always available to us,” Jackson said, and not limited to designated places but alive in opportunities to make, teach and learn, and even in traditions handed down in families. “That quilting tradition, and how it shows up — from a living culture to something that is hung with so much pride on the walls of an esteemed cultural institution — there’s something in that, that demonstrates the breadth of what can encompass an artful life.

“If we have artful lives, and we’re able to see each other’s humanity, it’s such a pre-condition for all of the other things we say we want to do as a nation of opportunity and justice,” Jackson said.

Read: Ravi Lovett, healing quilter and art therapist

National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Shelly Lowe, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, found a welcome grounding at the Choctaw Chahta Immi Cultural Center in Philadelphia, the first site in her first visit to Mississippi. Conversations about the Choctaw dictionary project, and the importance of maintaining their language and cultural teachings, resonated. As did the commitment of smaller organizations she visited, such as the Smith Robertson Museum in Jackson, to confront and share histories that can sometimes be hard to face.

“This is what the humanities does,” Lowe said. “It helps us take this information, take difficult histories, and it allows us to pause and really think about those histories. To process that. The humanities, and I would argue the arts, give us the strength to move forward.”

Their recent visit, in company with leaders of other national and regional arts and culture groups, offered a firsthand look at work in Jackson and central Mississippi that fosters creative pursuits, cultural celebration, connection, conversations and community cohesion.

The 50th anniversary reconvening of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, Nov. 1-4, was the core attraction, with its roster of illustrious Black women writers, including Alice Walker and Sonia Sanchez, who were also part of the original conference Margaret Walker organized at Jackson State University in 1973.

The 2023 conference at JSU and the Jackson Convention Complex pulled in the next generation of prominent Black women writers, with Jesmyn Ward and Angie Thomas among a host of keynote participants. With intergenerational conversations a big draw, the festival tapped elder wisdom and contemporary voices and vigor, to inspire and energize listeners in the continued uplift of Black excellence, and as a force to reckon with injustice and trauma both past and now.

The convening amplified arts’ and humanities’ central role in daily life in Jackson and far beyond, said Phoebe Stein, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. “Not a luxury, but central to how we understand ourselves, and how we relate and live in community with others.”

Difficult histories — unpacked, discussed and shared to unite and strengthen — were as much a thread as celebration and support during leaders’ jam-packed itinerary. Both endowment chairs were part of the poetry festival’s closing panel, a tribute to Margaret Walker, and their twin presence in Jackson offered a prime chance for show-and-tell by Mississippi’s cultural leaders.

Mississippi Arts Commission’s David Lewis and Mississippi Humanities Council’s Stuart Rockoff built out “Chair-a-paloosa,” as they informally dubbed the gathering, with a robust schedule highlighting grantees in action.

Arts and humanities visitors hear about the history of the Utica Institute from Jean Greene, co-director of the Utica Institute Museum. Credit: Photo by David Lewis

In addition to the poetry festival, tours and stops took in Sipp Culture in Utica, the Utica Institute Museum, the Choctaw Chahta Immi Cultural Center in Philadelphia, and in Jackson, JSU, the Two Mississippi Museums, Smith Robertson Museum, Mississippi Museum of Art, Tougaloo College, the Asylum Hill Research Project and more. At Tougaloo’s historic Woodworth Chapel, they saw a preview of New Stage Theatre’s “Anne & Emmett’ Arts in Education production, a “meeting in memory” between Anne Frank and Emmett Till.

It’s rare to get that many national arts and humanities figures together, and rarer still to host them in such a small-town setting, noted Carlton Tucker, co-director of Sipp Culture, which harnesses food and story to reimagine their community and outfit it for the future. “For them to take an interest in a small, rural community and the work that we’re doing there, is remarkable, but it’s also remarkable for the state of Mississippi, because it just shows that there are a lot of things happening here that don’t necessarily show by the way that people think about the state from a national perspective.”

South Arts President and CEO Susie Surkamer praised the “incredible amount of really substantial work going on, and in all types of settings” in Mississippi, “and such high quality.” In much of it, the importance of involving the community also stood out. “That doesn’t always happen with every institution or organization, so that is wonderful to see.”

For the cadre of arts and humanities leaders, it was a chance to connect outside of a Zoom room or formal meetings, have cultural and historical experiences together “and really sit with the arc of American history and Mississippi’s place in that, and really consider the implications on our own work today,” said David Holland, co-chair of the Creative States Coalition and deputy director of WESTAF (Western States Arts Federation). “It really puts it into context … the significance of arts and culture to people’s lives, to healing, to understanding our history, to moving forward in a more just future together.”

“It is a treat for them and an opportunity for Mississippi to be a backdrop for larger conversations about our nation,” Lewis said. Plus, the showcase of daily arts-related work in both rural and metro settings in Mississippi can “really be a beacon … for the rest of the country.”

As well as the profile boost, it can bring benefits later on and inspire organizations to apply for funding, Rockoff said. “We hope, down the road, that it results in more grant funding coming to Mississippi.

“We’re a poor state. … In other states, there are plenty of other funders for these types of cultural activities. So, to have that support from the national endowments — that relatively small amount of money goes a long way here.”

There’s payoff, too, in the favorable impressions festival participants and visiting leaders pack up, take with them and spread back home.

National, state and local arts and humanities leaders pose with cast and crew members of “Anne and Emmett,” a New Stage Theatre production in partnership with NEH’s United We Stand initiative, at Tougaloo College’s historic Woodworth Chapel. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Arts Commission

On Lowe’s flight from Atlanta to Jackson last week, it was clear half the plane was bound for the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, she said. “This festival brought in so many young African-American women — scholars, artists, poets, writers — who are all across the country, but they’re here in Mississippi,” sharing the impact of the people, the place and the program here.

“And, they’re all going to leave here, right? Talking about how they were here in Mississippi and how Mississippi is playing such a big part in their lives,” Lowe said. “Things like that are a very good way to say, ‘This is our history. This is the power of what we’ve done. This is where we’re going to continue to keep doing it.’”

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1997

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-22 07:00:00

Dec. 22, 1997

Myrlie Evers and Reena Evers-Everette cheer the jury verdict of Feb. 5, 1994, when Byron De La Beckwith was found guilty of the 1963 murder of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Credit: AP/Rogelio Solis

The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. 

In the court’s 4–2 decision, Justice Mike Mills praised efforts “to squeeze justice out of the harm caused by a furtive explosion which erupted from dark bushes on a June night in Jackson, Mississippi.” 

He wrote that Beckwith’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had not been denied. His “complicity with the Sovereignty Commission’s involvement in the prior trials contributed to the delay.” 

The decision did more than ensure that Beckwith would stay behind bars. The conviction helped clear the way for other prosecutions of unpunished killings from the Civil Rights Era.

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

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Mississippi Today

Medicaid expansion tracker approaches $1 billion loss for Mississippi

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-12-22 06:00:00

About the time people ring in the new year next week, the digital tracker on Mississippi Today’s homepage tabulating the amount of money the state is losing by not expanding Medicaid will hit $1 billion.

The state has lost $1 billion not since the start of the quickly departing 2024 but since the beginning of the state’s fiscal year on July 1.

Some who oppose Medicaid expansion say the digital tracker is flawed.

During an October news conference, when state Auditor Shad White unveiled details of his $2 million study seeking ways to cut state government spending, he said he did not look at Medicaid expansion as a method to save money or grow state revenue.

“I think that (Mississippi Today) calculator is wrong,” White said. “… I don’t think that takes into account how many people are going to be moved off the federal health care exchange where their health care is paid for fully by the federal government and moved onto Medicaid.”

White is not the only Mississippi politician who has expressed concern that if Medicaid expansion were enacted, thousands of people would lose their insurance on the exchange and be forced to enroll in Medicaid for health care coverage.

Mississippi Today’s projections used for the tracker are based on studies conducted by the Institutions of Higher Learning University Research Center. Granted, there are a lot of variables in the study that are inexact. It is impossible to say, for example, how many people will get sick and need health care, thus increasing the cost of Medicaid expansion. But is reasonable that the projections of the University Research Center are in the ballpark of being accurate and close to other studies conducted by health care experts.

White and others are correct that Mississippi Today’s calculator does not take into account money flowing into the state for people covered on the health care exchange. But that money does not go to the state; it goes to insurance companies that, granted, use that money to reimburse Mississippians for providing health care. But at least a portion of the money goes to out-of-state insurance companies as profits.

Both Medicaid expansion and the health care exchange are part of the Affordable Care Act. Under Medicaid expansion people earning up to $20,120 annually can sign up for Medicaid and the federal government will pay the bulk of the cost. Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not opted into Medicaid expansion.

People making more than $14,580 annually can garner private insurance through the health insurance exchanges, and people below certain income levels can receive help from the federal government in paying for that coverage.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation championed and signed into law by President Joe Biden significantly increased the federal subsidies provided to people receiving insurance on the exchange. Those increased subsidies led to many Mississippians — desperate for health care — turning to the exchange for help.

White, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, Gov. Tate Reeves and others have expressed concern that those people would lose their private health insurance and be forced to sign up for Medicaid if lawmakers vote to expand Medicaid.

They are correct.

But they do not mention that the enhanced benefits authored by the Biden administration are scheduled to expire in December 2025 unless they are reenacted by Congress. The incoming Donald Trump administration has given no indication it will continue the enhanced subsidies.

As a matter of fact, the Trump administration, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is looking for ways to cut federal spending.

Some have speculated that Medicaid expansion also could be on Musk’s chopping block.

That is possible. But remember congressional action is required to continue the enhanced subsidies. On the flip side, congressional action would most likely be required to end or cut Medicaid expansion.

Would the multiple U.S. senators and House members in the red states that have expanded Medicaid vote to end a program that is providing health care to thousands of their constituents?

If Congress does not continue Biden’s enhanced subsidies, the rates for Mississippians on the exchange will increase on average about $500 per year, according to a study by KFF, a national health advocacy nonprofit. If that occurs, it is likely that many of the 280,000 Mississippians on the exchange will drop their coverage.

The result will be that Mississippi’s rate of uninsured — already one of the highest in the nation – will rise further, putting additional pressure on hospitals and other providers who will be treating patients who have no ability to pay.

In the meantime, the Mississippi Today counter that tracks the amount of money Mississippi is losing by not expanding Medicaid keeps ticking up.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1911

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-21 07:00:00

Dec. 21, 1911

A colorized photograph of Josh Gibson, who was playing with the Homestead Grays Credit: Wikipedia

Josh Gibson, the Negro League’s “Home Run King,” was born in Buena Vista, Georgia. 

When the family’s farm suffered, they moved to Pittsburgh, and Gibson tried baseball at age 16. He eventually played for a semi-pro team in Pittsburgh and became known for his towering home runs. 

He was watching the Homestead Grays play on July 25, 1930, when the catcher injured his hand. Team members called for Gibson, sitting in the stands, to join them. He was such a talented catcher that base runners were more reluctant to steal. He hit the baseball so hard and so far (580 feet once at Yankee Stadium) that he became the second-highest paid player in the Negro Leagues behind Satchel Paige, with both of them entering the National Baseball Hame of Fame. 

The Hall estimated that Gibson hit nearly 800 homers in his 17-year career and had a lifetime batting average of .359. Gibson was portrayed in the 1996 TV movie, “Soul of the Game,” by Mykelti Williamson. Blair Underwood played Jackie Robinson, Delroy Lindo portrayed Satchel Paige, and Harvey Williams played “Cat” Mays, the father of the legendary Willie Mays. 

Gibson has now been honored with a statue outside the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.

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

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