NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For years, Tennessee Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro’s call to require the state’s voting infrastructure to include a paper record of each ballot cast has been batted down in the Republican-dominated Legislature.

But as false claims still swirl around the 2020 presidential election — and some GOP voters remain distrustful of voting machines — Tennessee Republican lawmakers who have held off are coming around on a paper-backed mandate. A similar scenario is playing out in some of the five other states -- four of which are Republican-led -- that do not currently have a voting system with a paper record.

The Tennessee GOP bill that is gaining traction would set a 2024 deadline for Tennessee to join the vast majority of states that already have voting systems that include a paper record of every ballot cast, so any disputed results can be verified.

Yarbro said he’ll take the change, even if he doesn’t love the impetus for it.

“I’m disappointed that it’s taken this long, and somewhat concerned over the rationale,” the Nashville lawmaker said. “But at the end of the day, this is good public policy.”

Mississippi and Indiana plan to have a paper trail by the 2024 presidential election. Last year, lawmakers in Texas — where slightly more than 1 in 10 registered voters cast ballots on paperless machines — passed a law requiring paper records by 2026. Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick touted the move as helping to rebuild trust in elections.

Efforts in two states — Louisiana and Democratic-led New Jersey — have been slowed by either process issues or funding.

"Across the partisan spectrum, there is some sense that the controversy around 2020 underscores how important it is to have paper records of voter intent that we can go back to,” said Mark Lindeman, director of Verified Voting, a group that tracks voting equipment across states.

In Tennessee, GOP Gov. Bill Lee has proposed $15 million for a switch to voter-verifiable, paper-backed equipment. The changeout could cost up to $37 million, with leftover federal election funds covering the rest, state officials said. Nearly two-thirds of the state’s 95 counties currently do not produce a paper record.

Republican lawmakers say Tennessee's elections are just fine. They direct scrutiny at other states, despite a lack of any evidence of widespread fraud or other major problems anywhere in the 2020 election.

“When they had the vote, there were a lot of questions about it, especially in several of the states, Georgia and different ones — ‘Is this done right?’" said Tennessee Sen. Ed Jackson, the Republican bill sponsor. “So, that’s what we are trying to accomplish. But we don’t have that issue here in Tennessee.”

Nationwide, election officials continue to grapple with false claims spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies about the 2020 election. This has led to new mail voting restrictions, threats directed at election officials, costly and time-consuming partisan ballot reviews and calls to abandon voting machines altogether and rely solely on paper ballots counted by hand.

About 68% of U.S. registered voters will mark ballots by hand for the 2022 midterm elections, while the rest will use touchscreen voting machines, according to Verified Voting. About 5% of ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election did not have a paper record, down from about 18% in 2016, according to federal officials.

That will shrink further by 2024.

In Indiana this year, Republicans decided not to replace existing equipment. Instead, they added a small printer to some 5,000 voting machines to create a paper trail by 2024.

That plan advanced through the GOP-dominated Legislature in March despite criticism from voter advocacy groups. They argue the printer technology is outdated and relies on lightweight thermal paper, similar to cash register receipts, that is easily damaged and lets voters see only part of their ballot at a time through a small window.

Democratic state Rep. Ed DeLaney of Indianapolis argued not having voter-completed paper ballots available for recounts threatens election integrity far more than claims such as mail ballot fraud.

“If we want to have voter confidence, then we need to do those things which are simple and effective in preventing a miscount,” said DeLaney. “That’s what we need to do and then we can worry about our fantasies and fears.”

This month, Mississippi lawmakers sent the governor legislation to require paper backups by 2024. On a radio show last year, Republican Sen. Jeff Tate said his bill addresses the perception of rigged voting equipment.

In New Jersey, GOP Sen. Joe Pennacchio has sponsored a bill to require paper ballots for all in-person voting, saying that even without the complaints over the 2020 election, “it’s still the right thing to do.” Some majority-party Democrats have introduced paper-trail proposals, as well. New Jersey has a long-standing requirement to upgrade to paper-backed voting systems, but a 2009 deadline still hasn't kicked in due to funding issues.

New Jersey has a hodgepodge of counties with voting machines that produce paper trails, and some that don’t. The state’s law permitting early in person voting, which took effect in 2021, called for machines with paper records. Though the state financed them for all 21 counties, only some bought enough to run their entire election on paper-backed machines.

About one-third of Mississippi voters and nearly half of New Jersey voters use paperless machines, according to Verified Voting.

Louisiana’s Republican Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin has favored ballot-marking machines that print a paper receipt that is electronically scanned so results could be available on election night, but efforts to replace the state's paperless machines have been mired in process delays.

A 2021 law tasked a new commission with recommending a replacement with a paper trail. As it mulls its options, the commission has heard calls for hand-marked paper ballots along with unsubstantiated claims of “cheating” in the 2020 election.

There is no evidence of any widespread fraud or coordinated efforts to steal the 2020 election. Last year, The Associated Press reviewed every instance of potential voter fraud reported in the six states disputed by Trump and found fewer than 475 cases — a number that would have made no difference in the contest.

Over the years, Tennessee election officials have said counties can choose their voting equipment. More recently, they encouraged a move toward paper-backed systems. Now, they support requiring the change, reasoning that increasingly fewer paperless machines are produced.

Last year, a Republican-led legislative subcommittee halted a Democratic push for a paper-trail mandate.

“If there’s not a problem, why are we trying to fix it? And why are we mandating that our local governments have to foot the bill for it?” GOP Rep. Ryan Williams said in 2021.

Williams has since come around. He voted for the new bill last month, telling fellow lawmakers that Tennesseans were “disturbed" about "elections in other states that they felt like disenfranchised them.”

“I think one of the things our citizens wanted to know after the last elections, that we did have a way to verify them in paper," Williams said.

Madison/Rankin County Circuit Court Judge Dewey Arthur walked into courtroom 1 of the circuit courthouse in Canton at 9:06 a.m. on March 28, 2022. His first order of business was the sentencing of 34-year-old Carlos Dominique Allen for drug offenses.

Before the sentence, Assistant District Attorney Todd McAlpin told the court that the judge should treat Allen as a habitual offender.

In Mississippi, someone facing a conviction for a second drug offense faces twice the maximum years in prison. Someone with two prior felony convictions gets the maximum sentence for the crimes as a habitual offender. If a plaintiff gets sentencing enhancement for being both an habitual offender and a subsequent drug offender, the court will double the maximum number of years for the crime. In both cases, the offender will serve without the possibility of parole or probation.

McAlpin provided evidence that in 2013 in Lauderdale County, Ala., Allen received a sentence of three years and three months in the Alabama Department of Corrections for drug possession. In 2016, a judge sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment for assault in the second degree in the same county, McApin added.

“Anything further?” Judge Arthur asked McAlpin.

“Not as far as the subsequent drug offender or habitual offender (issue).”

“Anything from the defense on the subsequent offender and habitual-offender issues?” the judge asked, turning to defense attorney Gerald Mumford.

“No, your honor.”

Killing Austin Elliott?

Before sentence pronouncement, the prosecution called on Mississippi Credit Union Association President and CEO Charles Elliott to testify. His child, Austin Elliott, died one year ago—on Feb. 23, 2021—from a fentanyl overdose after allegedly purchasing the drug from Allen.

Madison County Coroner Alex Breeland wrote in a letter dated Feb. 6, 2022, to the Madison/Rankin County District Attorney’s Office that six people died in Madison County of similar causes in the month Austin died.

Austin Elliott graduated from the University of Mississippi in mid-2019 with a business degree, majoring in management and minoring in entrepreneurship. His mother, Tina Elliott, told the Mississippi Free Press that he started using drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A couple weeks after he first tried opioids drugs, Austin thought, “I can see why people can get in trouble with this,” Tina Elliott recounts of Austin’s experience. “So we took him to the doctor, and (he) never had any more problems.”

“And then that day (Feb. 22, 2021), he runs into (Allen) and takes it.”

Tina Elliott explained that Austin went out with a friend for dinner at around 6 p.m. that Monday and took half a pill of what he allegedly got from Allen.

“He met Carlos through a friend that he went to high school with; he mentioned that they were friends,” Tina Elliott said.

After taking the tablet, Austin passed out in the restaurant’s parking lot. Tina Elliott explained that after an ambulance got to him, a paramedic injected Austin with Narcan, a medication designed to reverse the effects of opioid overdose, which depresses the central nervous system’s functioning, including breathing. The ambulance took Austin to a hospital.

Tina Elliott said that Austin cried tears of joy in the hospital. “I’m grateful to be alive. I’ve got y’all; everything’s going to be fine,” Austin said between tears.

“Honey, the Lord’s not done with you, yet,” Tina replied.

Austin Elliott came back home around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 23, 2021. He ate some food, was in good spirits, started getting ready to sleep, and everything seemed alright, Tina Elliott remembered.

“And he said he felt a little strange, like he was scared to go to bed,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “So he ate, laid down about 1:30 (a.m.), and I found him about 3 (a.m.). He had aspirated.”

Madison County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Allen later that day, and the district attorney’s office subsequently charged him with possession, sale and trafficking in fentanyl, as well as possession of hydrocodone and amphetamine.

Back to the Courthouse

In the courthouse on March 28, 2022, Austin Elliott’s father, Charles Elliott, advocated for the maximum sentence for Allen.

“Austin made a horrible decision, but he did not deserve to die,” Charles Elliott said. “Austin was going to get married. … We were going to have grandchildren.”

“It’s been our hopes and our prayers that Austin will be the last person to die as a result of the defendant,” he added. “Your honor, we pray that you make that a reality today.”

Allen’s younger brother, Delandrez Allen, an active-duty soldier stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., asked the judge for leniency when he took the stand. He explained that his brother moved from Alabama to Mississippi with his wife and children six years ago to start a new life.

“Since he’s been here, he maintained employment and attended college and graduated with honors, and was deepening his faith and attending a church there in Jackson, Mississippi”

Defense attorney Mumford asked him, “You’re not asking for your brother to go unpunished, are you?”

“No,” Delandrez Allen answered, “but I’ll just ask that the judge has leniency in his judgment today. I would like the judge to acknowledge that he has young children, a wife, and I don’t doubt one bit that he can be rehabilitated.”

“I think that he should be at least given the opportunity to at some point be there for his children and at least be able to raise them so that they can be productive citizens in life.”

Carlos Allen soon took the stand.

“Austin Elliott, you know, he was a friend of mine, so I would just like to send my condolences to his family,” he said, addressing the court. “Our prayers are with them regardless of what things may have looked like or whatever they may be in. I have nothing further.”

Later, Judge Arthur said that as a subsequent drug offender and a nonviolent habitual offender in Mississippi, Allen faces 40, 160, 12 and 12 years for each of the four indictments, totaling 224 years. In his sentencing order, however, the judge wrote that Allen will serve 100 years in prison “without early release or the possibility of parole.”

“Pills, in this case, were manufactured in a way to resemble legitimate pills, but they weren’t,” Judge Arthur said in court. “Your statement on tape was basically (that) people are dying from these, and you sold them anyway.”

“This court has rarely seen somebody so heavily involved in the trafficking of narcotics, and this court just can’t get past the fact that you knew these pills kill, and you sold them anyway,” he added. “The basic reason for this court’s sentence (is) it has to send a message: You can’t sell death in Madison County, Miss.”

Next: Torrey A. Powell

After the end of Allen’s sentencing, it was time for 42-year-old Torrey A. Powell to face the judge for his own sentencing.

Madison/Rankin County District Attorney’s Office wrote that on April 29, 2020, a Madison police officer stopped Powell on the road, while the suspect was driving.

“The officer found Powell did not have a valid driver’s license or insurance and asked Powell to step out of the car,” the release continued. “For safety reasons, Powell was patted down, where a pill bottle was found in Powell’s front pocket.”

“Powell admitted the bottle contained ecstasy pills, methamphetamine and heroin.”

While Powell faced the judge on March 28, 2022, seated beside his counsel, Bentley E. Corner, Assistant District Attorney Ashley Allen told him to find that Powell was a subsequent drug offender and a nonviolent habitual offender. With no objection from the defense, the judge agreed. Allen then argued for maximum sentences for Powell.

“He has committed felony drug offenses in Georgia and Oklahoma in multiple counties in Mississippi, and that’s just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head,” Allen said. “The State urges this court to sentence Mr. Powell as both a subsequent and nonviolent habitual offender and to run each of those charges consecutively—because I do not believe that any time that he spends back out in the free world after he receives and serves his sentences will be spent being a productive member of our society.”

However, defense counsel Corner pleaded that the court deviate from following the statute by considering Powell’s health condition. “Mr. Torrey is a heart patient; he has a pacemaker—he’s had two heart attacks since he’s been in jail,” he said.

Corner argued that a maximum sentence without the possibility of probation or parole means Powell will not be eligible for medical release due to his heart condition. “He has already served almost a year in pretrial detention, so he (would have been) eligible for that medical release after he’s been seen by the hospital and the doctors to determine whether or not his heart condition is deteriorating while in prison,” he said.

“So we’ll urge the court to sentence him to a number of years without the mandatory nonviolent habitual offender provision that would keep him from being eligible even for a medical release or for a release at age 65,” Corner concluded.

While addressing the court before his sentencing, Powell explained that he had been a drug addict, which can lead to his trouble with the law, and asked for leniency. “I’d spend 42 years of my life to finally realize that my drug use will be the death of me,” he said.

The judge, nevertheless, sentenced him to 40 and 16 years for two counts of methamphetamine possession. “All those sentences will be served without the possibility of parole or probation, any early release whatsoever,” he added. “The defendant is sentenced as a habitual offender.”

In another Madison/Rankin County circuit courtroom that day, Judge Brad Mills sentenced 42-year-old Lucas Montel Howard as a habitual offender “to serve (60) years after a jury convicted him of Possession of Cocaine with the Intent to (sell) and Conspiracy to Sell Cocaine,” a Madison/Rankin County District Attorney report said.

Seven Mississippi legislators filed 13 bills in the 2022 legislative session to reform the habitual-offenders’ laws in the state, but none garnered enough support to pass and go into effect.

Madison/Rankin County District Attorney John K. Bramlett told the Mississippi Free Press on March 28, 2022, in Canton, Miss., that he is not opposed to limiting the application of the habitual-offender laws.

“There’s some talk now of maybe making it where you can’t go back forever to pull up felonies,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. “In other words, if you were convicted of a crime in 1980 and 1982, and then you slipped back in 2022, you’ve had 40 years living a pretty clean life, I don’t think they should come after you as habitual.”

“So at some point, I think they’ll narrow down the years that you look back—15 years, maybe,” he postulated.

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed an income-tax cut Tuesday afternoon that will eliminate $524 million from state revenues. House Bill 531, known as the Mississippi Tax Freedom Act of 2022, eliminates the state’s lower tax bracket and cuts 1% off the top bracket. The new income tax will phase in over a four-year period, starting in 2023.

“This is a tremendous victory, and it will make a massive impact on the lives of Mississippians, and it will make a tremendous impact on our economy for years and years to come,” the governor said at the public bill signing. “… We will be on our way to returning over half a billion dollars to the people of our state.”

The legislation ends Mississippi’s 4% tax bracket on income between $5,000 and $10,000 and phases out the remainder of its 3% tax on income under $5,000. Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn had wanted to eliminate the state income tax completely, but Mississippi Senate leaders called such an action too drastic and said it would not be fiscally responsible.

“It’s not ‘Field of Dreams.’ I don’t print money,” Lt. Gov. Hosemann told Mississippi Free Press State Reporter Nick Judin in late 2020. “We have to have enough funds to pay for highway patrol, education, all the other things we pay for as a state.”

Speaker Gunn previously served as chairman of the American Legislative Executive Council’s national board, a right-wing organization that produces model legislation for state legislators across the nation to introduce in their chambers and which has focused for years on abolishing state income taxes. He remains on ALEC’s board.

The compromise bill Gov. Reeves signed into law Tuesday does not include earlier proposals that would have cut the state’s tax on groceries or car-tag fees. With no reductions in sales taxes, the legislation offers the most help to wealthier Mississippians who pay a larger share of income taxes than low-income and working class residents.

“This isn’t just a tax cut; it’s an investment in Mississippians,” Gov. Reeves said at the bill signing. “And as we’ve said before, this is the ideal time to do it. Over the last few years, our state has consistently and dramatically outperformed our revenue expectations. We’ve brought in billions of dollars more than initially projected.

“It is the fulfillment of a fundamental promise that conservatives made on the campaign trail that we would bring fiscal prudence and financial responsibility to Mississippi’s government.”

But Mississippi remains one of the most reliant states on federal dollars, with a May 2021 study placing Mississippi third on federal dependence behind Alaska and New Mexico. Mississippi also has the highest poverty rate in the nation, and the state has struggled in recent years to meet its own standards for fully funding public education or to invest in needed infrastructure repairs. Lawmakers adopted a state lottery in 2018 to help fill the gap in funding for roads and bridges and later amended it to also send funds to schools.

The state is currently enjoying assistance with infrastructure projects from billions in federal COVID-19 relief aid and President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law.

On its website, The Parents Campaign, a public-education lobbying organization, noted that public schools are underfunded by $272 million this year and urged supporters “to remind your legislators that any dollar that is available for a tax cut … is a dollar that is available to fund our public schools.”

“They have insisted that the state is floating in money and can afford a $524-million tax cut, so ‘we can’t afford it’ is no longer an excuse. Legislators should be held to account if they vote to fund massive tax cuts … before making a sincere and significant effort to close the funding gap for the more than 400,000 children in our public schools.”

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators have finished their busiest session in years after enacting the largest teacher pay raise in a generation and setting the state's largest-ever income tax cut.

“Clearly, by any stretch, the Mississippi Legislature performed this year,” Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said Tuesday.

After more than a year of economic uncertainty because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi's tax collections rebounded over the past several months, driven partly by massive federal spending for pandemic relief.

As they ended their session Tuesday, legislators completed work on two sets of spending bills.

The first was a state government budget for the year that begins July 1, using more than $7 billion in state money and billions more federal dollars.

The second was a plan to spend about $1.5 billion of the $1.8 billion Mississippi is receiving from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a federal spending package aimed at revitalizing the economy amid the pandemic. Mississippi will use about $750 million for water system improvements.

“When you contemplate the number of issues we had before us this year, it was pretty staggering in the beginning,” House Speaker Philip Gunn, a Republican from Clinton, said as the session ended.

WHAT LEGISLATORS DID

TEACHER PAY

In the coming school year, teachers will receive raises that average about $5,100, and assistant teachers will receive $2,000. Mississippi's average teacher salary in 2019-20 was $46,843, according to the Southern Regional Education Board. The national average was $64,133.

TAX CUT

Mississippi will reduce its income tax over four years. Starting in 2023, the 4% income tax bracket will be eliminated. The following three years, the 5% bracket will be reduced to 4%. After the first year, the tax-free income levels would be $18,300 for a single person and $36,600 for a married couple.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Feb. 2 to legalize medical marijuana for people with debilitating conditions. It became law immediately, but opening the first dispensaries will take months. In November 2020, Mississippi voters approved a medical marijuana initiative. The state Supreme Court overturned it six months later by ruling it was not properly on the ballot because the initiative process was outdated.

REDISTRICTING

Legislators updated boundaries for the four U.S. House districts, 52 state Senate districts and 122 state House districts to account for population changes revealed by the 2020 Census.

EQUAL PAY

Mississippi could become the final state to enact a law requiring equal pay for equal work by women and men. A bill awaits action by the governor. Critics said the bill is harmful because it would allow an employer to pay a woman less than a man based on the pay history that workers bring into new jobs.

STATE PARKS

Millions of dollars will go to improve the condition of state parks. Leaders said Mississippi could apply for federal money to supplement the state spending.

ELECTION SPENDING

State and local election offices are banned from accepting donations from outside groups for election operations, under a bill Reeves has signed. Mississippi joins other Republican-led states in setting a ban in reaction to donations that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made across the U.S. in 2020.

RURAL EMERGENCY ROOMS

The state Department of Health could issue up to five licenses for free-standing emergency rooms in rural areas, under a bill awaiting the governor.

PAY RAISES

Starting with the next four-year term, salaries would increase for the governor, lieutenant governor and six other statewide elected officials; the transportation and public service commissioners; and the House speaker, under a bill awaiting the governor.

TEACHING ABOUT RACE

In March, Reeves signed a bill banning schools, community colleges or universities from teaching that any “sex, race, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.” It became law immediately. Several Black lawmakers said the limitations could squelch honest discussion about the harmful effects of racism.

STATE SONG

Legislators voted to ditch “Go, Mississippi,” which has been the state song since 1962. It uses the tune of “Roll With Ross,” the 1959 campaign jingle of segregationist Gov. Ross Barnett. A bill designates “One Mississippi,” by singer-songwriter Steve Azar, as one new state song. It also creates a committee to recommend additional state songs from various genres. The bill awaits the governor's action.

WHAT LEGISLATORS DID NOT DO

INITIATIVE PROCESS

House and Senate negotiators failed to agree on a plan to revive an initiative process that would allow people to petition to put issues on the statewide ballot. The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in May that the state's initiative process was unworkable because it required people to gather signatures from five congressional districts the state had not used in decades.

MEDICAID FOR NEW MOMS

The Senate passed a bill to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage, but Gunn and House Medicaid Committee Chairman Joey Hood killed it without bringing it up for a House vote. Mississippi allows two months of Medicaid coverage for women after they give birth. Advocates for low-income women say expanding the coverage to a year could improve health outcomes in a state with a high rate of maternal mortality.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators on Monday were approving parts of a state budget for the year that begins July 1, and it is substantially larger than the budget for the current year.

The biggest state-funded portion of the new budget is nearly $6.3 billion general fund. With money from the Education Enhancement Fund, a Capital Expense Fund and two funds connected to Mississippi's lawsuit against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, total state spending will top $7.3 billion.

For the current year, the general fund is about $5.8 billion and total state spending is about $6.7 billion.

The budget for the new year includes money to pay for a teacher pay raise plan that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law last week. It also includes enough money to cover the increased cost of state employees' health insurance, so the employees themselves won't have to pay for the extra cost.

One big expense is $54 million for the Department of Human Services to buy a new computer system to replace one that's long outdated, said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg. The federal government will also spend $95 million for the computer system, said House Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Sam Mims, a Republican from McComb.

Mims said the Department of Human Services budget includes a $1.7 million increase for home-delivered meals for older adults, Mims said. Democratic Rep. Omeria Scott of Laurel applauded the increase but said to Mims: “The meals that the people are getting are not good. ... These are elderly people. You would agree that they deserve our best, right?”

“Yes, ma'am," Mims said. “Absolutely.”

A budget bill for the state Veterans Affairs Board would allocate $19.7 million to move a state veterans' home out of Jackson to other state-owned property.

“I think they're looking at property in Rankin County,” Hopson said.

Legislators also were making plans to spend about $1.5 billion of the $1.8 billion the state is receiving from the federal government for pandemic relief, said House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Read, a Republican from Gautier.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi is the latest Republican-led state to ban election offices from accepting donations from private groups for voting operations—a movement fueled by conservatives' suspicion of donations by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2020.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed House Bill 1365 on Friday, and it will become law July 1. It says state or local officials who conduct elections cannot solicit or accept donations from any private group for “voter education, voter outreach or voter registration programs."

Reeves said in a video posted to Facebook on Monday that he was “deeply disturbed by big tech's attempt to influence the 2020 elections.”

“Whether it was their attempt to silence conservative voices or suppress information they don't agree with, California's technology elites will stop at nothing to push their woke ideology on the American people," Reeves said. "Our elections cannot be left up to billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, especially when groups like Facebook systematically silence conservative voices on their platforms."

Republicans control the Mississippi House and Senate. The final version of the bill passed the Senate 49-2 with bipartisan support. It passed the House 78-38 with opposition from Democrats.

Jessica Anderson is executive director of the conservative Heritage Action For America, which has pushed for such bans. She said in a statement Monday that the new law will prohibit the use of “Zuck Bucks."

“Mississippians deserve to have fair elections free from the outside influence of Big Tech billionaires,” Anderson said.

Zuckerberg and his wife, Patricia Chan, donated $400 million for elections operations across the U.S. in 2020 as officials were trying to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life distributed grants to 2,500 election offices nationwide. The money was spent in a wide variety of ways — protective gear for poll workers, public education campaigns promoting new methods to vote during the pandemic, and new trucks to haul voting equipment.

Louisiana's Republican attorney general in 2020 ordered his state’s election offices to reject grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which distributed $350 million of the Zuckerberg money.

By 2021, at least eight Republican-led states had passed bans on private donations to elections offices. South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a ban in March.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi is on the verge of scuttling a state song with racist roots, two years after it retired a Confederate-themed state flag.

The current song, “Go, Mississippi," takes its tune from a 1959 campaign jingle of Democratic Gov. Ross Barnett. “Roll With Ross" included the lyrics, “For segregation, 100%. He's not a moderate, like some of the gents."

Barnett unsuccessfully resisted integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962, and legislators that year adopted a state song setting new words to his campaign ditty: “Go, Mississippi, keep rolling along. Go, Mississippi, you cannot go wrong.”

Some legislators have quietly sought a new song in recent years, saying the Barnett connection is an embarrassing relic of the bad old days.

The effort gained momentum when Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn opened this year's legislative session by showing a video of “One Mississippi," composed by country music singer and songwriter Steve Azar for the state's 2017 bicentennial celebration.

Azar is a Mississippi native. His lyrics play on the hide-and-seek counting game (One Mississippi ... two Mississippi ... three Mississippi ...) and incorporate familiar images: magnolia trees, fried catfish, hurricanes, kudzu.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate on Thursday passed the final version of a bill to replace the Barnett-linked song with “One Mississippi.” The bill also would create a committee to recommend that legislators designate additional state songs later. Tennessee is among states with multiple official songs.

Asked for his opinion on the measure, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves told The Associated Press on Friday that he’s not well-versed in the song proposal because he's been focused on other issues, including teacher pay raises and a tax cut.

Reeves also said he doesn't know the state song and can't recall whether he was supposed to learn it in school.

“I was focused on shooting basketballs,” Reeves deadpanned.

Two teenagers working as state Senate pages said Mississippi needs to change its song.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to take the tune of a racist song and make it for everybody," said Karmen Owens, a 15-year-old freshman at North Pike High School in McComb.

Raniyah Younger, a 17-year-old junior at Jackson's Callaway High, said a new state song should reflect different cultures and “equality of all races and all colors and all sexualities, of course.”

Democratic Sen. Hillman Frazier of Jackson worked for years to retire the Mississippi state flag, the last in the nation to feature the Confederate battle emblem. Frazier said Mississippi should not have a song affiliated with a segregationist governor, but he wants a committee to examine Mississippi's deep musical heritage and come up with a new song.

“Most people don’t know the state song. They never sing it," Frazier said Thursday. "So, six months trying to get it right wouldn’t hurt a thing.”

Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd of Oxford said it's best to ditch the old song now.

“It’s one more thing that doesn’t portray Mississippi in its best light,” Boyd said. “We need things that represent the state and really highlight the amazing people we have.”

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators are returning to the Capitol on Monday with hopes of finishing their 2022 session.

They still need to finish passing a state budget for the year that begins July 1. The state-funded portion of the budget will be more than $6.2 billion. Legislators also will allocate billions of federal dollars, including money the state received from a federal pandemic relief package.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Friday that he intends to sign a bill that will authorize Mississippi's largest-ever tax cut. On March 27, the House and Senate voted by wide margins to pass the bill that will reduce the state income tax over four years, beginning in 2023. Reeves has a Tuesday deadline to act.

“It’s a major tax cut that heads us in the direction of eliminating the income tax,” Reeves told reporters Friday at the Capitol. "Literally every Mississippian who pays income taxes in our state will have the opportunity to send less of their money to the government and the ability to keep more of their money.”

Supporters say a significant tax cut could spur economic growth and attract new residents to Mississippi, which was one of three states that lost population during the decade before the 2020 Census.

Opponents say reducing the income tax would mean less money for schools, health care, roads and other services, especially hurting Mississippi’s poor and working-class residents.

The legislative session started in early January, and it originally was scheduled to end Sunday. Final budget negotiations were delayed repeatedly because of contentious final discussions between House and Senate leaders over the tax cut plan.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Wednesday authorizing the largest pay raise in a generation for the state's public school teachers, long among the lowest-paid in the nation.

House Bill 530 becomes law July 1. Teachers will receive average increase of about $5,100 — a jump of more than 10% over their current pay.

Lawmakers and the Republican governor have said boosting the salaries could help Mississippi attract and retain classroom professionals.

The average teacher salary in Mississippi during the 2019-20 academic year was $46,843, according to the Southern Regional Education Board. That lagged behind the average of $55,205 for teachers in the 16 states of the regional organization. The national average was $64,133.

Under the new law, teachers’ base pay will increase by a few hundred dollars most years, with larger increases with every fifth year of experience and a more substantial bump at 25 years.

A beginning Mississippi teacher with a bachelor’s degree currently receives a $37,000 salary from the state, and the local school district can provide a supplement. Under the new law, the base pay from the state will be $41,500. Teachers with higher degrees and more experience are paid more.

Teachers’ assistants will receive a $2,000 increase over two years. That will take their pay from $15,000 to $17,000.

Under Democratic Gov. Ray Mabus in 1988, Mississippi legislators approved about an 18% pay raise for teachers, taking their average salary from about $20,750 to nearly $24,500.

The raise that Reeves signed Wednesday is a larger dollar amount but a smaller percentage increase. Accounting for inflation, the $3,750 average raise in 1988 equal to more than $8,400 today.

Suzanne Smith of Grenada has been teaching for 30 years and now teaches math to students working toward high school equivalency diplomas. At the Capitol on March 16, she said the pay raise plan will “make a huge difference in a lot of people's lives.”

“I want to think about our assistant teachers. They barely make a living wage at this point," said Smith, who is secretary/treasurer of the Mississippi Association of Educators. "That $2,000 increase — although it's not a huge increase, when you compare it to what they've got now, it is tremendous.”

Smith said the larger pay raises every fifth year could persuade some longtime educators to remain on the job. Some Mississippi teachers have been retiring and commuting to Alabama and other neighboring states to continue teaching while also collecting their Mississippi retirement pay.

Increasing educators' pay can be a moving target as states compete with each other. Alabama legislators are considering a proposal to provide pay raises for longtime teachers.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi House and Senate voted by wide margins Tuesday to approve separate plans to redraw legislative districts to account for population changes revealed by the 2020 Census.

Republican legislative leaders said the redistricting plans are likely to maintain their party's majority in each chamber.

A white Republican senator, Kathy Chism of New Albany, said during debate Tuesday that she had prayed over the issue because she was concerned that Republicans would be harmed by districts with higher percentages of Black voters.

Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi criticized both chambers for rejecting amendments that would have created more majority-Black districts.

“The proposed maps vastly underrepresent Mississippi’s Black population and, we fear, are drawn to dilute Black voting strength," the ACLU said in a statement.

About 60% of Mississippi residents are white and about 38% are Black, according to the Census Bureau.

The state House has 122 districts, and the Senate has 52. The next elections for four-year terms are in November 2023.

Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby of Pearl said the Senate redistricting plan keeps the same number of Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning districts as now.

In the Senate, most of the territory now represented by Republican Sen. Melanie Sojourner of Natchez and Democratic Sen. Albert Butler of Port Gibson were combined into a single majority-Black district. Sojourner is white, and Butler is Black. Kirby said a new majority-white district was created in Rankin and Smith counties, near the Jackson metro area.

One of Sojourner's allies, Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville, pushed for an alternate plan to put Sojourner in a majority-white district with Democratic Sen. Kelvin Butler of McComb, who is Black. McDaniel said his plan would give either incumbent “a chance to be successful” in an election.

Chism argued for McDaniel's proposal.

“As a Republican, I am concerned about the districts that had a significant increase of BVAP," Chism said, using the acronym for Black voting age population.

Referring to Sojourner and Butler going into a majority-Black district, Chism said: “That makes a Republican pro-life district vulnerable to becoming a pro-choice Democrat district.”

Chism said she had prayed about redistricting along with “prayer warriors” from her area.

“God gave me the answer I was looking for,” she said. “He said, ‘Child, I sent you to Jackson to stand for what’s right. I sent you as a Republican.' And I’m here to stand for the Republicans and I pray that y’all will stand with me and try to preserve our Republican district.”

On a voice vote, senators rejected McDaniel's proposal.

In the House, districts now represented by Democratic Rep. Tommy Reynolds of Charleston and Republican Rep. Chris Brown of Nettleton are being absorbed into surrounding districts because their areas had stagnant population growth.

One new House district is being created in DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state, and one new one is being created in coastal Harrison County.

The Census showed the Delta had the largest population loss in Mississippi between 2010 and 2020.

DeSoto County continued its growth surge. Parts of northeastern Mississippi, the metro Jackson suburbs and coastal counties also gained population.

Because legislative redistricting is done through a resolution rather than a bill, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves will not have the power to sign or veto the plans.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators worked on budget proposals Monday after missing deadlines because of a long dispute over a tax cut plan.

They were also negotiating final versions of several bills, including one to revive an initiative process so people could petition to put proposed laws on the statewide ballot. The state Supreme Court ruled in May that Mississippi's previous initiative process was invalid because it required petitioners to gather signatures from outdated congressional districts.

The new state budget year begins July 1. Legislators were supposed to file final budget bills Saturday, but talks bogged down until they finished their work on the tax cut.

The House and Senate passed a bill Sunday to provide the state's largest-ever income tax cut. It will go to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature in the next few days.

Legislators are expected to spend between $6 billion and $7 billion of state money, plus billions more in federal money, in the new budget year — an increase over the current year, but not a substantial one.

Top lawmakers said the budget will include a pay raise for teachers and for many state employees. Legislators have already voted to authorize average raises of about $5,100 for teachers and $2,000 for teachers' assistants. Some state employees are in line to receive pay raises based on a survey that showed their jobs were paying less than the market value.

The House and Senate also must agree on plans to spend part of the $1.8 billion Mississippi is receiving from the federal government for pandemic relief. Much of that money is expected to go to infrastructure projects, such as expansion of broadband in rural areas and improvements for water and sewer systems around the state.

House Speaker Philip Gunn, a Republican from Clinton, said legislators will probably spend about $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion of the federal relief money. He said the rest would be set aside “just for the unknown."

Some of the relief money would go to cities or counties with the expectation that those local governments would put $1 into infrastructure projects for every $1 of federal money they receive through the state, said House Speaker Pro Tempore Jason White, a Republican from West. Cities and counties have also received their own direct payments of federal pandemic relief money, and that cash could be used to match the dollars coming through the state.

Rural water associations have not received federal relief money, but those associations could apply for part of the state money, White said.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi House on Tuesday approved a plan to redraw its districts to account for population changes revealed by the 2020 Census.

Senators were debating their own redistricting proposal.

The House has 122 districts, and the Senate has 52. Republicans hold wide majorities in both chambers and the redistricting plans are unlikely to change that. The next elections for four-year terms are in November 2023.

Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby of Pearl said the Senate redistricting plan keeps the same number of Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning districts as now.

About 62% of Mississippi residents are white and about 36% are Black, according to the Census Bureau.

Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.

Both chambers on Tuesday rejected amendments that would have created more majority-Black districts.

In the Senate, most of the territory now represented by Republican Sen. Melanie Sojourner of Natchez and Democratic Sen. Albert Butler of Port Gibson were combined into a single majority-Black district. Kirby said a new majority-white district was created in Rankin and Smith counties, near the Jackson metro area.

One of Sojourner's allies, Republican Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville, pushed for an alternate plan to put Sojourner in a district with a larger percentage of white residents than the plan unveiled by Senate leaders Sunday.

In the House, districts now represented by Democratic Rep. Tommy Reynolds of Charleston and Republican Rep. Chris Brown of Nettleton are being absorbed into surrounding districts because their areas had stagnant population growth.

One new House district is being created in DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state, and one new one is being created in coastal Harrison County.

The Census showed the Delta had the largest population loss in Mississippi between 2010 and 2020.

DeSoto County continued its growth surge. Parts of northeastern Mississippi, the metro Jackson suburbs and coastal counties also gained population.

Because legislative redistricting is done through a resolution rather than a bill, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves will not have the power to sign or veto the plans.

Jessica Broughman entered Rankin County Detention Center in December 2018 on a methamphetamine sales charge. That would be her fourth felony charge, and she feared she would get a lengthy jail sentence.

“My parents have been taking care of my daughter (Aubrey) since she was 2 years old,” Broughman told the Mississippi Free Press about her now-10-year-old daughter Aubrey in a March 23, 2022, phone interview. “During that time when I really struggled with my addiction (to heroin and meth), and I was in and out of jail a lot, they were taking care of her and raising her, which was a blessing that I had them to do that.”

The 33-year-old recalled the confused state of mind she was in as she arrived at the detention center in 2018. “I was at a really dark place in my life,” Broughman said. “I was struggling really bad with my addiction. I was very lost. I didn’t know what was going to happen next because I was already a convicted felon.”

Broughman was arrested earlier in 2018 for methamphetamine possession but bonded out before her arrest again in December that year.

From the viewpoint of the sheriff’s administrative assistant Kristi Shanks, Broughman appeared jaded and distant when she arrived at the detention center that December, which she described in a phone conversation on March 18.

Over time, though, Shanks says she saw some shifts in Broughman, including her determination to carve out a new path for herself.

“We just noticed a big change in her from being kind of hard and standoffish to becoming involved and open, receptive to things, so you just notice the change in people slowly as they grow,” Shanks said.

Broughman, who said she had been clean since December 2018, described the need to be in her daughter’s life as a motivation for change. “I was tired of not being a good mom; I was tired of having to be a mom through a jail phone,” she said. “I missed out on a lot of memorable years with my daughter and my family.”

Shanks said Broughman took advantage of all the resources that the jail offered to her.

“While she was here, she really—with all of our churches coming in and doing Bible studies—she really got in her Bible, and she let God really change her heart, and she softened up, and she had the mentality of getting out and wanting to do good and being successful and not going back to the lifestyle she was living, doing drugs and everything,” Shanks commented.

“She enrolled in college courses while she was here. She took all the classes.”

The sheriff’s office offered Broughman parenting, computer, anger-management and financial-management classes, and she took college courses through Hinds Community College.

Because Broughman suffered from addictions when she entered Rankin County Detention Center in 2018, she entered programs from Celebrate Recovery, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.

She was among the first offenders enrolled in Rankin County’s work-release program after the Mississippi Legislature passed House Bill 747 in 2021. The program allows Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey to send nonviolent offenders in their last year in jail outside the detention center to work with private or government entities. Bailey sent Broughman to work at Genna Benna’s restaurant in downtown Brandon beginning May 21, 2021.

Convict Leasing By Another Name?

Rep. Gene Newman, R-Pearl, submitted HB 747 in January 2021. The first iteration of the bill specifies that income the offenders earn while participating in the work-release program comes under the control of the authorities who can distribute them to pay child support, fines, restitution or other owed fees. The offender will receive the balance when released from jail.

The version that the Mississippi House passed in February 2021 added the Mississippi Department of Corrections and Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation to the list of agencies that can establish such a program, in addition to a sheriff or court, as the first version stated.

Mississippi’s America Civil Liberties Union took issue with the House-passed bill. ACLU-MS Deputy Director Alicia N. Netterville told the Mississippi Free Press on March 9 that the bill allows convict-leasing by another name.

“So just for some context, we kind of have to look back at history, to look back at the exception clause in the 13th Amendment that did not necessarily prohibit slavery, but had an exception for people who have been convicted, duly convicted of crime,” Netterville said.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Confederate army, representing southern states including Mississippi, fought the Union Army to maintain and expand the institutional enslavement of Black people. After the Union Army won the war official in April 1865, the country enacted the 13th Amendment, one of three Reconstruction amendments that purportedly prohibited slavery, to the U.S. Constitution.

The amendment reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Netterville says the practice of convict-leasing developed out of the 13th Amendment’s exception clause. “And what convict-leasing is, is when people were free from the plantation, state legislatures across the country created a plethora of crimes to justify what we know now as racial profiling in order to arrest formerly enslaved people and take them to places like Parchman, and then they will lease them back to the plantation owner, but the individual was not paid; the plantation owner actually paid Parchman.”

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History wrote that Parchman Farm—the Mississippi State Penitentiary located on a 28-acre land in Sunflower County—began operation in 1901, became the central hub for the state’s correctional system and resembled a massive antebellum plantation in many ways. Parchman now takes up more than 18,000 acres.

Netterville explained that the convict-leasing practice evolved into peonage over the years, “arresting people for debt and then, in turn, leasing them out,” the deputy director added.

EJI: Slavery Existed Until 1930s

The Equal Justice Initiative attested that slavery persisted until the 1930s in the form of convict-leasing.

“The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, but explicitly exempted those convicted of crime,” EJI continued. “In response, Southern state legislatures quickly passed ‘Black Codes’—new laws that explicitly applied only to Black people and subjected them to criminal prosecution for ‘offenses’ such as loitering, breaking curfew, vagrancy, having weapons and not carrying proof of employment.”

“Crafted to ensnare Black people and return them to chains, these laws were effective; for the first time in U.S. history, many state penal systems held more Black prisoners than white—all of whom could be leased for profit,” the organization added. “Industrialization, economic shifts and political pressure ended widespread convict-leasing by World War II, but the Thirteenth Amendment’s dangerous loophole still permits the enslavement of prisoners who continue to work without pay in various public and private industries.”

ACLU-MS Deputy Director Netterville said that convict-leasing supplied labor for both the private and public sectors “to build railroad (or) anything that they needed labor for; they relied on the practice of racial profiling and convict-leasing,” she added. “So we had a convict-leasing law on our books in the 1800s.”

The ACLU worked to ensure that HB 747, as the Mississippi House of Representatives passed, would not see the light of day, even though it judged that the notion of a work-release program was not inherently wrong.

“Work-release programs have proven to be a successful way to reduce recidivism,” Netterville said. “So the ACLU is not opposed to work-release, but we are opposed to work-release that mirrors convict-leasing in any shape, form or fashion.”

In a 2014 seminar research paper, Patrice Keon Pettigrew noted that inmates’ participation in educational, vocational and/or work release programs might reduce recidivism by 20% to 60%.

However, in Netterville’s judgment, House Bill 747 was an attempt to resurrect Mississippi’s 1800s convict-leasing laws. “So that bill would have literally allowed every sheriff in the state of Mississippi to have work-release program(s), but work-release programs that would have required that the incarcerated person who was working will turn over all of their income to the sheriff—just reclassified convict-leasing,” she explained.

The ACLU-MS said further conversation regarding the bill resulted in its revamping. “As a result of our aggressive advocacy, supporters of HB 747 requested meetings to explain why the bill was not an attempt to resurrect convict-leasing, slavery and sharecropping,” the organization wrote in a report. “Holding firm to our opposition of the bill, we reached a compromise that allows the Sheriff of Rankin County to implement a one-year pilot program.”

“The bill limits the pilot program to no more than 25 incarcerated persons, requires incarcerated persons to open a bank account, and caps the amount of wages used to pay child support, fines and restitution,” ACLU-MS added. “In addition to mandatory reporting by Sheriff Bailey, the PEER Committee will conduct a final study of the pilot program.” That final report is due by December 2022.

Netterville noted that the organization worked on the bill with the Rankin County sheriff. “We worked on language with him and policy with him to prevent the abuse—the financial abuse—and the convict-leasing,” she said.

“The advocates were very particular about making 747 only for people currently housed in the Rankin County custody to avoid some of the abuses seen in other programs like (in) Louisiana, where sheriffs and courts and prosecutors work together to create these convict-leasing programs.”

Louisiana has a work-release program that gives the sheriff complete control over the offenders’ wages. The sheriff disburses the inmate wages to cover food, clothing, medical and dental expenses, travel expenses, support dependents, and to pay fines and fees. The inmate gets any remaining balance upon discharge.

A Trusted ‘Trusty’ Program?

The people of Rankin County elected Bryan Bailey as sheriff in 2011. He immediately worked to stop the county’s cooperation with the Mississippi Department of Correction regarding sending some prisoners to county jail via its ”trusty” program.

“It just got to be where it was too much of a hassle, dealing with the state, the guidelines and different things like that. We ended up having a meeting with our judges and our district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office and said, ‘Hey, we got some good people here we’d like to keep as trusties,'” Bailey told the Mississippi Free Press in a March 18 phone interview.

A 2011 MDOC manual indicated that inmates can get trusty status to work for the institution, or as a labor crew or if the inmate possesses a skill. “An inmate in trusty status may be awarded a trusty time allowance of 30 days reduction of sentence for each 30 days of participation in approved programs,” the manual said.

There were 12 possible programs a trusty can be involved in, such as what the manual calls “MDOC classified jail support.” Others include a community-based work program, a joint state-county work program, road crews, “sensitive” placement, Mississippi Prison Industries, mobile work crew, essential inmate unit support, governor’s mansion, satisfactory participation in education or instructional program, satisfactory participation in work projects, and satisfactory participation in any special incentive programs.

On the MDOC website, the agency explained that “Trusty Earned Time allows for the reduction of sentence of 10 days for every 30 days successful participation in selected work and educational programs.”

Then-Gov. Haley Barbour benefitted from the trusty practice, first pardoning several trusties assigned to him in the Governor’s Mansion who had violently murdered wives or girlfriends, as the Jackson Free Press’ Ronni Mott revealed in 2008, with several follow-ups until he left office in 2012 when the practice attracted wider media attention.

Trusty Program As Reentry in Rankin

Rankin County started its inmate trusty program as a reentry program more than 10 years ago, with funding from the community.

“So it is just a community-based effort on rehabilitation, which I think the only way it’s going to be successful is for our communities to be involved,” Bailey said. “Our churches are highly involved in this. If I have a need for an inmate, I can get on the phone and have it covered within minutes by a church.”

The Rankin County trusty program operates as follows: If an offense ordinarily carries, for example, a three-year sentence with the MDOC then the district attorney, in collaboration with the sheriff and the judge, will offer the same or a slightly longer term of confinement at the county jail in exchange for a pledge to complete specified activities in the program. The term must be a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years.

The Rankin County sheriff’s trusties work at the vehicle maintenance shop or woodshop, or they clean county buildings and take various classes like Jessica Broughman did when she enrolled in the trusty program while incarcerated. The trusties will, later on, go back to court to be released on time served and placed on probation.

“This is all on the county level with our county inmates, who haven’t been sentenced to go to MDOC,” Sheriff Administrative Assistant Shanks explained.

Sheriff Bailey commented that some people in the program have come to him at the end of their time and requested more jail time until they feel they are ready to reenter society.

“I know you’re not going to believe this, and I’ll be glad to let you talk to a couple of people that asked for it, but I’ve had people that when it was time for them to get out, they came to me crying in tears and said, ‘Sheriff, I’m not ready to get out. If I get out right now, I’m not going to make it. I’m going to fail, I’m going to get back on meth,'” Bailey recalled.

“And we went to the judge and got them six more months, or three more months or something till they felt like they were ready to leave, and then once they leave, we try to make sure they have a safe place to live, that they have a good job, and some of them would even have vehicles donated to them.”

A Missing Link: A Mountain of Fines

The Rankin County sheriff said that his unscientific conclusion was that the program had achieved around a 50% recidivism reduction. Still, he observed over the program’s 10 years that it had a missing piece.

“I noticed that these people were getting out, and they’ll have a mountain of fines,” he said. “One big problem is most of these people in their drug life or criminal life, they lost their license, they had a bunch of tickets, you know, they just had fines everywhere.”

“They’ll have fines on the charge that they’re currently in here on, so money, having some money was a big deal,” Bailey added. That is the reason for his advocacy and work with the ACLU on the work-release program that HB 747 established.

“The reason we pushed hard forward with the Legislature (is because) it was a missing link in our reentry program we’ve been doing here,” he said. “Having a little bit of money is one big thing that people need to be successful when they get out of prison.”

The version of Mississippi’s 2021 HB 747 that became law in 2021 limited the provision to Rankin County for one year as a pilot program allowing up to 25 inmates in the final year of jail time at a time, and it puts admission into the program at the discretion of the sheriff. It also limited the amount of money used for fines and restitution payments.

The bill does not allow more than 25% of the income to go to fines, child support, restitution, fees, and the cost of obtaining a driver’s license, leaving Sheriff Bailey to determine how they will spend the remaining amount. The sheriff told the Mississippi Free Press that he mandates that inmates save 50% of their income and otherwise allows them to spend 25% on anything they want.

“I knew that especially with the Mississippi Sheriff’s office in the south that I want to be real careful with them doing the work program because I didn’t want anybody to say that these inmates are being taken advantage of or something like that,” Sheriff Bailey told the Mississippi Free Press.

“So the number-one thing on my work program is I don’t touch any of their money,” he added. “They’re in complete 100% control of their money, and the sheriff’s office and the county does not get a dime of it.”

Earning Money for After Incarceration

Only those in Rankin County’s trusty program can participate in the work-release program once they meet some requirements, including a threshold number of classes. Those in the work-release program make a monthly report on their money in worksheets that administrative assistant Shanks prepares.

Shanks discussed inmates’ difficulties when they are released from jail and have no money. When combined with the hurdle of getting work, this sometimes results in involvement in illicit activity, which may ultimately result in re-incarceration.

“That’s how the work-release program started—Sheriff (Bailey) really wanted to try to help them make money while they’re here ’cause that was one thing we noticed—a lot of inmates getting out, not having a job, not having money, and then they would come right back in here. The recidivism was just so high,” Shanks told the Mississippi Free Press.

“A lot of inmates will get out and turn right back to selling drugs or prostituting, whatever they have to do to make money,” she added. “And so we just wanted to start the work program so that they can start making money while they’re here so they have a foundation when they get out and they can stay with their job so they’ll have employment and that will help them have a job, make money, so they don’t have to find how to make money in other ways.”

The sheriff said that about 11 people are currently in the work-release program because he is starting small, and that around 10 have graduated. He unscientifically judged that while the trusty program had a 50% reduction in recidivism, it’s as low as 20% for the work-release program. However, the program is still at a stage too early for a more definitive appraisal.

Businesses are lining up offering to take in those in the work-release program, the sheriff told the Mississippi Free Press. Also, inmates can receive minimum wage or more.

“I have a guy who’s a certified mechanic (worrying) that he was going to be cutting grass or something for a minimum wage,” the sheriff said. “I went to the owner of Bob Boyte Honda (Brandon, Miss.) and talked with him; they hired him as a mechanic at Bob Boyte Honda. So he’s making what the other certified mechanics make.”

“Now if somebody doesn’t have a skill, they are going to start out in a starting position. But if I have a certified electrician, I’m not going to go let him cut grass,” Bailey asserted. “I will find him a job with an electrician.”

He said that most of the women in the work-release program work at places like Genna Benna’s Restaurant and McClain Lodge as servers and hosts, and while a majority of the male participants work at locations like a welding shop, Bob Boyte Honda and Summit Foods.

Mississippi State Rep. Gene Newman, R-Pearl, who sponsored HB 747 in 2021, told the Mississippi Free Press on March 21 that the bill’s novelty is in affording inmates the ability to make money while incarcerated. “It allows people who committed a crime while they’re still in jail … to be able to actually work so that they’ll have money whenever they get out so that they can support themselves, so it’ll be less likely that they go back,” Newman said. “The program has been very much of a success.”

“You can’t have just a criminal-justice (system) that’s just about punishing people,” he added. “You’ve got to be able to figure out how you are going to help them get back into the society when they come back.”

Sheriff Administrative Assistant Shanks said she writes the work-release program’s reports and submits them to the Legislature. “We’ve already made a few reports to them, and they’re very pleased with how it’s going,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “We did it every six months, so the last time we went was in the middle of February; we went in and turned in the latest reports that we did.”

“That will be the second report we have given them on the inmates that are working,” she added. “We gave it to the senators that are on the corrections committee.”

‘Something Meaningful Like Work’

Mississippi State Senate Corrections Committee Chairman Juan Barnett, D-Heidelberg, put forth Senate Bill 2275 this legislative session to extend the Rankin County work-release program for two more years and to allow Jackson County to similarly test the program.

“I think individuals should have the opportunity to work even if they’re incarcerated,” Sen. Barnett told the Mississippi Free Press in a March 2, 2022, phone interview. “They should still have the opportunity to participate in something meaningful like work.”

This year, Rep. Newman is sponsoring another bill, HB 586, which will remove the current one-year limit on the 2021 HB 747 and make the Rankin County program permanent.

Jessica Broughman left the Rankin Detention Center in August 2021 with about $7,000 saved from working at Genna Benna’s Restaurant between May and August 2021 as part of the work-release program while in jail, and even after she left the jail, until September that year.

Broughman bought a 2009 Honda Fit for $5,000 soon after she walked out of prison a free woman. She joined Milwaukee Tools in September 2021 as a shipping clerk through the help of one of the Celebrate Recovery facilitators. The car aided her movement to and from work.

“When she got out, she paid off all her fines. She bought a vehicle, moved back in with her mom in Madison, and got her child back,” Shanks told the Mississippi Free Press. “And now she’s working at Milwaukee Tools, has a good job, and she’s very successful.”

Broughman said that she has continued to attend Celebrate Recovery programs and is involved with a church.

“I’m just trying to be proactive,” she said. “I just want to be aware of my addiction. I want to be aware of my surroundings, but not to a point where it hinders me because that’s not the person I am today, but I think staying aware of it is always a positive thing.”

“I just want to start a life, actually live a life that I am supposed to be living.”

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators on Sunday unveiled plans to redraw the state House and Senate districts to account for population changes revealed by the 2020 Census.

The House has 122 districts, and the Senate has 52. Republicans hold wide majorities in both chambers, and the redistricting plans are unlikely to change that. The next elections for four-year terms are in November 2023.

Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby of Pearl said Sunday that the Senate redistricting plan keeps the same number of Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning districts as now.

About 62% of Mississippi residents are white, and about 36% are Black, according to the Census Bureau.

Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.

In the Senate, most of the territory now represented by Republican Sen. Melanie Sojourner of Natchez and Democratic Sen. Albert Butler of Port Gibson were combined into a single majority-Black district. Kirby said a new majority-white district was created in Rankin and Smith counties, near the Jackson metro area.

“Nobody got exactly what they wanted," Kirby said.

In the House, districts now represented by Democratic Rep. Tommy Reynolds of Charleston and Republican Rep. Chris Brown of Nettleton are being absorbed into surrounding districts because their areas had stagnant population.

One new House district is being created in DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state, and one new one is being created in coastal Harrison County.

The House redistricting chairman, Republican Rep. Jim Beckett of Bruce, said he asked representatives for their ideas in drawing the updated map.

“You tell us what’s the core part of your district," Beckett said. "In a perfect world, how would you like to draw your district?”

The Census showed the Delta had the largest population loss in Mississippi between 2010 and 2020.

DeSoto County continued its growth surge. Parts of northeastern Mississippi, the metro Jackson suburbs and coastal counties also gained population.

The House and Senate are expected to approve the redistricting plans in coming days. Because legislative redistricting is done through a resolution rather than a bill, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves will not have the power to sign or veto the plans.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Top Mississippi lawmakers on Friday increased estimates of how much tax money the state will collect this budget year and next.

The current year's general fund estimate climbed from $5.8 billion to nearly $6.9 billion. The estimate for the year that begins July 1 climbed from $6.5 billion to nearly $7 billion.

Members of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee voted to increase the revenue estimates based on recommendations from the state economist, the state treasurer and three other experts who analyzed employment and other economic trends.

Although Mississippi remains one of the poorest states in the nation, it has enjoyed robust tax collections the past several months, partly because of federal pandemic spending.

Revenue estimates are the basis for writing state budgets. Legislators face deadlines this weekend to agree on tax and budget proposals for the the coming year.

House and Senate leaders on Friday remained far apart on tax cut proposals.

Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves are both pushing to phase out the state income tax over several years.

“We’re collecting more money from our citizens than we’re actually spending," Gunn said Friday. “We contend that we should give a portion of that back to the taxpayers.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said he's reluctant to enact sweeping tax cuts because of uncertainties about how the economy will fare. He has proposed temporarily suspending the state gasoline tax, reducing the grocery tax and reducing but not eliminating the income tax.

“Other than God, nobody really knows what the next two or three years is going to do," Hosemann said. "So, I want to prepare in a conservative way that I feel comfortable that I’m not going to have to come back to my taxpayers two or three years from now and say, ‘Oops.’”

About one-third of Mississippi's tax revenue comes from the income tax. The poorest residents would see no gain from eliminating the income tax because they are not paying it now.

The general fund is the biggest state-funded portion of the budget, but Mississippi also has a capital expense fund and other sources of state money that can be spent. The state faces some increased expenses in the coming year, including a teacher pay raise plan that legislators passed and Reeves recently signed into law.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves insisted Thursday that legislators pass a bill to phase out the state income tax, but other Republicans who lead the House and Senate remained far apart on the issue.

With a week and a half remaining in the three-month legislative session, Reeves unveiled his own proposal. He said Thursday that he wants the state to reduce the top income tax rate from 5% to 3.5% next January, then phase out the rest of the income tax over the following seven years.

“I'm not married to this plan. I'm married to the elimination of the income tax,” Reeves said at a Capitol news conference.

Legislators face a Saturday deadline to agree on tax and spending bills for the budget year that begins July 1.

House Speaker Philip Gunn has been pushing for more than a year to phase out the income tax in one of the poorest states in the nation. He says he believes it will spur economic growth.

Asked about the governor's plan Thursday, Gunn told reporters: “While I appreciate him proposing something ... we’ve been asking for over a year now for a proposal. Here we are two days before deadline and we see the first proposal from the governor. My question is: Where are his votes?”

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has said he wants to reduce some taxes but keep enough money to pay for core government services. Hosemann did not immediately respond to the proposal from Reeves.

Mississippi’s income tax generates 34% of state revenue, and the poorest residents would see no gain from eliminating the income tax because they are not paying it now.

Mississippi has enjoyed robust tax collections the past several months, partly because of increased federal spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the state also faces expensive budget items, including a long-running court case that requires improvements to the mental health system. Legislators have rarely put all the required money into a school funding formula that has been in law since the late 1990s.

Gunn and other House leaders rolled out their latest proposal Wednesday. It would make the income tax disappear over about 18-20 years, a substantially longer timeline than previously proposed. House leaders walked away from an earlier proposal to reduce the 7% sales tax on groceries.

Hosemann has proposed reducing the income tax, reducing the sales tax on groceries and temporarily suspending the state’s 18.4-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. The Senate also proposes one-time tax rebates of $100 to $1,000.

Gunn said Thursday that if legislators don't pass an income tax phaseout before the regular legislative session ends April 3, he wants Reeves to call a special session to push the issue.

“This is a hot topic right now,” Gunn said. “It is at the forefront of discussion, and we don't need to lose the steam, the momentum, that we've been able to build on the topic.”

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi House leaders offered a revised proposal Wednesday to phase out the state income tax, sending it to Senate leaders as legislators approach big deadlines to set taxes and spending.

The new House plan would make the income tax disappear over about 18-20 years, a substantially longer timeline than previously proposed. And the plan no longer includes a proposal to reduce the 7% sales tax on groceries.

Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn said the latest proposal would remove about $100 million in state tax revenue per year until the income tax is gone. He said a taxpayer earning $40,000 a year would receive a tax break of about $100 a month — enough to buy more gasoline or groceries.

“If we don’t give it back to the taxpayers, what then does the Senate propose that we do with it? I will tell you: They propose that we spend it," Gunn said. "We contend that that money ought to be returned to the taxpayers.”

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann proposes reducing the income tax, reducing the sales tax on groceries and temporarily suspending the state’s 18.4-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. The Senate also proposes one-time tax rebates of $100 to $1,000.

“During the many hours we have spent with the House on this issue, we have not said we do not support ever eliminating the income tax in Mississippi,” Hosemann said in a statement Wednesday. “We can address further cuts at any time. Taxpayers expect us to be responsible stewards of tax dollars. The Senate’s plan includes cutting taxes and taking care of core government services — not gutting them.”

Saturday is the deadline for the House and Senate to reach deals on tax and spending bills for the budget year that begins July 1.

Mississippi has enjoyed robust tax collections the past several months, partly because of increased federal spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the state also faces expensive budget items, including a long-running court case that requires improvements to the mental health system. Legislators have rarely put all the required money into a school funding formula that has been in law since the late 1990s.

Mississippi's income tax generates 34% of state revenue, and the poorest residents would see no gain from eliminating the income tax because they are not paying it now.

Gunn said Wednesday he's willing to have the Legislature spend about half of the $1.9 billion of the pandemic relief money Mississippi is receiving from the federal government. That's a change from Gunn's position in recent weeks, when he had said he would oppose spending pandemic money until the Legislature agrees to phase out the state income tax.

Gunn said the House would propose spending the federal money on projects such as broadband expansion and water and sewer system improvements. Senators started passing bills several weeks ago to spend the state's pandemic relief money. The Senate wants to spend $750 million of it it for water and sewer projects. Both chambers must agree on a plan.

At the Capitol on Wednesday, several religious leaders called on legislators to spend pandemic relief money to improve people's quality of life. The Rev. Jason Coker said students at an elementary school in the Delta town of Shaw were unable to wash their hands on campus for several months because of water quality problems.

“We live in the United States of America, and we're here pleading for our state for water and sewage,” Coker said.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi teachers would receive their largest pay raise in years, under a bill that the state Senate passed Thursday.

The House still needs to pass the final version of House Bill 530 before it can go to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his expected signature, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.

Mississippi has long had some of the lowest teachers salaries in the nation.

“This is the plan that teachers have told us they wanted,” Senate Education Chairman Dennis DeBar said. “This is the input they provided to each and every one of us since last year.”

The bill would provide an average increase of about $5,100 — a jump of more than 10% over teachers’ current pay.

The average teacher salary in Mississippi during the 2019-20 academic year was $46,843, according to the Southern Regional Education Board. That lagged behind the average of $55,205 for teachers in the 16 states of the regional organization. The national average was $64,133.

Under the bill, teachers’ base pay would increase by a few hundred dollars most years, with larger increases with every fifth year of experience and a more substantial bump at 25 years.

A beginning Mississippi teacher with a bachelor’s degree currently receives a $37,000 salary from the state, and the local school district can provide a supplement. Under the bill, the base pay from the state would be $41,500. Teachers with higher degrees and more experience are paid more.

Teachers’ assistants would receive a $2,000 increase over two years, taking their pay from $15,000 to $17,000.

The Mississippi Association of Educators said it was grateful for the Senate's decision.

“This legislative action provides an avenue for recruitment and retention of Mississippi’s public school teachers. We know first-hand how difficult the past two years of instruction have been for our educators and their assistants. We believe that by providing them the respect of paying them according to their value, we can expect more talented Mississippians to enter the field,” the non-profit advocacy group said in a statement.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi House and Senate are pushing forward with separate tax cut proposals, and leaders will hold final negotiations later this month.

Speaker Philip Gunn said Tuesday he remains firm in wanting to phase out the income tax over several years.

“It is a good thing to let citizens keep more of their hard-earned money,” Gunn said at a gathering in the Capitol rotunda. Other Republicans — and a lone Democrat, Rep. Tom Miles of Forest — stood behind Gunn as he spoke.

The Senate on Tuesday passed its latest proposal to reduce the income tax but not eliminate it. The Senate plan would leave a top income tax rate of 4.6%, down from the current 5%.

“I think this is a measured approach,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Josh Harkins, a Republican from Brandon.

The Senate plan also has a six-month suspension of state's 18.4-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. Republican Lt. Gov. Hosemann said the state would pull $215 million from a capital expense fund and give it to the state Department of Transportation to make up for the temporary loss of gas tax revenue. Several states are trying to suspend gas taxes as prices rise.

Republicans hold wide majorities in the House and Senate, but there's no guarantee leaders will agree on a final plan to send to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

Mississippi has enjoyed robust tax collections in recent months, partly because of federal spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. Democratic Sen. Hob Bryan said Tuesday that Mississippi should invest in schools, roads, water and sewer systems and other projects that will improve the quality of life.

“I disagree with the notion that we need a tax cut at all,” Bryan said.

On Monday, the House passed the latest version of its plan.

Both plans would reduce the 7% sales tax on groceries. The Senate plan includes one-time income tax rebates of $100 to $1,000, with larger rebates going to people with larger incomes.

Mississippi’s income tax generates 34% of state revenue. Critics say the state can’t afford to cut taxes because it chronically underfunds education and has significant financial obligations to improve its mental health and foster care systems. The poorest Mississippi residents would see no gain from eliminating the income tax because they are not paying it now.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law the first bill that specifies lynching as a federal hate crime. The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which Congress passed on March 7, enables the prosecution of crimes as lynchings if they are done during a hate crime in which the victim is injured or slain.

A 2020 version of the bill set the maximum sentence as 10 years. The one Biden will sign comes with 30 years in prison and fines for anyone conspiring to commit an act of lynching that causes death or injury.

The House approved the bill 422-3 with eight members not voting. The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent. Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush introduced this version in January 2021. He had introduced a bill as well in January 2019 and the House passed the bill 410-4, but that one stalled in the Senate.

“Lynching has always been a terrorist weapon in the hands of racists in the history of our nation," Rush said in an interview earlier this year. Just as important, he added, is that it remains so — a continuing weapon to “promote racialized terror."

Here is a deeper look at the bill.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

In 2015, the Equal Justice Initiative issued a report that detailed more than 4,400 documented racial terror lynchings of Black people in America between 1877 and 1950.

The Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit later reported that during the 12-year period of Reconstruction following the U.S. Civil War, at least 2,000 Black women, men and children were victims of lynchings.

The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is “clearly symbolic,” in addition to having teeth, said Damon T. Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“No doubt about that, especially given the long road it’s taken to have any federal anti-lynching legislation, at all,” Hewitt said, adding that the 30-year sentence is valuable because state charges and convictions are not guaranteed to stand. “Even if they somehow are able to appeal the underlying sentence, you still have the federal charge."

Acts of violence, including those where the race of the victim is a factor, are covered under state laws, according to Matthew Countryman, Afroamerican and African Studies chair at the University of Michigan.

“States, particularly in the South, have been unwilling to enforce these laws," Countryman said. In the 1960s, he said, the Justice Department began charging people with violations of civil rights. “The anti-lynching law is another tool," Countryman said. "But you need a Justice Department that's willing to prosecute."

WHAT IS LYNCHING, PRECISELY?

Lynching typically is understood to mean illegal mob actions that result in the slaying of a person based on race without due process for the victim. It became prevalent in the United States, especially in the nation’s South, during Reconstruction and extended through the end of the 1800s and into the 1900s.

Most often the victims were Black, but people of Mexican and Asian descent also were victimized because of their skin color and ethnicity. For Blacks, lynching was meant to instill fear and terror — and was used to keep them from voting, protesting and pursuing education.

Public lynchings were warnings to the Black community, said Ersula Ore, associate professor of African and African American studies and rhetoric at Arizona State University and author of “Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, & American Identity.”

“It was during Reconstruction that America’s modern definition of lynching as an act of white solidarity and a racialized form of social control was forged,” she said.

ARE THERE RECENT EXAMPLES OF LYNCHING?

Says Rush, the bill's sponsor: “Lynching is just covered in a different camouflage. The rope has been replaced with a shotgun and semi-automatic weapons."

Some examples of what could fall under that definition:

—The 2020 slaying of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, in which the 25-year-old was jogging when he was followed by three white men in pickup trucks and killed. A federal jury recently determined that incident was motivated by racial hatred.

— The 2015 fatal shootings of the Black pastor and eight other Black congregants at Emmanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, by Dylann Roof.

—In 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a Black man, was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck near Jasper, Texas, by white men. An avowed racist was executed in 2019 for Byrd's killing. John William King had a tattoo on his body of a Black man with a noose around his neck hanging from a tree, according to authorities.

WHY PASS A FEDERAL ANTI-LYNCHING LAW RIGHT NOW?

Congress first considered anti-lynching legislation more than 120 years ago. It had failed to pass anti-lynching legislation nearly 200 times, starting with a bill introduced in 1900 by North Carolina Rep. George Henry White, the only Black member of Congress at the time.

In the early 1920s, the NAACP began its efforts to pass an anti-lynching bill. Federal hate crime legislation eventually was passed in the 1990s — decades after the civil rights movement.

“What the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act does is nationally acknowledge what Black folks have always known, and that is that racialized violence is endemic to America’s way of life,” Ore said.

WHO WAS EMMETT TILL?

Till, 14, was visiting relatives in Mississippi, from his home in Chicago in 1955 when it was alleged that he whistled at a white woman. He was kidnapped, beaten and shot in the head. A large metal fan also was tied to his neck with barbed wire. Till's body then was thrown into a river. His mother insisted on an open funeral casket to show the world what had been done to her child.

Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were accused, but acquitted by a jury of all white men. Bryant and Milam later told a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till.

Countryman called Till’s mother’s actions an “extraordinary campaign of shame on the nation.”