If you don’t know much about Black history, or not as much as you’d like, all you have to do is watch two documentaries in February, Black History Month. Women with distinguished civil rights forebears made these both documentaries, and both films use innovative techniques.
Read MoreFor the last MCIR LIVE event of 2021, MCIR founder and host Jerry Mitchell talked to three guests who have made exploring experiences of hate in the Deep South the centerpiece of their work in new and surprising ways.
The Justice Department has closed the books on the lynching of Emmett Till, whose face — young and unblemished, then swollen and monstrous — has come to symbolize the unpunished killings of Black Americans.
Whatever hope there was for justice was dashed this week when the department pinned the blame on its inability to confirm a book’s explosive 2017 claim that the White woman at the center of the case recanted her story about Till’s actions that fateful day in Money, Mississippi.
Some historians of the civil rights movement think Bob Moses, who died in July 2021, was as influential as Martin Luther King Jr., if not more so.
Read MoreAngela Carpenter is a municipal court judge in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Twice a month on Tuesday afternoons, she presides over domestic violence court. She doesn’t want members of the public, who might be called to serve on juries or grand juries, to dismiss domestic violence cases with a shrug: Why didn’t she just leave??
Read MoreAdam Clayton Powell Jr., the tall, dapper congressman who represented Harlem, wanted to be sure the short, stout sharecropper from Mississippi in a borrowed dress understood how important and powerful he was.
“I know who you are,” Fannie Lou Hamer told him.
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas to effectively deputize its residents to block abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. At least eight other states, including Mississippi, are considering copy-cat laws.
Read MoreBooks, documentaries and an FBI investigation detail the abduction, torture and murder of Emmett Till 66 years ago, but one person who should have been charged in the case has never been fingered.
Read MoreEudora Welty, supreme 20th-century master of the short story, author of novels and essays, and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, spent almost all of her writing life in her family home in Jackson’s Belhaven neighborhood.
Read More“This place was a sanctuary. If anyone wanted to lynch you, you could come here and you’d be safe.”
Read MoreI’m a historian of policing and prisons in Mississippi. Here we go again.
Read MoreAs supervisor of MCIR’s Justice Squad, I try to guide college students who surpass me in skills!
MCIR’s Justice Squad includes undergraduates from Millsaps College who are interested in investigative journalism. Each semester, members can propose their own projects or Jerry Mitchell assigns a cold case for their investigation.
Read More“When I knew I had to leave,” Victoria told me, “I only had my two kids. No money. No place to go.” Victoria is not the real name of a woman in her early 30s, a native Mississippian who had left an abusive partner.
Read MoreCurtis Wilkie, one of Mississippi’s best and best known journalists, came to Jackson last week to talk about his new book, When Evil Lived in Laurel: The “White Knights” and The Murder of Vernon Dahmer.
Read MoreAs Pheonecia Ratliff’s story shows, the main threat to victims of domestic violence is the prevalence of guns. Once her abusive ex-boyfriend bonded out of jail in Canton in May 2020, he could have gotten one from a friend or relative.
Read MoreAfter another deadly conflict between Israel and Hamas, which controls Palestinian territories, change is coming to the top of the Israeli government.
Read MoreTwo weeks ago, I stood in Onisha Burks Memory Gardens Cemetery, an old graveyard behind the main cemetery in Canton, a central Mississippi city with a large Black population.
Read MoreBy considering Mississippi’s 2018 law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the U.S. Supreme Court is tipping off its plans to chip away at the right to abortion, experts says.
Read MoreIn March 2021, Lisa Sun, a young Asian American fashion CEO in New York City, was concerned about her Asian immigrant seamstresses.
Read MoreMother’s Day is a complicated holiday. There are children who have lost their mothers, and there are mothers who have lost their children. For those who have only memories, seeing Mother’s Day cards, flowers and balloons all over can be very painful.
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