Jackson Free Press

Management & Training Corporation will take over management of the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility and two other Mississippi prisons, the Associated Press is reporting. MTC will also assume management of East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian and the Marshall County Correctional Facility in Holly Springs.

Michael Johnson might be best know for his golden shoes he wore during the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. He is the only male athlete to ever win the 200-meter and 400-meters in the same games.

Johnson is currently working in England for the BBC as a commentator. He made some recent comments to British media outlet the Daily Mail, that has created some buzz.

The Daily Mail published comments made by Johnson about slavery and athletics. Here are a few quotes from the article:

‘All my life I believed I became an athlete through my own determination, but it’s impossible to think that being descended from slaves hasn’t left an imprint through the generations."

"Difficult as it was to hear, slavery has benefited descendants like me – I believe there is a superior athletic gene in us."

Are Johnson's comments fair or foul? Read the whole Daily Mail story here.

Johnson is not the first sports figure to make these claims. Former CBS Sports commentator and Las Vegas bookmaker Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder made similar comments in 1988.

ESPN did a 30 for 30 film on Snyder and his downfall after his comments.

This week, Mississippians got in an up roar when several news outlets referred to our state as the "Landmass" between New Orleans, LA. and Mobile, AL. It has made the rounds on Facebook and Twitter with a post even of the JFP site.

Fifty years ago today, Gov. Ross R. Barnett blocked African-American student James Meredith from enrolling at the University of Mississippi.

Meredith's appearance on the Oxford campus sparked violent protests and prompted President John F. Kennedy to dispatch federal troops to Mississippi.

Barnett was fined and, later, a body of water was named after him. Meredith got a statue erected in his honor, about which he told the Jackson Free Press in 2008:

Like all the other major schools in the country, they were put under heavy pressure to do a "Black Thing." The night before statue dedication, they did their "Black Thing," and asked me to come early and attend it. I've been trying for 20, 25 years to figure out how to bury James Meredith and go back to who God put me here to be. And I chose that night. And I told them in my presentation to them ... that for the last 10 or 15 years I've been fighting hard with the university to cut out the "black this, black that" thing. That is the worst thing in American education today, the "black this" and "black that."

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2012/sep/20/8555/

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is wading into the Jackson mayor's race, and endorsing Councilman Chokwe Lumumba over political upstart and businessman Jonathan Lee.

In the R-and-B-laced radio ad, Thompson refrains from naming Lee but says: "When I see Republicans from Rankin and Madison counties endorsing the other so-called Democrat, I know something is fishy."

Thompson goes on to say that the Republicans supporting the other candidate are the same people who "opened their checkbooks last fall for Mitt Romney in an effort to kick President Obama out of the White House."

As JFP city reporter Tyler Cleveland has pointed out, six of Lee's 10 biggest contributors have given to the GOP or Republican causes in the past. Thompson hits every buzzword, saying "these Republicans want to pass charter schools, create voter-ID laws, cut Pell Grants, end Medicare and reduce Social Security benefits."

At the end of the ad, Thompson advises voters not to fall for "old Republican tricks" and to "vote for the real Democrat" on May 21.

In other states I've lived, it would have been highly unusual for a Congressman to get involved in a party primary. Perhaps this is normal for Mississippi. Or, maybe it's just normal for Rep. Thompson?

Jackson State will not play a homecoming game this season. Here's what is happening instead.

Tons of new releases and Best of Jackson...

Mississippi native Duvalier Malone has started a petition to remove the Confederate symbol from the Mississippi state flag. The online petition form has over 1,100 signatures. In a statement, Malone said he "wants to create enough momentum for Mississippi to have another referendum vote on the flag, which will hopefully result in positive change."

The petition is written in letter format, and Malone cites recent racially motivated violence in Jackson as well as the Charleston massacre, saying that positive change can come from such atrocities.

He writes, "Now is the time to join forces and face this issue, which has cast a shadow on our state for too long. Even Republican Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn agrees: Now is the time to leave the Confederate battle flag behind us -- before another innocent person is attacked in its name."

As previously reported by the Jackson Free Press, unless Gov. Bryant calls a special session, the flag debate will have to wait until January for the Legislature. If the petition turns into a ballot initiative, it would need a minimum of 107,216 signatures, with specific number requirements from each of the five congressional districts.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2015/jul/07/22026/