Jackson Mayor Frank Melton is off to the woods of Jefferson Davis County with about 40 young men this week.
The mayor assembled 40 participants, all between the ages of 12 and 17, for a week-long camping trip to the Sophia Sutton Mission campgrounds near Bassfield. Melton said the camp aims to make a difference in the lives of the city's at-risk youth.
The work schedule, a rigorous regiment running to 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., contains events such as hiking, swimming lessons, volleyball/football, and two slots dedicated to basic reading and math. It also contains an 8 a.m. daily slot for Bible study—nothing uncommon to summer church camp, but an unexpected addition to a camp under the purview of city government.
"There's a problem with a city-sponsored event containing religion because there's a very clear separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution," said ACLU of Mississippi Executive Director Nsombi Lambright. "It's like the government is imposing its religious beliefs on these young people that are participating in this summer camp. All of them may not be Christian. It's government-sponsored religion, a clear violation."
The Sophia Sutton Mission Assembly's 1987 annual report says that Sophia Sutton Begley was a white woman, born in 1893, who lived near Prentiss. Begley bequeathed the property in 1954 with the condition that it only be used for Christian activities.
Sheriff Henry McCullum—who deputized Melton in 2004 after Gov. Haley Barbour relieved him of his Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics duties—has secured $31,885 through a Social Services Block Grant and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to use the Sutton property as a camp for young people, according to a July 13, 2007, interview in The Hattiesburg-American.
"I've got a school, baby, I've got a school," McCullum told the paper. The campground boasts the largest swimming pool in the area, and accepts both boys and girls, although Melton's program is limited to boys under 17.
Assistant CAO Goldia Revies recently presented the plan of the 2007 Mayor's Summer Youth Camp to the JPS Board, looking to rent a JPS bus for transportation. The board granted the city use of a bus.
"District policy allows other organizations to use JPS transportation as long as the district is reimbursed for the cost and as long as the reason for the use is educational," said JPS Board Vice President Jonathan Larkin, referring to the two daily hours of the course devoted to math and reading. "There was no justification for refusing the mayor in the case like this."
Another requirement for the bus rental was that the camp patrons must be either JPS students or registered in a GED program. JPS agreed merely to supply the bus and the driver, but offered no insurance coverage to the teens. The liability release portion of the registration form requires a parent to release the camp manager, camp director, instructors, employees, sponsors and the camp itself "of any and all liability connected to" attendance.
Attorney John Reeves said he did not think a release involving minors could be easily defended in court.
"For the release to be valid, it would have to be a negotiated thing between the parties, involving pretty much adults, in my opinion," Reeves said. The camp's parental consent form also asks parents' consent for their kids to volunteer for community service to the city of Jackson, with a work schedule not to exceed 40 hours, with no monetary compensation for the services performed. The consent form explains that the child's volunteer service is necessary in order to qualify for a slot at the work camp. Melton told WLBT this week that he is using the camp to decide which young men will get jobs doing lawn cleanups for the city.
Parents also had to sign a media release saying that the Mayor's Summer Camp could "photograph and/or videotape for use on their website, promotional brochures or during a local newscast or print interview," with no further financial compensation.
Revies did not return calls regarding the boys' work schedules.
Melton told WLBT that each boy who completes the camp will be given a job, adding that he wants to hire the teens as city workers to pick up trash and cut grass.
The mayor said he is personally paying all the expenses and told WLBT that he is arranging the camp to better get to know the children. It's quite a jump from last year, when Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Tomie Green forbade Melton to supervise minors as a condition of his bond. Melton allegedly directed at least one minor to commit a felony last year when he allowed youths to demolish a home on Ridgeway Street with sledgehammers. A jury acquitted Melton of the charges.
The outing seems similar to camps that Melton sponsored for young men when he was a private citizen in Jackson. News reports show that he took young gang members away to a camp in Texas in the '80s, which included gang leaders like Joseph Staffney, who was later murdered on the streets of Jackson. His brother, Anthony Staffney, now works for Melton and the city since he, Maurice Warner and Vidal Sullivan were acquitted of the murder of Aaron Crockett in 2001.
Melton told the Jackson Free Press in a series of interviews in 2006 that he believes it is his mission to take in young men with missing fathers, and often mothers, and mentor them. "[T]his is what I was put on this Earth to do, and I will never back up. And I will never apologize. This is what makes me happy, and I can tell you if those kids weren't living in this house, I would not be sitting here interviewing with you because I wouldn't be here. I would not be here," he said in April 2006.
As a Jefferson Davis deputy, in a county with some of the worst drug-dealing in the state, Melton also brought kids from there to Jackson to the Farish Street YMCA in Jackson for a swim, followed by a barbecue at his home and a tour of Jackson State, according to a 2004 Clarion-Ledger article.
Two weeks after he was sworn in as deputy there, Melton said he tried to help apprehend David Warner, who the FBI calls one of the region's largest drug dealers of crack and pot, who was indicted June 23, 2004. Melton told the Clarion-Ledger then that he was talking to Kenneth Warner, the father of the reputed drug kingpin, to get him to surrender.
But when the FBI executed a search warrant on Warner's 5,100-square-foot home, he was not there. They did find a sealed federal indictment inside his home, however, leading them to believe he was tipped off. "Super Dave" Warner—the first Mississippian to make the U.S. Marshals' 15 most dangerous fugitives list— was apprehended a year later in Toluca, Mexico, and extradited to the U.S.
"I've been to the parents' home a couple times to talk to them when we were looking for this boy," he told the JFP last year. "… But the problem I have with that is when your son builds like a $300,000 house across the house from where you live, I think I'd have a few questions. If Matthew built that, I'd think we'd have to have a talk about it."
Matthew Melton is his biological son, who grew up in Texas.
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