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. On his 65th birthday, Democrat Mike Espy filed Friday morning to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith when it is up again in 2020.
2. Long-time New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $1-million public-art grant for the City of Jackson alongside Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba on Nov. 29, 2018.
3. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy did not win his bid for U.S. Senate in Tuesday night's special election, but he came closer than any Mississippi Democrat has in 36 years.
4. Rep. Adrienne Wooten and former Hinds County District Attorney Faye Peterson won circuit court seats in the judicial run-off, creating a woman majority and cementing the first all-black Hinds County Circuit Court bench.
5. Underlying race tensions catapulted to the surface of the run-off race between Hyde-Smith and former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, with a series of other race-related reveals emerging about Hyde-Smith.
6. The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the sole abortion clinic in Mississippi, received a permanent injunction in its case to prevent the 15-week abortion ban from going into effect. But, the State will likely appeal to higher courts.
7. Almost six months to the day of her death, Frances Fortner’s mother and father filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the City of Jackson and other businesses.
8. Three individuals and the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP brought a civil-rights suit against the State for absentee-ballot issues ahead of the U.S. Senate run-off election between Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy.
9. Rukia Lumumba was the last person in a long queue of voters waiting to cast a ballot on the final day of in-person absentee voting on Saturday, Nov. 24.
10. U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith attended and graduated from a segregation academy that was set up so that white parents could avoid having to send their children to schools with black students, a yearbook reveals.

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