In 2023 as lawmakers were passing the bill that would establish a state-appointed court within Jackson, there was talk about appointing “the best and the brightest” judges from around the state to serve – a comment some Black legislators said implied they couldn’t be found within a majority Black Hinds County. 

Over a year later, the Capitol Complex Improvement District Court is set to open next week, and three judges with roots in Jackson and live in the capital have been appointed to serve. 

The judges who were sworn in during a Friday ceremony said they were interested in the positions because they wanted to serve the community where many of them grew up and live. 

“This is a very serious undertaking to citizens who live in this city,” said Judge Christopher Collins, who will serve on a part-time basis. He moved to Jackson for the role. 

Judge Stanley Alexander and James Holland will be the full-time judges.

Alexander is a former assistant district attorney in multiple judicial districts and he worked in the attorney general’s office, including as director of the Division of Public Integrity. Holland has practiced law for over 40 years and has trial experience, including defense in state and federal courts. He ran an unsuccessful race for Hinds County district attorney in 2015.

Collins has been a prosecutor and public defender. His judicial experience includes work as a circuit and municipal judge, intervention court judge and a judge for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. 

Bryana Smith McDougal was appointed as the court’s clerk. She previously was judicial assistant to former Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens and an assistant deputy clerk for the Supreme Court. She grew up in Jackson and lives in Madison.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph, who appointed the judges and clerk, said he considered many from across the state and took recommendations. It was through letters of recommendation and conversations with the three judges that showed that they were the best for the position. 

“These judges have proven themselves,” Randolph said. 

House Bill 1020, passed in 2023, created the court. The CCID court was supposed to be operating last year, but it waited on a building to operate. Now business will begin operation Monday at 8 a.m. at its renovated facility at 201 S. Jefferson St., a former bus terminal in downtown. 

The CCID court will hear misdemeanor cases and initial appearances for felonies investigated by Capitol Police. Those cases have been handled in the existing Hinds County court system during the interim.

“We want to stay current (with cases.) Our goal is to support and supplement the current court system,” Holland said. 

At the Friday ceremony, Gov. Tate Reeves said the court and the ongoing work of Capitol Police will help make Jackson safer. 

“Make no mistake. Jackson’s best days are ahead of us,” he said. 

Reeves stood alongside various government officials, law enforcement and lawmakers, including House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, who authored HB 1020, and Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, whose agency includes Capitol Police. 

Lamar said the court will be for the regular people of Jackson who want to have their kids play safely in their yards, people who want an efficient and blind justice system and families who will be supported by future jobs that come to the city. 

HB 1020 also expanded the jurisdiction of the Capitol Police from within the district to Jackson. The district covers downtown, the area around Jackson State University, Belhaven, the hospitals, Fondren and up to Northside Drive. A bill has been proposed this session to expand the district even further. 

In recent years, Capitol Police has been built up from a former security force for government buildings into a law enforcement agency. 

The court and police expansion were touted as solutions to crime and a backlogged Hinds County court system. Pushback came from Jackson lawmakers, advocacy groups and community members and two lawsuits were filed, but they have since been resolved. 

Prosecutors from the attorney general office’s Public Integrity Unit were also appointed to work in the CCID court, but they were not announced Friday. A spokesperson said their identities will be known once the court opens. 

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

So, as I watched the last 90 seconds of Mississippi State’s overtime victory over Ole Miss last Saturday night at Starkville, I got to thinking: What would Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, think?

I had plenty of time to think. Because of video reviews, timeouts, fouls, free throws and more replay reviews, the last 90 seconds of playing time lasted 17 minutes of real time. The game itself took two hours, 41 minutes. That’s 161 minutes if you are keeping score, which is roughly four times the length of time the ball actually was in play.

I think I know what Naismith would think. I believe he would think: You know, this is not really what I had in mind.

Some historic perspective is necessary here. Dr. Naismith was not yet a doctor when he conjured up the game we call basketball. Later to become a doctor of both divinity and of medicine, Naismith was a recently hired YMCA training school instructor at Springfield (Mass.) College in December of 1891, 134 years and change ago. His boss, Dean Luther Gillick charged Naismith with the task of developing a new indoor sport to fill the void between football and baseball seasons. Seems the Springfield students were terribly bored with gymnastics.

Gillick told Naismith he wanted a sport that required skill and sportsmanship. He wanted a game that provided exercise for the whole body, yet a game played without extreme roughness causing damage to players and equipment. Had they watched the Rebels and Bulldogs last Saturday night, Gllick and Naismith might have covered their eyes. Extreme roughness and physicality ruled the night.

But all in all, Naismith did fairly well. Take last Saturday night, for example: Certainly none of players, nor the more than 9,000 fans at The Hump, were the least bit bored, except for during the numerous replay reviews. 

Given his advanced degree in divinity, Naismith probably would admit he was fortunate in some ways. For instance, after sketching out his idea for the sport, Naismith sent a janitor in search of two 15-inch by 15-inch boxes to hang at either end of the gymnasium. Basketball was almost boxball. Hoops was almost squares. The janitor couldn’t find the appropriate boxes and returned to Naismith carrying two peach baskets. And, yes, the baskets had bottoms. Initially a ladder was needed to retrieve the ball after made baskets.

Naismith’s class had 18 students. So it was the first game of basketball matched nine against nine. Tacking, pushing, holding and tripping were prohibited, but, then, so was dribbling. Clearly, as Bob Cousy, Pete Maravich, Juju Murray and Josh Hubbard have illustrated, the game would evolve. The first game, played with a soccer ball, ended with the score one to nothing. Accuracy has evolved, too.

Naismith’s game quickly grew in popularity, especially In the northeast. Naismith became something of a hero. In fact, some folks suggested the new sport be called Naismith-ball. To his everlasting credit, Naismith flatly rejected the idea.

You, as I, may wonder how some of the terms we use in basketball today came about. For instance, the player who patrols the area closest to the goal is often called the post-man even though there is no mail involved. Sometimes, he plays the low post. Sometimes, he moves farther away from the basketball and plays the high post. Why post? Glad you asked. Back in Naismith’s day, most gyms, including the one in Springfield, had posts in the middle of the courts to hold up the ceilings. The players had to maneuver around the posts. The player who played near the posts closest to the baskets was called the post-man.

Back then, many of the courts were elevated and doubled as stages (think Memorial Coliseum at Vanderbilt). There was an inherent danger of players falling off the stages and breaking legs, arms and noggins. Netting was often put up around the courts to protect the players from such danger, giving the playing floor the visual effect of a cage. And that’s why basketball players are often still referred to a cagers. Now you know.

Women took to the sport from almost the very beginning. The first women’s game was played in 1892 at Northampton, Mass. Men were not allowed to attend because the women played the game in bloomers. Uniforms, too, have evolved.

“Basketball,” Naismith wrote, “is a game to play. You don’t coach it.” Chris Jans and Chris Beard, two guys who make millions, surely would disagree. But maybe Naismith had the right idea. All that coaching – which happens mostly during TV timeouts – is part of what makes the last 90 seconds of a close game last more than 10 times that long.

In his book about basketball, Naismith wrote, “Let us all be able to lose gracefully and to win courteously; to accept criticism as well as praise; and, last of all, to appreciate the attitude of the other fellow at all times.”

Dr. Naismith, we can reasonably surmise, would not have appreciated the numerous refrains of “Go to hell Ole Miss” and “ref, you suck” last Saturday night.

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

Jan. 24, 1941

Legendary artist Aaron Neville — who NPR once said “sings like an angel who swallowed a wah-wah pedal” — was born in New Orleans. 

With Black, Native American and European roots, he made a career of breaking through barriers and embracing a wide variety of music genres. 

As a child growing up in poverty, he discovered that his voice was special. 

“I would sing my way into movies or basketball games or whatever,” he told New Orleans magazine. “Whoever was on the door, they knew I could sing, so they’d say, ‘All right, Neville, sing me a song, and I’ll let you in.” 

By the mid-1950s, he and his brothers began performing as an R&B group, scoring a local hit with “Mardi Gras Mambo,” but his career came crashing down when he was arrested in 1958 for car theft and spent six months in prison. The time served as a wake-up call. 

“They had eight people in a cell designed to hold four,” he told People magazine. “Rats were running over everything.” 

After prison, he settled down, married his sweetheart and began a solo career. He soon found success with his single, “Over You,” which reached No. 21 on the R&B charts and decided to move to Los Angeles. 

The move, intended to boost his career, devastated his personal life when he became addicted to heroin and spent a year in prison for burglary. 

Determined to make it in music, he returned to New Orleans and recorded with legendary producer Allen Toussaint, scoring a major hit with “Tell It Like It Is” (ranked on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”). The song rose all the way to No. 2 on the charts, selling more than a million copies, but Neville received no royalties — only a flat fee for the recording session. As a result, he had to work as a ditch digger and dockworker to support his family. 

“We were eating mayonnaise sandwiches,” his son, Aaron Jr., told People. “And we didn’t have a refrigerator. We had an ice chest.” 

Neville continued to struggle with his addiction. “The worst time of my life was when I was separated from my wife and thought I would lose her,” he told GQ magazine. “Then I started praying real hard.” 

After his mother died in 1975, he beat back the demons and began playing again with his brothers, becoming a mainstay of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. 

In 1989, his career enjoyed a renaissance after duets with Linda Ronstadt, creating the Grammy-winning single and international hit “Don’t Know Much.” The two performed together at the Grammy Awards in what was Ronstadt’s last performance on the show. 

Neville went on to record the successful “Yellow Moon” with the Neville Brothers, and his solo career continued to soar with more hits, “Everybody Plays the Fool” and “Don’t Take Away My Heaven.” 

In the years that followed, he explored other genres, including country, recording a duet with Trisha Yearwood. In 2006, he released a collection of soul classics. Four years later, he recorded a collection of gospel hymns. 

“I do feel God when I’m singing,” he said. “(A social worker in England) told me there was this 6-year-old boy, he was autistic and they couldn’t do anything with him. The only thing that would soothe him was to put headphones on his ears and he would hear my voice. When I heard that, I thought, ‘Well, it must be the God in me touching the God in him.’” 

Shortly after the album’s release, his wife, Joel, died of cancer. A year later, he met the woman who became his second wife, Sarah, during a People magazine shoot, and she inspired him to live on Freville Farm in upstate New York. 

“I don’t have neighbors that close, so I don’t bother nobody if I’m singing loud,” he told Relix. “I can hit whatever notes I want. The only ones that are gonna hear me are the chickens, and they don’t mind.” 

For the first time in his career, he recorded an album in which he wrote most of the songs himself, making “Apache” a reminiscent love letter to the city he grew up in and the people he loves. “I feel,” he told New Orleans magazine, “like I am a miracle.”

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