Entries - County: Mississippi - Starting with J

In Jackson v. Hobbs, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids mandatory life imprisonment without parole sentences for children. Kuntrell Jackson—convicted of capital murder based on events that occurred when he was fourteen years old—was granted resentencing in which his youth could be taken into account. Jackson was ultimately resentenced to twenty years imprisonment and was released from prison on parole in 2017. Dozens of other juvenile offenders have been similarly resentenced based on this case. On November 18, 1999, Jackson was walking with two other juveniles—fourteen-year-old Derrick Shields and fifteen-year-old Travis Booker—through the Chickasaw Courts housing project in Blytheville (Mississippi County) and began discussing the idea of robbing a local video store. …

The Johnny Cash Heritage Festival is an annual event held in Dyess (Mississippi County), the small town where Johnny Cash lived until he was eighteen years old. The festival, begun in October 2017, features several days of music, arts and crafts, scholarly lectures, and appearances by Cash family members and nationally known performers. The event is sponsored by the Cultural Heritage Program at Arkansas State University (ASU), headed by Dr. Ruth Hawkins. The festival is held in October, traditionally a month of good weather in northeastern Arkansas as well as the period when farmers are harvesting cotton. From 2011 to 2014, ASU held the Johnny Cash Music Festival in Jonesboro (Craighead County), featuring concerts by such country music luminaries as Rosanne …

The city of Joiner (Mississippi County) is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 61 and State Highway 118, within an area widely recognized for its fertile farmland and its proximity to the Mississippi River and the city of Memphis, Tennessee. There are varying accounts regarding Joiner’s beginnings. One story states that the locale was first associated with a hotel of the same name that was established by Rufus L. Joiner. This account also asserts that the spelling was originally Joyner and somehow evolved into Joiner over the years. However, Rufus L. Joiner’s biography, as published by Goodspeed’s history of the area, makes no mention of his association with a hotel, describing him only as a prominent farmer. On the …