Mississippi Today
Seventy-five years later, Dot Ford, now Dot Burrow, gets her due
Seventy-five years ago, a tall, thin teen-aged girl named Dot Ford scored 82 points in a high school basketball game in the tiny, northeast Mississippi town of Smithville. She averaged right at 50 points a game for the entire 1949-50 season.
Ford scored 50 points or more in 12 games. For the season, she averaged nearly two points per minute. She was a Hill Country basketball hero, big news in basketball-crazy Monroe County, Her exploits even made headlines in the newspapers nearly 200 miles away in Jackson and in Memphis.
But her fame was short-lived. Back then, there was no women’s college basketball to speak of. Her basketball career ended quietly. She married her high school sweetheart, James Burrow, who had been a starting point guard at Mississippi State. Together, they raised an athletic family in nearby Amory. Dot and James lived in the same house for more than 60 years. Still do, for that matter.
All that was left of those Smithville basketball glory days were a few newspaper clippings and her own memories, and that was fine. Besides, sons Jimmy, who played football for national champion Nebraska, and Johnny, who played for Ole Miss, were making more memories. In recent years, grandson Joe – yes, that Joe Burrow – has become, by far, the most famous Burrow of all.
Basketball star Dot Ford was a largely forgotten legend. Know this: “Was” is the operative word here. Her basketball excellence is forgotten no more.
Do you believe in fate? If the answer is no, read on for the rest of this story.
We move forward to March of 2023 and to the town of Amory, where a horrific tornado had blown away much of the town. A Jackson journalist – this one actually – had made the three-hour drive to Amory to write about how people in the town of 6,600 were coping with immense damage.
I was searching for the high school baseball field where the 2022 state champions played their games. Dodging downed trees in a nearby neighborhood, I pulled over and asked directions. Major coincidence: The second guy I approached just happened to be the baseball coach, Chris Pace, who was helping neighbors clean up their yards.
He pointed out a house a few doors down and told me it was the home of the grandparents of LSU’s Heisman Trophy winner and Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. I walked that way and met Jimmy Burrow, Dot’s son and Joe’s dad, who had driven all night from his Ohio home and was helping his parents deal with major damage to their house.
The front of the house looked fine. Hidden from view was the rear of the house where the fireplace chimney had fallen through the ripped-apart roof and into the den. There was major structural damage, but the Burrows were safe. They had ridden out the tornado in the storm cellar they had built under their carport after the killer tornado that hit nearby Smithville in 2011, killing 16.
His parents, both in their early 90s, were shaken, Jimmy said, but they would be fine. In the course of the conversation, he told me about his mother’s basketball accomplishments all those years ago. I filed it away.
A few days later, after writing about the tornado wreckage, I searched through newspaper archives, confirmed all Dot Burrow’s remarkable statistics, and wrote the largely forgotten story of Dot Ford Burrow.
The good people at the Mississippi High School Activities Association, the governing body of Mississippi high school sports, took it from there. They nominated Dot Burrow for the National High School Hall of Fame. Just as they suspected, Dot Ford Burrow was a no-brainer. The long-awaited announcement came Tuesday. Dot Burrow will be one of four former athletes and four coaches who will be inducted into the national high.school hall of fame in the Class of 2024 this summer at Indianapolis.
Jimmy Burrow says his mother was shocked and quite emotional. She knew she had been nominated, but she never expected to join the likes of Walter Payton in a national hall of fame, not after 75 years.
Joe Burrow is one proud grandson. Said Joe Burrow when he learned the news: “My grandmother was an incredible athlete and a generational basketball player, and is arguably the best athlete in the family. Knowing how great she was has motivated me to be the best I could be in all sports.”
Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Mauer, who once hit 43 home runs for his Minnesota high school baseball team, is probably the biggest name in this year’s class. Former Auburn and NFL football star Takeo Spikes, another inductee, once caught 24 touchdown passes and made 238 tackles for his undefeated Sandersville (Georgia) High football team. Forty-three home runs, 24 touchdown passes and 238 tackles are remarkable statistics.
But then so are 82 points in a single game and a 50-point scoring average for a season. Three quarters of a century later, Dot Ford Burrow finally gets the recognition she deserves.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
An ad supporting Jenifer Branning finds imaginary liberals on the Mississippi Supreme Court
The Improve Mississippi PAC claims in advertising that the state Supreme Court “is in danger of being dominated by liberal justices” unless Jenifer Branning is elected in Tuesday’s runoff.
Improve Mississippi made the almost laughable claim in both radio commercials and mailers that were sent to homes in the court’s central district, where a runoff election will be held on Tuesday.
Improve Mississippi is an independent, third party political action committee created to aid state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Neshoba County in her efforts to defeat longtime Central District Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens of Copiah County.
The PAC should receive an award or at least be considered for an honor for best fiction writing.
At least seven current members of the nine-member Supreme Court would be shocked to know anyone considered them liberal.
It is telling that the ads do not offer any examples of “liberal” Supreme Court opinions issued by the current majority. It is even more telling that there have been no ads by Improve Mississippi or any other group citing the liberal dissenting opinions written or joined by Kitchens.
Granted, it is fair and likely accurate to point out that Branning is more conservative than Kitchens. After all, Branning is considered one of the more conservative members of a supermajority Republican Mississippi Senate.
As a member of the Senate, for example, she voted against removing the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag, opposed Medicaid expansion and an equal pay bill for women.
And if she is elected to the state Supreme Court in Tuesday’s runoff election, she might be one of the panel’s more conservative members. But she will be surrounded by a Supreme Court bench full of conservatives.
A look at the history of the members of the Supreme Court might be helpful.
Chief Justice Michael Randolph originally was appointed to the court by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who is credited with leading the effort to make the Republican Party dominant in Mississippi. Before Randolph was appointed by Barbour, he served a stint on the National Coal Council — appointed to the post by President Ronald Reagan who is considered an icon in the conservative movement.
Justices James Maxwell, Dawn Beam, David Ishee and Kenneth Griffis were appointed by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant.
Only three members of the current court were not initially appointed to the Supreme Court by conservative Republican governors: Kitchens, Josiah Coleman and Robert Chamberlin. All three got their initial posts on the court by winning elections for full eight-year terms.
But Chamberlin, once a Republican state senator from Southaven, was appointed as a circuit court judge by Barbour before winning his Supreme Court post. And Coleman was endorsed in his election effort by both the Republican Party and by current Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who also contributed to his campaign.
Only Kitchens earned a spot on the court without either being appointed by a Republican governor or being endorsed by the state Republican Party.
The ninth member of the court is Leslie King, who, like Kitchens, is viewed as not as conservative as the other seven justices. King, former chief judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals, was originally appointed to the Supreme Court by Barbour, who to his credit made the appointment at least in part to ensure that a Black Mississippian remained on the nine-member court.
It should be noted that Beam was defeated on Nov. 5 by David Sullivan, a Gulf Coast municipal judge who has a local reputation for leaning conservative. Even if Sullivan is less conservative when he takes his new post in January, there still be six justices on the Supreme Court with strong conservative bonafides, not counting what happens in the Branning-Kitchens runoff.
Granted, Kitchens is next in line to serve as chief justice should Randolph, who has been on the court since 2004, step down. The longest tenured justice serves as the chief justice.
But to think that Kitchens as chief justice would be able to exert enough influence to force the other longtime conservative members of the court to start voting as liberals is even more fiction.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1968
Nov. 24, 1968
Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver fled the U.S. to avoid imprisonment on a parole violation. He wrote in “Soul on Ice”: “If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.”
The Arkansas native began to be incarcerated when he was still in junior high and soon read about Malcolm X. He began writing his own essays, drawing the praise of Norman Mailer and others. That work helped him win parole in 1966. His “Soul on Ice” memoir, written from Folsom state prison, described his journey from selling marijuana to following Malcolm X. The book he wrote became a seminal work in Black literature, and he became a national figure.
Cleaver soon joined the Black Panther Party, serving as the minister of information. After a Panther shootout with police that left him injured, one Panther dead and two officers wounded, he jumped bail and fled the U.S. In 1977, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, he returned to the U.S. pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault and served 1,200 hours of community service.
From that point forward, “Mr. Cleaver metamorphosed into variously a born-again Christian, a follower of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a Mormon, a crack cocaine addict, a designer of men’s trousers featuring a codpiece and even, finally, a Republican,” The New York Times wrote in his 1998 obituary. His wife said he was suffering from mental illness and never recovered.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1867
Nov. 23, 1867
The Louisiana Constitutional Convention, composed of 49 White delegates and 49 Black delegates, met in New Orleans. The new constitution became the first in the state’s history to include a bill of rights.
The document gave property rights to married women, funded public education without segregated schools, provided full citizenship for Black Americans, and eliminated the Black Codes of 1865 and property qualifications for officeholders.
The voters ratified the constitution months later. Despite the document, prejudice and corruption continued to reign in Louisiana, and when Reconstruction ended, the constitution was replaced with one that helped restore the rule of white supremacy.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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