Mississippi Today
Jackson community leaders call out Henifin for lack of collaboration, personnel issues

Jackson community leaders call out Henifin for lack of collaboration, personnel issues
A group of Jackson community leaders on Wednesday panned the federally appointed manager of the city’s water system over a number of issues, including a lack of collaboration and transparency, the firing of an employee and awarding a large contract to an out-of-town business.
The Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, which has led water distribution efforts and rallies during the peaks of the Jackson water crisis, spoke to the media on Wednesday after meeting with officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice. In November, those two agencies agreed to a federal order with the city of Jackson that put a third-party manager, Ted Henifin, in control of rehabbing the drinking water system.
The EPA and DOJ are in Jackson this week meeting with residents, and asking both in person and through an online survey for input on the future of the water system. (Jacksonians interested in participating can access the survey at this link).
At the Wednesday meeting, the coalition asked the two federal agencies for more inclusion in the future decision-making process around the water system moving forward. As the coalition said to reporters after the meeting, there hasn’t been enough collaboration between Henifin and community members thus far.

“There has been no collaboration as it relates to the overall process,” Danyelle Holmes, a member of the coalition and National Social Justice Organizer with the Poor People’s Campaign, said, adding that residents haven’t been getting boil water notices during outages. “There’s no transparency, or accountability at all. We have not had meetings with (Henifin)… the collaboration has fallen short with the coalition.”
Under the federal order that put Henifin in charge, there’s little oversight over the manager’s role other than that of the U.S. judge who appointed him. As a non-public entity, Henifin’s organization, JXN Water, is not subject to public records laws, and it also can avoid state and local statutes around procuring contracts with public dollars. The order also allows Henifin to make changes, such as to the water billing system, without the approval of elected Jackson officials.
Henifin has repeatedly stated his commitment to being transparent, and said he wants the approval of Jacksonians before he makes changes to the billing system or recommends a new structure for future governance. In an interview with Mississippi Today, he talked about earning the trust of residents, and how he hopes that will start to take shape once they see improvements.

Henifin, who has appeared at several town hall events since his appointment, said his next step in making long-term changes to the water system is holding community engagement sessions, although JXN Water has not put out details for when those will be.
Coalition members said they were disappointed in how the federal takeover has played out so far in terms of working with the community. They were also frustrated with specific decisions Henifin has made so far, such as awarding a large operations and maintenance contract to Texas-based Jacobs Solutions.
Henifin announced last month the six-month contract, which will pay Jacobs $2 million a month to run the city’s water treatment plants and train local operators for long-term staffing.
“We have great pause when we bring in firms like Jacobs and pay them $2 million a month and we don’t pay our local firms anything in sight of that,” said Socrates Garrett, a Jackson businessman whose firm contracts engineering services. “We think that you could’ve had hired a minority firm as the primary contractor and let Jacobs be the (sub-contractor).”
Henifin told Mississippi Today that he expects to extend Jacobs’ contract between five to 10 years, adding that he also expects the extension to come at a cheaper monthly rate.
Holmes also alleged that Henifin “wrongfully” fired the one Black employee of JXN Water, Chief Experience Officer Tariq Abdul-Tawwab, last week. Abdul-Tawwab was brought on to improve the customer service experience for Jackson water customers, who for years have experienced unreliable billing and long wait times to reach anyone at the city’s water department.
While the nonprofit recently removed Abdul-Tawwab from its website, Henifin said in a statement yesterday that “it is not our policy” to comment on personnel decisions. Neither Henifin nor JXN Water responded to requests for comment in response to the coalition’s other criticisms.
Both Holmes and Garrett talked about the importance of JXN Water and its contractors reflecting the 83% Black capital city.
Claims about Abdul-Tawwab’s position with JXN Water comes just after a debt relief program he was helping to publicize made local news over questions of how the program was being funded.
Last week, after the city announced new federal funding that would relieve residents’ water bill debts, WLBT reported that Jackson hadn’t actually received all the federal funds that JXN Water thought it would to fund program. The city then, using another program, had to write off most of the debt it was relieving residents of, rather than paying the debt off, the story reported.
Despite Henifin later clarifying the confusion in a public statement, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Monday said he believed Henifin made a mistake in communicating details of the program, adding that it was done in good faith.

In the WLBT story, Henifin said he thought some of the confusion around funding amounts came from “his staff.” Abdul-Tawwab spoke at multiple public events to brief residents about the debt relief program. Other than those two, JXN Water has only had one other employee, Chief Operating Officer Jordan Hillman, according to its website.
In his statement Wednesday, Henifin added:
“We’ll continue our work improving the customer service experience and hope to maintain a relationship with the community organizations that helped introduce us to the Jackson community. We’re hopeful that all the community partners stay at the table and continue to hold us accountable to the people of Jackson.”
At its meeting with federal officials Wednesday, the coalition also presented a petition, which it says has over 6,000 signatures, asking the EPA to protect Jackson from a privatized water system, as well to provide water filters to ensure clean water for residents.
Questions over the future management of the water system emerged this legislative session when lawmakers tried, and failed, to create a state-controlled regional authority to oversee the system. Henifin, who opposed the bill, favors putting the system’s control under a nonprofit led by a board of constituents.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1939, Billie Holiday recorded ‘Strange Fruit’

April 20, 1939

Legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday stepped into a Fifth Avenue studio and recorded “Strange Fruit,” a song written by Jewish civil rights activist Abel Meeropol, a high school English teacher upset about the lynchings of Black Americans — more than 6,400 between 1865 and 1950.
Meeropol and his wife had adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were orphaned after their parents’ executions for espionage.
Holiday was drawn to the song, which reminded her of her father, who died when a hospital refused to treat him because he was Black. Weeks earlier, she had sung it for the first time at the Café Society in New York City. When she finished, she didn’t hear a sound.
“Then a lone person began to clap nervously,” she wrote in her memoir. “Then suddenly everybody was clapping.”
The song sold more than a million copies, and jazz writer Leonard Feather called it “the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism.”
After her 1959 death, both she and the song went into the Grammy Hall of Fame, Time magazine called “Strange Fruit” the song of the century, and the British music publication Q included it among “10 songs that actually changed the world.”
David Margolick traces the tune’s journey through history in his book, “Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Biography of a Song.” Andra Day won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Holiday in the film, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Mississippi Today
Mississippians are asked to vote more often than people in most other states

Not long after many Mississippi families celebrate Easter, they will be returning to the polls to vote in municipal party runoff elections.
The party runoff is April 22.
A year does not pass when there is not a significant election in the state. Mississippians have the opportunity to go to the polls more than voters in most — if not all — states.
In Mississippi, do not worry if your candidate loses because odds are it will not be long before you get to pick another candidate and vote in another election.
Mississippians go to the polls so much because it is one of only five states nationwide where the elections for governor and other statewide and local offices are held in odd years. In Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana, the election for governor and other statewide posts are held the year after the federal midterm elections. For those who might be confused by all the election lingo, the federal midterms are the elections held two years after the presidential election. All 435 members of the U.S. House and one-third of the membership of the U.S. Senate are up for election during every midterm. In Mississippi, there also are important judicial elections that coincide with the federal midterms.
Then the following year after the midterms, Mississippians are asked to go back to the polls to elect a governor, the seven other statewide offices and various other local and district posts.
Two states — Virginia and New Jersey — are electing governors and other state and local officials this year, the year after the presidential election.
The elections in New Jersey and Virginia are normally viewed as a bellwether of how the incumbent president is doing since they are the first statewide elections after the presidential election that was held the previous year. The elections in Virginia and New Jersey, for example, were viewed as a bad omen in 2021 for then-President Joe Biden and the Democrats since the Republican in the swing state of Virginia won the Governor’s Mansion and the Democrats won a closer-than-expected election for governor in the blue state of New Jersey.
With the exception of Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia and New Jersey, all other states elect most of their state officials such as governor, legislators and local officials during even years — either to coincide with the federal midterms or the presidential elections.
And in Mississippi, to ensure that the democratic process is never too far out of sight and mind, most of the state’s roughly 300 municipalities hold elections in the other odd year of the four-year election cycle — this year.
The municipal election impacts many though not all Mississippians. Country dwellers will have no reason to go to the polls this year except for a few special elections. But in most Mississippi municipalities, the offices for mayor and city council/board of aldermen are up for election this year.
Jackson, the state’s largest and capital city, has perhaps the most high profile runoff election in which state Sen. John Horhn is challenging incumbent Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in the Democratic primary.
Mississippi has been electing its governors in odd years for a long time. The 1890 Mississippi Constitution set the election for governor for 1895 and “every four years thereafter.”
There is an argument that the constant elections in Mississippi wears out voters, creating apathy resulting in lower voter turnout compared to some other states.
Turnout in presidential elections is normally lower in Mississippi than the nation as a whole. In 2024, despite the strong support for Republican Donald Trump in the state, 57.5% of registered voters went to the polls in Mississippi compared to the national average of 64%, according to the United States Elections Project.
In addition, Mississippi Today political reporter Taylor Vance theorizes that the odd year elections for state and local officials prolonged the political control for Mississippi Democrats. By 1948, Mississippians had started to vote for a candidate other than the Democrat for president. Mississippians began to vote for other candidates — first third party candidates and then Republicans — because of the national Democratic Party’s support of civil rights.
But because state elections were in odd years, it was easier for Mississippi Democrats to distance themselves from the national Democrats who were not on the ballot and win in state and local races.
In the modern Mississippi political environment, though, Republicans win most years — odd or even, state or federal elections. But Democrats will fare better this year in municipal elections than they do in most other contests in Mississippi, where the elections come fast and often.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1977, Alex Haley awarded Pulitzer for ‘Roots’

April 19, 1977

Alex Haley was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for “Roots,” which was also adapted for television.
Network executives worried that the depiction of the brutality of the slave experience might scare away viewers. Instead, 130 million Americans watched the epic miniseries, which meant that 85% of U.S. households watched the program.
The miniseries received 36 Emmy nominations and won nine. In 2016, the History Channel, Lifetime and A&E remade the miniseries, which won critical acclaim and received eight Emmy nominations.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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