This year saw Mississippians go to the polls in record numbers, the Legislature called back into session to find a solution to the state’s bridge crisis while sports fans set aside their differences and cheered in one voice for the Bulldogs women’s basketball team. Mississippi Today photojournalist Eric J. Shelton shot and edited many of the images from these news events and more — from state Capitol debates to sports in Neshoba County and beyond to the dramatic moments of this year’s Senate elections.
Wheeler Parker, Emmett Till’s cousin and eye-witness to the events that took place in 1955, stands next to the Emmett Till river marker during a rededication ceremony for the marker on River Road in Glendora Thursday, June 21, 2018. The previous marker was riddled with bullets in 2016. The event was sponsored by the Emmett Till Interpretive Center and the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University.
Jerry Slocum, farmer and president of North Mississippi Grain Company, takes a look at his soy bean crops in one of his fields in Coldwater, Miss. Wednesday, June 20, 2018. During the recent trade war between the United States and its closest trading partners, China imposed 25 percent tariffs on soybeans, corn and beef.
Lee Eric Evans, 26, shows his entry and exit gunshot wounds while at his aunt’s home on Davis Street in the Farish Street Historic District Tuesday, July 3, 2018. Evans has been shot on three different occasions near the historic district. On Saturday, July 7, Evans was shot multiple times and found laying on Central Street which is about two miles from the Farish Street Historic District. He died later at the scene.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., right, listens as Senate candidate Mike Espy speaks to media during a press conference at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson Friday July, 20, 2018. Espy’s run for the Senate seat vacated by Sen. Thad Cochran drew prominent Democrats from around the country to Mississippi.
LaQuisha Smith and her daughter chat in a park near their former home. She is looking for work and a new place to live, but wants to keep her kids in the school district. Smith and thousands of others throughout Mississippi are fighting the same fight – eviction notices. Mississippi ranks No. 8 in the nation for evictions.
Patrick Steve Beadle, center, stands with one of his lawyers, Cynthia Stewart, right, as he questions the bailiff about how he was physically handled during his sentencing hearing at the Madison County circuit court Monday, October 15, 2018. Beadle was sentenced to 8 years for trafficking marijuana.
In this Aug. 24, 2018 photo, Rukia Lumumba of the People’s Advocacy Institute and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, leads a discussion at the Black Women Matter Issues Forum of small political rural and urban organizations and the Black Voters Matter Fund field team in a leadership exercise in Jackson, Miss. The meeting was in part to introduce national media to these hands-on organizations that work throughout the state and also to build interest and excitement among the groups, that are mainly women led, for the upcoming election, defining issues and the campaigning in locales where black turnout might be key.
In this photo provided by WLBT-TV a noose hangs on a tree on the state capitol grounds in Jackson, Miss. on Monday, Nov. 26, 2018. A Mississippi official says two nooses and six signs were found on the grounds of the Mississippi state Capitol. Chuck McIntosh, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration, which oversees the Capitol, says the nooses and signs were found Monday morning between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m.