Minrose Gwin's new novel, "Promise," was inspired by the April 1936 tornado that ripped through her native Tupelo, Miss., leaving an official death toll of 233. Years later, she discovered that what her family referred to as "our tornado" took the lives of uncounted African-Americans as well.
Sitting in his fifth floor corner office overlooking the slow moving Interstate traffic snaking through Jackson on a weekday afternoon, Chris Gillard is a long way from his childhood in Tupelo. As director of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, he oversees the state's most visible and, perhaps, most elite law enforcement agency.
In Tupelo and throughout America racial divisions like flooding waters are dangerously close to breeching a dam. In a world of hurt people are asking questions.
Many Northeast Mississippi residents joined millions of other Americans during the last few days in seeking to regain emotional and personal equilibrium after the early Sunday mass murder of 49 people in an Orlando night club. A sizable group, organized through social media, gathered in front of Tupelo's City Hall on Monday night to express grief and memorialize those killed in the club, whose clientele was predominantly gay and young.