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State
'Confederate Heritage' and Pro-Flag Rally Planned for Monday
Last fall, the Magnolia Heritage Campaign started a petition drive to preserve what it considers Mississippi heritage by acknowledging Christianity as the official state religion and English as the official …
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Music
Jason Isbell: Choosing the Right Details
Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell has had a busy couple of years since he last played in Jackson in 2013.
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Person of the Day
Dr. John Hall
The American Heart Association presented Dr. John Hall of UMMC with the Award of Meritorious Achievement Wednesday, June 24.
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UN Rights Body Backs Call for Accountability in Gaza War
The U.N.'s top human rights body backed calls Friday for accountability in last year's conflict in Gaza, in which hundreds of Palestinian civilians and six Israeli civilians were killed.
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Hispanic Leaders Want GOP Field to Condemn Trump's 'Idiocy'
Hispanic leaders are bristling at the largely tepid response by Republican presidential candidates to Donald Trump's characterization of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers.
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Russian Parliament Votes to Adopt Controversial Privacy Law
Lawmakers in the Russian parliament on Friday voted for a bill forcing online search engines to remove search results about a specific person at that person's request.
Entry
In 1860, 49% of White Families in Mississippi Owned Slaves, Who Outnumbered White Folks Here
By Donna LaddDuring the last couple weeks of talking about the Confederacy (and the state flag that celebrates it), we've encountered any number of historic inaccuracies in the arguments of those who don't want to change our state flag.
One of them is that (a) not many white Mississippians even owned slaves and (b) that only 6 to 10 percent of Confederate soldiers owned slaves.
Here are the problems with that argument as the chart and link before bring into full relief. As you can see in this excellent MPB documentary, many Confederates soldiers were just 17 or 18 years old. But many of the soldiers' families owned at least one or two slaves.
Based on 1860 Census results, 49 percent of Mississippi households owned slaves at the start of the Civil War, and more than half the population of our state—55 percent—were slaves. Slavery was massive here and directed affected nearly half the white families in Mississippi, including some who weren't as wealthy as the planters who owned many slaves (and who were at first exempt from fighting in the Civil War when the Confederacy instituted a draft, but that's another subject).
The chart below shows the number of slaves in all of the states that existed at the start of the Civil War.
Also, read my column this week, "Driving Old Dixie Down," for many links to historic sources about Mississippi and other Confederate states at the start of the war, including extensive evidence of why the Confederacy formed: in order to have a strong central federal government to force slaves on any new states, and to ensure that it got its runaway slaves back.
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2015/jul/02/21958/
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State
Official: State Prisons 'Hell on Earth' for 40 Years
Since the five-member Task Force on Contracting and Procurement started meeting, the body has aired concerns about the way the agency awards contracts and general complaints about the state's prisons.
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Person of the Day
Abby Wambach
Now, at the age of 35, Abby Wambach will have one final chance to capture a World Cup title in the final of the 2015 Women's World Cup.
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Story
Episcopalians OK Allowing Gay Marriage in Churches
The Episcopal Church has completed its embrace of gay rights, changing church law to allow same-sex religious marriages throughout the denomination, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay …
Photo gallery
Readers' Designs for New Mississippi Flag #MSFlagDIY
"To describe its symbolism, the 21 stars are there to represent the 21 known tribes …
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Story
Sports
Aaron Holbert’s Baseball Odyssey
Striking out is not meant to be celebrated. Aaron Holbert, manager of the Mississippi Braves, should know this. He has been in professional baseball for 25 years.
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Books
A Long Time Coming
"Go Set a Watchman," the second novel by "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee, will finally be out July 14.
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Music
Holding out for The Hood Hippie
If you make something, Malcolm Morrow, creator of Jackson entertainment blog The Hood Hippie, wants to help you. No, really.
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Wellness
Lower Your Risk of Skin Cancer
Only a generation ago, many people thought a suntan was healthy. Now, we know it is anything but. In fact, today, doctors know a tan is actually a response to …
Story
Stinker Quote(s) of the Week: ‘Good Ole Boy’ Talking Points By You, the Readers
We asked readers on Facebook to share some of the good-ole-boy/girl reasons they were seeing to keep the Confederate emblem in the Mississippi state flag.
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Cover
Design Your Own Flag
We want to invite our readers to use this page to come up with a new flag design that better represents the Mississippi of 2015 (and let's be honest, just …
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Cover
Sensory Grilling
There are many methods and techniques on the grill, but my favorite has always been the patient, slow burn that comes from smoking meats. It's a method of cooking that …
