Schools and CigsCharters-school advocates are looking to change the state's current law to allow charter schools to use lottery enrollment. The Mississippi Legislature passed SB 2293 last year, creating a process for transforming some failing public schools into "New Start Schools" and …
Health for AllAlvin Poussaint's career reads like a hopscotch game across the touchstones of post-World War II African American history. Born in 1934, Poussaint earned a medical degree at Cornell University and studied psychiatry at UCLA before joining the Civil Rights Movement.
Of Contracts, BrokenOver the past few weeks, the Mississippi Legislature has bandied about a few anemic attempts at strengthening laws protecting victims of domestic violence. Among them is an addition to the state's divorce laws that would allow judges to grant a …
[Stiggers] It's Electric!Mo'tel Williams: "Greetings, peace-loving people. It's your non-black ambassador here to promote a special peace tour by the Sausage Sandwich Sisters: electric-slide line-dance ambassadors for world peace and rent money."
[Kamikaze] A Jackson Reality CheckIt's time for some hard truth. Some Jackson detractors may have taken my ProJack stance as blind love for our fair city. Some have accused me of selling hype over substance. I've refuted crime stats, championed development and screamed "Buy …
[Head] Smaller, Blacker, StrongerWe all have the opportunity to stand together as a multicultural Jackson that represents everything that is good.
No Small FeatThe students in John Bennetts' second-grade class are being perfect sponges. Bennetts, a teacher at KIPP Delta Elementary Literacy Academy, a charter school in Helena, Ark., is drilling the class on the difference between "explicit information" and "implicit information."
Rip the Cypher: Phase OneBefore stepping foot inside the North Midtown Arts Center on Millsaps Avenue, it was obvious that something was going on. More than the cars parked along the sides of the street gave it away. The energy was palpable; the music …
Bridging the GapsBook selling was a profitable enterprise in the oft-mythicized but very real city of Timbuktu. In the late 15th century, after the emperor Aska Mohammed's reign, the city was at its most prosperous, its scholars widely celebrated.
Torn by TimeIt's one of the hallmarks of humanity: being torn between hope for the future and the familiarity of the past. The Prozorof family in Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" is especially human.
Maintaining FocusWhen I first saw the cover of "Ghost Light: A Novel" by Joseph O'Connor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011, $25), I didn't know quite what to expect from the woman dressed in early 1900s garb. Would I be bored or …
‘Bodies, Bodies'"The Swimming Pool" by Holly LeCraw (Doubleday, 2010, $25.95) starts with this uninviting, ethereal opening line: "Bodies, bodies."
[Natalie's Note] Come Aboard the MothershipSome radio stations only play what the big corporations want them to play, but that won't last much longer. With Pandora, Sirius and a number of other musical resources popping up, folks are finally getting what they've been begging for: …
Civil Rights Museum Funding Advances In HouseA proposed national civil-rights museum in downtown Jackson could receive $30 million in state funds, under a bill up for consideration by the state House of Representatives. The House Ways & Means Committee voted today to approve HB 1463, which …
Health Reform Moves AheadThe Mississippi Legislature is debating laws that conform to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, even as legal challenges to the act continue.
The students in John Bennetts' second-grade class are being perfect sponges. Bennetts, a teacher at KIPP Delta Elementary Literacy Academy, a charter school in Helena, Ark., is drilling the class on the difference between "explicit information" and "implicit information."