by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today March 14, 2023
MARCH 14, 1933
Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones was born in Chicago. His trumpet play won him a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music. Time magazine named him one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, and his gift for arranging songs made him sought after as an arranger, a musical director and a producer. He has received a record 79 Grammy nominations, which includes 28 wins.
Jones also showed a talent for scoring films, starting with the 1964 film, The Pawnbroker, breaking through many color barriers. In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
In 1995, he received the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charity work. In 2013, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Two years later, his daughter, Rashida Jones, produced an award-winning documentary that detailed his life from battling poverty on Chicago’s South Side to producing some of the world’s most beloved music.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
President Biden awards the Medal of Honor to U.S. Army veteran Col. Paris Davis on March 3 for his actions during the Vietnam War. (The Washington Post)
In the early hours of June 18, 1965, Capt. Paris D. Davis led the 12 members of his Special Forces team and about 90 South Vietnamese trainees stealthily through the jungle of Bong Son in Vietnam’s Binh Dinh province. The company successfully raided an enemy camp, killing scores of North Vietnamese soldiers, some while they were still in their cots. And then the tables turned. The Washington Post | Read more >>
Meet 26-year-old Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the first Gen Z member in Congress, and now labeled “the coolest member” in the House.
SHORTLY AFTER 7 P.M. on January 3, down a cobblestone alley in the splashy Washington, DC, waterfront known as The Wharf, a steady pulse emanated from Union Stage. Inside was a raucous scene: strobing lights, high-top tables covered with empties, the stagnant smell of beer-soaked floors. A backlit white sign near the entrance read “Tonight: Swearing In Concert of Maxwell Alejandro Frost.” Inside, an eclectic crowd—half dressed like they’d just left meetings on Capitol Hill, the other half like ’90s teens—filled the dance floor. “I am too old for this shit,” one attendee near the bar quipped with a laugh as music thumped in the background.VANITYFAIR | Read more >>
In “The Light We Carry,” the former first lady will share her approaches to dealing with challenging times. Her 2018 memoir, “Becoming,” was one of the best-selling books of all time.Read More
Lusia Harris, a basketball legend, had a stellar career at Delta State University, which is located in Cleveland, Miss. During her heyday with the DSU Lady Statemen, the well-oiled team won three AIAW championships in 1975, 1976, and 1977 under Coach Margaret Wade, also a legend as well. Harris was a 6-3 powerhouse center and always attracted a crowd on game night as the students on campus and the local community would hardly miss any of the women’s games.
The documentary film, titled "The Queen of Basketball", is worth watching. Produced by Ben Proudfoot, the founder of Breakwater Studios, it chronicles Harris growing up in Minter City, a small community in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, and attending Delta State University (just down the road from her hometown) to lead the Lady Statesmen to the three national championships that brought national attention to the university. After her college career, she almost took the basketball court with the New Orleans Jazz as the first woman ever officially drafted by the NBA. But because of family obligations and a reluctance to compete with men on the court, Harris never played a game.
This very educational film is around 22 minutes and portrays an interesting life journey for a basketball legend.
Tuesday, July 27, 2021
Mississippi’s Black Communities Turned Around Their Covid Rates. Next Up: Make Strides on Vaccines.
Michaela Gibson Morris
At its first pop-up vaccination event on April 10, the Northeast Mississippi Coalition Against Covid 19 gave shots to nearly 40 people in Shannon, a town where roughly 60% of some 1,800 residents are African American.
Though a fraction of the doses typically given out at large mass vaccination sites, the event was a success, say organizers — a coalition of health care providers and elected officials. Held outdoors, it allowed for a physically distant, communal atmosphere that many have missed over the past year.
“People would get their shot, and then say, ‘I’m going to get my wife or my daughter,’” said Dr. Vernon Rayford, a Tupelo internal medicine physician and coalition member.
The group has held two more events and administered a total of 110 doses, Rayford said. More pop-ups are scheduled.
Mississippi had already narrowed an outsize gap in covid-19 incidence and mortality rates for its Black residents, leveraging community partnerships to promote masks and physical distancing while dispelling rumors. Now health advocates hope to stretch those partnerships to help ensure vaccines reach all Mississippians equally.
It appears to be working. Vaccine rates are neck and neck among Black and white residents, with available state data showing a slightly higher rate for whites and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data showing the opposite. Mississippi isone of the few states where the Black rate isn’t lagging significantly behind the rate for whites.
And as of mid-May, African Americans, who make up 38% of the state’s population, are getting 40% of the doses given each week, said state epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers.
“We continue to reach parity with our doses,” Byers said during a May press conference.
This is the latest phase of Mississippi’s dramatic turnaround on covid among its Black residents.
In the first four months of the pandemic, the incidence of covid was almost three times higher for African Americans than whites — 1,131 cases per 100,000 for Black Mississippians compared with 403 cases per 100,000 for whites. Mortality in those first months was almost twice as high for African Americans — 46.2 per 100,000 compared with 24.6 per 100,000 for whites, based on an analysis of weekly covid reports published by the Mississippi State Department of Health.
“Covid revealed what many already knew in the public health community: that the inequities in Black and brown communities have existed for a long time,” saidVictor Sutton, who directs the state health department’s preventive health and health equity division.
That disproportionate toll on Black Mississippians started to wane, though, as covid cases began a rapid climb in the state and the rest of the country in the fall. Public health officials saw per capita rates of infection and deaths for African Americans drop below the rates of the white population. Through the peak of the holiday covid wave in mid-January, the infections and deaths rose for both groups, but the rates for African Americans remained lower than for whites.
State health department officials pointed to outreach through churches, historically black colleges and universities and community organizations that reinforced the importance of masking and physical distancing among African Americans. Efforts were also underway to reach other underserved groups, including Hispanics across the state, Native Americans in eastern Mississippi and Vietnamese communities on the Gulf Coast.
While Mississippi was among the first states to drop its mask rules, the groups hit hardest by the pandemic were more open to masking and physical distancing than the overall population, health officials said.
“It didn’t get political in the African American community,” Rayford said.
In Tupelo, the Temple of Compassion and Deliverance’s Bishop Clarence Parks was among the Mississippi clergy who used his pulpit both in his church and on Facebook. He lost his 91-year-old mother to covid on April 9, 2020. Hers was among the first cases diagnosed in Tupelo.
“It did give me a sense of urgency,” Parks said. “I saw what covid was doing.”
In addition to moving church services online and into the parking lot, Parks made a point to talk to his congregation about how to protect themselves, their parents and grandparents from covid. As small groups came back inside the church, masks were required. He talked to other pastors about safeguarding their flocks. Parks, 61, posted on Facebook when he got his covid vaccine.
In his congregation of 400, Parks estimates about 15 became infected with covid.
“My mom is the only one in our church who passed from covid,” Parks said.
Mississippi Valley State University, a historically Black school in Itta Bena, a town in the Mississippi Delta, hosted drives to distribute masks and information on protective measures, plus hosted Zoom community meetings to reach beyond its campus boundaries.
“We’re trying to focus on the Delta,” said La Shon Brooks, chief of staff and legislative liaison for the Mississippi Valley president.
Parity on vaccines, though, got off to a slow start. When supply was limited and appointments were snapped up in minutes in February, African Americans were receiving about 15% of the vaccines distributed through the state health department. As more vaccine became available, the department started sending thousands of doses to community health centers and clinics serving large minority populations, said State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs.
“We want to make sure we‘re addressing trust and access issues,” Dobbs said during a February press conference.
In southwestern Mississippi, Alcorn State University, a historically Black school, organized a vaccine clinic in partnership with the state health department and local county emergency management agency. Located in a rural county with the closest hospitals about 45 minutes away by car, the university has attracted between 160 and 200 Mississippians to each drive-in clinic session. The organizers even made walk-up appointments available to reach students and staff members on campus.
“We’re drawing a wide range of ages and races,” said Jennifer Riley Collins, Alcorn State’s covid response coordinator.
In recent weeks, the state health department has increased efforts to partner with community groups on smaller vaccination events and to reach the homebound. They are also working to direct the public to pharmacies and clinics offering the vaccine.
Health advocates remain concerned that more Mississippians of all races and ethnicities need to be vaccinated or the state risks another wave of infections that could overwhelm health care resources.
In survey results released in mid-May, the Mississippi State Health Department, which polled 11,000 state residents across all 82 counties between December and March, found that 73% were likely to take the vaccine, but as of Thursday only 33.7% of the state’s residents had rolled up their sleeves for at least one dose, according to CDC data. Nationwide, the rate was 49.9%.
Among African Americans, the survey found 56% intended to get vaccinated, compared with 80% of white Mississippians.
“We’re still at risk,” Dobbs said. “We still have a large part of the population that is still vulnerable.”
Even as racial equity in vaccine distribution has improved, closing the gap among the still hesitant and skeptical remains a significant challenge to achieving widespread immunity.
Health care workers, ranked as top vaccine influencers in the health department survey, will need to switch out of their traditional role of giving monologues and engage instead in a dialogue to understand what is preventing the unvaccinated from getting the shots, said Dr. Jeremy Blanchard, chief medical officer for Tupelo-based North Mississippi Health Services.
“We need to listen more effectively,” Blanchard said.
This article first appeared on Kaiser Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
Jill Biden to visit Mississippi as COVID-19 vaccination rate sputters
by Will Stribling | Mississippi Today June 21, 2021
First Lady Jill Biden will visit COVID-19 vaccination sites in Jackson on Tuesday as part of the Biden Administration’s nationwide tour to reach Americans who haven’t been vaccinated and promote vaccine education.
The visit comes as Mississippi continues to rank last in the nation in the share of its population that has been vaccinated. Only 32% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated despite significant gains made in recent months in vaccinating the most vulnerable and making vaccine access more equitable.
Mississippi is also the state furthest behind in reaching President Joe Biden’s goal of getting at least one COVID-19 shot into the arms of 70% of adults by July 4. Just over 36% of Mississippians are currently vaccinated, providing no hope the state will reach even 50% by Independence Day. If vaccination rates don’t improve significantly, the state wouldn’t reach that 70% threshold for well over a year.
No significant improvement is on the horizon as the state’s vaccination rate continues to tank. The 15,073 shots given last week represent a decrease of over 87% from February’s peak.
As the state's vaccine rate continues to sputter, Gov. Tate Reeves announced last week that the last remnants of COVID-related government policy in Mississippi — the state’s COVID-19 emergency orders — will expire on Aug. 15, more than a year after the orders were first enacted.
“While a State of Emergency should no longer be necessary after August 15, all Mississippians should remain vigilant, get vaccinated, and follow public health guidance,” Reeves said in a statement.
Even though Mississippi has remained under a state of emergency order due to the pandemic, there have been virtually no safety protocols in effect formonths.
Reeves also announced that emergency COVID-19 operations with the Mississippi National Guard will end on July 15. The guard’s involvement has been an essential component of the state’s vaccine rollout, assisting the Mississippi State Department of Health with the logistical challenges of operating vaccination sites and putting shots in the arms of thousands of Mississippians.
“The governor’s timeline to lift Mississippi’s State of Emergency declaration on August 15, 2021, ensures our over 1,500 service members complete all necessary out-processing requirements and receive the benefits and entitlements they have earned during their dedicated service to our state,” Maj. Gen. Janson Boyles, the adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard, said in a written statement.
The Mississippi Department of Health reported on Friday that 1,071,623 people in Mississippi — about 36% of the state’s population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Nearly 953,00 people have been fully inoculated since the state began distributing vaccines in December.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
