Mississippi Counties Research Articles

Front Porch

Front Porch Marcie Cohen Ferris Click for larger view View full resolution Deborah Roberts, The inbetween, 2019. Mix media and colalge on paper, 44 x 32 in. Private collection. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery. London. © Deborah Roberts. [End Page 1] In this moment, when connection remains paramount as our lives have shifted to isolation and virtual interaction, I picture an imaginary gathering of the captivating southern artists, photographers, scholars, storytellers, and writers whose work you will explore in this special Art and Vision issue of Southern Cultures, guest edited by Teka Selman. This assembly is loud. There is animated conversation, protest, raised voices, song, and poetry. Intricate maps and collages of southern riverways and African American women’s ways cover the walls. Images of southern sites of racial terrorism reflect past and present violence. Stories of southern artifacts, both human-made and of the natural world—from trees that witnessed lynching to the massive ceremonial mounds of southeastern Indian tribes—speak of generations of black and brown southerners as they resisted injustice and annihilation, demanding recognition of their humanity. Click for larger view View full resolution Jimmy Cohen with son Jerry at a construction site in northeastern Arkansas, ca. 1924. Courtesy of the Cohen Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On the heels of our spring volume on documentary practices, the Art and Vision issue is similarly fueled by present-day creativity that requires both our attention and activism. It is not enough merely to see as we have in the past. The covid-19 pandemic has dramatically changed how we understand our interconnectedness to the global community. We may have discussed the political, historical, cultural, and environmental connections that link our southern [End Page 2] places to the larger world, but now we viscerally feel them. There is a profound awakening to the fragility of humanity—and the gut punch that significant change happens now or never. The southern artists assembled here insist that we take action regarding climate change, environmental exploitation, genocide, changing sexual and gender identities, racism, and sexism, all brought into stark relief as we collectively face a global health crisis. We began work on the volume last fall, gathering (face-to-face!) with our friend and colleague Teka, who has been at the center of the contemporary art world for over twenty years. We are grateful for Teka’s counsel, time, and dedication in bringing together exceptional voices in southern art today, and in shaping this issue’s vision. ________ while working on this issue, I felt the pull and place of my own southern family within the historical arc of a “long South,” which this volume’s art and essays explore. In the early 1920s, my grandparents Samuel Joseph “Jimmy” Cohen, a civil engineer, and his young bride, Luba Tooter Cohen, left their Russian immigrant families and the vibrant Jewish enclaves of New York City for the rich agricultural lands of Mississippi County in northeast Arkansas. They held tightly to the passports that allowed them safe passage to America, an imperative reflected in Susan Harbage Page’s gilded passport. Their journeys from eastern Europe were fraught by rising nationalism and anti-Semitism. Travel papers and documentation represented escape and the possibility of safety and opportunity in a new country. In Arkansas, they began a family and contributed to the region’s essential sectors of flood control, industry, and construction, including hundreds of miles of drainage canals, bridges, dams, and highways. In Blytheville and the surrounding swamps, bayous, and levees, Jimmy and Luba were touched by historical and geological forces from the past and in their future. In what became known as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the great earthquake of 1811–1812 created the “Sunken Lands” where their livelihood was centered. They lived through the Mississippi River Flood of 1927, whose destructive force was directly tied to the politics and policies of land ownership and the control of the path and flow of the nation’s most powerful waterway. Artist Monique Michelle Verdin’s communities experienced this history at the other end of the river. Her striking collages of the Lower Mississippi River Valley...

Enhanced vs Standard Parents as Teacher Curriculum on Factors Related to Infant Feeding among African American Women.

To determine the comparative impact of the standard Parents as Teachers (PAT) to the nutrition and physical activity enhanced version (PATE) of the perinatal educational curriculum on compliance with infant feeding recommendations and changes in maternal infant feeding knowledge and beliefs. Women at least 18 years of age, <19 weeks pregnant, and residing in three Mississippi counties were randomized to the standard PAT or the PATE version of the perinatal educational curriculum. Infant diets were assessed via 24-hour diet recall at postnatal months 1 to 12. Maternal knowledge and beliefs about infant feeding were assessed via survey at baseline and postnatal month 12. Compliance with infant feeding recommendations and differences in compliance between treatment arms were assessed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves. Longitudinal changes in maternal knowledge and beliefs were assessed with McNemar tests of symmetry. Postnatal retention for the PAT and PATE arms were 83% (25/30) and 88% (21/24). Compliance with feeding recommendations for PAT and PATE participants, respectively, was 40% and 63% for no solid food before 6 months; 23% and 21% for no sugar-sweetened beverages before 12 months; 100% (both) for no fruit juice before 6 months; and 43% and 46% for no snack chips, French fries, and other fried food and candy before 12 months. Median times to feeding sugar-sweetened beverages were 10.1 and 9.6 months in PAT and PATE arms. Significant differences in compliance between arms were not found (P > 0.05). Participants' knowledge and beliefs about infant feeding were generally in agreement with expert recommendations at baseline, with few changes over time or between arms. Findings suggest the need for further intervention focused on translating knowledge into action to improve diets of weaning infants in this region of the United States.

Food Security, SNAP Usage, and Produce Behaviors among Elementary School Children in a Rural, Appalachian Mississippi County

Food Security, SNAP Usage, and Produce Behaviors among Elementary School Children in a Rural, Appalachian Mississippi County

Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South by Kimberly M. Welch

Reviewed by: Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South by Kimberly M. Welch Anne Twitty (bio) Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South. By Kimberly M. Welch. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Pp. 328. Cloth, $39.95.) Americans have always been a litigious bunch. But until recently, historians had largely ignored the black people, both free and enslaved, who went to court in the antebellum South. Both white supremacy and southern statutes, we reasoned, rendered black litigants few and far between. In the last fifteen years, such assumptions have been shaken by the scholarship of Dylan Penningroth, Laura Edwards, and, more recently, this reviewer, Kelly Kennington, and Martha Jones. By putting black litigants front and center, however, Kimberly Welch has provided the first comprehensive treatment of black litigiousness in the antebellum South. Battling dead rats and live snakes, Welch took to the courthouse basements, storage sheds, and trailers where so many of America's local court records are slowly deteriorating to identify, clean, and photograph suits filed by or against black litigants in Iberville and Pointe Coupee Parishes in Louisiana and Adams and Claiborne Counties in Mississippi between 1800 and 1860. Her efforts yielded more than one thousand cases—mostly civil matters—across two different legal regimes: the civil-law tradition in Louisiana and the common-law system in Mississippi. Black litigants, Welch reveals, came from all walks of life. They were free and enslaved, wealthy and poor, male and female, native and foreign. Some, like William Johnson, the famous Natchez barber, or Rose Belly, an African-born woman who became the wife of a white planter who eventually freed her, enjoyed significant privilege, but many did not. [End Page 806] They sued and were sued to recover debts, to protect real or personal property, to obtain payment for labor, to secure freedom, and to sever marital ties. They pursued actions and were pursued by fellow black litigants and white southerners alike. No matter who they were, what kind of legal proceedings they participated in, or who they faced off against, however, black litigants employed the rhetoric of property by asserting ownership of their money, their land, their moveable goods, their labor, their person, and their marriages. This strategy, Welch argues, was a calculated response to a southern legal system rooted in the protection of private property, specifically slaveholders' property. When black litigants went to court, they challenged the racial order by insisting that they be treated like white litigants. Their claims might have been dismissed outright—judges and juries could have simply disregarded black litigants as legal persons. By framing their demands around property, however, black litigants forced the issue. When given the choice between defending white supremacy by denying them legal redress or shoring up property rights—even black property rights—the courts chose the latter every time. As such, Welch asserts, property became central to black claims-making in the antebellum South. By defending their property rights in court and compelling white southerners to take them—and their claims—seriously, black litigants were actively seeking recognition of their personhood. The experience they obtained while pursuing private legal matters in the antebellum era, moreover, helped prepare them for the much more public legal battles for civic inclusion during the long civil rights movement. In addition to invoking the rhetoric of property, black litigants also pursued a variety of specific tactics to advance their claims. While navigating the courts, black litigants consciously crafted narratives about "gender, freedom, property, and citizenship" that were legible to the white southerners who presided over their cases and opened up "new worlds with expanded possibilities for people of color" (59). They also, on occasion, acted as their own attorneys, and, in other instances, employed white attorneys to represent them. But perhaps most captivatingly, black litigants leveraged both good reputations and ties to the community. In the antebellum South, where personalism reigned, Welch shows, black litigants were hardly interchangeable. Some black litigants, as a result of their wealth, personal connections, and conduct, might even have more "credit" than the white people they faced off against in [End Page 807] court. Obtaining this "credit" meant behaving as the white community wished, which often...

Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South by Kimberly M. Welch

Reviewed by: Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South by Kimberly M. Welch W. Caleb McDaniel (bio) Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South. By Kimberly M. Welch. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 306. Cloth, $39.95.) Kimberly M. Welch ends Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South with the story of how it began, with digging through rotting documents stored loosely in boxes or garbage bags and dusted with the droppings of various pests. The book is based on Welch’s study of over one thousand civil lawsuits filed by black litigants between 1800 and 1860 in the Natchez district, defined here as Adams and Concordia Counties in Mississippi and Iberville and Point Coupee Parishes in Louisiana. To find those lawsuits, she traveled not only to established archives, but also to [End Page 464] courthouses and storage sheds where she found crumbling nineteenth-century legal records stashed and still folded in three, largely forgotten even by the clerks who possessed them. What Welch found in those previously unexplored records is a story that, she argues, historians have also forgotten: in the antebellum South, black litigants frequently entered courtrooms to pursue damages, to recover money they had loaned to white defendants, to enforce contracts, to petition for divorce or family recognition, to report kidnappings, and to sue for freedom. Many black litigants succeeded by appealing both to their local reputations and to their rights as property holders. Welch uses these findings to argue that relations between white and black residents in the Natchez district were more complex than a simple case of total domination, on the one hand, and total subordination, on the other. She challenges Eugene Genovese’s view of antebellum southern courts as “instruments of white hegemony” (13) and joins more recent legal historians, including Ariela Gross and Laura Edwards, in arguing that the courts were never fully controlled by any one group. For Welch, law ultimately “reflects the messiness and the contradictions of local communities and lived experience” (13). To be sure, while hundreds of black litigants succeeded in Natchez district courts, those same courts protected slaveholders’ property rights and ordered auctions at which people were sold. But courts sometimes became an “arena of possibility” in which black litigants could claim rights, enforce those claims even against white defendants, and somewhat improve their living conditions (166). In these “fleeting, hard-won moments of recognition,” black litigants turned inconsistencies and tensions within the southern legal system to their momentary advantage (59). Instead of focusing on what white southerners would allow, Welch focuses on what black litigants actually said and did to advocate for their interests. This book belongs to a growing body of scholarship on black litigiousness in the American South, both before and after the Civil War. Like Anne Twitty’s Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787–1857 (2016) and Kelly Kennington’s In the Shadow of Dred Scott: St. Louis Freedom Suits and the Legal Culture of Slavery in Antebellum America (2017), which examines approximately three hundred freedom suits in antebellum St. Louis, Welch’s work demonstrates the importance of looking at local courts for evidence of how the law worked in slave states. (Welch’s database includes roughly 128 freedom suits, about half of which were successful, but the bulk of the suits she surveyed involved free black litigants.) In Natchez, as in St. Louis, law was a part of daily life, and knowledge about the law was widespread [End Page 465] among black southerners, free and enslaved. Welch even found at least two cases of free black men appearing as attorneys of record before courts, despite being unable to sign their own names. “While many people of African descent in the slave South could not and did not go to court,” she writes, “the legal activity of people of color—their claims-making and self-advocacy—had a long and robust history . . . that did not begin with the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and the extension of formal rights” (192). Indeed, together with Martha Jones’s Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018) on free black litigiousness in antebellum Baltimore...

Spatio-temporal analysis of urban changes and surface water quality

The combination of remote sensing techniques and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to measure water quality allows researchers to monitor changes in various water quality parameters over temporal and spatial scales that are not always readily apparent from in situ measurements. This study involves using Landsat images and in situ data within GIS to map urban expansion and its resulting influences on water quality in the Pontchartrain Basin over the last three decades. The Pontchartrain Basin is located in southeast Louisiana and covers an area of 25,000 km2 that encompasses sixteen parishes east of the Mississippi River and four Mississippi Counties. A Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) image from 1985 and a Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) image from 2015 were processed using the Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) algorithm to map urban expansion. In order to estimate how water quality has changed in the Pontchartrain Basin between 1985 and 2015, in situ water quality data from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality was interpolated using Empirical Bayesian Kriging (EBK). Comparing urban expansion produced from SAM classification with urban indices, impervious surfaces were better identified and distinguished from other land cover features. The results of this study demonstrated that high levels of fecal coliform were consistent with increased urbanization in water bodies in the Pontchartrain Basin. Phosphorous levels were higher in 2015 compared to 1985 and were at levels high enough to lead to eutrophic conditions. Dissolved oxygen levels were lower near the mouth of the Mississippi river in 2015 than in 1985. The results indicated that urbanization has negative impact on water quality. The geospatial model is recommended to effectively manage and reduce the processing time of large water quality datasets.

Testing the improvement of performance of the IRI model in the estimation of TEC over the mid-latitude American regions

This paper mainly discusses the improvement of performance of the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model in estimating the variation of the Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) over the mid latitude American regions during the relatively low (2008–2010) and relatively high (2012) solar activity years. This has been conducted employing the VTEC values obtained from the dual frequency ground based Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers located at Mineral Area Community College, MACC (37.85°N, 269.52°W) and Mississippi County Airport, MAIR (36.85°N, 270.64°W), and the latest versions of the IRI online model (IRI 2007, IRI 2012 and IRI 2016). The study mainly focuses to compare the trend of variability of the monthly and seasonal modeled VTEC values (IRI 2007 VTEC, IRI 2012 VTEC and IRI 2016 VTEC) with the corresponding measured VTEC values (GPS VTEC). The overall results show that the IRI VTEC values (almost in all versions of the model) are generally smaller than the GPS VTEC except after about 15:00 UT (09:00 LT) in the December solstice when the Sun shifts to the high solar activity. On the contrary, overestimations of the VTEC values by the model are observed in traversing from the low solar activity (2008) to high solar activity (2012) phase, especially after about 15:00 UT (09::00 LT) with the IRI 2016 version showing the highest. In general, the IRI 2007 and IRI 2012 versions show similar monthly and seasonal underestimations or overestimations showing that the two versions have almost similar performance. The IRI 2016 version is generally better in capturing both the diurnal and arithmetic mean GPS VTEC values with some exceptional months and seasons as compared to those of the IRI 2007 and IRI 2012 versions.

Increasing College-Going Rate, Parent Involvement, and Community Participation in Rural Communities

This study examined the perceptions of leaders of grant-supported projects aimed at increasing the college-going rate of high school students in rural Appalachian counties in Mississippi to determine which factors they felt most influenced the college-going rate, parental participation in school activities, and community participation. Analysis of the leaders’ responses to questions related to these items showed that college visits and ACT preparation workshops were perceived as having the greatest impact on increasing the college-going rate at the schools. No one factor was perceived as having the least impact on increasing the college-going rate at the schools. Factors influencing parental and community participation included events and workshops for parents, especially those which involved community members as mentors. Acknowledgement: This research was supported by Appalachian Regional Commission Grant MS-16115.

Coastal Sand Frostweed, Crocanthemum arenicola Synonym: Helianthemum arenicola

Coastal sand frostweed is found on beach dunes, scrub, and sandhills. It is endemic to the Florida Panhandle, Mississippi, and Alabama coastal counties. After Hurricane Katrina, coastal sand frostweed became the plant with highest frequency on stable dunes on Horn Island, Mississippi (Lucas and Carter 2013).https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sg168&#x0D; Note: This fact sheet is also available as a chapter in a comprehensive manual titled Dune Restoration and Enhancement for the Florida Panhandle, Please see the manual for more information about other useful and attractive native plants for dunes and for further information about restoration and preservation techniques.

An exploration of posttraumatic growth, loneliness, depression, resilience, and social capital among survivors of Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among posttraumatic growth (PTG), loneliness, depression, psychological resilience, and social capital among survivors of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. The survey was administered to a spatially stratified, random sample of households in the three coastal counties of Mississippi. A total of 216 participants were included in this study who lived in close proximity to the Gulf of Mexico coastline during both disasters. Results from structural equation modeling analyses indicated that there was a significant and inverse relationship between PTG and loneliness. Conversely, a direct relationship was not found between PTG and depressive symptoms; instead, the results revealed an indirect relationship between PTG and depressive symptoms through loneliness. Social capital was related to loneliness only indirectly through PTG, while psychological resilience was related to loneliness both directly and indirectly through PTG. Understanding the relationships among these factors, particularly the importance of PTG, can provide insight into the long-term adaptation among those who have survived multiple disasters. Further, these findings may lead to nuanced methods for behavioral health practitioners in assessing and treating individuals with symptoms of depression in disaster-prone communities.

You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement by Greta de Jong

You Can’t Eat Freedom: Southerners and Social Justice after the Civil Rights Movement by Greta de Jong

First Report of Soybean Vein Necrosis Virus Infecting Kudzu (Pueraria montana) in the United States of America

Soybean vein necrosis virus (SVNV) is a virus originally discovered in Arkansas and Tennessee and is currently present in all major soybean-producing states in the United States and Canada (Zhou and Tzanetakis 2013). Studies were carried out to investigate the role of kudzu (Pueraria montana) in SVNV epidemiology. Kudzu is present in millions of acres in the southeastern United States and is known to host at least another soybean-infecting virus, tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV) (Aboughanem-Sabanadzovic et al. 2014; Khankum et al. 2013). Eighty-five samples collected from 15 Mississippi counties during September 2015 were tested for SVNV infections using DAS-ELISA (Agdia Inc, U.S.A.) and three were infected by the virus. Two of the samples displayed mild deformation of young leaves, whereas the third was symptomless. In order to verify the results, virus-specific RT-PCR tests were performed on nucleic acid extracts from all ELISA-positive samples along with three SVNV-free kudzu plants and controls, represented by SVNV-infected and healthy soybeans. A DNA band of 236 bp corresponding to the NSs gene (Zhou and Tzanetakis 2013) was amplified only from the three ELISA-positive kudzu samples and positive controls. The products were directly sequenced in both directions and confirmed to be SVNV-specific as they shared 96 to 99% nt identity with corresponding region of the SVNV reference isolate (GenBank accession no. GU722319). In a greenhouse-based study, first instar larvae of soybean thrips (Neohydatothrips variabilis Beach) were fed on symptomatic soybean for virus acquisition and transferred to eight SVNV-free kudzu seedlings as described (Zhou and Tzanetakis 2013). Leaf and root tissues were randomly collected from virus-inoculated and mock-inoculated kudzu, respectively, at 6 weeks post inoculation. Total nucleic acids were isolated and RT-PCR was performed using primer set SdetF/SdetR (Zhou et al. 2011). Amplification products corresponding to the complete NP gene (834 bp) were obtained in both leaf and root tissues from five inoculated plants and shared 97 to 99% identity with the reference isolate (GenBank accession no. GU722319), whereas there was no amplification from mock-inoculated controls. Those results were further confirmed by dot blot immunoassay with infected plants remaining asymptomatic for at least a month post inoculation. Our findings represent the first report of SVNV infections of kudzu in the U.S.A. and the world. Kudzu is likely to play a role in the epidemiology of virus and disease. Furthermore, our results expand the range of pathogens (Asian soybean rust, TRSV) and insects (kudzu bug) that kudzu can sustain, indicating its ecological impact as an invasive species.

Prevalence of canine heartworm infection in Mississippi animal shelters

Understanding diagnosis of heartworm disease in the context of animal shelters’ needs and expectations is crucial for developing guidelines that specifically address the unique shelter population. Accurate and economical heartworm testing strategies are essential. However, current comprehensive guidelines for the management of heartworm disease in dogs are directed toward client-owned animals and do not address needs of animal shelters and other resource-scarce facilities. Additionally, testing recommendations do not take into account regional and local differences in heartworm prevalence across the United States that occur due to abiotic and biotic factors. The objective of this study was to determine the apparent prevalence of Dirofilaria immitis microfilaremia and antigenemia in dogs from Mississippi animal shelters. Further, we compare agreement between microfilaria and antigen testing in this population. We performed a cross-sectional study using canine serum and blood bank samples representative of the Mississippi shelter population. Microfilaria testing of whole blood included a blood smear and modified Knott test. Antigen testing of serum was performed using the DiroCHEK® antigen ELISA test. Analyses included descriptive and analytic statistics as well as Cohen’s kappa for test agreement. A total of 283 whole blood samples and 363 serum samples, representing 363 dogs from 18 shelters in 17 Mississippi counties, were utilized in this study. Sixty-four (22.6%) whole blood samples demonstrated D. immitis microfilariae on the modified Knott test and 125 (34.4%) serum samples had detectable D. immitis antigen. Increasing age and low body condition were associated with antigen-positive test results. Only age was associated with microfilaria-positive test results. There was moderate agreement between the antigen ELISA test and the modified Knott microfilaria test and poor agreement between the antigen ELISA and the blood smear. This study provides the first known report of the prevalence of D. immitis microfilaremia and antigenemia in Mississippi shelter dogs. We observed that prevalence of both microfilaremia and antigenemia was significantly higher in these sampled dogs compared to previous reports for the owned canine population in Mississippi. Heartworm infection presents unique management challenges for animal shelters. Knowledge of the expected prevalence in the area can be utilized for management decisions related to prevention, testing, and treatment of dogs in shelter populations.

Evaluating county-level spatial prevalence and clustering of medicare beneficiaries in Mississippi

ObjectiveThis study seeks to examine how the extent of socioeconomic deprivation, racial and ethnic isolation, and health disadvantage differ among Medicare beneficiaries in Mississippi. Methods: Geographical information system (GIS) mappings are used in conjunction with cluster analysis to examine patterns of disparities in disease distribution, healthcare utilization and socioeconomic well-being among different counties in Mississippi. ResultsResults reveal that counties in these two clusters are markedly different in terms of socio-economic well-being but are somewhat similar in terms of disease distributions and healthcare utilization. ConclusionAddressing the geographic disparities in disease distribution and healthcare utilization that exist among the counties should be a public health priority. Specifically, health policies and programs should be renewed to target people living in counties that are either predominantly rural or predominantly Black or have higher percentages of population living below the poverty level.

No Improvements in Postnatal Dietary Outcomes Were Observed in a Two-Arm, Randomized, Controlled, Comparative Impact Trial among Rural, Southern, African-American Women

BackgroundSuboptimal diet quality, prevalent among postpartum women, is troubling for mothers and their children because positive relationships between maternal and child diet quality exist. ObjectiveThe primary objective was to determine whether postnatal diet quality scores of participants in the two treatment arms differed or changed over time. DesignDelta Healthy Sprouts was a two-arm, randomized, controlled, comparative impact trial. Participants and settingPregnant women at least 18 years of age, less than 19 weeks pregnant, and residing in three Mississippi counties were recruited between March 2013 and December 2014. Postnatal data was collected from 54 participants between September 2013 and May 2016. The postnatal attrition rates were 17% and 13% for the control and experimental arms. InterventionThe control arm received the Parents as Teachers curriculum, and the experimental arm received a nutrition- and physical activity-enhanced Parents as Teachers curriculum. Main outcome measuresMultiple-pass 24-hour dietary recalls were collected from participants at the postnatal month 1, 4, 6, 8, and 12 visits. Healthy Eating Index-2010 was used to calculate diet quality. Statistical analysis performedLinear mixed models were used to test for treatment, time, and treatment by time (interaction) effects on postnatal dietary outcomes. ResultsControl arm mean (95% confidence limits) total Healthy Eating Index-2010 scores were 36.8 (range=32.5 to 41.1), 36.5 (range=31.9 to 41.1), 40.2 (range=35.7 to 44.8), 39.3 (range=34.7 to 43.9), and 36.4 (range=31.8 to 41.0) at postnatal months 1, 4, 6, 8, and 12, respectively. Corresponding experimental arm scores were 42.3 (range=37.5 to 47.0), 41.6 (range=36.3 to 46.9), 40.2 (range=34.8 to 45.7), 45.8 (range=40.5 to 51.1), and 37.6 (range=32.6 to 42.7), respectively. Experimental scores were significantly higher than control scores across time. No other effects were significant. ConclusionsNeither the standard Parents as Teachers curriculum nor the enhanced Parents as Teachers curriculum was effective at improving the poor diet quality of this cohort of rural, Southern, African-American women during the 12 months following the birth of their infant.

Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War by Justin Behrend

Reviewed by: Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War by Justin Behrend Daryl Scott Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics in the Deep South after the Civil War. By Justin Behrend. ( Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 355. Paper, $32.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-5142-1; cloth, $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-4033-3.) The rapid incorporation of newly emancipated people into the political community has been a feature of historiography since the advent of professional history. Writing in the tradition of W. E. B. Du Bois and Eric Foner, Justin Behrend is most interested in the spread of democracy. He seeks to add to this tradition by dismissing the notion that the trajectory of the political struggle was inevitable and by explaining how black Republicanism came to be: "What needs explaining, then, is how most freed people in the American South rejected patron-client relations and instead made the conceptual leap of believing that protection and opportunity could arise from a broad-based community of poor people, linked with a distant and nebulous power in the nation's capital" (p. 4). At the core of his project is understanding how freedpeople developed a "grassroots democracy" (p. 6). While Behrend does not forthrightly say so, the core of his argument is that black people were more interested in constructing a democracy than in pursuing racial solidarity or party politics. Moreover, he suggests that those who opposed them did so largely for antidemocratic reasons. The struggle, then, was about democracy not race. Using a wide array of federal sources and archival records, Behrend focuses on the Natchez District, four Mississippi counties and two Louisiana parishes with an overwhelmingly black population and large plantations. He documents how the black community developed its civic life by participating in religious, fraternal, and political formations and laid the groundwork for creating a grassroots democracy. The importance of this background is to document that freedpeople drew on their own experiences, not just the Union League and the Republican Party, to generate a political culture. He suggests that community building mattered greatly in producing grassroots democracy. His linkage of freedpeople's prior organizing to their subsequent political mobilization is the work's major contribution to the literature. By holding that political affairs could have instead developed with freed-people supporting their former masters, Behrend leads readers to expect that he will also explore the behavior of the Democrats and the planter class. Indeed, this part of the story cannot be told without an analysis of the motives and behaviors of the planters and businesspeople who formed the leadership of the Democratic Party during presidential Reconstruction. When restoring the political order, the Democrats made no efforts to include black people in the process, treating them as just as politically irrelevant as they had during the antebellum and Confederate [End Page 482] periods. Indeed, the black codes were created without the consent of those they governed. This fact undoubtedly shaped the political proclivities of freedpeople, making them wide open to the Republicans, especially as the Party of Lincoln came around to advocating for black citizenship and black male suffrage. Ignoring this phase of presidential Reconstruction also allows Behrend to suggest that white people were more open to the black community's political participation than they were. Increasingly, historians are realizing that the struggle for redemption was a veritable countermovement that began at the onset of black political participation, not simply with the ultimate electoral victories. The central state was attempting to undermine conservative white forces and lacked the capacity to do so. We learn much about grassroots democracy, but the nature of the opposition is often assumed. The story cannot be truly understood without a full juxtaposition and exploration of both political cultures, democratic and conservative. Unfortunately, the author does not explore how much of black people's democratic impulses were driven by racial necessity and by popular white conservative opposition. That would suggest black solidarity was predetermined. Daryl Scott Howard University Copyright © 2018 The Southern Historical Association

Hobbseus yalobushensis, a Crayfish of Intermittent Streams: Biotic and Habitat Associations, Life History Characteristics, and New Localities

Abstract Hobbseus yalobushensis, the Yalobusha rivulet crayfish, is a species of conservation concern because it is known from only six localities in parts of three central Mississippi counties. No studies have focused on the species since its description in 1989. Our objectives were to: (1) identify additional H. yalobushensis localities within a landscape managed intensively for loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) production, (2) relate stream size, water quality variables, and flow permanence to species presence or density, (3) characterize the aquatic community in relation to H. yalobushensis, (4) better define elements of the species' life history, and (5) compile unpublished H. yalobushensis localities from post-1989 collection records. During February and March 2011–2013, we made 56 samples in 24 reaches of 16 streams in Calhoun County, Mississippi. We documented captured crayfishes, fishes, and amphibians and measured habitat and water quality variables. Catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE, number per 100 s elect...

Enhanced Curriculum Intervention Did Not Result in Increased Postnatal Physical Activity in Rural, Southern, Primarily African American Women.

To test the impact of an enhanced home visiting curriculum on postnatal physical activity in rural, southern, primarily African American mothers. Randomized controlled trial. Three rural counties in Mississippi. Between September 2013 and May 2016, 54 postpartum women randomized to standard home visiting curriculum (n = 30 control) or lifestyle enhanced home visiting curriculum (n = 24 experimental) were followed for 12 months. The experimental arm of the intervention built upon the Parents as Teachers curriculum (control arm) by adding culturally tailored, maternal weight management and early childhood obesity prevention components. Physical activity behavior and related psychosocial constructs including attitudes, expectations, self-efficacy, social support, and barriers. Generalized linear mixed models were applied to test for treatment and time effects on physical activity and related psychosocial constructs. Postnatal retention rates were 83% and 88% for control and experimental arms, respectively. Mean weekly minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were 28 and 50 minutes at postnatal months 1 and 12 in the control arm and 40 minutes for both time points in the experimental arm. Although a significant time effect was found, pairwise comparisons failed to reach statistical significance. The enhanced treatment was not effective at increasing postnatal physical activity nor improving related psychosocial construct measures in this cohort of rural, southern women.

“God always provides”: Challenges and barriers in food assistance delivery in Mississippi

This exploratory research project identifies critical needs for food pantry delivery in rural Mississippi. Our study describes the experiences of food pantry operators and volunteers while documenting the challenges these pantry providers encounter when attempting to meet the needs of pantry patrons. We interviewed 25 food pantry providers/volunteers at 14 food pantries located in nine counties in Mississippi, representing four geographic areas of the state (North Central, Central, Delta (West), and Southwest). Findings suggest that growing demand for services, coupled with stricter reporting requirements and infrastructure barriers are key challenges that food pantry service providers face. These issues are important to community development studies that focus on how coalition building facilitates community partnerships that support food assistance programs.

A Statewide Survey for Container-Breeding Mosquitoes in Mississippi.

Container-breeding mosquitoes are important in public health due to outbreaks of Zika, chikungunya, and dengue viruses. This paper documents the distribution of container-breeding mosquito species in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the genus Aedes. Five sites in each of the 82 Mississippi counties were sampled monthly between May 1 and August 31, 2016, and 50,109 mosquitoes in 14 species were collected. The most prevalent and widely distributed species found was Ae. albopictus, being found in all 82 counties, especially during July. A recent invasive, Ae. japonicus, seems to be spreading rapidly in Mississippi since first being discovered in the state in 2011. The most abundant Culex species collected were Cx. quinquefasciatus (found statewide), Cx. salinarius (almost exclusively in the southern portion of the state), and Cx. restuans (mostly central and southern Mississippi). Another relatively recent invasive species, Cx. coronator, was found in 20 counties, predominantly in the southern one-third of the state during late summer. Co-occurrence data of mosquito species found in the artificial containers were also documented and analyzed. Lastly, even though we sampled extensively in 410 sites across Mississippi, no larval Ae. aegypti were found. These data represent the first modern statewide survey of container species in Mississippi, and as such, allows for better public health readiness for emerging diseases and design of more effective vector control programs.