Topping new in Mississippi this week:
- After a Facebook post suggestion people should be lynched for removing Confederate monuments, there are calls for a Mississippi State Representatives to resign. Representative Karl Oliver made the post Saturday evening. By Monday, he had apologized and been stripped of his vice-chairmanship for the Forestry Committee by House Speaker Philip Gunn. But Democrats, the Mississippi NAACP and ACLU say that’s not enough and Oliver should be removed from his seat. In his District 46, including Winona, the reaction was mixed.
- Jackson State is one step closer to having a new university president. The Institution of Higher Learning named Mississippi Valley State’s president Dr. William Bynum as its preferred candidate. This was a shock to JSU alumni and supporters because Dr. Bynum wasn’t the top choice of JSU’s Interview Search Advisory Board. Some alumni walked out of the meeting where Dr. Bynum was named the preferred candidate.
- The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the state saying it violates an act passed nearly 150 years ago requiring school rights for all. When Congress passed Mississippi’s Readmission Act in 1869, it said the Constitution of Mississippi shall never deprive any citizen of school rights. The lawsuit claims Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution and later amendments violated that requirement, and Mississippi’s public school system isn’t’ providing uniform opportunity across the state.
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