by Devna Bose, Mississippi Today
July 18, 2025

Shelves half-filled with books lined the walls of the muggy Bailey APAC Middle School library, where a handful of volunteers assembled equipment, painted ceilings and sorted through boxes.

One volunteer, wiping sweat from his brow, was Errick L. Greene, superintendent of Jackson Public Schools.

Jackson Public Schools held its annual Beautification Day on Friday. The event brings community members into schools to help prepare them for the first day, just days away. Greene joined hundreds of volunteers across the city.

After all, he was the one who established the event when he arrived at the district in 2018 — a district that was facing a potential state takeover and had lost some trust from its community.

“There’s no way to revitalize a district and do the heavy lifting that we needed to do without some kind of spark,” he said. “We were looking for those sparks — painting a mural or planting some flowers or helping a teacher to set up a classroom. This was an effort to create some shared ownership in our schools.

“You want families to feel like this is their school, because it is.”

That shared responsibility is essential, especially as federal education funding wavers, Greene said. 

Voters had just approved a $65 million bond issue to pay for repairs and new classrooms in the district when Greene arrived in 2018. But he quickly realized Jackson Public Schools, which has many decades-old buildings, needed “two, three, maybe even four times more than that.”

“While I’m thankful, we’ve seen over time, the needs were just much, much, much greater,” he said. 

As the district focuses on taking its schools to the next level, Greene said, the state needs to continue consistently and fully funding education, and the community needs to keep supporting its schools at events like Beautification Day. 

Bailey in particular was humming with excitement on Friday morning. This year, students will be returning to the school’s original location where it was built in 1938. The school was closed for a few years while undergoing renovations, but in a few days, it will reopen as a 4th to 8th grade school after absorbing Wells APAC Elementary School.

For Rose Wright, a longtime history teacher at Bailey, it’s a homecoming.

“What I love about Beautification Day is that these are their children, and these parents are coming to help us help them,” she said, cutting decorations for her classroom. “I am just really excited to be at home.”

Outside in the sultry July heat, a group of dads dug up dead vines. Though it’s not his first time helping out during Beautification Day, Justin Cook, an attorney at the Mississippi Office of the State Public Defender, took off work this year to help prepare the school. He’s got two kids, a 5th grader and an 8th grader, who will learn in the new building.

“I thought it was important to do everything I could to make the transition easier,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be hiccups, and whatever we can do as parents and stakeholders to have that growing pains be as minimal as possible is essential.”

Events like Beautification Day, Greene said, don’t just deepen the relationship between the community and the district. They also show students that the community is invested in them, which is integral to their success. 

“I grew up in Flint, Michigan, and so I know what it means to be in a community that is kind of dismissed,” he said. “I’ve found that here, there’s a great deal of pride — even where we as a school district had not delivered. The fact that we even have this kind of activity absolutely signals to young people that people care about you.”

Students roamed the school grounds and hallways, stepping around wood planks and cardboard boxes, peering into their new classrooms.

Kayley Willis, who will be in the 5th grade at Bailey this year, saw her school for the first time on Friday morning and explored the building with friends Anasia Hunter and Farah Malembeka, both rising 6th graders. 

“It makes us feel proud that we actually have people who care about the school enough to come down here and help out,” Hunter said. “It really feels like they care.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post ‘This is their school.’ Hundreds of volunteers prepare JPS schools for first day appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This article from *Mississippi Today* emphasizes themes of community involvement, local investment in public education, and the value of public schools, which are typically associated with center-left priorities. It portrays Jackson Public Schools Superintendent Errick L. Greene positively, highlighting grassroots efforts like Beautification Day without criticism or opposing viewpoints. While the tone is optimistic and focused on civic pride, it also subtly underscores the need for increased public funding and support from the state, reinforcing progressive concerns about underfunded schools. The reporting is factual but framed with a community-oriented, pro-public education perspective.

by Caleb Bedillion, The Marshall Project and Anna Wolfe, Mississippi Today
July 18, 2025

Tangled finances, thousands in personal loans and a political contribution from a supposed investor group made up of undercover FBI informants — this was all contained in a months-late campaign finance report from Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens. 

Owens, a second-term Democrat in Mississippi’s capital city region, is fighting federal bribery charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. At the same time, his recent campaign finance disclosure reflects a pair of transactions that correspond with key details in the government’s allegation that Owens took money from undercover informants to pay off a local official’s debt.

Regarding payments from Facility Solutions Team — the company name used in the FBI sting — to former Jackson City Councilwoman Angelique Lee, Owens allegedly stated the need to “clean it out,” according to the indictment, which was unsealed in November.

“[L]ike we always do, we’ll put it in a campaign account, or directly wire it,” he said, the indictment claims. “[T]hat’s the only way I want the paper trail to look.”

Agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with Owens and other officials, and after his arraignment last year, Owens responded to the charges, saying, “The cherry-picked statements of drunken locker room banter is not a crime.”

Throughout 2024, a non-election year during which federal authorities allege Owens funneled thousands of dollars in bribes to Jackson’s city officials, Owens loaned his campaign more than $20,000, according to his campaign committee’s finance report. He’d won reelection in late 2023.

Owens and his attorneys did not respond to questions about his campaign finance report.

Owens’ report, filed May 30 – months late and riddled with errors – is the latest example of how Mississippi politicians can ignore the state’s campaign finance transparency laws while avoiding meaningful consequences. It’s a lax legal environment that has led to late and illegible reports, untraceable out-of-state money that defied contribution limits, and, according to federal authorities, public corruption with campaign finance accounts serving as piggy banks. 

Enforcement duties are divided among many government bodies, including the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The commission’s executive director, Tom Hood, has long complained that the state’s campaign finance laws are confusing and ineffective.

“It’s just a mess,” Hood said.

Owens filed the annual report months past the Jan. 31 deadline, after reporting from The Marshall Project – Jackson revealed he had failed to do so. He paid a $500 fine in April.

He was also late filing in previous years, paying fines in some years and failing to pay the penalties in other years, according to records provided by the Ethics Commission.

The report, which Owens signed, is full of omissions or miscalculations, with no way to tell which is which. The cover sheet of the report provides the total amount of itemized contributions and disbursements for the year — $44,000 in and $36,500 out. But the body of the report lists the line-by-line itemizations for each, and when the Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today summed the individual itemizations, the totals didn’t match those on the cover sheet.

Based on the itemized spending detailed in the body of the report, Owens’ campaign should have thousands more in cash on hand than reported. In the report’s cover sheet, Owens also reported that he received more in itemized contributions during the year than he received in total contributions, which would be impossible to do.

While the secretary of state receives and maintains campaign finance reports, it has no obligation to review the reports and no authority to investigate their accuracy. Under state law, willfully filing a false campaign finance report is a misdemeanor. Charges, however, are rare.

Owens is the only local official in the federal bribery probe — which is set to go to trial next summer — who remains in office. The government alleged that Owens accepted $125,000 to split between him and two associates in late 2023 from a group of men he believed were vying for a development project in downtown Jackson. Owens accepted several thousand dollars more to funnel to public officials for their support of the project, the indictment alleges. The use of campaign accounts was an important feature of the alleged scheme, according to the indictment.

Owens divvied up $50,000 from Facility Solutions Team, or FST, into checks from various individuals or companies — allegedly meant to conceal the bribe — to former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s reelection campaign, the indictment charged. 

Lumumba accepted the checks during a sunset cruise on a yacht in South Florida, the indictment alleged. His campaign finance report, filed earlier this year, reflected five $10,000 contributions near the date of the trip, with no mention of FST.

Lumumba, who lost reelection in April, has pleaded not guilty. 

While the indictment accused Owens of saying that public officials use campaign accounts to finance their personal lives, state law prohibits the use of political contributions for personal use. 

The indictment alleges Owens accepted $60,000 — some for the purpose of funneling to local politicians — from the men representing themselves as FST in the backroom of Owens’ cigar bar on Feb. 13, 2024. On his campaign finance report, he listed a $12,500 campaign contribution from FST two days later, the same day the indictment alleges he paid off $10,000 of former Councilwoman Lee’s campaign debt. Lee pleaded guilty to charges related to the alleged bribery scheme in 2024. 

Also on Feb. 15, 2024, the campaign finance report Owens filed shows a $10,000 payment to 1Vision, a printing company that used to go by the name A2Z Printing, for the purpose of “debt retirement.” Lee had her city paycheck garnished starting in 2023 to pay off debts to A2Z Printing, according to media reports. No mention of Lee was made in the campaign finance report filed by Owens. The printing company did not respond to requests for comment.

Campaigns are allowed to contribute money to other campaigns or political action committees. If Owens’ committee used campaign funds to pay off debt owed by Lee’s campaign, the transaction should have been structured as a contribution to Lee’s campaign and reported as such by both campaigns, said Sam Begley, a Jackson-based attorney and election law expert who has advised candidates about their financial disclosures.

The alleged debt payoff on behalf of Lee is not the first time Owens has described transactions on his campaign finance filings in ways that may obscure how his campaign is spending money. Confusing or unclear descriptions of spending activity are common on campaign finance reports across the state.

Owens previously reported that in 2023, he paid $1,275 to a staff member in the district attorney’s office who also worked on his campaign. The payment was labeled a reimbursement, which Owens explained in a May email to The Marshall Project – Jackson was for expenditures this person made on behalf of the campaign, “such as meals for volunteers/workers, evening/weekend canvassers, and election day workers.”

State law requires campaigns to itemize all contributions and expenses over $200. Begley said he believes Owens’ committee should have itemized any payments over $200 made by anyone on behalf of the campaign. 

Upfront payments, with the expectation of repayment by the campaign, might also be considered a loan, according to a spokesperson for the secretary of state. Campaigns are barred from spending money to repay undocumented loans.

The state Ethics Commission has addressed undocumented loan repayments in several opinions, outlining the required documentation to make repayments legal.

Since 2018, the Ethics Commission has had the power to issue advisory opinions upon request to help candidates and campaigns sort through laws that Hood, the commission’s executive director, said aren’t always clear.

The commission has issued just six opinions in seven years.

“I was surprised in the first few years that there weren’t more,” Hood said. “But now it seems to be clear that for whatever reason, most people don’t think they need advice.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Indicted Jackson prosecutor's latest campaign finance report rife with errors appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

The article critically examines the conduct of Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, a Democrat, and highlights systemic weaknesses in Mississippi’s campaign finance laws. While the reporting is grounded in factual evidence, legal documents, and expert commentary, the tone leans toward exposing flaws in enforcement and transparency—issues typically emphasized by center-left or reform-oriented journalism. The article does not display partisan rhetoric or ideological framing beyond its focus on accountability and legal integrity. Its publication by Mississippi Today and The Marshall Project, both known for investigative work with slight progressive leanings, further supports a Center-Left classification.

by Cliff Johnson, Mississippi Today
July 18, 2025

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

My parents were born in 1945 Tylertown in southwest Mississippi. Despite being raised in rural homes where overt racism was served up as often as turnip greens or buttermilk biscuits, Dad and Mom refused to pass down to their children the generations-old heirlooms of animus and fear. No racist jokes. No slurs. No stray remarks about knowing one’s place and no lamentations about lost traditions or unwelcome changes. And whom do I have to thank for this gift that changed the trajectory of my life?  Uncle Sam and the United States Air Force.

As it did for so many young men from small farms in far-flung rural counties, the military and ROTC provided Dad with a pathway to college and a career after graduation.

Upon graduating from Ole Miss in 1967 with an obligation of active-duty military service (and a two-week-old baby, me), the Air Force sent my father to Texas A&M to obtain a master’s degree in computer science and start down the road toward becoming a military officer. When he left College Station, the next stop was officer training school.

An important thing happened during that period between completing his formal education and being sent off to Vietnam. The Air Force confronted Dad with the hard truth about racism in our country and our military – and they made it crystal clear that it would not be tolerated from Air Force officers.

More times than I can count, Dad has told me the story of a crusty officer barking out, “In the United States Air Force, there is no white, there is no black, there is only Air Force blue!” That same officer told Dad and other young officers from the South that their particular brand of prejudice might be quickly cured by a glimpse at the scores from IQ tests administered to all in attendance.

And as Dad moved through the mandatory “race relations” component of his training, another important thing happened. He got to know the Black officers from his squadron. He ate meals with them. He learned to play handball with them. He figured out that they wanted the same things he did.

As Dad puts it, “They just wanted to marry a pretty girl, get promoted, drink a cold beer once in a while, and maybe take a decent vacation.”

Dad didn’t like everything they said to him in that class, and he admits that he sometimes got angry. But on the handful of occasions when I have discussed with him how it came to be that he and Mom ended the cycle of overt racism in our family, he consistently has credited the fact that the Air Force told him hard truths about who he was and afforded him the opportunity to discover the painful reality that what he was told around the dinner table in Tylertown was a source of pain and oppression for those new friends about whom he cared deeply – and with whom he shared table as an adult soldier.

The training Dad experienced was part of a national effort in the late 1960s and early 70s to address racial division and inequality in our military. On March 5, 1971, the secretary of Defense announced that the effort would be expanded to require every member of the armed forces to attend classes in race relations.

As part of that historic effort, the Defense Race Relations Institute trained 1,400 race relations instructors in a single year. According to the New York Times, a bibliography of “100 of the most important works on the Black man in America” was contributed to the Institute in hopes of educating soldiers on the challenges confronting our country.

As a direct beneficiary of that historic effort, I am deeply disturbed by the fact that the difficult and important lessons the United States Air Force taught my father would be illegal today, 55 years later, if presented in any Mississippi school or university.

Mississippi’s new anti-DEI law prohibits requiring “diversity training” in our schools and universities and defines that term as “any formal or informal education, seminars, workshops or institutional program that focus on increasing awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, gender identity, sexual orientation or national origin.” (Emphasis added by me). 

In a world where we still are plagued by bias and racism, and at a time when we remain deeply and violently divided, Mississippi politicians have outlawed efforts to increase awareness and understanding of issues that are as complicated today as they were when I was a young boy. They have made illegal conversations and lessons that our armed forces – not Harvard University or the University of Virginia – deemed central to the security, morale and identity of our nation.

Sticking our heads in the sand, or elsewhere, and “protecting” our children from our painful and violent past does them, and Mississippi, no good. It shortchanges and underestimates young people who are fully capable of talking about hard things, fosters the stereotype of Mississippi as a place where ignorance and injustice flourish, and is a slap in the face of all those like Dad who did the hard work of grappling with the truth and fighting for our freedom to tell it.             

Cliff Johnson is a civil rights lawyer and law professor in Oxford, Mississippi. Johnson is a graduate of Mississippi College and Columbia University School of Law, and he speaks frequently on the intersection of law, politics and religion.      

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Attorney: 1970s' Air Force DEI training 'changed my life,' but now illegal in Mississippi appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This opinion essay by Cliff Johnson reflects a Center-Left political bias. The author expresses concern over Mississippi’s recent anti-DEI law, arguing it suppresses essential conversations about race and inclusion—framing such policies as regressive and harmful. The piece is personal and reflective, using emotional appeals, historical anecdotes, and moral reasoning to critique conservative legislation. While it doesn’t push a broader progressive agenda, its defense of DEI principles, criticism of right-leaning policies, and framing of Mississippi lawmakers’ actions in a negative light reflect a perspective aligned with moderate-to-left values on social justice and education.