Mississippi
A Mystery Solved And A Life Recreated At Mississippi Museum Of Art
Noah Saterstrom (American, b. 1974), ‘What Became of Dr. Smith,’ 2023, installation view at … [+]
It ate at Noah Saterstrom. How his old, well-to-do Natchez, Mississippi family, obsessed with its lineage as it was, could have such a conspicuous hole. His great grandfather: Dr. David Lawson Lemmon Smith (1891–1965).
The mention of him stopped Saterstrom’s grandmother Margaret, Dr. Smith’s daughter, dead in her tracks. He was an optimist was all she’d say. A photo of the man spent decades on her desk, but details never escaped her lips.
What was she hiding?
Why?
Even as a boy, Saterstrom (b. 1974), who grew up in Natchez as much as anywhere, could sense there was something “off” about this. A feeling that ripened with age. His curiosity ripened along with it.
In 2017, Saterstrom embarked on a years-long search of state, local, and private archives for information about Dr. D.L. Smith. He’d find a great deal, including why Dr. Smith had been expunged from the family record. That year, while in Jackson, Saterstrom found himself at the Mississippi Department of Archives.
In a leather-bound ledger that hadn’t been opened in who knows how long, Saterstrom found the name he was looking for: “Dr. David Lemmon Smith, Claiborne County.”
The book recorded admissions to the Mississippi Insane Hospital in Jackson, as it was then called.
Cue the dramatic music.
Aided by the state’s librarian, Saterstrom pieced together a remarkably detailed account of his great grandfather’s life prior to institutionalization in 1924. Newspaper clippings. Personal correspondence. Court records.
Revealed is a husband, a father of four, an itinerant optometrist around Mississippi and Louisiana. A man who most definitely lost touch with reality as he progressed into his 30s. Dr. Smith’s letters increasingly displayed classic paranoid personality disorder and schizophrenia. Then there was the accusation of rape by a 15-year-old girl and his near lynching as a result. His languishing in jail. His escape, making it all the way to Washington, D.C. where he received a meeting with President Calvin Coolidge before being apprehended and sent back to Mississippi.
Dr. Smith’s mother, Minnie, pleading with the court for her son to be deemed mentally unfit, which he was, negating the need for a trial and necessitating his admission to the State Hospital for the Insane. He didn’t go willing, but later in life, would pass on opportunities for discharge.
Dr. Smith spent the last 41 years of his life at the state hospital in Jackson and its successor, Whitfield. No one from the family claimed the body when he passed despite being notified, as was customary for wards of the state. Saterstrom isn’t sure where his great grandfather is buried.
This life erased and Saterstrom’s attempts to come to grips with it unfold in epic fashion during “What Became of Dr. Smith” through September 22, 2024, an exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson centering Saterstrom’s 6-foot-tall, 122-feet-long, 732-square-foot painting of his ancestor’s life composed of 138 2-feet-square canvas panels. Monet’s Orangerie Water Lilies meets Huck Finn. What Became of Dr. Smith envelopes onlookers in characters and vignettes, eerie and mysterious.
A Family History
Noah Saterstrom (American, b. 1974), ‘What Became of Dr. Smith,’ 2023, installation view at … [+]
Saterstrom’s connection to mental illness, sadly, runs deeper than his great grandfather’s writings. He fought it himself. A terrible bout of dissociation in his mid-20s.
According to the Mayo Clinic: “Dissociative disorders are mental health conditions that involve experiencing a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behavior and identity. These conditions include escape from reality in ways that are not wanted and not healthy. This causes problems in managing everyday life.”
The artist pulled himself out over a course of years through therapy and by making art. He doggedly painted hundreds of family photographs carefully assembled chronologically in albums. Doing so returned his memories to him. A tether to reality.
He’d stare at the pictures for hours and then paint them for hours more. A kind of therapy. A kind of meditation. His mind came back.
Art saves lives.
Oh, by the way, Dr. Smith’s father, Noah Saterstrom’s great-great-grandfather, was institutionalized at the Louisiana State Asylum in 1898.
Like many medical conditions, family history is a leading indicator for mental illness. Resources to learn more and for help are available online.
Noah Saterstrom (American, b. 1974), ‘What Became of Dr. Smith,’ 2023, installation view at … [+]
Asylum Hill Cemetery
As with any great Southern epic, right when you think the story has reached its apex, you realize it’s only begun. So it goes with Dr. Smith and the State Hospital for the Insane which operated from 1855-1935.
A 2012 discovery by a construction worker at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson unearthed unexpected burials. On what was the last remaining undeveloped area of campus, the State Hospital for the Insane cemetery had been found.
In response, Ralph Didlake, UMMC professor of surgery, vice chancellor for academic affairs and director of the Center for Bioethics and the Medical Humanities, convened the Asylum Hill Research Consortium, a group of scholars and advisors tasked with crafting a long-term solution to the cemetery challenge: assembling an archaeological crew to excavate the area.
“(UMMC) is a very important institution for the health of Mississippians, so they need the land,” Jennifer Mack, lead bioarchaeologist for the Asylum Hill Project at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told Forbes.com. “There were a lot of conversations with the administration and bioethicists and anthropologists, heavy discussions about weighing the needs of the living and respect for the deceased, and it was finally determined that as long as (excavation) was done respectfully, and in consultation with known direct descendants, it would make sense to remove people from the cemetery.”
The Asylum Hill Project is undertaking the work of exhuming the bodies and researching who these people were. Asylum for the institution that once stood there, hill for the prominence it occupies.
In late 2022, exhumations of individuals began and will likely continue through the end of the decade. As of July 19, 2024, 486 bodies had been removed. Remote sensing indicates there’s somewhere between 4,000 and 7,000 graves within the 12-acre cemetery.
At one point, all the graves were clearly marked with wooden markers that deteriorated over time. Some families funded stone monuments for their relatives buried there.
“Each of these wooden markers was painted with the name of the deceased, the date of death, and then the county the person came from,” Mack explained. “Letters to the family (were written) saying the grave is carefully marked and if you ever want to come lay flowers on the grave, we can show you.”
Excavations thus far have revealed graves laid out in neat, orderly rows. All deceased were buried clothed in at least a pine box. No mass graves have been found.
Children were found, a fact Saterstrom didn’t realize prior to the completion of his painting. Upon learning this, he added one to a panel depicting the Asylum Hill cemetery. Look for her when inspecting the artwork. She’s about eight-and-a-half, nine years old.
How does a cemetery containing thousands of graves become forgotten? It was never forgotten, per se, but its scale was. When the Asylum Hill facility closed in 1935, Mississippi and the country were in the depths of the Depression. Then came World War II. People move on. They get old. Memories fade.
Vegetation grows fast in this part of the world; without regular upkeep, the gravesite would have been covered over entirely in a year. Nothing happened on the site for decades until all the old state hospital buildings were eventually demolished and UMMC opened in 1955. The cemetery site was unused for nearly 80 years.
Who’s Buried On Asylum Hill?
The state of Mississippi began keeping official death records in November of 1912. From that time until Asylum Hill’s closing, presumably, everyone who died there will have a death certificate filed with the state giving the place of burial. Researchers have created a database of around 4,300 individuals who were buried in the cemetery during that period; for the 57 years the cemetery was in use prior to the official death records, accounts are spotty.
Extant patient records, admission records, discharge books, newspaper accounts, court records, census records, and family histories are being used to help identify individuals. Anything predating the Civil War was destroyed in the war.
“One goal of the bioarcheological part of the project that really aligns with what Noah was doing in his painting is trying to humanize the experience, help people who haven’t thought of it to see that these are individuals, and individuals are suffering with mental illness today,” Mack said. “They had whole lives before they were institutionalized, and within the institution. As with people who are at Whitfield today, they have lives in an institution, they form friendships and relationships, have activities; your life doesn’t end just because you’re ‘locked up.’ It wasn’t just a nameless, faceless mass of people in the asylum. Descendants want us to be able to identify their ancestors. They’re hoping that through bioarcheological analysis and DNA, we’re going to be able to say, ‘Okay, this set of human remains is your great-great-grandmother.’”
Contradicting Stereotypes
Approximately 30,000 people were treated at the Mississippi Insane Hospital in Jackson over its 80-year existence. Many of those people were admitted multiple times making an accurate number of patients hard to come by. The site also housed a nursing home and drug treatment center
The care shown with burials indicates the facility was not the nightmare factory of “insane asylums” from horror movies and ghost stories.
“The popular media makes everyone think, ‘Oh, it’s a dungeon and people are forced in this.’ It’s important to remember that it was a hard decision for families to send a loved one here, not just because–even at the time–people probably viewed it as not a great place to end up, but just because it’s hard to let go of your loved one,” Mack said. “We have stories from one family in particular who would say every time we went to see her, she was further and further away. As much as families would want to bring their loved one home, people with severe mental illness just couldn’t reach a point where they could be discharged. It’s never easy to send someone you love away, but if you can’t care for that person at home (what choice do you have)?”
The state hospital was staffed by medical professionals, doctors and nurses. Remember, too, when it opened, Mississippi was a wealthy state thanks to “King Cotton.” The facility was actually a source of pride.
“This was a great philanthropic venture and it was intended to improve the lives of Mississippians,” Mack continued. “Part of the impetus was that there were people rotting away in jails, under no charge, just because there was no other place to put them and (citizens) thought that was wrong.”
Dr. Smith was jailed with mental illness, residing between the courts and medical care. In a tragic echo of the past, incarceration is increasingly being used across America as a “solution” for a rampant mental illness problem.
“People look at the old asylum and think, ‘Oh, they probably did terrible things there,’ but I would caution them to think about how well are we doing today with the same issues,” Mack said.
Mississippi
Mississippi homeowners blame a noisy data center plant for sleepless nights. The mayor’s advice? “Consider selling.”
It was 4 a.m. on a Sunday and 46-year-old Jason Haley was once again wide awake.
The suburban silence that Haley had grown used to in his two decades as a resident of Southaven, Mississippi, had, for the last few months, been replaced by a constant whirring, like an airplane hovering over his home, he said.
The noise keeping Haley awake was coming from a plant powering Elon Musk’s xAI data centers in the area, according to a lawsuit filed in June against the company and its subsidiary, MZX Tech. Haley and two other Southaven residents, who live within a mile of the plant, allege in the suit that “near-constant” noise and vibrations are causing negative physical and psychological health effects.
The filing comes amid growing resistance toward data center development, with the majority of Americans opposing local construction of a data center, according to a Gallup poll published earlier this year.
Similar disputes are playing out across the country, like in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where a lawsuit this month filed by residents alleges a data center emits “unreasonable and excessive noise” onto residents’ properties and in Lowell, Massachusetts, where noise from a data center’s cooling center “disrupts neighbors’ sleep,” according to an April suit.
There are more than 4,000 data centers in the U.S., according to a recent United Nations report. To power the data centers, developers are building their own plants, sometimes with little warning to residents like Haley.
Haley reached out to Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite about the noise in emails he shared with CBS News. In one last November, he urged Musselwhite to drive through the neighborhood “and take a listen to the constant high pitch noises.”
“I am aware of the noise and working on a solution with xAI officials,” Musselwhite had responded to Haley an hour later. “It is a problem,” he said in another email later in the day.
But soon, another sleepless night rolled around and Haley was emailing the mayor again.
“Anyone else I can reach out to?” Haley wrote to Musselwhite. “It’s almost 4 am and I can hear it from my bed. The high pitch and roaring combined is full force at this time. My ears are ringing. I can’t live in this. How was this ever approved?”
“I don’t care that this is Elon’s project”
Just north of Southaven, which sits on the Mississippi-Tennessee border, xAI’s data center Colossus went online in Memphis in September 2024. The company dubbed it “the world’s largest AI supercomputer.”
By late July 2025, Musk was announcing that another data center, Colossus 2, was set to begin operation in the area within weeks.
Days later, an announcement popped into the Facebook feeds of Southaven residents: An energy facility that had been dormant for decades will be revived to support xAI’s expanding data center operations in the area, Musselwhite said.
The post was met by a flood of comments, with some lauding the development and others expressing concern about the plant’s impact on the environment and strain on local resources.
Meanwhile, Haley started hearing sounds.
“My first thought was somebody’s got a leaf blower going all the time,” he said.
By December, the noise had become a fixture. He started getting headaches, stopped getting sleep and slipped into feelings of hopelessness and depression. The noise was inescapable, he said, and despite his best efforts to drown it out (sleeping with earplugs, getting a box fan for white noise), it continued to drone on.
So Haley began speaking up — at city government meetings, on Facebook and through TikTok, where he posts videos of himself measuring the noise with a sound meter. He later became involved in a grassroots coalition called Safe and Sound, drawing awareness to concerns surrounding xAI’s undertakings in the region.
The “activist” label is one he’s reluctantly accepted.
“I’ve never been into any kind of activism, never really kept up with politics a whole lot,” he said. “I’m just a guy that has a problem with this noise, and started speaking out and trying to raise awareness.”
When he emailed Musselwhite about the noise again in December, his message came with a disclosure: “I am not a republican or democrat, I don’t care that this is Elon’s project. I didn’t know whose it was when I started complaining about the noise that started in August.”
Musselwhite responded a few days later.
“As I mentioned to you in the public meeting, you seem to be a reasonable person,” he said. “I will give you some unsolicited advice from an older man, be careful with whom you associate so you don’t damage your credibility.”
By January, xAI was expanding its footprint with a third data center in Southaven, MACROHARDDR. As residents like Haley continued pushing back online and in city meetings, Musselwhite had a new message.
Southaven, he said in a Facebook post, was “under attack by all who choose to oppose Elon Musk because of his high-profile political stances.” He warned residents to “beware of the smokescreen of radical politics.”
In his emails to Haley, Musselwhite continued to acknowledge the noise as a problem.
“The noise issue is one of my highest priorities and I have been in detailed discussions with xAI and many independent professionals to resolve this,” he wrote in March.
But in the same email, he offered Haley more advice: “I know they want houses for employees, so you may want to consider selling your home.”
CBS News made multiple attempts to speak with Musselwhite and did not receive a reply.
Migraines, ringing ears and sleepless nights
Moving isn’t Haley’s preference, but he said he is in the financial position to do so if he chooses.
That’s not the case for everyone.
A little over a decade ago, 31-year-old Taylor Logsdon bought a home for her growing family in Southaven and began building her life around it.
“We loved it here,” she said. “It was peaceful, it was quiet, didn’t have to worry about nothing.”
But that was before the noise, so loud, she said, that it sometimes shakes her home. Logsdon, who is also involved in the Safe and Sound coalition and is suing xAI with Haley and one other Southaven resident, said she has experienced migraines and anxiety as a result of the noise.
She said she has persistent ringing in her ears and so do her children. A full night of sleep has become rare for the family.
“I would move tomorrow if I could,” she said, adding that she needs to save money before she can afford to move.
Her children, all under the age of 13, are having trouble staying awake at school.
“One of them is extra angry all the time — never, never has been that way, but he’s just irritable like all the time,” she said. “I feel like I’m snappier too.”
xAI spent millions of dollars trying to mitigate the sound with a sound wall, a berm and evergreen trees, Musselwhite said in a February Facebook post.
“It still hasn’t helped. It hasn’t even put a dent in it,” Logsdon said.
People living in areas where there is “constant humming or buzzing” report headaches, stress and sleep disturbance, said Dr. Samoon Ahmad, a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University.
A 2023 study found that environmental noise exposure can lead to adverse associations for cardiovascular disease and mortality, diabetes, hearing impairment, neurological disorders and adverse reproductive outcomes.
“People think of annoyance as an abstract term,” Ahmad said. “It’s not an abstract term because it has real physiological ramifications.”
The World Health Organization recommends less than 40 decibels of annual average nighttime noise outside of bedrooms to prevent adverse health effects. Haley has recorded noise levels over 60 decibels as late as 10:15 p.m. from his Southaven backyard.
Musk’s Memphis
Even before Logsdon and Haley decided to take action against xAI, Musk’s growing presence in the Memphis area garnered attention from advocacy groups over health and environmental concerns.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed a lawsuit in April against xAI claiming the Southaven plant emits “significant” amounts of harmful pollutants from its 27 gas turbines, which has since increased to 59, according to a court filing reviewed by CBS News. The NAACP has also filed an appeal to challenge the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s decision to issue an air permit allowing the Southaven plant to operate 41 permanent methane gas turbines. An independent study found their operation would increase air pollution in an area already grappling with a disproportionate number of asthma-related emergency room visits.
CBS News has reached out to xAI for comment.
Musk’s investment in the latest Southaven data center brings his company’s contribution to the area to $20 billion, according to the office of Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves. The governor called it “the largest economic development project in Mississippi’s history.”
Musk’s financial footprint has also extended beyond the data centers — MZX Tech donated over $1.3 million to the Southaven Police Department in February, according to the donation agreement obtained by CBS News, and has offered half-priced Starlink for those in the Memphis region.
But Logsdon says the cost to her and her family’s health has her wondering why it feels like her city is willing to “hurt the few to get the benefits.”
“We were not a failure town before,” Logsdon said. “It’s not like our economics were terrible here.”
Southaven had a median household income of over $70,000 in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — $20,000 more than the state average.
Logsdon, currently a stay-at-home mom, will be searching for work this fall so she and her husband can start saving up to move away from the plant. For now, her goal is a full night’s sleep.
“I hope that my family can go back to having our normal,” she said. “Being able to sleep at night, being able to enjoy my backyard, being able to go swimming.”
GPS data from the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, obtained by CBS News, tracks the movements of the boat that carried Nolan Wells to Horn Island on July 4. Wells was found dead after going missing following an outing on the island.
The vessel left a dock at approximately 9:56 a.m. that morning and arrived at Horn Island at 11:14 a.m. CBS News has previously reported that Wells was not on the boat when it departed the island.
According to the GPS data, the boat left Horn Island at 4:31 p.m. and returned to its original departure dock. It then traveled into Fort Bayou around 5:52 p.m. before returning to the dock at 6:06 p.m.
Later that evening, the boat went to the Fort Bayou boat launch at 7:19 p.m., according to the MSDMR report. From there, it traveled over land — presumably towed by a vehicle — to the Biloxi, Mississippi, residence of the boat’s owners.
The MSDMR report indicates that the boat’s owner, his mother and one other individual who was reportedly with Wells on the day of the incident have cooperated with the investigation.
The department’s report ends on July 5, following notification that the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office would take over as the lead investigative agency.
Wells, 18, was last seen on July 4 on Horn Island, where he had taken a boat trip with friends to celebrate the holiday, officials said. Wells traveled to the island with his friends but did not return to the mainland with them that afternoon, Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter has said.
He was last seen on the island at 3 p.m., according to attorney Ben Crump’s office. His mother reported him missing later that night and a search began.
His body was discovered July 6 off the coast of the island, which is about 10 miles south of the Mississippi mainland, following a search that involved the U.S. Coast Guard, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and the National Park Service.
Dental records confirmed the body was Wells, Jackson County coroner Bruce Lynd told CBS News. An autopsy took place on July 7, Lynd said, but the results were not immediately made public. Wells’ body was flown to Washington, D.C., for an independent autopsy, according to Crump.
Wells’ parents have said they don’t believe their son would’ve stayed behind on the island by choice when his friends left by boat.
“No, he wouldn’t. Nolan always stays with the group,” Elmore Wonsley, Nolan’s father, told “CBS Mornings” last week. “If you be with me, you come back with me. So that I don’t understand, and with me being a parent, if I was in that situation, I would have told them, ‘You’re going to get back on this boat with me because I don’t want to answer to your parents if something happens to you.’”
When directly asked if he believed Nolan was left behind on the island, his father responded, “Yes. I don’t believe he decided to stay on the island by himself. It just doesn’t — that’s not his character.”
Wells went to Ocean Springs High School and was a rising sophomore on Southwest Mississippi Community College’s football team. Crump said Wells was a good swimmer.
Permanent daylight saving time in New Jersey
House approves permanent DST: NJ gets later sunsets year-round but darker winter mornings; sunrise could be ~8:25 a.m.
Are Americans finally done changing the clocks twice a year? Congress moved a step closer to ending the ritual after the U.S. House passed legislation that would make daylight saving time permanent.
It hasn’t been approved by the Senate yet, but it did pass the House with broad support (308-117). If it passes the Senate, it could be signed by President Donald Trump or become law without his signature, unless he vetoes it.
Trump has previously backed ending twice-a-year time changes.
“I am going to work very hard to see The Sunshine Protection Act signed into Law. It’s time that people can stop worrying about the ‘Clock,’” he wrote in a May Truth Social post.
A few versions of the Sunshine Protection Act were introduced in Congress. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Florida, introduced the one that’s gaining ground last year.
Here’s what to know about daylight saving time and the move to change it.
What is daylight saving time and why do we use it?
Daylight saving time is the practice of setting clocks forward an hour from March until November in an effort to gain more sunlight during the summer months.
According to the Library of Congress, it was first enacted in 1918 as a fuel cost-saving measure during World War I.
Daylight saving time became federal law under the Uniform Time Act of 1966. Under the law, some states can opt to exempt themselves from daylight saving time.
Would Mississippi keep daylight saving time year-round?
In 2021, the Mississippi Legislature passed a law saying the state plans to stick with daylight saving time year-round. But that only takes effect if Congress changes the federal law to let states adopt it all the time. A bill updating the effective date died in committee in the 2026 session.
Nineteen states, including Mississippi, are ready to make daylight saving time permanent if Congress changes the law to make the twice-a-year time shift optional, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
How later sunrises would affect Mississippi
Sunrise and sunset times in summer would look the same.
But the period from November to March would be different. The amount of daylight would be the same, just shifted an hour later than usual.
Mississippi could expect the latest winter sunrises around 7:59 a.m. in mid-January. The earliest sunsets would shift from about 4:46 p.m. in early December to 5:46 p.m., according to timeanddate.com.
Why permanent daylight saving time failed before
Yes. Congress did drop Daylight Saving Time before.
The move failed in 1974 after parents worried about kids going to school before dawn, risking more vehicle crashes.
Some parts of the country, like Michigan or Indiana, don’t see sunrise until after 9 a.m. with the permanent daylight saving time.
When clocks fall back in 2026
Clocks will “fall back” from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, unless Congress changes the law.
Daylight saving time ends on the first Sunday in November each year, under current law. That’s when we get back that missing hour of sleep from the spring time change.
Does Mississippi change clocks twice a year?
Yes. Mississippi, which is in the Central time zone, observes daylight saving time.
What time is it in Mississippi?
Visit timeanddate.com to see the current time in Jackson.
Which states don’t observe daylight saving time?
Most of the U.S. participates in daylight saving time except for Hawaii and most of Arizona. The Navajo Nation in the northeast corner of the state does participate.
Bonnie Bolden is the Deep South Connect reporter for Mississippi with USA TODAY Network. Email her at bbolden@usatodayco.com.
Melina Khan is a national trending reporter for USA TODAY. Keep up with her on X @melinakh and Instagram @bymelinakhan.
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