Talks

Wednesday, May 16

The Jackson Police Department holds its annual Police Memorial Service outside its downtown headquarters to honor and commemorate the 17 JPD officers who have died in the line of duty since 1893.

Thursday, May 17

A Jackson Academy senior named Frances Fortner dies after her vehicle hits an uncovered manhole and flips upside down on Ridgewood Road near Venetian Way. ... The Mississippi Gaming Commission proposes rules to govern sports books at the state’s 28 licensed casinos after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that bars gambling on sports in most states.

Friday, May 18

The Trump administration resurrects a Reagan-era rule banning federally funded family planning clinics from referring women for abortions, or sharing space with abortion providers.

Saturday, May 19

Prince Harry of Britain marries Meghan Markle in a diverse ceremony at Windsor Castle.

Sunday, May 20

Venezuela’s National Election Council declares socialist leader Nicolas Maduro the winner of the country’s presidential election by a margin of 93 percent, prompting a coalition of 14 nations to pledge to scale back diplomatic relations with Venezuela.

Monday, May 21

On behalf of the City of Jackson, Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba accepts responsibility for not preventing the accident that killed Frances Fortner. ... U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi introduce a bill to make the Medgar Evers home a national monument.

Tuesday, May 22

The U.S. House prepares to approve legislation to roll back the Dodd- Frank law, a rules framework for banks installed to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis that brought millions of lost jobs and foreclosed homes.

— IHL Board President Shane Hooper on the board’s decision to raise tuition.

by Ko Bragg

As we get nearer to annual budget

hearings in the City of Jackson, you can almost feel the tension mounting around money issues.

In April, the bickering came over the council’s decision to raise the part-time city clerk’s salary so that Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote could hire a new clerk. Other municipal workers protested.

During a discussion about the payroll at that same meeting, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who did not support the pay raise for part-time city clerks, defensively aired out his frustrations with rumors he had heard about how much money people in his administration were making, including one claiming a 30-percent increase in the mayor’s staffing budget.

Lumumba said everybody who came to work for him took less money than they were previously making, and that one person on his executive staff took $50,000 less, but he would not name that person.

An analysis of city salaries shows that Mayor Lumumba’s “A-Team” makes between 3.4 and 8 percent more than Yarber’s did. That group includes the chief administrative officer, the chief of staff, the communications manager, the public-works director, the director of planning and development, and the director of administration.

Examining the salaries of department heads in the City of Jackson under Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba and former Mayor Tony Yarber shows that Lumumba’s executive staff gets paid as much as 29.3 percent more than the previous mayor’s did—but the women don’t fare as well as the men.

The variation depends on whether you count the time when Kishia Powell was public-works director from 2014-2016 paid at $150,000 a year compared to when Jerriot Smash took over the role when Powell went to Atlanta. He made $126,000.

Six people in the Lumumba administration are making six figures compared to four under Yarber. Of those, the mayor’s salary ($119,999.36) and the chief of police’s salary ($112,998.08) are the only positions with wages that are exactly the same across both administrations.

The Cost of the ‘A-Team’

Last summer, Lumumba began announcing members of what he labels as his “A-Team.” This group, hailing largely from academia, comes at a price, however.

Using data from the National League of Cities’ average salaries of municipal officials, an “A-team” not including the mayor or the communications manager, costs around $450,000 collectively. The Lumumba “A-team” minus the communications manager and the mayor himself makes $511,000.

Nearly 2,000 cities and towns belong to the NLC, including 294 in the state.

Public Works Director Bob Miller is the highest-paid person in the City of Jackson with a salary of $125,991.84. However, Powell, Yarber’s initial pick for the position, was paid almost 20 percent more than Miller. When Powell went to Atlanta to work for Mayor Kasim Reed, Smash filled in and remained until Miller took over the role in October 2017. Smash made $38 more than Miller makes now.

Robert Blaine, the city’s chief administrative officer, is the second-highest paid member of the mayor’s “A-team” (not including the mayor) making $111,537.92. His role involves making sure the City is operating efficiently. The various divisions in city government report to Blaine, with the exception of the chief of police, who reports directly to the mayor.

Blaine was an unconventional choice

— Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba on the manhole on Ridgewood Road that led to a car accident that killed Jackson Academy senior Frances “Franny” Fortner.

for the role considering he has a background in music and working in administration at Jackson State University and Tougaloo College. The CAO under Yarber, originally Gus McCoy, made three-fourths of what Blaine makes.

Then comes Charles Hatcher with the Department of Finance and Administration who makes $105,000—an approximately 24-percent increase over the woman in that role under Yarber, Michelle Battee-Day. Hatcher, a Cornell University graduate with bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in consumer economics from the Ivy League School, worked as a professor, then an independent consultant before coming to Jackson.

Mukesh Kumar, the director of planning and development, makes approximately $2,000 more than the last director, with a salary of $86,908.64. Kumar spent nearly 15 years as a professor of urban and regional planning at Jackson State University before joining the Lumumba administration.

Gender Math The women of the Lumumba “A team” have either seen very little pay increase compared to their predecessors or are being paid less.

Looking at the women’s salaries across both administrations, the only women to make six figures in both cabinets have been the city attorneys. Sharon Gipson, Lumumba’s city attorney, makes $8 less than Monica Joiner, the city attorney under Yarber, with a salary of $106,238.08.

The mayor’s chief of staff, Safiya Omari, makes $81,999.84—just a $2,000 net increase from the last woman in the role, Jacqueline Anderson-Woods.

Omari helps execute and advance the mayor’s vision for the City and serves in his place when he is out of town, unavailable, or if a situation can be resolved without him. She also manages constituent services, the business community and communications.

Before coming to work for the City, Omari was the director of Jackson State University’s Center for University Scholars and a professor of social work.

Kai Williams, the city’s communication manager, makes $51,617.28 a year which is 15-percent less than the woman in the role under Yarber, Sheila Byrd, who made $59,517.12.

The Pew Research Center found that in 2017, women in the United States working part-time and full-time earned 82 percent of what men earned.

Email city reporter Ko Bragg at ko@jacksonfreepress.com and follow her on Twitter at @keaux_ for breaking news.

Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba $119,999.36

Safiya Omari, Chief of Staff $81,999.84

Bob Miller, Director of Public Works $125,991.84

Charles Hatcher, Director of Finance and Administration $106,238.08

Mukesh Kumar, Director of Planning and Development $86,908.64

Kai Williams, Communications Manager, $51,617.28

Mayor Tony Yarber $119,999.36

Jacqueline Anderson-Woods, Chief of Staff, $79,998.88

Kishia Powell, (Initial) Director of Public Works, $150,000; Jerriot Smash, Interim Public Works Director $126,029.28

Michelle Battee-Day, Director of Finance and Administration $84,841.12

Eric Jefferson, Director of Planning and Development $85,001.28

Shelia Byrd, Communications Manager, $59,517.12

— AFT President Randi Weingarten on teacher walkouts throughout the country.

by Arielle Dreher

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation for Teachers (right), visited Davis Magnet Elementary School (soon to be renamed after Barack Obama) last week. She also spoke to a group of AFT-affiliated teachers in Jackson.

Students at Davis Magnet Elementary

School crowded into their library to receive free chapter books for the summer from the American Federation for Teachers last week. Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, handed out books to students for the First Book Partnership.

“I am a high-school social-studies teacher in Brooklyn, New York, but I am on leave from teaching so that I can do this other job,” Weingarten told a group of students that had gathered around her.

“[Y]our teachers in Jackson and your bus drivers and great principal and great librarian said this is a school of readers, so … we said how do we make sure that when we come and visit this school, (we) make sure that we give each and every one of you ... a book that you’re reading this summer that you can keep.”

Weingarten also met with AFT Mississippi members later that afternoon to discuss “educational issues and the recent teacher actions in several states around the country,” a press release said. She said that she was invited to come down and speak to the membership.

AFT is one of the nation’s teacher unions, and it has a Mississippi chapter as well as a strong local chapter in Jackson.

Jackson AFT president Akemi Stout could not share her membership numbers or statewide membership numbers, she said.

Teachers in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky and now North Carolina have made national headlines as they strike for better wages, policy matters

and other various reasons. Weingarten said in states like Mississippi where funding challenges are an “uphill battle,” paths to change can seem impossible.

“But this is the difference today … one of the things that I think is an unintended consequence of the Trump era is that the president did not just shake up his base, but he has shaken up a lot of people,” she told the Jackson Free Press. “And there are a lot of people now who are saying ‘wait a second, if we want fairness, if we want a better life, we have to use our voice.’”

Stout said her group’s focus right now is getting more funding to the classrooms.

The fight to pass Initiative 42, a ballot initiative that could have forced the Legislature to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, was the last big public push to get more funds to the classroom in Mississippi. After that initiative failed, the public-education community has been on defense, fighting to offer input on the Republican supermajority’s proposed new education funding formula.

So far, the state’s education community wants more public input and hearings on the new proposal. The legislation to change MAEP to the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula died in the Senate earlier this year, after educators and Mississippians flooded their lawmakers’ phones with calls.

room, so the teachers can have what they need,” Stout told the Jackson Free Press. “Second, let’s make sure we’ve got pay increases for teachers so we can keep a viable workforce within the schools.”

Striking in Mississippi would be challenging—and depending on the specifics, also illegal. Mississippi is a “right to work” state, which means unions are not allowed to enter into contracts with employers on the exclusive behalf of their members—so union membership is not automatic. Mississippians have the right to voluntarily join unions, however, the Legislature passed a slew of laws in 2014 to prohibit people

and unions alike from “intimidation and coercion” against any business when they are seeking to get a neutrality agreement or collective bargaining recognition.

The Mississippi Legislature also made itself the exclusive authority over labor peace agreements or collective bargaining under federal labor laws. It is illegal in Mississippi for unions or an “agency thereof” to engage in mass picketing or demonstrations. The fine is $500 or up to six months in jail. The law states that it does not interfere with the First Amendment.

Tough laws did not stop teachers in other states from walking out, however. Strikes in West Virginia are technically illegal, but that did not stop teachers from every county from striking in February.

Katie Endicott, a West Virginia high school teacher, told reporters at the Education Writers Association seminar in Los Angeles last week that superintendents and school-support personnel all supported the strikes. Endicott said walkouts stemmed from not only salary concerns but increased insurance rates and programs that lawmakers had required school districts to implement. Endicott said social-media and posts going “West Virginia viral” were crucial to the organization of the walkouts.

“Social media was the catalyst,” she said at the EWA Seminar last week. “We were able to get the pulse of the state… (which) allowed us to move quickly.”

West Virginia has strong teacher unions, and the unions were involved in the strike there.

Teacher salaries in Mississippi rank 50th nationally, a National Education Association report shows. NEA estimates the average teacher salary in Mississippi at $42,744. Based on the 2018-2019 MAEP salary schedule, a teacher with the highest certification would have to work seven years to get to this level of pay, however.

These MAEP numbers do not take into consideration what some school districts can afford to give their teachers above the state schedule. Stout says her organization will continue to focus on making sure teachers have the resources they need.

“Is a walkout possible? It is. … I can’t control what people do, and when people are fed up, they do many things,” she said.

by Ko Bragg

On a sweltering Friday evening, orange cones

blocked off Meadow Lane as the neighborhood came together on May 18 for a commemorative graduation and block party for Kingston Frazier, the 6-year-old boy who was kidnapped and murdered precisely a year from the date of that gathering.

In the quaint, manicured neighborhood with no sidewalks, classic house music that black people play at cookouts and family reunions echoed out from tall speakers in the front lawn. The sun still felt like it was at its afternoon peak when the block party began at 5 p.m., but the lights in the front lawn indicated that the event had only gotten started. Kids and teenagers helped move green coolers filled with ice and beverages across the sloped driveway, as others pulled up to the home of Lynn Winston, Kingston’s grandmother. She said she was surprised, but glad to see the television station’s trucks and other media there because they will keep her grandson’s story alive.

“It’s the first-year anniversary, so we’re all sad, I’m sad, the family’s sad,” Winston told the Jackson Free Press. “But, at the same time, this is in Kingston’s honor. Kingston would be grinning from ear to ear that this is in celebration of his life.”

‘Go Ahead and Take It’

On May 18, 2017, Kingston’s mother, Ebony Archie, pulled up in front of a local Kroger on I-55 at around 1 a.m. to get some party supplies for Kingston’s graduation the next day. She left the car running as her son slept in the backseat. While she was in the store, another car drove up and a man got out and pulled away in her Toyota Camry.

Officials believe Byron McBride drove off in the silver Toyota first while Dwan Wakefield and D’Allen Washington operated a dark-colored Honda Civic waiting nearby. An amber alert went out, and less than a half-day later, police found the car in a ditch in Gluckstadt.

During a hearing in June 2017, officials testified to the details of their investigation in front of Madison County’s Judge Bruce McKinley who decided that all three young men should face a grand jury.

Agent Rusty Clark said Wakefield told him that McBride called him while he and Washington sat at a Shell gas station, acknowledging that a child was in the back seat of the vehicle. McBride then told Wakefield that he was “going to off the kid.” Wakefield said he told McBride to just “drop the kid off somewhere.”

McBride told officials in his original statement that

One year to the date after Kingston Frazier, a 6-year-old kidnapped from Kroger and then murdered, his family spoke out.

he was not involved. In a later statement, he said Wakefield told him in the Kroger parking lot about Archie’s car: “Man, you got this. It’s right there. Go ahead and take it.” McBride confessed to Clark in his third statement that he, in fact, shot the 6-year-old.

The three young men are in various stages of the criminal-justice system. McBride is facing the most serious charge—capital murder—a crime punishable by death in Mississippi. He was indicted in November 2017, and awaits a mental evaluation before being tried or sentenced.

Brian Buckley, Assistant District Attorney in Madison County, told the JFP that Washington already entered a guilty plea to being an accessory after the fact of kidnapping and had agreed to cooperate against the two other teens. Washington had been out on bond for a separate armed robbery during the Kingston incident to which he also pled guilty. Buckley confirmed that Washington is in jail, “not going anywhere,” and is up for sentencing on Sept. 24.

Wakefield went through youth court initially, but he was certified as an adult and indicted in February. He is currently out on $275,000 bond with an ankle monitor.

Buckley said that Wakefield’s charges include three counts of accessory after the fact for murder, kidnapping and auto theft.

Forgiveness Pending

Ebony Archie had been relatively silent until the oneyear anniversary of that fateful night, but she said she would definitely be at the upcoming trials.

At a press conference at local radio station 94.3 FM on May 18, Archie sat in a cloth armchair next to a portrait of Kingston in an ornate gold frame. Her hair sleek in a bun, eyes watering, Archie took questions from reporters

“I would just like to thank everybody for the support and prayers also,” she said. “This has just been a terrible year for me.” Archie said that the last 365 days have been “very empty” for her, with some days brighter than others, but for the most part, just empty,.

“I miss words, his words,” she said. “‘I love you mom.’... Sometimes I still hear it in my mind.”

William Frazier, Kingston’s dad, sat next to Archie in an identical chair on the other side of Frazier’s photo. Despite being the more vocal parent in recent months, he sipped a drink when reporters asked him questions.

“Whatever she said,” Frazier said, deferring to Archie. “I really ain’t got no talk for the news, to be honest. Y’all don’t say what I say anyway, so let’s just leave it at that.”

Archie, after a long pause, said she can forgive the young men allegedly involved in the murder of her son.

“That’s God’s job to forgive. I won’t. I promise you,” Frazier mumbled.