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. Jackson doesn't have a mayor, yet, despite Chokwe Antar Lumumba's impressive Democratic primary victory in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. He still must defeat several other candidates on June 6.
2. Jacksonians spend an additional $2,046 per year driving on Jackson roads compared to Hattiesburg, the Coast and DeSoto County, a new study from the TRIP group shows.
3. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political-advocacy organization founded by the Koch brothers, will throw Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves a five-figure thank-you campaign, after the Republican repeatedly shot down proposals to divert funds to pay for the state's infrastructure, which he called "unconstitutional."
4. Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the Democratic nominee for mayor of Jackson, talked about superheroes, family, and politics during a podcast interview with Beau York of Podastery Studios.
5. With canvases, brushes, papier mache, bottle caps—and sometimes balloons—the instructor for the city's annual Allison Wells Summer Arts Camp, Cindy Presley, focuses on creating pieces that inspire participants to create art from anything.
6. The Mississippi Teacher Corps is a small alternate-route teacher program based out of the University of Mississippi that enables a group of typically recent undergraduates to take master's courses while teaching for two years, leaving with their master's degree if they complete the program.
7. Fifty foresters with "boots on the ground" to fight wildfires all over Mississippi on almost 19.8 million acres will lose their jobs come July 1. The layoffs come after the state Legislature cut the Mississippi Forestry Commission budget by almost 16 percent in the past session.
8. Community members are working with a nonprofit organization, Friends of the Briarwood Pool, to help keep Briarwood Pool open this summer after the YMCA sold the pool, which has been in the community for more than 50 years.
9. A grand jury indicted Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith Tuesday on two domestic-violence misdemeanor charges and two felony charges for aggravated stalking and robbery.
10. Little Kingston Frazier died the day he was supposed to graduate from kindergarten. But his death brought an entire community together, at least for a week.

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