Mississippi Today
Sex Abuse, Beatings and an Untouchable Mississippi Sheriff
Sex Abuse, Beatings and an Untouchable Mississippi Sheriff
Terry Grassaree was dogged for years by questions about how he did his job as a law enforcement officer in Macon, Miss., a tiny, rural town near the state’s eastern border.
There were allegations of rape inside the jail that Mr. Grassaree supervised, and lawsuits claiming that he covered up the episodes. At least five people, including one of his fellow deputies, accused him of beating others or choking them with a police baton.
Mr. Grassaree survived it all, rising in the ranks of the Noxubee County Sheriff’s Department, from a deputy mopping floors, to chief deputy, to the elected position of sheriff, making him one of the most powerful figures in town.
Now, more than three years after losing an election and retiring, and 16 years after a woman first claimed that Mr. Grassaree pressured her to lie about being raped, the former sheriff faces criminal charges.
A federal indictment filed in October accuses him of committing bribery in 2019, near the end of his eight-year tenure as sheriff, and of lying to federal agents when they questioned him about whether he requested sexually explicit photographs and videos from a female inmate. Mr. Grassaree has denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.
But an investigation by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reportingat Mississippi Todayand The New York Times reveals that allegations of wrongdoing against Mr. Grassaree have been far more wide-ranging and serious than those federal charges suggest. The investigation included a review of nearly two decades of lawsuit depositions and a previously undisclosed report by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.
At a minimum, the documents detail gross mismanagement at the Noxubee County jail that repeatedly put female inmates in harm’s way. At worst, they tell the story of a sheriff who operated with impunity, even as he was accused of abusing the people in his custody, turning a blind eye to women who were raped and trying to cover it up when caught.
Over nearly two decades, as allegations mounted and Noxubee County’s insurance company paid to settle lawsuits against Mr. Grassaree, state prosecutors brought no charges against him or others accused of abuses in the jail. A federal investigation dragged on for years, and led to charges last fall, a few weeks after reporters started asking authorities about the case.
Even now, no higher authority has reviewed how Mr. Grassaree ran the jail or whether his policies endangered women, because in Mississippi, as in many states, rural sheriffs are left largely to police themselves and their jails.

In 2006, after Mr. Grassaree and his staff left jail cell keys hanging openly on a wall, male inmates opened the doors to the cell of two women inmates and raped them, according to statements the women gave to state investigators. One of the women said Mr. Grassaree pressured her to sign a false statement to cover up the crimes, according to the state police report that has never been made public.
About a year later, in a lawsuit, four people who had been arrested gave sworn statements accusing Mr. Grassaree of violence. Two of the people said he choked or beat them while they were in his custody. A third said he pinned her against a wall and threatened to let a male inmate rape her.
In 2019, a jailed woman told investigators that she had been coerced into having sex with two deputies who offered her a cellphone in exchange for her compliance. Instead of punishing the deputies, she claimed in a lawsuit against the county, Mr. Grassaree demanded that she send him explicit pictures and videos of herself. The federal indictment also accuses Mr. Grassaree of using his cellphone to facilitate a bribe, which experts say could have been the perks the woman says she received.
All told, at least eight men — including four deputies and Mr. Grassaree himself — have been accused of sex abuse by women inmates who were being held in the Noxubee County jail while Mr. Grassaree was in charge.
Over the years, the accusations of rape and other misconduct at the jail have been investigated separately by the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. No rape or assault charges have been filed.
Mr. Grassaree has denied all of the allegations against him and has faced no disciplinary action. His lawyer declined to comment further.
Holding people accountable for rapes and assaults behind bars is difficult under the best of circumstances. There is little to protect incarcerated victims and witnesses from retaliation for speaking up. When they do come forward, they are often dismissed as not credible, especially if the person accused is a law enforcement officer.
What happened inside the Noxubee jail, and how the authorities responded, is a case study in how those difficulties can be even harder to surmount in rural places, where jails are the exclusive domain of a county sheriff who operates largely without oversight.
No state agency oversees Mississippi’s county jails, and no state regulator has the authority to fine a sheriff for endangering people in custody or for failing to train the staff who operate the jail. In 2017, state lawmakers stopped providing funds for jail inspections by the Mississippi Department of Health, removing even the basic requirement that the facilities meet food safety and cleanliness requirements.
“They are closed-off institutions, and the people held inside them are unpopular and politically powerless,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project. “That makes them ripe for neglect and abuse that is entirely foreseeable.”
Scott Colom, the elected district attorney for Noxubee County, took office in 2016 and was not involved in the investigation of the 2006 rape allegations.
After learning of the more recent allegations against Mr. Grassaree and his deputies, Mr. Colom said, he notified federal authorities and worked with them on an investigation. Although he believed the evidence against Mr. Grassaree in the case was “clear and strong,” Mr. Colom said he knew it would be tough to seat an impartial jury in Noxubee County. He has twice been forced to cancel criminal trials because there were too few potential jurors available, he said, and neither of those cases involved a public official.
Darren J. LaMarca, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, declined to comment on the case and so did others responsible for investigating the alleged abuses in the Noxubee County jail.
Mr. Grassaree spoke briefly in an interview about his professional history, but would not answer detailed questions about the 2006 rape cases or the more recent allegations related to his federal charges.
Mary Taylor, a retired dispatcher who worked full time at the jail from 1988 to 2017, said in a phone interview that in her years at the jail she never witnessed any sexual abuse.
She said she wasn’t working on the day the two women said the rapes took place in 2006, but that she doesn’t believe their version of events.
“My belief? They weren’t raped,” Ms. Taylor said. “They did that to get out of jail.”
She maintained that it’s “impossible for one man to rape a woman, unless she’s not moving, unless it’s a Bill Cosby thing.”
“They could have yelled out and told somebody,” she said. “You can’t rape the unwilling.”

Building a tough reputation
When Terry Grassaree was born in Macon in 1962, the idea that he could one day be sheriff seemed far-fetched.
In Macon, which briefly served as Mississippi’s capital during the Civil War, only white men worked as law enforcement officers in those days. The county had a long history of violence against African Americans, including the massacre of 13 Black Mississippians at a church, gunned down by nightriders on a single August night in 1871. The sheriff at the time arrested no one.
Though the county’s population is mostly Black, every sheriff elected in Noxubee County was white until 1988, when Albert Walker became the first Black man to hold the office. Mr. Grassaree, his handpicked successor, was the second.
Mr. Grassaree started his law enforcement career as a police officer in Macon and in nearby Brooksville, and sold insurance on the side to help make ends meet. Sheriff Walker hired him as a county deputy in 1992 and put him to work mopping floors, among other duties, at the county jail. Mr. Grassaree was also a deputy coroner, paid $85 for each body he handled.
He worked his way up to chief deputy, and took on running the jail.
Mr. Grassaree, known to keep order by issuing physical threats, said in an interview last year that he drew inspiration from the professional wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
“Even while they were whipping him, he was still the toughest guy on the mat,” Mr. Grassaree said. “He’s like, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ No matter how long a man whips you, he will get tired. He might think he’s winning. The only thing you’ve got to do is hold out.”
This idea, he said, became the foundation for how he behaved when he put on his uniform.
Early in his career, he beefed his 6-foot-2 frame up to 230 pounds, and people started calling him “Big Dog.” Not many people crossed him after that, he said.
His reputation for being aggressive spread across town. In a 2006 letter to the editor in the local paper, a mother complained that Mr. Grassaree had threatened her 16-year-old son. The boy, she wrote, had fought with Mr. Grassaree’s son at school.
The editor of the same newspaper, The Macon Beacon, arrived to cover an arrest near a nightclub in 2000 and snapped a picture of Mr. Grassaree kneeling on a man’s neck. The photo made the front page.

People who passed through the jail describe being attacked by Mr. Grassaree when he thought they were causing trouble. Four people gave sworn statements about such attacks as part of a 2005 lawsuit against Mr. Grassaree and Noxubee County filed by former deputy Kendrick Slaughter. In the lawsuit, Mr. Slaughter claimed that Mr. Grassaree tried to bribe him not to run for City Council, and then hauled him to jail for talking to the FBI about the alleged bribe.
Noxubee County’s insurance company settled the suit for an undisclosed amount.
The four sworn statements accuse Mr. Grassaree of a number of violent acts, which he has denied committing. One man wrote that while he was handcuffed in a courtroom in 2002, Mr. Grassaree beat him until a judge came off the bench to rescue him.
Another man said in his sworn statement that Mr. Grassaree choked him with his nightstick and warned him to follow his orders. The man said Mr. Grassaree told him, “I’ll shoot you in the head! I’m the Big Dog! I’m Number One! This my jail!”
A 19-year-old woman said Mr. Grassaree hit her twice with his nightstick and threw her against a wall after accusing her of stealing potato chips from a man held in jail. Mr. Grassaree “spread my legs apart with his foot,” she said in her deposition.
Then, she said, he told her that he ought to let the inmate rape her.

A jail with no rules
The jail that Mr. Grassaree oversaw for most of his career sits frozen in time on Industrial Road on the outskirts of Macon, next to the old Purina pet food mill that now produces feed for catfish farms.
The building has been locked and empty since about 2014, when Mr. Grassaree and his deputies packed up and moved to a new facility down the street. Inside the old jail, a blackened mix of dirt, rust and mold has crept over the white iron cell doors. Bags of trash and dusty bed linens litter the remaining furniture and the floor.
When Mr. Grassaree was put in charge of this building in the 1990s, he inherited a jailhouse that essentially operated without rules. Jail workers allowed inmates to come and go from the building without logging the inmates’ movements or supervising them closely.
The onlypolicies about the jail that appear in the 2003 Noxubee County Sheriff’s Policy Manual center on the use of force. None tell how to run the jail.
For years, certain inmates were let out of their cells to help cook, pass out food trays and clean.
Kennedy Brewer, who entered the jail in 2002, was one of the facility’s most trusted inmates. Eyebrows were raised when he showed up at a court hearing on his own, having driven himself to the courthouse without a deputy to escort him, according to Forrest Allgood, the district attorney at the time.
Mr. Brewer spent five years at the jail waiting to be retried after DNA evidence proved he had been wrongly convicted of sexually abusing and murdering a 3-year-old girl. When prosecutors gave up on a new trial, Mr. Brewer was released, and his case was featured in the Netflix documentary series “The Innocence Files.”
Testifying under oath as a witness in a lawsuit in 2007, Mr. Brewer said he served as a jail trusty, or an inmate with special privileges, and had access to keys that opened each cell. He said he would check newly arrested people into the jail and that he once escorted an inmate to a cell with no one else present.
Mr. Grassaree has denied that inmates were allowed to use jail keys without supervision.
On a June day in 2006, Mr. Brewer had no problem getting into the women’s cell block undetected.
He grabbed the jailer’s keys off the nail hanging on the wall and slipped down the short hallway that ran the length of jail. In a building smaller than a McDonald’s, he and a fellow inmate didn’t have to go far. There were no guards patrolling the halls and no surveillance cameras to catch any movements.
When Mr. Brewer unlocked the cell door, one of the women inside was laying down for a nap.
Then Brewer was on top of her, grabbing her arms and forcing her down, according to statements the first woman later gave to state agents.
“No, I don’t want to do this,” she begged, according to her statements.
Then she looked for her cellmate, Jessie Levette Douglas. She told investigators she saw another inmate, Laterris Goodwin, on top of her.
It was all over in moments.

The woman who originally reported the rapes declined to be interviewed for this article. Ms. Douglas died of renal failure in a state prison in 2018.
When investigators interview rape victims, they are supposed to remain impartial. But when Mr. Grassaree, who was chief deputy at the time, found the woman crying on the floor, he stood over her and shouted, the woman said in a deposition taken as part of her subsequent lawsuit against the county. He and another member of the sheriff’s office yelled that she couldn’t tell anybody about the rape and that she was “going to make them lose their jobs and make the department look bad,” according to her sworn statement.
“They kept berating me as if I had done something wrong,” she said.
When state agents arrived the next day at the request of the sheriff’s office, Mr. Grassaree handed them everything they needed to dismiss the allegations, including signed statements from two of the men saying the women had invited them to have sex, and more important, a statement from Ms. Douglas saying everything she saw and experienced was consensual.
If Mr. Grassaree and his deputies had been in charge of the investigation, it might have ended there. But when state agents interviewed Ms. Douglas, her story changed.
She told investigators that she and her cellmate had been raped that day and that she lied in her first statement because Mr. Grassaree had pressured her to cover up what happened.
Mr. Grassaree “told me to tell everybody the sex was consensual and that for me to ‘help a brother,’ referring to Brewer,”Ms. Douglaswrote in a later statement. “He told me to tell everybody that we put on a freak show for the male inmates.”
In reality, Ms. Douglas told the agents, three men incarcerated at the jail — Mr. Brewer, Mr. Goodwin and Michael Slaughter — had entered her locked cell at different times on the same day and had raped her.
In statements to investigators, Mr. Slaughter, Mr. Brewer and Mr. Goodwin denied that they had raped the women, claiming that the sex was consensual.
In an interview from 2022, Mr. Brewerdenied ever having sex with anyone inside the jail. Neither Mr. Slaughter nor Mr. Goodwin could be reached for comment.
Both women were given polygraph tests, and the examiner concluded that they were telling the truth, according to state investigators’ records. Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Slaughter failed polygraph tests; Mr. Brewer declined to take one.
State agents shared their findings with federal and state prosecutors, and the case was presented to a Noxubee County grand jury. The grand jury decided not to issue charges.
Legal experts say Mr. Grassaree could have been investigated for obstructing justice in the case. That never happened, and neither did an investigation of practices in the jail, where agents concluded that four rapes had taken place.
Noxubee County’s insurance company settled the woman’s lawsuit in 2009. The Macon Beacon reported that she was paid $375,000.
Sabrina Campbell said her sister, Ms. Douglas — the woman who said she was raped by three inmates and who died many years later — wanted the public to know what happened to her. “I don’t want my sister to have died in vain,” Ms. Campbell said.
The rapes devastated her sister, who never stopped battling nightmares afterward, she said. “She was scared all the time. She would tell nieces and nephews about the jail, ‘Don’t ever come here, because your life is over.’”

Another round of allegations
Allegations of sexual abuse at the Noxubee County jail did not end with the 2006 case.
In 2020, Elizabeth Layne Reed,a woman incarcerated at the jail, made explosive allegations against the men she encountered there. In a lawsuit she filed that year, she accused two deputies, Vance Phillips and Damon Clark, of coercing her into having sex.
She said the men gave her a cellphone and other perks so that she would have sexual encounters with them in remote spots around the jail or when the deputies checked her out of the facility. The deputies even put a sofa in her jail cell, she said.
Ms. Reed said in an interview that she wanted the public to know what happened to her in the hope that others would come forward. “It made me terrified to trust anybody,” she said. “Women in jail and prison need to be protected.”
According to her lawsuit, Mr. Grassaree knew all about his deputies’ “sexual contacts and shenanigans,” but did nothing to “stop the coerced sexual relationships.” Mr. Grassaree denied any knowledge of what deputies were doing. “Are you a boss?” he said. “Do your employees tell you everything they do?”
Instead of intervening, the lawsuit alleged, the sheriff “sexted” her and demanded that she use the phone the deputies had given her to send him “a continuous stream of explicit videos, photographs and texts” while she was in jail. She also alleged in the lawsuit that Mr. Grassaree touched her in a “sexual manner.”
The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
News outlets in Mississippi made brief mention of the lawsuit, but government officials at all levels, including federal and state prosecutors, were silent for two years about what, if anything, they were doing to investigate the allegations it raised, and whether they had found evidence to support them.
A review by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and The New York Times of documents filed in the lawsuit, along with documents fromthe preceding2019 state investigation, reveals that Ms. Reedaccused other deputies besides Mr. Phillips and Mr. Clark of sexual harassment and abuse. None of the other deputies has been charged or named publicly. It is unclear whether the FBI investigated those allegations.
The federal bureau’s investigation into Mr. Grassaree, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Clark took more than two years to yield charges, even though investigators had confessions of sexual contact from the deputies as well as text messages between the woman and the three men. In fall of 2022, several weeks after reporters began asking authorities about the case, Mr. LaMarca successfully sought indictments against Mr. Grassaree and Mr. Phillips on bribery charges. Mr. Clark has not been indicted.
Ms. Reed hoped that other deputies, including Mr. Clark, would be held accountable, she said. “They’re still walking around free, not worried about any charges.”
Ms. Reed said that she felt sick to her stomach when she found out that neither Mr. Grassaree nor Mr. Phillips had been directly charged in connection with her allegations of sex abuse. Lawyers for Mr. Phillips did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Clark could not be reached for comment.
The indictments do not mention sexual abuse. Along with bribery, Mr. Grassaree was also charged with lying to the F.B.I. in denying that he had “requested and received” nude photos and videos from Ms. Reed. A trial is scheduled for summer.
Julie Abbate, who served as the deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2003 to 2018 and reviewed the allegations at the news organizations’ request, said the federal prosecutors could have explored criminal charges against Mr. Grassaree and his deputies for violating the civil rights of women in his facility.
The question of whether to bring federal charges in the case may have been complicated by guidance the Department of Justice issued in 2018, saying that law enforcement officers cannot be federally prosecuted for violating a person’s civil rights if the person “truly made a voluntary decision as to what she wanted to do with her body,” particularly if she received a benefit or special treatment in exchange for sex.
But Ms. Reed’s decisions in the episode in the Noxubee County jail were “not free-will choices,” said Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University, and the cellphone Ms. Reed received from deputies “was the vehicle by which more abuse could be directed towards her.”
Mississippi law makes it a crime for law enforcement officers to engage in sexual acts with incarcerated people. Prosecutors are not required to prove the victims were physically overpowered or even that they told their abuser to stop.
But the district attorney’s office that handles criminal cases in Noxubee County chose to pass the 2020case on to federal prosecutors, instead of seeking charges under the state law, because of worries about getting a fair jury in the county. When asked about federal prosecutors’ decision to charge Mr. Grassaree and Mr. Phillips with bribery in the case, the district attorney, Mr. Colom, said, “I trust federal authorities to use the best statutes.”
Ms. Abbate said the allegations about abuses in the Noxubee County jail were indicative of a larger, pervasive problem at the facility and a harmful culture inside the sheriff’s office. That culture, she said, undoubtedly endangered inmates and allowed abuses to continue.
“The allegations that come to light are almost always just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ms. Abbate, who is now director of Just Detention International, an organization dedicated to ending sexual abuse in correctional facilities. Referring to the 2006 and 2020 cases, she said, “I guarantee you that these two instances are not the only ones.”
This article was co-reported by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
New Stage’s ‘Little Women’ musical opens aptly in Women’s History Month
Ties that bind, not lines that divide, at the heart of “Little Women” are what make Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel such an enduring classic. More than a century and a half since its 1868 publication, the March sisters’ coming-of-age tale continues to resonate in fresh approaches, say cast and crew in a musical version opening this week at New Stage Theatre in Jackson, Mississippi.
“Little Women, The Broadway Musical” adds songs to Alcott’s story of the four distinct March sisters — traditional, lovely Meg, spirited tomboy and writer Jo, quiet and gentle Beth, and artistic, pampered Amy. They are growing into young women under the watchful eye of mother Marmee as their father serves as an Army chaplain in the Civil War. “Little Women, The Broadway Musical” performances run March 25 through April 6 at New Stage Theatre.
In a serendipitous move, the production coincides with Women’s History Month in March, and has a female director at the helm — Malaika Quarterman, in her New Stage Theatre directing debut. Logistics and scheduling preferences landed the musical in March, to catch school matinees with the American classic.
The novel has inspired myriad adaptations in film, TV, stage and opera, plus literary retellings by other authors. This musical version debuted on Broadway in 2005, with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Mindi Dickstein and book (script) by Allan Knee.
“The music in this show brings out the heart of the characters in a way that a movie or a straight play, or even the book, can’t do,” said Cameron Vipperman, whose play-within-a-play role helps illustrate the writer Jo’s growth in the story. She read the book at age 10, and now embraces how the musical dramatizes, speeds up and reconstructs the timeline for more interest and engagement.
“What a great way to introduce kids that haven’t read the book,” director Quarterman said, hitting the highlights and sending them to the pages for a deeper dive on characters they fell in love with over the two-and-a-half-hour run time.

Joy, familial warmth, love, courage, loss, grief and resilience are all threads in a story that has captivated generations and continues to find new audiences and fresh acclaim (the 2019 film adaptation by Greta Gerwig earned six Academy Award nominations).
In current contentious times, when diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being ripped out or rolled back, the poignant, women-centered narrative maintains a power to reach deep and unite.
“Stories where females support each other, instead of rip each other apart to get to the finish line — which would be the goal of getting the man or something — are very few and far between sometimes,” Quarterman said. “It’s so special because it was written so long ago, with the writer being such a strong dreamer, and dreaming big for women.
“For us to actualize it, where a female artistic producer chooses this show and believes in a brand new female director and then this person gets to empower these great, local, awesome artists — It’s just really been special to see this story and its impact ripple through generations of dreamers.” For Quarterman, a 14-year drama teacher with Jackson Public Schools active in community theater and professional regional theater, “To be able to tell this story here, for New Stage, is pretty epic for me.”
Alcott’s story is often a touchstone for young girls, and this cast of grown women finds much in the source material that they still hold dear, and that resonates in new ways.

“I relate to Jo more than any other fictional character that exists,” Kristina Swearingen said of her character, the central figure Jo March. “At different parts of my life, I have related to her in different parts of hers.”
The Alabama native, more recently of New York, recalled her “energetic, crazy, running-around-having-a-grand-old-time” youth in high school and college, then a career-driven purpose that led her, like Jo, to move to New York.
Swearingen first did this show in college, before the loss of grandparents and a major move. Now, “I know what it’s like to grieve the loss of a loved one, and to live so far away from home, and wanting to go home and be with your family but also wanting to be in a place where your career can take off. .. It hits a lot closer to home.”
As one of four sisters in real life, Frannie Dean of Flora draws on a wealth of memories in playing Beth — including her own family position as next to the youngest of the girls. She and siblings read the story together in their homeschooled childhood, assigning each other roles.

“Omigosh, this is my life,” she said, chuckling. “We would play pretend all day. … ‘Little Women’ is really sweet in that aspect, to really be able to carry my own experience with my family and bring it into the show. … It’s timeless in its nature, its warmth and what it brings to people.”
Jennifer Smith of Clinton, as March family matriarch Marmee, found her way in through a song. First introduced to Marmee’s song “Here Alone” a decade ago when starting voice lessons as an adult, she made it her own. “It became an audition piece for me. It became a dream role for me. It’s been pivotal in opening up doors for me.”
She relishes aging into this role, countering a common fear of women in the entertainment field that they may “age out” of desirable parts. “It’s just a full-circle moment for me, and I’m grateful for it.”

Quarterman fell in love with the 1969 film version she watched with her sister when they were little, adoring the family’s playfulness and stability. Amid teenage angst, she identified with the inevitable growth and change that came with siblings growing up and moving on. Being a mom brings a whole different lens.
“Seeing these little people in your life just growing up, being their own unique versions, all going through their own arc — it’s just fun, and I think that’s why you can stay connected” to the story at any life juncture, she said.
Cast member Slade Haney pointed out the rarity of a story set on a Northeastern homestead during the Civil War.
“You’re getting to see what it was like for the women whose husbands were away at war — how moms struggled, how sisters struggled. You had to make your own means. … I think both men and women can see themselves in these characters, in wanting to be independent like Jo, or like Amy wanting to have something of value that belongs to you and not just just feel like you’re passed over all the time, and Meg, to be valuable to someone else, and in Beth, for everyone to be happy and content and love each other,” Haney said.
New Stage Theatre Artistic Director Francine Reynolds drew attention, too, to the rarity of an American classic for the stage offering an abundance of women’s roles that can showcase Jackson metro’s talent pool. “We just always have so many great women,” she said, and classics — “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Death of a Salesman,” for instance — often offer fewer parts for them, though contemporary dramas are more balanced.
Reynolds sees value in the musical’s timing and storyline. “Of course, we need to celebrate the contributions of women. This was a woman who was trying to be a writer in 1865, ’66, ’67. That’s, to me, a real trailblazing thing.
“It is important to show, this was a real person — Louisa May Alcott, personified as Jo. It’s important to hold these people up as role models for other young girls, to show that you can do this, too. You can dream your dream. You can strive to break boundaries.”
It is a key reminder of advancements that may be threatened. “We’ve made such strides,” Reynolds said, “and had so many great programs to open doors for people, that I feel like those doors are going to start closing, just because of things you are allowed to say and things you aren’t allowed.”
For tickets, $50 (discounts for seniors, students, military), visit www.newstagetheatre.com or the New Stage Theatre box office, or call 601-948-3533.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Rolling Fork – 2 Years Later

Tracy Harden stood outside her Chuck’s Dairy Bar in Rolling Fork, teary eyed, remembering not the EF-4 tornado that nearly wiped the town off the map two years before. Instead, she became emotional, “even after all this time,” she said, thinking of the overwhelming help people who’d come from all over selflessly offered.
“We’re back now, she said, smiling. “People have been so kind.”


“I stepped out of that cooler two years ago and saw everything, and I mean, everything was just… gone,” she said, her voice trailing off. “My God, I thought. What are we going to do now? But people came and were so giving. It’s remarkable, and such a blessing.”

“And to have another one come on almost the exact date the first came,” she said, shaking her head. “I got word from these young storm chasers I’d met. He told me they were tracking this one, and it looked like it was coming straight for us in Rolling Fork.”
“I got up and went outside.”
“And there it was!”
“I cannot tell you what went through me seeing that tornado form in the sky.”
The tornado that touched down in Rolling Fork last Sunday did minimal damage and claimed no lives.
Horns honk as people travel along U.S. 61. Harden smiles and waves.
She heads back into her restaurant after chatting with friends to resume grill duties as people, some local, some just passing through town, line up for burgers and ice cream treats.


Rolling Fork is mending, slowly. Although there is evidence of some rebuilding such as new homes under construction, many buildings like the library and post office remain boarded up and closed. A brutal reminder of that fateful evening two years ago.


















This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Remembering Big George Foreman and a poor guy named Pedro
George Foreman, surely one of the world’s most intriguing and transformative sports figures of the 20th century, died over the weekend at the age of 76. Please indulge me a few memories.
This was back when professional boxing was in its heyday. Muhammad Ali was heavyweight champion of the world for a second time. The lower weight divisions featured such skilled champions and future champs as Alex Arugello, Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran, Tommy “Hit Man” Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Boxing was front page news all over the globe. Indeed, Ali was said to be the most famous person in the world and had stunned the boxing world by stopping the previously undefeated Foreman in an eighth round knockout in Kinshasa, Zaire, in October of 1974. Foreman, once an Olympic gold medalist at age 19, had won his previous 40 professional fights and few had lasted past the second round. Big George, as he was known, packed a fearsome punch.
My dealings with Foreman began in January of 1977, roughly 27 months after his Ali debacle with Foreman in the middle of a boxing comeback. At the time, I was the sports editor of my hometown newspaper in Hattiesburg when the news came that Foreman was going to fight a Puerto Rican professional named Pedro Agosto in Pensacola, just three hours away.
Right away, I applied for press credentials and was rewarded with a ringside seats at the Pensacola Civic Center. I thought I was going to cover a boxing match. It turned out more like an execution.
The mismatch was evident from the pre-fight introductions. Foreman towered over the 5-foot, 11-inch Agosto. Foreman had muscles on top of muscles, Agosto not so much. When they announced Agosto weighed 205 pounds, the New York sports writer next to me wise-cracked, “Yeah, well what is he going to weigh without his head?”
It looked entirely possible we might learn.
Foreman toyed with the smaller man for three rounds, almost like a full-grown German shepherd dealing with a tiny, yapping Shih Tzu. By the fourth round, Big George had tired of the yapping. With punches that landed like claps of thunder, Foreman knocked Agosto down three times. Twice, Agosto struggled to his feet after the referee counted to nine. Nearly half a century later I have no idea why Agosto got up. Nobody present– or the national TV audience – would have blamed him for playing possum. But, no, he got up the second time and stumbled over into the corner of the ring right in front of me. And that’s where he was when Foreman hit him with an evil right uppercut to the jaw that lifted the smaller man a foot off the canvas and sprayed me and everyone in the vicinity with Agosto’s blood, sweat and snot – thankfully, no brains. That’s when the ref ended it.
It remains the only time in my sports writing career I had to buy a T-shirt at the event to wear home.
So, now, let’s move ahead 18 years to July of 1995. Foreman had long since completed his comeback by winning back the heavyweight championship. He had become a preacher. He also had become a pitch man for a an indoor grill that bore his name and would sell more than 100 million units. He was a millionaire many times over. He made far more for hawking that grill than he ever made as a fighter. He had become a beloved figure, known for his warm smile and his soothing voice. And now he was coming to Jackson to sign his biography. His publishing company called my office to ask if I’d like an interview. I said I surely would.
One day at the office, I answered my phone and the familiar voice on the other end said, “This is George Foreman and I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
I told him I wanted to talk to him about his book but first I wanted to tell him he owed me a shirt.
“A shirt?” he said. “How’s that?”
I asked him if remembered a guy named Pedro Agosto. He said he did. “Man, I really hit that poor guy,” he said.
I thought you had killed him, I said, and I then told him about all the blood and snot that ruined my shirt.
“Man, I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I’d never hit a guy like that now. I was an angry, angry man back then.”
We had a nice conversation. He told me about finding his Lord. He told me about his 12 children, including five boys, all of whom he named George.
I asked him why he would give five boys the same name.
“I never met my father until late in his life,” Big George told me. “My father never gave me nothing. So I decided I was going to give all my boys something to remember me by. I gave them all my name.”
Yes, and he named one of his girls Georgette.
We did get around to talking about his book, and you will not be surprised by its title: “By George.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
://mississippitoday.org”>Mississippi Today.
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