Mississippi Today is moving its offices to downtown Jackson

by Mississippi Today, Mississippi Today
March 3, 2025

Mississippi Today, the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom, is moving its offices to downtown Jackson from Ridgeland.

For us, this move is more than just a change of address — it’s a reflection of our belief in Jackson’s promise. In late February, we announced the launch of a team of reporters focused on covering the city of Jackson. We believe strongly that the success of the entire state of Mississippi relies on the success of Jackson.

READ MORE: Mississippi Today announces new team of reporters to cover the city of Jackson

Downtown Jackson, in particular, is Mississippi’s heartbeat. The values represented in this neighborhood are the values that define the people of the entire state: creativity, determination, perseverance, and a tangible sense of community. By investing in this space, we’re investing in the people, businesses, and leaders who are already shaping the city and state every day. And we hope to be representative of a proud next chapter that breathes life into this important place.

Our new home will be in the historic Lamar Life Building, one of Mississippi’s most iconic landmarks. Opened and dedicated in 1925 — exactly 100 years ago — it was the state of Mississippi’s first skyscraper and remains a symbol of Jackson’s growth and resilience.

This building boasts an important literary and media history. A young Eudora Welty, working for her father’s life insurance company, began her lifelong pursuit of storytelling and photography in the building. It was also home to Mississippi’s first network radio station, WJDX, and it also once housed Lamar Broadcasting Television, now known as WLBT. We are proud to build upon these legacies.

Our office, which is currently being renovated, will not only provide a comfortable home for the largest newsroom staff in the state that is already doing so much work downtown at the state Capitol and at City Hall. It will double as a community gathering place and venue for the live programming that Mississippi Today does so well. We want our space to regularly bring people downtown, and we will work to host events that every Mississippian will find engaging.

Stay tuned for more updates as we settle into our new home. We couldn’t be more excited to continue our work from the heart of Mississippi.

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

Vanderbilt University expelled James Lawson for taking part in a sit-in in Nashville. 

Throughout the civil rights movement, he assisted Martin Luther King Jr. in teaching the principles of nonviolence. It was a lesson Lawson learned when he was young: 

“I had my first racial insult hurled at me as a child. I struck out at that child and fought the child physically. Mom was in the kitchen working. In telling her the story she, without turning to me, said, ‘Jimmy, what good did that do?’ And she did a long soliloquy then about our lives and who we were and the love of God and the love of Jesus in our home, in our congregation.  And her last sentence was, ‘Jimmy, there must be a better way.’ In many ways that’s the pivotal event of my life.” 

He joined the Methodist Youth Fellowship and made headlines when he refused to report for the draft in 1951. He served 14 months in prison for refusing to fight in the war. Afterward he traveled as a missionary to India, where he studied the nonviolent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. 

Back in the U.S., he met King, and the two began to work together. 

“We were convinced that through nonviolent struggle, we could change the face of this nation and begin the process whereby we could really become a democracy with liberty, equality and justice for all people,” Lawson recalled. 

At King’s urging, he dropped out of graduate school and joined the movement. Lawson set his sights on sit-ins in Nashville. Student Diane Nash said she didn’t think nonviolence would work but told him that nobody else was trying to do anything about this system. 

The sit-ins proved successful, and a year later, Lawson and his students joined the Freedom Rides, only to be arrested again, this time in Mississippi for violating segregation laws. Rather than take them to the local jail, the Riders were hauled to the state’s notorious prison, known locally as Parchman Farm. 

When he was finally freed about 40 days later, he and other Riders met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, leading to President John Kennedy ordering that bus seating no longer be restricted by race. 

In 1962, he became the pastor at Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis. Six years later, he invited King to speak in support of sanitation workers, only to see his friend assassinated the next day. 

“Our country is a country trapped,” he said, “embedded, addicted to the mythology of violence.” That is why nonviolence still matters,  he said. “Our nation must be changed.”

Lawson died at a Los Angeles hospital on June 9, 2024, at the age of 95.

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

March 2, 1955

Nine months before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 

“History had me glued to the seat,” the civil rights pioneer told the Guardian. “It felt as if Harriet Tubman’s hand was pushing me down on the one shoulder, and Sojourner Truth’s hand was pushing me down on the other. Learning about those two women gave me the courage to remain seated that day.” 

She aspired to become a civil rights lawyer and when the bus driver ordered her to move, she responded, “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare.” 

When two white police officers tried to drag her from the bus, she told them it was her constitutional right to stay. They handcuffed her, jailed her and charged her with violating segregation laws, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer. She learned of racism at a young age, and she was disturbed by what she heard in her all-Black school. 

“One thing especially bothered me – we Black students constantly put ourselves down,” she said in “Twice Toward Justice.” 

“The N-word – we were saying it to each other, to ourselves. I’d hear that word and I would start crying. I wouldn’t let people use it around me.” 

After her arrest, she grew close with Parks. Other Black women followed her lead, refusing to surrender their seats, including Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald. They brought the groundbreaking Browder v. Gayle lawsuit that resulted in Montgomery’s segregated bus system being declared unconstitutional. 

“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it,” she said. “You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’”

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