Molly Minta, Mississippi Today

Jasmine Barnes has been following the headlines about dysfunction in Jackson’s City Hall since college, taking notes on government meeting minutes and financial records.

The auditor at the Mississippi Department of Transportation had wanted to run for city council for years, but she started seriously considering it after purchasing her first family home in Northpointe, a northeast Jackson neighborhood, in 2019.

It seemed to her like the city could use her accounting expertise, but she was uncertain if a young Black woman could be a viable candidate in Ward 1, an area long known as Jackson’s “white Republican bastion.”

“I knew that if you’re gonna run against a white Republican in a ward like this, you’re gonna have to have your A-game,” she said.

In an attempt to convince Barnes, her campaign manager and friend sent out a poll in late December, asking frequent voters in the ward if they were satisfied with the incumbent Ashby Foote, the founder of a financial services company who was elected to the council in 2014 as a Republican and has not faced a serious challenger since.

Over half of respondents said they would consider somebody else, Barnes said.

Now, as Ward 1 residents start voting for the June 3 general election, Barnes and fellow challenger, independent Grace Greene, are creating stiff competition for Foote who is also running as an independent.

The hotly contested race reflects what political observers and ward residents have known for years now: Northeast Jackson is not quite the “white Republican bastion” it once was.

In 2024, Ward 1 was recorded as having 1,000 more Black residents than white, a ratio of nearly 50% to 45%, after redistricting prompted by the 2020 census. That same year, the ward voted overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump during the presidential election.

To be sure, Ward 1 is still the city’s whitest ward, home to influential Republican donors who live in some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the state. And these voters carry greater weight in municipal races, where turnout is lower, a trend that historically favors the affluent and conservative. In this year’s Democratic primary, Ward 1 recorded the highest voter turnout in the city – 30% versus 23% citywide – leading some pundits to cry Republican interference.

Jackson's demographics by U.S. Census block group

Hover over each dot to learn more.

Ward 1 is economically diverse, with some of Jackson’s biggest mansions as well as several apartment complexes.

But many of the ward’s civically engaged residents, regardless of race, political party or the nexis of the two, are united by shared interests, such as preserving property values in an area that has not suffered as much as other parts of the city from population loss, crime or divestment but where there is financially more at stake.

“I’m gonna go back to: We need help,” Madeline Cannon, a Ward 1 resident for nearly 60 years, said as she was leaving a candidate forum at the Briarwood Presbyterian Church last week. “Right now, I’m looking for a leader. I am a Democrat. I’ve been a Democrat all my life. But we’re just looking for a leader.”

For residents, their relationships with their council person matters much more, Cannon said, than political party.

Greene said she recently experienced this firsthand at a meet-and-greet at the Country Club of Jackson hosted by a friend who is involved with the neighborhood association. Greene was prepared for residents to ask her questions about Rodney DePriest, a white businessman who is running as an independent candidate for mayor.

Instead, Greene said nearly everyone wanted to know if she knew Horhn, who had just secured the Democratic nomination.

“Then some of the people who were coming up to me, introducing themselves to me were like, ‘We’ve already spoken to John Horhn about this, we’re doing this … or we worked with John for years about this or he’s been supportive about this in the Senate, whatever business or philanthropic thing these people had worked on, and it was very obvious they had good relationships with him and a respect for him,” she said, “and like, in their minds, it was almost settled, even though we had a general election.”

When Jackson adopted a mayor-council form of government and created the city’s seven wards 40 years ago, Ward 1 voters elected a Democrat. But ever since 1993, when insurance agency president Derwood Boyles stepped down, Ward 1 has been represented by a Republican.

Political scientist Steve Rozman, a retired Tougaloo College professor who lived in north Jackson for years, has a few possible explanations for why northeast Jackson became and has remained the whitest, wealthiest and most conservative part of the city.

Jackson was developed as a segregated city, and Rozman speculated the city’s desirable land was close to the Pearl River. Indeed, one of Jackson’s most premier neighborhoods, Eastover, was developed in 1949 by Leland Speed Sr., a former mayor of Jackson, on a horse farm on low-lying land near the river.

“Whites set up on the land that they regarded as best in the area,” he said. “A lot of the Black neighborhoods historically have not been near the Pearl River. With the municipal water system, maybe it was advantageous under more primitive conditions to be near water.”

As the 20th century wore on, factors like redlining, higher property values and significant opposition from racist white people would have kept Black Jacksonians from purchasing homes in the city’s northeast until the 1990s and 2000s, Rozman said.

Today, northeast Jackson is home to large apartment complexes near County Line Road and I-55 as well as a growing Hispanic population, a diversity that Barnes said people don’t often acknowledge. Instead, folks still tend to associate northeast Jackson with its tennis courts, private schools and gated neighborhoods.

“I don’t know if it’s like a perception thing,” she said.

Jasmine Barnes, 32, joined others vying for mayor and city council seats to voice their positions and answer questions from the public during a Meet the Candidates forum held Tuesday evening, May 27, 2025 at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson.

In reality, the ward’s demographics represent a marked shift from 1992, when Ward 1 was 92% white, according to the Northside Sun.

Back then, Ward 1 was one of three majority white wards in the city, along with wards 4 and 6 in southwestern Jackson. But by 2000, before the city had even received the final Census tally, Ward 1’s councilperson, Ben Allen, was telling his constituents that would no longer be possible.

“It would be very difficult for us to get three white wards, unless some fancy gerrymandering goes on,” Allen told the Northside Sun.

Come 2002, redistricting dropped Ward 1’s white population to 76%, according to newspaper archives. The balance would shift again in 2010, to 55.9% white and 39.7% Black.

With the exception of a few closely contested special elections, the ward has remained a Republican stronghold this century, as Democrats often failed to field any candidates. But when they did, the race could be close: In 2014, Foote was elected by a little over 100 votes against construction attorney Dorsey Carson. It was technically a nonpartisan special election, and Carson, a Democrat, reportedly “strayed from discussing his political affiliation,” while Foote emphasized his conservative values.

Now the sole Republican on the council, Foote said when it came time for him to participate in drawing new ward lines last year, he didn’t do so with his reelection chances in mind in part because the process did not affect his constituency’s racial balance.

Of the couple thousand voters that Ward 1 had to give up, Foote said they were about 50-50 Black-white.

Instead, Foote said his goal was to keep the shape and cohesiveness of Ward 1 “in a way that made logical sense and not get gerrymandered into something that looks like a lizard or whatever.”

Ward 1 city council candidate Ashby Foote, 73, joined others vying for city council seats and the Mayor's office, voicing their positions and answering questions from the public during a Meet the Candidates forum held Tuesday evening, May 27, 2025 at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson.

The distant cousin of author Shelby Foote moved to Jackson in 1980. In 1999, he bought a home with his wife on Calnita Place, close to Jackson Academy — a feature Foote said he didn’t appreciate at the time because his children attended other schools, but has since come to see as protecting his property values.

Plus, the cul de sac was good for his dog, Skip, a Jack Russell mix.

“Your dog’s life expectancy goes up,” Foote said jokingly.

As she has canvassed the ward, Barnes said she’s loved walking through the neighborhoods close to Jackson Academy.

“I was like, man, this is a really cool community, and I just kind of love that aspect of kids walking by themselves because they feel safe enough to do that,” she said.

That’s not the only similarity between Democrat and Republican in the Ward 1 race. When Barnes reads news articles about the city, she often ends up finding herself asking the same questions as Foote about financial transparency and accountability.

“Jackson is in a vulnerable position, but we’re not a vulnerable city,” she said. “We have a lot that we can do internally to build our credibility, build our leverage first, and then we can go out and seek other resources.”

Foote noted that if he were to lose reelection, the lack of a Republican on Jackson’s city council would not impact the issues of the day.

“It’s not really about Republican values or Democrat values,” he said. “It’s really about let’s get the roads fixed, let’s make sure we have running water, let’s make sure the garbage is picked up, and let’s make sure we do it in a cost efficient manner.”

At the same time, Foote has touted in campaign materials that he is endorsed by the Hinds County Republican Party. He said his first run for office was financed by a generous donation from Billy Mounger, an architect of the state’s GOP who was good friends with Foote’s father.

Greene, an entrepreneur who has worked as a doula, an online reseller, and an economic developer in Peru, said she chose to run as an independent so that residents of Ward 1, regardless of their political affiliation, will know she supports them.

Greene moved to the ward in 2020 with her family after looking at homes in Belhaven, Fondren and LOHO, the neighborhood just outside of Eastover. They landed on a home in Heatherwood in part because it had an attached garage, a feature the older homes in Fondren lack.

Grace Greene, 43, joined others vying for city council seats and the Mayor's office, voicing their positions and answering questions from the public during a Meet the Candidates forum held Tuesday evening, May 27, 2025 at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson.

Plus, she wanted to raise her kids, who are enrolled in Jackson Public Schools, in a diverse environment, a decision she has talked about with other white residents during the campaign.

“There was somebody in the neighborhood who knew me from childhood and he made a comment about the changing demographics of the neighborhood. He said how initially he thought it was going to be a negative thing, but it just turned out to not be a negative thing. I just told him, I said, ‘Well that was a positive to us when we moved here,’” she said during an interview at her office in Highland Village.

Greene also noted that everyone in the ward is impacted by the city’s actions, regardless of whether they live in an apartment or a gated community. For instance, she said she had two kids in diapers with no trash pick up for 18 days in 2023.

“That was a leveler across the city, cause no matter where you lived, no one had trash pickup, and we all had to figure out what to do with this,” she said. “And the fact that there was truly, really no explanation to the citizens as to why this was happening? There was no response when we reached out about it.”

Another leveler? When it’s the state versus Jackson, that includes the Republicans who live here, too.

Foote shared a story about the controversy surrounding the Smith-Wills Stadium. At one point, frustrated by what he characterized as a lack of transparency from the city administration around a deal to forgive $500,000 in past-due rent from the stadium’s vendor, Foote said he asked Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office for an opinion on whether the vote the council took to do so was legal.

Even though Fitch is a fellow Republican, Foote said her office told him it would be a conflict of interest to opine on his question, since Fitch is representing the state in its fight to take the stadium.

by Molly Minta, Mississippi Today

March 18, 2025

A baby cried as Gwendolyn Chapman wrote down a question in precise pencil script.

A former mayoral hopeful, Chapman was just another voter Monday night. She’d gone to the candidate forum at the Afrikan Art Gallery, a space for Jackson’s activist community and one of the few surviving businesses on historic Farish Street, historically the center of Black business in the city.

Chapman, 70, wanted to know how the nine candidates who’d shown up would work together after the election to better the city she’s called home for most of her life, even if they didn’t win, she told Mississippi Today. The primary — a faceoff between 12 democratic candidates — will be on April 1.

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But nearly two hours in, Chapman hadn’t gotten much of an answer. Some candidates sounded more invested in the loss of one of their opponents than in their own victory. Even though one of the forum’s organizers, Asinia Lukata Chikuyu, said he’d tried to get the candidates to focus on policies, some kept lobbing insinuations and outright attacks at the others in front of the 50 or so attendees.

Chapman hoped to help bring some clarity. But she couldn’t get the moderator’s attention. Every time she stood up, Eldridge Henderson, a local radio host, would call on someone else. A pole in front of Chapman’s chair blocked her from view.

Finally, she spoke up — loudly. “I have a question,” she announced.

Henderson pointed at a woman to his left. “She’s next and then you,” he said.

The woman mainly directed her question to Chokwe Antar Lumumba, the current mayor whose federal indictment for bribery has left many Jacksonians wondering if he will be able to win a third term. She asked if Lumumba could speak to the city’s broken relationship with the state, which she said has “closed its pockets.”

“Absolutely,” he began. “First of all, if you think that the issue with the state of Mississippi has anything to do with the mayor, not only have you not been following history, you’re falling right into the trap, right?”

No one in the state had an issue with him, Lumumba continued, until he refused to give up the airport and until the city’s gun violence increased, something he said he predicted would happen after the pandemic, which is why he tried to ban open carry via executive order.

“You have to understand there’s a difference between being friendly and being a friend,” he added. “A friend funds things not in campaign season, but for 30 years. Friends support you in that way, right? So that’s a misnomer. And we have to understand that there’s a difference between being a diplomat and a doorman.”

Next to respond was state Sen. John Horhn, a four-time candidate for mayor who some view as Lumumba’s most formidable challenger.

“Our city is broken,” Horhn began. “Just about every department doesn’t function. The police? Maybe. The fire department? Maybe. I don’t like how they did the contract, but the garbage is being picked up. Everything else is dysfunctional. We don’t even have a bond rating, right, because audits haven’t been submitted the way they’re supposed to be submitted—”

Lumumba muttered something about “the council.”

“Can I get 5 seconds back from that interruption?” Horhn asked. He went on to say that he believes that no one trusts the city — not the residents, the county, the state or the federal government, which he claimed took $800 million in funds from the city and gave it to JXN Water, the third-party administrator overseeing the city’s water system, precisely due to a lack of trust.

“That, that’s something I have to directly respond to,” Lumumba said, rising from his chair. “Because that’s not true.”

Henderson and Lukata rushed toward the moderator’s podium, their hands outstretched. “Not right now,” Lukata said. Lumumba sat back down.

It seemed like Chapman’s time. But more candidates kept standing up to answer. The baby babbled.

Socrates Garrett, a local businessman and city contractor, called on divided Jacksonians to come together and march on the state Capitol to expose the state government’s racism. In a response to Horhn, James Hopkins, a community activist who works in retail management, said the city’s current administration is not the reason that Jackson can’t get the state and federal funds it needs.

“When Jackson went Black, the state held back,” Hopkins said. “That’s what we’re dealing with. It has nothing to do with this administration, absolutely nothing.”

Then candidate David Archie, a former Hinds County supervisor, stood up.

“I have to answer this,” he said.

“No, no, gentleman, no,” Henderson pleaded. He pointed at Chapman. It was finally her turn. She stood.

“I’ve really enjoyed this forum,” Chapman said. “This is what I would like to know: The person who do become mayor, of all the candidates that’s sitting there, about how many percent would come together to express their ideas, express their problems, express what’s going on, to support the mayor?

“We need some unity in this community, especially among our nation of people,” she added.

The first to answer, Lumumba rephrased her question.

“The question — hopefully this doesn’t count against my time — the question is, would you be willing to work with everyone else, essentially, right, if you are elected mayor or if you are not elected mayor,” he said.

He went on to name former Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber, who defeated Lumumba in the 2014 special election held to replace Lumumba’s father after he died eight months into his first term. When he lost, Lumumba said he didn’t sulk, instead he stood with Yarber to defend the city’s ownership of the airport. But when Lumumba finally won election in 2017, beating Horhn, Lumumba said the state senator called Jackson voters “fickle” and “uneducated.”

“Clarion Ledger, May 3, 2017,” Lumumba said, urging voters to look up the article that contained those quotes from Horhn.

“Hmm, okay,” Chapman said. “May 3. Alright, May 3.”

Next, candidate and local personal injury attorney Delano Funches said that if he didn’t win, he would continue doing what he’s been doing for the last 10 years — working with Jackson’s youth and trying to reduce crime.

This answer did not satisfy Chapman.

“That wasn’t my question but go ahead,” she said.

Archie said he got his start as a community activist.

“That didn’t answer my question either,” Chapman said. “Just one person answered so far.”

A woman in a floral dress leaned over her chair and whispered to Chapman, “you ain’t gonna get no answer.”

Candidate Albert Wilson, a nonprofit founder and former geometry teacher, went next. In a seeming answer to the question before Chapman’s, he said Thalia Mara Hall wouldn’t be closed for as long as it has been if Jackson were able to adequately maintain its facilities.

“Well, just one person answered my question,” Chapman stated, seeming to no longer care to listen to Wilson, who was still talking. “Nobody answered it yet but one person. So it is egotistical narcissism. No unity in the community. This is a grand example.”

The baby started crying again. More candidates got up.

Garrett said he would be willing to work with everybody, win, lose or draw, because he was an elder with gray hair who could help guide young leaders. Horhn said that over the past 32 years, he has delivered construction projects for every administration, from the Civil Rights Museum to the convention center and the parkway by Jackson State University, but that some of the other candidates have not been as proactive.

“These folks have left the nose of the camel under the tent and now the whole body of the camel is under the tent,” Horhn said.

In response to Lumumba’s shot at him, Horhn said that Jackson voters are “sweet and innocent” but “fickle sometimes in terms of how we pick our folks. And when we hear somebody say ‘free the land, power to the people. When I’m the mayor, you’re the mayor’” — Horhn said, repeating common Lumumba phrases — “do you feel like you’re the mayor? After eight years, is life better for you in Jackson?"

Candidate and construction company owner Marcus Wallace said he thought Chapman’s question was a good one, but he did not directly answer it, instead speaking about times he had worked with past administrations.

The baby wailed even louder. Lumumba and Archie looked at their phones.

Then candidate and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Tim Henderson, who had introduced himself as “Tim Henderson, the military guy,” stood up.

He spoke somewhat quietly. The easy answer, he said, was yes, but he had learned a lot since announcing his candidacy.

“The elephant in the room on that question is there are cliques in the city,” he said. “There are groups of people in different parts of this city that are making decisions for everybody else in the city and don’t even consult the folks that it affects the most.”

“True,” Wallace said.

“You’ve got to have a leader that recognizes this is the challenge,” Henderson continued. “It’s not going to be easy because there are folks that are dug in in this city.”

That was it. As another voter asked a question, Chapman and her cousin who she’d attended the forum with got up and left.

Outside in the parking lot, Chapman said she thought Lumumba was the only candidate who answered her question. The only reason any of the others were on topic, she said, was because they saw she was applauding Lumumba’s answer.

But the city’s future is more important than any one person, she said.

“They have to see that if the winner, which is the mayor, wins, and the other candidates come together in terms of support, that would bring a lot together,” she said. “It really will.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A gold necklace with Jimmie “Jay” Lee’s name on it was found with human remains in Carroll County this weekend, but authorities have not publicly confirmed the remains belong to the missing University of Mississippi student and well-known member of Oxford’s LGBTQ+ community.

Local authorities acknowledged the necklace was found with human remains that have yet to be identified through DNA. In a text, Carroll County Sheriff Clint Walker had no comment but acknowledged a picture of the necklace, asking "who sent you the picture of the necklace?" The Oxford Police Department could not be reached by press time.

After this story published, the Oxford Police Department released a statement that it was aware of the Carroll County sheriff's investigation and had no additional comment until the identification of the remains.

"Our main priority has always been to bring Jay Lee home," Chief Jeff McCutchen said in the release. "We, like the public, are anxiously awaiting updates and ask for patience as the investigative process unfolds."

An image of the cursive nameplate obtained by Mississippi Today matches a necklace that Lee wore in pictures and videos on his Instagram account as recently as two days before he went missing.

Lee’s body had been missing since July 2022 after his mother told local police that she had not heard from him. A few weeks later, a fellow Ole Miss student and recent graduate, Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., was arrested and accused of killing Lee to preserve their secret sexual relationship.

Herrington's attorney, state Rep. Kevin Horan, R-Grenada, said he had no comment. Lee's parents could not be reached.

The human remains were found about an hour and a half south of Oxford. The day Lee went missing, Herrington was seen on video retrieving a long-handle shovel and wheelbarrow from his parent’s house in Grenada County and putting it into the back of a box truck that belonged to his moving company, according to evidence released in the case.

Herrington was tried for capital murder in December by the Lafayette County District Attorney’s Office. A judge declared a mistrial after the jury, which was chosen in Forrest County, was hung 11-1, with the disagreeing juror reportedly unable to convict due to the lack of a body.

Update 2/2/23: This story has been updated to include a press statement from the Oxford Police Department and the text message from the Carroll County sheriff.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.