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Leviticus 20:13: “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

Huffington Post reports Gipson’s Facebook conversation below:

Then, veering even further away from politics and delving deeper into Old Testament religious doctrine — which also states that the earth is flat, snakes can talk, whores should be stoned to death and you should kill your neighbor for working on a Sabbath, Gibson had this to say:

Mississippi constituents at UnityMS flagged the post, reminding Gibson just who employs him:

Mr. Gipson needs to realize he represents all of his constituents. He should not cherry-pick which constituents he wants to work for. He should also realize his positions are neither popular nor Republican. LGBT individuals, couples, and families help pay Gipson’s salary. It’s important that he remember that.

According to the Post, “a November 2011 survey found that only 13 percent of Mississippi voters support marriage equality for the LGBT community, while 78 percent said it should remain illegal. Even among Democrats, only 19 percent expressed support.”

Is anyone surprised?

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“We have literally stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi. Three blocks from the Capitol sits the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. A bill was drafted. It said, if you would perform an abortion in the state of Mississippi, you must be a certified OB/GYN and you must have admitting privileges to a hospital. Anybody here in the medical field knows how hard it is to get admitting privileges to a hospital…

“It’s going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to–  Roe vs. Wade. So we’ve done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They’re like, ‘Well, the poor pitiful women that can’t afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger.’ That’s what we’ve heard over and over and over.

“But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere, and that’s what we’ve decided to do. This became law and the governor signed it, and I think for one time, we were first in the nation in the state of Mississippi.”

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The video was flagged by The Maddow Blog‘s Laura Conway who contacted Carpenter to get clarity on his statement. This is what he had to say:

“That was what a lot of our critics on the House floor said during the debate,” he told me. “That was just some language that some of the African-Americans used.” A few white Democrats also spoke out about the old “home remedies,” he remembered, but in the end the measure passed with support from several Democrats.

According to the book, “Our Body, Ourselves: Boston Women’s Health Care Collective,” in 1969, prior to the 1973 passage of Roe vs. Wade, seventy-five percent of women of color were forced by poverty or stigma to attain illegal abortions. Fast-forward to 2012, in a state riddled with educational disparities, entrenched racism and poverty that disproportionately affects Black Americans, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number that problematic again.

Mississippi: The State that is willing to allow women to die so its politicians can feel “moral.”

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Barbour, a Republican who once considered running for president, pardoned 198 people before finishing his second term Jan. 10. Of those pardoned, 10 were incarcerated at the time, including the four convicted killers and a robber who worked at the Governor’s Mansion.

The five former Governor’s Mansion trusties had already been released by the time Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood persuaded a lower court judge to issue a restraining order that kept the five other inmates in prison.

Mississippi Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tara Booth said those inmates will be released 48 hours after law enforcement and prosecutors are notified in the county where they were convicted.

“Once all the required notifications have been completed, the inmates will be released,” she said.

Hood had challenged the pardons based on the argument that many of them didn’t follow a requirement in the state Constitution to publish notices in newspapers.

In their 6-3 opinion, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote “we are compelled to hold that — in each of the cases before us — it fell to the governor alone to decide whether the Constitution’s publication requirement was met.” The court also said it couldn’t overturn the pardons because of the Constitution’s separation of powers of the different branches of government.

Hood’s temporary restraining order had required the trusties to check in with corrections officials every 24 hours and show up for court hearings. One of the trusties, however, Joseph Ozement moved to Laramie, Wyo., and refused to come back.

Ozement’s attorney, Robert Moxley, said Thursday his client felt like “he wasn’t really free until today.”

“I asked him if he could do a cartwheel and he said he’s too old. But he sure is pleased that it is all over. He has a very humanistic outlook on it. He said it was hard on the victims’ families, it was hard on the offenders’ families, but he hopes everyone can just go on with their lives,” Moxley said.

Randy Walker was shot in the head in 1993 by one of the trusties who Barbour pardoned. That former inmate, David Gatlin, also fatally shot his own estranged wife as she held the couple’s baby. Walker and the woman were friends.

Walker said the court’s decision had been weighing heavily on his mind and now he’s just trying to understand what happened.

“I just really haven’t absorbed it yet,” Walker said.

Hood had said the Governor’s Mansion trusties and about 165 others didn’t meet the requirements of the Mississippi Constitution, which says people seeking pardons must publish notices for 30 days in a newspaper.

Hood contended that if ads weren’t run in daily papers every day for 30 days, or weekly newspapers once a week for five weeks, the pardons weren’t valid.

Hood did not immediately respond to messages left Thursday with his spokeswoman.

In the end, the Supreme Court said it was up to the governor to decide if the pardoned inmates did what they were supposed to do. In addition to the pardons issued in his final days in office, Barbour also granted medical release and conditional clemency to some inmates, but they weren’t required to give public notice of their release.

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An attorney for the man, Denareus “Ted” Martin, 18, said a video was taken at City Hall by one of the officials in the town of Tutwiler, and posted on YouTube, though it has since been taken down. A separate video, which was also posted and removed, showed a police officer boxing with Martin, attorney Ellis Pittman said.

In the cinnamon video, a woman uses a piece of paper to pour a substance into Martin’s mouth while a group of people can be heard laughing in the background. Martin holds the cinnamon in his mouth for a few seconds before coughing and spitting it out. He runs to a water fountain and then to a restroom, where he appears on the verge of vomiting.

Pittman said his client was choking, but the officials “were all laughing, grinning and having a grand time.”

Former Tutwiler Police Chief Terry Tyler told The Associated Press on Thursday that he and the others were fired Tuesday during a specially called meeting of the Tutwiler Board of Aldermen.

“It’s a bunch of lies and false allegations,” Tyler said. “I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”

Tyler said he’s talking with an attorney and had no further comment.

Tallahatchie County Sheriff William Brewer said he heard about the firings Tuesday night and called the district attorney’s office and the FBI. He said a joint investigation is under way.

The “Cinnamon Challenge” is a prank in which people try to swallow cinnamon without water, which dries the mouth and usually causes them to cough and spit a plume of the spice. There are thousands of videos on the internet that show people trying it.

WABG-TV first reported the firings, aired the video and showed it on its website.

The video was taken while Martin was assigned to Tutwiler City Hall to work off fines from a minor criminal charge, though he didn’t know specifically what the offense was, Pittman said.

Former police officers Jimmy Johnson and Bobby Banks Jr., as well as court clerk LaToya Ellis and town clerk Angelia Chandler also were fired, the ex-police chief said. Chandler was the one who poured the cinnamon into Martin’s mouth, Pittman said. Banks also worked as a sheriff’s deputy for Tallahatchie County. The sheriff said he’s on suspension while the matter is investigated.

The AP tried unsuccessfully to reach them for comment. Several other Tutwiler officials, including Mayor Genether Miller-Spurlock, did not respond to numerous messages Thursday.

Pittman said the other video that was posted on the internet shows Johnson, the former police captain, boxing with Martin behind a shed near City Hall. He said the other former officer, Banks, made the video and posted it online.

Pittman said he’s not sure how many videos were taken of Martin. He said it may have started because his client told officers “they ain’t about nothing.”

“They took him out back behind a shed and put some boxing gloves on him, saying, ‘If we ain’t nothing then come on.’” Pittman said. “They proceeded to beat him up.”

Tutwiler is small town of about 1,300 people in Tallahatchie County in the Mississippi Delta. The area is known mostly for farming and several prisons and jails that employ many of its residents.

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Relatives of three victims told The Associated Press on Monday that state corrections officials notified them over the weekend that the men convicted in the crimes were to be released this past Sunday.

Barbour’s office hasn’t responded to numerous messages. Barbour, a Republican, leaves office on Tuesday.

Copies of the pardons filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office were released Monday. They show he has pardoned at least five men, the convicted killers and a man serving life for robbery.

The inmates are David Gatlin, convicted of killing his estranged wife in 1993; Joseph Ozment, convicted in 1994 of killing a man during a robbery; Anthony McCray, convicted in 2001 of killing his wife; Charles Hooker, sentenced to life in 1992 for murder; and Nathan Kern, sentenced to life in 1982 for burglary after at least two prior convictions.

The pardons outraged victims’ relatives as well as Democratic lawmakers, who called for an end to the custom of governors’ issuing such end-of-tenure pardons.

“Serving your sentence at the Governor’s Mansion where you pour liquor, cook and clean should not earn a pardon for murder,” Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, a Democrat, posted Monday on his Facebook page.

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In Ohio, an important swing state, voters rejected the law enacted by Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature that limited the ability of public-employee unions to collectively bargain.

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In Mississippi, abortion rights advocates defeated a proposed initiative that would define the word “person” to include every human being “from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.”

Before you start celebrating, Ohio voters also rebuffed Obama’s health care law. Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure saying that no federal, state or local law or rule could compel any person or employer to participate in a health care system.

Read more at the Root.

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Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant won in a landslide victory with nearly 60 percent percent of the vote.

“I know what I am, and people see what my race is. What I’m talking about is the ability for anybody to run for any office in this state they want to even if they don’t have a significant amount of money, that’s supposed to be a red state instead of a blue state or blue state instead of a red state, but they have the opportunity to give the people a voice.”

Read more at blacklikemoi.com

DuPree is the first African American to win a major party nomination for governor in the Dixie state. He is also the mayor of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Despite the historic nature of this race, DuPree is not focusing on race. He is running a low-key campaign across the state, trying to increase his name recognition.

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“The focus of my campaign is to try and move Mississippi in another direction,” DuPree said. “Mississippi [for] far too long has been a state that’s been categorized by the negative.”

DuPree served on the school board, was a county commissioner and has his own real estate company. He has been mayor of Hattiesburg — a college town and the state’s third-largest city — for 10 years. He says he turned the city around, attracting 1,000 new jobs last year alone. DuPree says jobs, health care and education are the key issues in this election.

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BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — Mississippi Department of Transportation law enforcement officers say a tractor-trailer they stopped this week was hauling about $7 million worth of marijuana.

The Sun Herald reports  the MDOT announced Thursday they stopped the 2005 Peterbuilt tractor and van trailer Tuesday morning at the Interstate 10 inspection station in southern Mississippi for a routine weight, safety and paperwork check. Officers found 126 plastic wrapped, 55-pound bundles of marijuana that together weighed about 7,000 pounds.

MDOT officials say they, along with officers of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, are investigating where the marijuana came from and where it was going.

Charges against the driver were pending.

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The family of James Craig Anderson asked the prosecutor to not impose the death penalty because it goes against their religious beliefs.

In a letter to the prosecutor, they explain that they would like to end capital punishment, which they say, has been historically used in Mississippi to execute African-American criminals disproportionately.

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“We also oppose the death penalty because it historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites,” the letter states. “Executing James’ killers will not help to balance the scales. But sparing them may help to spark a dialogue that one day will lead to the elimination of capital punishment.”

Read more at CNN.com

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JACKSON, Mississippi — The family of a black man who authorities say was run over by a white teenager in a truck is suing over the alleged hate crime.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Mississippi accuses seven white teenagers of setting out on June 26 in search of a black man to harass.

A defendant in the lawsuit, Deryl Dedmon, is charged with capital murder and robbery in the death of 49-year-old James Craig Anderson.

Authorities say Dedmon intentionally ran over Anderson with a pickup truck in Jackson on June 26.

Dedmon was scheduled for a preliminary hearing Tuesday on the criminal charges.

Another defendant in the lawsuit, John Aaron Rice, is charged with assault.

Their attorneys say they were not involved in a racially-motivated attack.

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The recent victory by Hattiesburg’s Miss. Mayor Johnny DuPree, who won the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor and could become the first Black politician elected to a statewide office since Reconstruction, illustrates a state that despite its people of color, continues to be quite conservative.

The Grio reports:

Racial districting, brought on by the Voting Rights Act, has guaranteed minority representation in the form of majority-black districts in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South. However, the unintended result has been racial polarization, with increasingly white conservative districts surrounding these black districts…

The unequal treatment of blacks and whites in Mississippi extends to the criminal justice system. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that black children in the Magnolia State are incarcerated at twice the rate of white children, usually for low-level nonviolent offenses.

Read more at the Grio.

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Deborah Madden, an FBI spokeswoman in Mississippi, said Wednesday that the bureau is investigating the June 26 death of James Craig Anderson. Madden said the agency wants to “determine whether federal civil rights crimes occurred.”

Anderson’s death flamed anger across the country when a surveillance video was made public of him being run over near a hotel in Jackson. Mississippi was the scene of some of the most shocking violence of the civil rights era.

Deryl Dedmon, who authorities say was driving the green 1998 Ford F-250, is charged with murder. John Aaron Rice is charged with simple assault for allegedly assaulting Anderson before he was killed.

Mississippi authorities say Dedmon and Rice, both 18 at the time, and a group of other teenagers were out looking for a black person to assault when they found Rice just before dawn near a Jackson hotel.

Their attorneys deny they were involved in a racially motivated attack.

Rice had also been charged with murder, but a judge reduced the charge after police testified that he had left the scene in another vehicle before Anderson was run over. Prosecutors said they will still urge a state grand jury to indict both teens for murder.

Hinds County District Attorney Robert Schuler Smith did not respond to messages Wednesday seeking comment. Jackson Police Detective Eric Smith, who investigated the case, refused comment Wednesday.

The hotel’s security camera captured video of Anderson being run over. The surveillance video, obtained by The Associated Press and other media, shows a white Jeep in which Rice was allegedly a passenger leaving a hotel parking lot at 5:05 a.m.

Less than 20 seconds later, a Ford truck backs up and then lunges forward. Anderson’s shirt is illuminated in the headlights before he disappears under the vehicle next to the curb. The hotel provided Jackson police with the video, which prosecutors say has been vital in the investigation.

Rice’s attorney, Samuel Martin, suggested during a hearing last month that the teens were on a beer run after a night of partying, not looking for a black man to assault, as prosecutors allege.

Martin suggested during a line of questioning with a police detective that Rice had no knowledge of any plan to indiscriminately attack a black man.

Smith testified during a bond hearing in July that Dedmon had been robbed by a black man in the weeks before Anderson’s death and was looking for “some sort of revenge” when he asked people at a party in Rankin County to go to Jackson in search of someone “to mess with.”

Seven people headed to Jackson in two cars, with Dedmon and Rice in separate vehicles.

The district attorney has said racial slurs were used during the attack and that Dedmon later bragged that he “just ran that n—– over.”

The killing has evoked memories of the state’s racially violent past, including the beating, jailing and killing of civil rights activists in the 1960s.

Dedmon was pulled over on Interstate 20 in Rankin County later that morning. Rice was arrested a few days later. Authorities have not ruled out that others at the scene could be charged.

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James Craig Anderson, 49, was beaten by a group of white teens, then fatally mowed over with an attacker’s truck in early July.

Surveillance video released this month brought the story to the nation’s attention, and aided in the prosecution of an 18-year-old attacker, Deryl Dedmon, who killed Anderson with his truck.

Attendees of Sunday’s meeting marched from nearby churches to the motel where Anderson was murdered, a local paper reports:

“There is a lot of general appall over what took place here,” said Ronnie C. Crudup Sr., bishop of New Horizons church near the motel where Anderson was attacked. “We wanted to get well-minded people, both black and white, together to do something to support this family and this country. This is not indicative of where Mississippi is today.”

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James Craig Anderson, 49, was beaten and mowed over by a group of white teen’s pickup-truck. Surveillance video aided in the prosecution of attacker Deryl Dedmon.

Jackson police spokeswoman Colendula Green said detectives had received a call from “one person” saying that “white people” were beating up on homeless African Americans. They looked into it, she said, and couldn’t substantiate the claims.

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RANKIN COUNTY, MS — A young man is alleged to have killed his friend after an argument about a girl and a Twitter post.

Dorian Cyrus allegedly killed his friend  Jeffery Taylor Jenkins after an argument on social media network, Twitter.

The Grio reports:

The two were suspected to be having an argument about a girl when Cyrus went to 19-year-old Jenkins home and fatally stabbed him. Allegedly the stabbing occurred in response to a Twitter or Facebook post. Cyrus is currently being held in jail, and is charged with murder.

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One of the teens involved said “let’s go f**k with some n****,” before the incident began, according to police.

The group then proceeded to beat Anderson and run him over with a car. The driver, Deryl Dedmond, has been charged with murder and a hate crime . One of his friends was charged with assault and another two have not been charged yet.

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Cory Maye, 30, celebrated his release with friends, family and the lawyers who defended him during his case.

Maye, who was arrested in 2001 for the shooting, plead not guilty during the case. At the time, he claimed he did not know the men breaking into his home were police and that he was just trying protect his 18-month-old daughter when he shot Prentiss, Mississippi, police officer Ron Jones. Jurors felt otherwise and convicted Maye of capital murder in 2004.

Despite initially receiving the death penalty, Maye’s time was cut short early last month when a judge threw out the capital murder charges and allowed Maye to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.

There are a lot of themes in Maye’s story. It is a story about the drug war, about the death penalty, about race and class in the South. It’s a story about the inadequacies of the criminal justice system, and it’s a story about the conflict between a man’s right to defend his home and a creeping tendency of police departments in America to serve routine search warrants by breaking down doors.

Read more at The Huffington Post

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The Mississippi Department of Public Safety said it began its investigation Monday after allegations surfaced that Dr. Adel Shaker falsified information in the 1998 death of Julie Ward, a British tourist killed on a visit to Kenya. Shaker was a pathologist in Kenya at the time.

Shaker told The Associated Press on Monday that his boss in Kenya changed his report to make it look like Ward was killed by wild animals instead of being murdered. Shaker said top officials in Kenya were involved in the cover-up and he had not been able to do anything about it because of Kenya’s oppressive regime at the time.

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JACKSON, Miss. — A public school district in Mississippi and the federal government are divided over whether the schools are complying with a desegregation order that dates back to the civil rights era.

The Justice Department has asked a judge to order the Cleveland Public School District “to devise and implement a desegregation plan that will immediately dismantle its one-race schools,” but an attorney for the district said it has been following the latest order and sends the federal government updates on its integration attempts.

“Of our 10 schools, we have six that have a significant integrated population,” said attorney Jamie Jacks said. “The district was hopeful they (the Justice Department) would see not only that we are a truly integrated system within the Mississippi Delta, but we’re a good school district. Our kids do well and get a great education.”

Before the 1969 order, schools on the west side of the railroad tracks that run through Cleveland were by law segregated white schools. More than 40 years later, students and faculty at those schools are still disproportionately white, the Justice Department said.

Similarly, the department said, schools on the east side of the railroad tracks — originally black schools — have never been integrated. In most cases, the schools on the opposite sides of the tracks are less than three miles apart.

The district is located about 20 miles from the Arkansas border in Bolivar County, which has a black population of 65.6 percent.

Jacks said the district, which has a student population of 3,491 and is 68 percent black and 29 percent white, began a transfer program shortly after the 1969 desegregation order to move minority students to majority schools.

“Cleveland High School, which is the on the west side is 47 percent African-American; 50 percent white; 2 percent Hispanic and 1 percent Asian,” Jacks said. “Cleveland High used to be 100 percent white.”

Another school, Bell Academy, has an 80 percent black population, but it used to be 97 percent, she said.

Ellis Turnage, an attorney who represents parents of some of the students involved in the case, said the Cleveland High numbers illustrate the problem.

“As long as you stay with this old historical remedy that hasn’t worked, you’re going to end up with the same results,” he said. “You need to go to one high school, one junior high … that’s the way you achieve integration.”

According to the Justice Department, attempts to work with the school district were unsuccessful.

“It is intolerable for school districts to continue operating schools that retain their racial identity from the Jim Crow era,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the Justice Department. “If school districts are not willing to work collaboratively to eradicate the vestiges of de jure segregated schools, we will ask the courts to take the steps necessary to ensure that students of all racial backgrounds have the opportunity to attend diverse, inclusive schools.”

Enforcing court-ordered desegregation of school districts is one of the division’s top priorities.

For example, on March 23, federal court in Mississippi modified the 1969 desegregation order governing the operations of the school district in Leake County, Miss. After a comprehensive review, the department determined that the school district continued to operate four essentially single-race schools.

After taking account of a capacity study and the input of more than 800 students, parents and concerned citizens who attended a community meeting, the Justice Department and district jointly requested that two schools close. They also asked that students and faculty be reassigned, and for improvements to the quality of education and extracurricular activities at the remaining schools. A judge granted the requests.

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We asked voters on this poll whether they think interracial marriage should be legal or illegal- 46% of Mississippi Republicans said it should be illegal to just 40% who think it should be legal. For the most part there aren’t any huge divides in how voters view the candidates or who they support for the nomination based on their attitudes about interracial marriage but there are a few exceptions.

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Authorities said Wayne Allen Stoker Jr., 45, of Oxford, was also ordered Monday to pay $211,000 in restitution and will face three years of supervised release after he’s out of prison.

The U.S. attorney’s office for north Mississippi said that in pleading guilty, Stoker “admitted that the motivation for his crime was based on racial hatred.”

A news release from prosecutors Tuesday said Stoker was in “The Dam Bar” in Coffeeville when two black men entered and Stoker became “volatile” and had to be removed. Court documents said Stoker admitted returning later and setting the bar on fire.

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“The bureaucracy denied it, the legislature won’t pass it and if the legislature passes it, it won’t become law because I won’t sign it,” Barbour told the Associated Press in an interview – a change from when he had earlier declined to take a position against the measure.

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Representative Omeria Scott (District 80) and Poetry Out Loud winner, John Uzodinma of Madison

JACKSON, Miss. — Black lawmakers said funding public schools and infrastructure projects at Mississippi’s historically black universities are among their priorities as budget-writing moves into its final phases this session.

The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus discussed those projects and others during a public meeting Monday on the campus of Tougaloo College. They urged residents to lobby legislators to pass the proposals.

Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, said a proposal to implement an intervention initiative for failing school districts and add services for “at risk” families should also be considered.

Mississippi currently has six school districts under state control, and many of them have a majority-black student population.

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CALHOUN COUNTY, Miss. — At least three adults died when a Mississippi school bus full of high school students collided head-on with an 18-wheeler Tuesday afternoon in Calhoun County, NBC station WTVA reported.

At least 60 others were injured, officials said.

The big-rig driver was among the dead, Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman John Kalahar told The Associated Press. The two adults were on the bus, NBC News said.

Calhoun County Coroner Jerry Fleming told NBC News two buses were involved. The semitrailer appeared to have sideswiped one and hit the other head-on, he said.

The accident happened at a bridge along Highways 8 and 9, south of Calhoun City, officials told WTVA.

The school bus from Ackerman High School in Choctaw County was returning from a senior trip to the University of Mississippi in Oxford, said NBC station WCM.

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Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, says he is mulling a bid to be his party’s nominee in 2012 where he would likely face President Barack Obama vying for a second term in the White House.

The governor apologized last month for saying in a magazine interview that the civil rights era was not “that bad,” a comment that put the Republican politician on the defensive.

“I urge you to move this museum forward as an appropriate way to do justice to the Civil Rights Movement and to stand as a monument of remembrance and reconciliation,” Barbour said in the speech late on Tuesday.

“The civil rights struggle is an important part of our history, and millions of people are interested in learning more about it. People from around the world would flock to see the museum and learn about the movement,” he said.

Read more at Reuters.com

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The sisters were convicted in 1994 of leading two men into an ambush in central Mississippi the year before. Three teenagers hit each man in the head with a shotgun and took their wallets – making off with only $11, court records said.

Jamie and Gladys Scott were each convicted of two counts of armed robbery and sentenced to two life sentences.

“I think it’s a victory,” said the sisters’ attorney, Chokwe Lumumba. “I talked to Gladys and she’s elated about the news. I’m sure Jamie is, too.”

Civil rights advocates have for years called for their release, saying the sentences were excessive. Those demands gained traction when Barbour asked the Mississippi Parole Board to take another look at the case.

The Scott sisters are eligible for parole in 2014, but Barbour said prison officials no longer think they are a threat to society and Jamie’s medical condition is costing the state a lot of money.

Lumumba said he has no problem with the governor requiring Gladys to offer up her organ because “Gladys actually volunteered that as part of her petition.”

Lumumba said it’s not clear what caused the kidney failure, but it’s likely a combination of different illnesses over the years.

Barbour spokesman Dan Turner told The Associated Press that Jamie Scott was released because she needs the transplant. He said Gladys Scott will be released if she agrees to donate her kidney because of the significant risk and recovery time.

“She wanted to do it,” Turner said. “That wasn’t something we introduced.”

Barbour is a Republican in his second term who has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2012. He said the parole board agreed with the indefinite suspension of their sentences, which is different from a pardon or commutation because it comes with conditions.

An “indefinite suspension of sentence” can be reversed if the conditions are not followed, but those requirements are usually things like meeting with a parole officer.

The Scott sisters have received significant public support from advocacy groups, including the NAACP, which called for their release. Hundreds of people marched through downtown Jackson from the state capital to the governor’s mansion in September, chanting in unison that the women should be freed.

Still, their release won’t be immediate.

Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said late Wednesday that he had not received the order. He also said the women want to live with relatives in Florida, which requires approval from officials in that state.

In general, that process takes 45 days.

Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the Scott sisters’ release will be “a great victory for the state of Mississippi for two individuals who received an excessive sentence” and he has no problem with the kidney donation requirement because Gladys Scott volunteered.

“I think it’s encouraging that she’s willing to share a kidney so her sister can have a better quality life,” Johnson said.

National NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said the suspension of the sentences represents the good that can come with the power of governors.

“It’s again proof that when people get engaged, keep the faith, we can win,” Jealous said.

(This version deletes incorrect reference to Barbour granting a suspended sentence to student’s killer.)

For years, the auburn-haired white man has educated students about activists in their own state who led peaceful demonstrations, and the wrath of segregationists who channeled violence to repress social change.

A civil rights/human rights curriculum becomes mandatory in all public schools for the 2011-2012 school year, five years after Gov. Haley Barbour signed the requirement into law.

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Greenwood — USA Today is reporting on an incident called a suicide by authorities, that the NAACP thinks may actually be a lynching.

The county sheriff says that a 26-year-old black man, Frederick Jermaine Carter,  found hanged from an oak tree in Greenwood, Miss., apparently committed suicide, but the president of the local NAACP challenges that explanation and says the group will monitor developments in the case.

State Rep. Willie Perkins, a Democrat from Greenwood and president of the Leflore County branch of the NAACP, says that group also “will keep a high scrutiny and watch on any investigative report regarding what was the cause of death.”

“There are a lot of concerns there, No. 1 that this individual could not have (hanged) himself without the assistance of someone, if it’s being declared a suicide,” he says. “Why would someone from Sunflower County come to North Greenwood, the predominantly white housing area of Greenwood? Why would someone that far away come and hang themselves in North Greenwood by a river? That does not pass the smell test to me.”

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After Oxford attorney Danny Lampley spent about five hours in the county jail Wednesday, Chancery Judge Talmadge Littlejohn let him go free. Lampley, 49, was released so that he could represent another client, the judge said in a later order.

Lampley told The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal he respected the judge but wasn’t going to back down.

“I don’t have to say it because I’m an American,” Lampley told the newspaper. “I’m just not going to back off on this.”

Lampley was representing a client in a divorce case at the time of the contempt order, according to the judge’s calendar.

“Lampley shall purge himself of said criminal contempt by complying with the order of this Court by standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in open court,” according to the order, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

Neither Littlejohn, who is in his mid-70s, nor Lampley responded to telephone calls from the AP.

Bear Atwood, an ACLU attorney in Mississippi, said there was a long established precedent that a person can’t be compelled to stand and say the pledge.

“It’s simply not permissible to force someone to do that,” Atwood said.

Atwood said Lampley could file a complaint with Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance, but the best way to handle the situation was to “educate the judge on why he shouldn’t do it again.”

Littlejohn is in his second term as a chancery judge and presides over divorces and child custody disputes. Judges in Mississippi are elected, though they run in nonpartisan races.

Littlejohn is running unopposed for re-election in November.

Littlejohn is a former state lawmaker. He ran for a congressional seat as a Democrat in 1996, finishing second out of three candidates in the Democratic primary. He lost a runoff.

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