Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. In the same room where he first announced his candidacy for Jackson mayor 21 years ago, Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. gave what is likely to be his final State of the City address.
2. In the absence of Ward 1 Councilman Quentin Whitwell, the council voted unanimously to hire an election consultant, to provide funds to Stewpot Community Services, and to accept a bid for a construction contract that should bring several city bus stops and sidewalks into compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
3. Over the weekend, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote about politicians' politicians' new "controlled and controlling approach" for talking to voters.
4. Victor Voe warned them: "Don't let them kill me. I be hearing them say they going to kill me. I am hearing voices that others don't hear." That's what Voe told mental-health staff at East Mississippi Correction Facility eight days before a church group found him hanging in his solitary-confinement cell.
5. Credit rating service Moody's last month downgraded the rating on the city of Jackson's water and sewer system revenue bonds from Aa3 to A1 and set an outlook for the city waterworks' borrowing capacity of "negative."
6. Othor Cain, chairman of the board of directors at Grace House in Jackson, delivered sort of a state-of-the-state on HIV/AIDS at Koinonia Coffee House's Friday Forum.
7. Democrats in the Mississippi Legislature want to implement a compromise plan that would increase access to health-care to people who do not currently have it without expanding Medicaid.
8. The atmosphere in the Clarion Hotel's ballroom was electric moments before Chokwe Lumumba arrived on the scene to celebrate his election victory Tuesday. Lumumba was officially Jackson's next mayor.
9. Medgar Evers seemed to know his life was drawing to a close. A week and a half before he met his fate outside his family's Jackson home, Evers, the Mississippi field secretary for the National Association of Colored People, said if he died, it would be for a good cause: fighting for America.
10. Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, gave a speech dedicated to Medgar in front of their former home as part of the 50th anniversary of Medgar's death. Read the speech here.

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