Mississippi Today
On this day in 1940
Oct. 25, 1940
Benjamin O. Davis Sr. became the first Black American promoted to brigadier general in the U.S. Army.
His parents wanted him to head to college after graduating high school, but Davis chose a military career instead. He served in the Spanish-American War in the 8th United States Volunteer Infantry, an all-Black unit.
He overcame rampant prejudice and rose in the ranks. In 1900, he became the first Black American officer, and a year later, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He served with the famed โBuffalo Soldiersโ regiment in the Philippines, leading to his temporary promotion to lieutenant colonel.
During World War II, he became the Army’s top adviser on race relations and served with the European Theater of Operation. For his stellar work, the Army honored him with the Bronze Star Medal and the Distinguished Service Medal, France awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm and Liberia gave him the Grade of Commander of the Order of the Star of Africa.
His important work paved the way for other people of color โ just one of six Black officers in the Army between the Civil War to World War II.
On July 20, 1948, after 50 years of military service, Davis retired in a public ceremony with President Harry Truman presiding. Six days later, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which abolished racial discrimination in the armed forces. Twenty-two years later, Davis died and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1997, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippiโs new PSC energized by nuclear power, tepid over renewables
โWe’re open for business,โ Northern District Public Service Commissioner Chris Brown said, a sentiment he repeated throughout the PSC’s โNuclear Summitโ on Tuesday.
Brown and his colleagues โ Central District Public Service Commissioner De’Keither Stamps and Southern District Public Service Commissioner Wayne Carr โ are in their first term after last year’s statewide elections saw a complete turnover in the PSC. The PSC oversees a broad range of public utility issues, such as electric generation, power bills, water infrastructure, among many others.
As the world looks towards alternative energy forms to balance an increased demand with the need to limit carbon emissions, the PSC is hoping to move Mississippi ahead of the curve.
โWe think nuclear’s our future,โ Brown said during a Wednesday Senate hearing.
The PSC’s โNuclear Summitโ hosted several speakers from the industry as well as representatives from utilities serving the state that are looking to expand nuclear generation.
โEconomic development in the future is going to go to places where you have affordable and reliable power,โ Stamps said during the summit. โAnd one of the most affordable and reliable power sources is nuclear.โ
One speaker, Kirk Sorenson of Flibe Energy, talked about the prospects of opening a new nuclear plant in Tishomingo County at the Yellow Creek site. The Tennessee Valley Authority started, and later abandoned, work on a nuclear plant there in the 1970s. Sorenson said Flibe has been leasing the site for the last five years and has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on improvements, although it’s unclear what the timeline for a Yellow Creek nuclear plant would be (getting approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can take up to five years, although Congress recently passed a bill to speed up the review process).
In 2023, 76% of Mississippi’s generated energy came from natural gas, much higher than the 43% for the country as a whole. The state’s two largest power producers are the Grand Gulf nuclear plant in Port Gibson, owned by Entergy, and the Victor J. Daniel plant in Moss Point, owned by Mississippi Power, which uses both coal and gas.
Mississippi Power initially planned to close Plant Daniel’s coal units in 2027, a move clean-energy advocates celebrated, because the plant was producing excess power. However, the company is now delaying the closure to sell energy to Georgia. At Grand Gulf, Entergy upgraded the plant’s power in 2012 to make it the country’s largest single-unit nuclear power plant in the country. The plant is licensed to run until 2044.
Earlier this month, state lawmakers advocated for bringing more nuclear power to the state during a Senate committee hearing, the Clarion Ledger reported. Industry representatives advised lawmakers tax incentives were one of the ways to attract more nuclear development in the state.
Nuclear power isn’t considered renewable because its required fuel, such as uranium, is a finite resource, but its generation doesn’t yield any carbon emissions. Compared to renewable energy like wind and solar, nuclear plants can run more consistently and use up less space. However, nuclear power comes with much higher upfront costs and more government restrictions because of safety concerns. On top of that, the United States doesn’t have any permanent storage facilities for nuclear waste.
โWe’re not anti-solar’
During interviews with Mississippi Today, all three commissioners maintained that they weren’t against solar power, saying they believe in an โall of the aboveโ approach to sourcing energy.
Brown, a former state lawmaker and the current PSC chairman, took exception to media and advocacy groups painting the commission as โanti-solar.โย
โWe’ve approved every solar generation plant (that’s come before the PSC),โ he said. Electric generating facilities in the state have to get approval from the PSC. โJust because you ask questions doesn’t make you anti-anything. Our goal is just to ask questions our constituents are asking.โ
Brown referenced a โSolar Summitโ the PSC held in August, similar to other fact-finding sessions the agency has held around certain topics. The โSolar Summit,โ though, didn’t include any speakers from the solar industry, as the outlet Floodlight reported. And unlike the โNuclear Summit,โ much of the session’s airtime was instead filled with skepticism around what the industry might mean for Mississippi.
One of the speakers, for instance, was state Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson, who has no background in the energy field. Gipson spoke for about an hour and theorized over the threat that new solar facilities could pose to farmland.
โHow much solar do we need as a state?โ Gipson asked.
As of 2023, solar power made up less than a percent of the state’s electric generation, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, compared to 4% nationally. Overall, when including sources like wind and hydropower, renewables made up 21% of the country’s energy mix, compared to under 3% for Mississippi.
A major point of disagreement between the PSC and solar advocates is that of incentives. The last PSC, led by former commissioners Brandon Presley and Brent Bailey, added incentives under the state’s net metering rule, which requires the two state-regulated energy companies โ Entergy Mississippi and Mississippi Power โ to reimburse customers for self-generated renewable energy. Gov. Tate Reeves criticized the move, calling on state lawmakers to reverse the rule.
This spring, just over a year after the new rule went into effect, commissioners Brown and Carr voted to suspend incentives for low-income customers as well as for schools looking to put in solar panels.
The two commissioners argued that such incentives create a cost shift against people without solar panels, although it’s unclear whether that’s come close to happening in Mississippi, a state with relatively few net metering customers.
โNo one has ever given me anything my entire adult life,โ Carr told Mississippi Today, also panning recent federal programs pushing for more solar generation. โI don’t feel like that because โBig Brother,’ so to speak, says that we should be helping out an industry, I don’t agree with thatโฆ We’re not against solar. If you want to do it, pay for it.โ
Renewable advocates like Monika Gerhart pushed back on that point. Gerhart, executive director of the Gulf States Renewable Energy Industries Association, argued that the state government gives out economic incentives to different industries all the time, including recently for Amazon as well as an electric car battery plant.
โMississippi has historically provided a pretty good economic incentive for industries that it was interested in,โ she said. โI don’t see this as being that different, that you attract a developing industry because you know there will be dividends.โ
The PSC is also looking to create an โoverarching state lawโ around approving solar facilities, Stamps said during the summit, to create a consistent process for every county to follow. During Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Brown said that the agency will be asking for new regulations dealing with solar plants, including around decommissioning facilities.
โI think that solar is a useful tool, but it does need some guardrails,โ he told the lawmakers.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1994
Oct. 24, 1994
President Bill Clinton awarded Dorothy Porter Wesley the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Charles Frankel Award for her service as a Black librarian, bibliographer, researcher and curator.
The first Black woman to complete her graduate studies at Columbia University, she joined the Howard University library staff in 1928. With no budget and almost no staff, she overcame sexism and other barriers to transform the Library of Negro Life and History, with a few thousand titles, into a world-class research center with more than 180,000 books, pamphlets, manuscripts and other materials, which scholars from around the globe came to visit.
She recalled that work: โI went around the (Howard) library and pulled out every relevant book I could find โ the history of slavery, Black poets โ for the collection. Over the years, the main thing I had to do was beg โ from publishers, authors, families. Sometimes it meant being there just after the funeral director took out the bodies and saying, โYou want all this junk in the basement?’โ
Before she died in 1995 at the age of 91, Howard named the reading room in its library after her, and historian Benjamin Quarles declared, โWithout exaggeration, there hasn’t been a major black history book in the last 30 years in which the author hasn’t acknowledged Mrs. Porter’s help.โ
A portrait of her hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
โMore than just a red stateโ: In the home of the Civil Rights Movement, a fight for a free Palestine
On a brisk day last December, Ray Nacanaynay and Lea Campbell stood at a busy intersection in Gulfport.
Nacanaynay, an Air Force veteran and member of Veterans for Peace, invited Campbell, the founding president of Mississippi Rising Coalition, to join him at his first protest for the war on Gaza.
โHe said, โI’m going to take my Veterans for Peace flag and a ceasefire sign, and I’m going to go stand at the intersection of Highway 49 and Highway 90 in Gulfport, and I would love for you to stand with me,’โ said Campbell. โAnd I did.โ
The protest grew into a weekly vigil for Gaza in Gulfport’s Jones Park. The initial actions were small โ just Nacanaynay and Campbell. But soon, other organizers and students began to join them.
โIt started to grow,โ said Campbell.
Nacanaynay and Campbell are just two of scores of Mississippians who have been protesting the war on Gaza over the past year. October marks one year since Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a surprise attack on Israel in which they killed about 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages. Since then, Israel’s subsequent ground invasion and bombardment has killed over 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them children, and displaced 90% of Gaza’s population.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the objective of this invasion is to eliminate Hamas. But a number of international human rights organizations have called Israel’s offensive a genocide, including a United Nations Special Rapporteur.
As the crisis worsened, organizers across Mississippi began planning events to protest U.S. policies that support Israel’s attack on Gaza, to mourn the lives lost, and to educate the public about the history of struggle for the land. Meanwhile, Mississippi lawmakers re-affirmed the state‘s financial support for Israel.
And Mississippians have struggled to find common ground, grappling with the different, at times conflicting meanings of the centuries-old conflict for the state’s citizens.
Rabbi Eric Gurvis of Jackson’s Beth Israel Congregation cautioned that violence in the Middle East is โso complicated on so many levels.โ
Gurvis, who believes there should be a Palestinian state, says that Israel is fighting a war against an enemy, Hamas, that rejects its right to exist.
โWhen Israel says we’re going to defend our citizens and try to stop those who are seeking to perpetrate the end of our existence, that’s not genocide,โ Gurvis said. โThat’s self defense.โ
โThere has to be a partner who will say, yes, there has to be an Israel as well.โ
Others say the conflict is not so complicated.
Emad Al-Turk, a Palestinian-American Mississippian, said that with the war in Gaza, โIsrael intends to ethnically cleanse and get rid of the indigenous people of Palestine.โ
He finds himself pushing through despite the challenges to keep fighting. โFor their sake, for their liberation, I try to push myself to find whatever strength I have to make sure we continue this fight.โ
Where does Mississippi stand?
In the state of Mississippi, where lawmakers have consistently been vocal about their support for Israel, organizers say they have faced an uphill battle engaging people on the consequences of U.S. economic and military aid to the Middle Eastern country โ for both Mississippians and Palestinians.
On Oct. 13, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a written ultimatum warning Netanyahu’s government to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Palestine within 30 days or face potential reductions in U.S. military support. The letter specified that Israel must allow at least 350 trucks to enter Gaza each day and institute pauses in fighting to enable the distribution of aid.
But the very same day, the U.S. promised to send Israel a missile defense system and troops to operate it. Since October 2023, the U.S. Congress has enacted legislation providing Israel with more than $12.5 billion in military aid.
Nacanaynay’s organization, Veterans for Peace, wrote a letter to U.S. State Department officials in February saying the country’s military support of Israel violates U.S. law, including the Leahy Law, which bars the provision of arms to foreign powers that have committed โgross violations of human rights.โ
In April, Mississippi lawmakers voted to extend the Israel Support Act, a 2019 law prohibiting the state from investing in businesses that boycott Israel.
The law also authorized the Mississippi treasury to increase its initial $20 million investment in Israeli bonds up to $50 million. The state has earned over $2.2 million in interest from the bonds, according to the state treasury.
Spokespeople for House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann did not respond to requests for comment.
However, not all elected officials have lent unconditional support to Israel’s actions. Democratic 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, for instance, was one Mississippi congressman who signed an open letter in December 2023 along with 10 other members of Congress, urging for a bilateral ceasefire.
โToo many innocent lives have been lost already. The bloodshed must end,โ the letter said.
And though the Israel Support Act passed both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature with a significant majority, it drew criticism from some lawmakers.
During House debate on April 3, Rep. Jill Ford, R-Madison, cited the biblical verse in Genesis, saying, โGod will bless those that bless Israel and curse those that curse Israel.โ
But Rep. Daryl Porter, D-Summit, responded that Mississippi lawmakers have neglected other scriptural instructions.
โAre you aware that the Bible also tells us to do a lot of stuff, like take care of the sick, feed the hungry, take care of the poor, and we fail to do that in this body?โ
Candace Abdul-Tawwab, a Jackson-based organizer who protested against the law when it was first proposed in 2019, echoed that she objects to Mississippi’s ongoing financial support of Israel when there are so many needs closer to home.
โThey’re sending our money to this country that’s committing these atrocities, when Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the nation.โ
Finding common ground
Aala’a Matalgah, an Ole Miss student of Arab origin, grew up in Mississippi. She remembers seeing pictures and videos of Gaza even as a child. But she also remembers feeling frustrated when no one else at school knew what she was talking about when she would mention it. โIt was shocking because I was like, how can something be so intense, and so many people don’t know about it?โ
Everything changed in October 2023. โNow,โ Matalgah said, โevery single person knows what Palestine is.โ
Gurvis described the war as โhorrific.โ
โI wish that every innocent Palestinian mother, father, child, grandparent that has died were not dead,โ he said. โThey’re human beings. They’re created in the image of God, just like us.โ
With Palestine in the spotlight, organizers said they have had to challenge ingrained narratives and pervasive stereotypes about Muslims and people of Arab origin.
โWe’re really fighting against the prevailing anti-Muslim narrative,โ said Campbell. โThe prevailing narrative in the South is that Muslims are terrorists โฆ we’re really having to unpack and deconstruct that narrative and lack of awareness, and that’s very challenging.โ
At one of Nacanaynay’s vigils, when he was holding a sign that said โBoycott, Divest, Sanction Israel,โ a man drove up by the sidewalk and told him, โGo to effing Palestine.โ
Still, in a state protective of its veterans, Nacanaynay, who moved to Mississippi from Washington state in 2023, feels he is positioned to โdo much more than a lot of other peopleโ to organize for Palestine.
โMaybe someone sees me holding a sign or shares a few words with me, and that’s what changes them,โ he said. โThat’s what turns them around.โ
During a pro-Palestine protest at Ole Miss in May, a white counter protester made monkey noises at a Black student participating in the protest. The counter protester’s fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, removed him from membership, while the university opened an investigation into his conduct.
Kristin Hickman, assistant professor of anthropology and international studies at the University of Mississippi, said in her personal capacity that she was โincredibly impressedโ by the students’ persistence in organizing around Palestine, despite the racist backlash they faced.
Matalgah, a member of University of Mississippi for Palestine, expressed a sense of sadness at the counter protestors’ behavior.
โThey didn’t know anything about Palestine or Israel,โ she said. โThey were just there because they hated us.โ
But she also recounted a moment where both sides realized they had something in common.
โThey were, at one point, chanting โFuck Joe Biden!’ And we looked at them and we started chanting it back because obviouslyโฆfuck Joe Biden! And they were so confused โ they all got quiet for a second.โ
From Gaza to Mississippi, a shared story
Terron Weaver, who has been door-knocking and holding teach-ins in northern Mississippi and Jackson as a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said his organizing boils down to an experience many Mississippians share: โNot getting a fair shake in life.โ
Weaver said he’s had considerable success โjust bringing those conversations to people.โ
โPeople are not necessarily conservative,โ Weaver said. โI think that people here are just oppressed.โ
He said that many Black Mississippians he’s spoken with identify with Palestinians’ experiences.
โMost Black people here know what it’s like to live basically in a police state and that type of oppression,โ Weaver said. โI don’t think I’ve met another Black person that I’ve had a conversation with on Palestineโฆthat they don’t resonate with it in some way.โ
Al-Turk, whose relatives from Gaza have been repeatedly displaced in the past year, described how Palestinians in the occupied territories must display different license plates than Israelis. They must take meandering, poorly maintained roads littered with checkpoints, separate from smoother, direct routes reserved for Israelis. Human rights organizations, including an Israeli group, B’Tselem, and an independent human rights expert of the United Nations, have termed the system made up of such differential rights for Israelis and Palestinians an apartheid.
These experiences, Al-Turk said, have parallels in the liberation struggles of Black Americans and Black South Africans, and even the Irish movement for independence.
โIt’s all the same,โ he said. โIt’s seeking dignity and being recognized as an equal human being who has all the rights that others who live in that land are entitled to. That is not endowed by government, but it is endowed by our creator.โ
Many also see parallels with the Holocaust.
Sophia Williams, an Army veteran and a native Mississippian of German descent, found out two months ago that a distant relative had served as a Nazi guard in Dachau. As she connected the dots, she struggled with feelings of shock that slowly combined with horror.
โI wondered, how could the Holocaust have happened?โ Williams said. She felt like she was forced to grapple with this question twice: while processing her discovery about her family history and their role in the atrocities committed on Jews in Germany, while simultaneously watching the news over the past year.
โUnfortunately, I’m getting the answer now,โ Williams said. โThe pattern that I’ve seen is one of dehumanization.โ
Many Mississippians consider it even more important to organize for Palestine, given its history.
โThis is the seat of the civil rights movement,โ Abdul-Tawwab said. โThis is in our spirit. This is in our soul. So why would we not join in the fight for Palestinians? This is part of our legacy here. We’re fighting for ourselves, and at the same time fighting for them.โ
โTo me, the most important point is this: neither apartheid nor segregation are acceptable anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances,โ said Hickman. โIsrael does not have the right to impose a system of apartheid on Palestinians. Southern readers should understand that better than anybody else.โ
Many have fond memories from this past year of coming together in an attempt to build community.
Maya Purohit, a student at Mississippi State University, remembers one moment in particular that took place at a vigil in October 2023, when the names of Palestinian victims were being read out.
โEveryone in the room was just overcome with this wave of grief, and love as well, for strangers across the world that you don’t even know. Everyone was either in tears or bawling. It was crazy, yet beautiful,โ Purohit said.
โAnd that really gave me hope that, okay, there are people all the way across the world who care for this cause. Even in a place like Mississippi, where we’re not really known to be progressive or to be super empathetic to people who don’t look like the average cis white person, heterosexual person.โ
Hickman emphasized that while many Mississippians might think of the violence in the Middle East as something that’s happening โfar away,โ there are university students, some of whom were raised in Mississippi, who are Palestinian.
โThis is not a โfar away’ issue for them,โ Hickman said. โTheir family members are getting killed with the help of American tax dollars.โ
Margaret Lawson, an archivist of queer history in Mississippi, highlighted the importance of recognizing the multitudes even within rigid political spaces.
โIf you look at an electoral map, you see a red state,โ they said. โBut our state is much more diverse than that. Mississippi is the Blackest state in the nation. Jackson is the Blackest city in the Blackest state in the nation.โ
Lawson expressed the need to honor the views not just of the privileged few, but also those whose demands are not being met by their governments.
โThat is a part of Mississippi’s story, too,โ Lawson said.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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