College students spending spring break by a body of water is nothing new. However, through an “alternative spring break” program, Illinois-based nonprofit Living Lands & Waters made such a trip an opportunity for students to learn about and clean up that body of water instead of simply sunbathe beside it. 

Throughout March, 140 volunteers from 14 universities joined the crew of Living Lands & Waters at McKellar Lake in Memphis to remove 131,419 pounds of trash. 

For Roslin Johns, an environmental science major at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, she returned to take part in the program for a second year after remembering a fun-filled and fulfilling time spent on the water. 

“They just make it such a fun experience,” Johns said. “At the end, I leave feeling good not just about myself, but what I did for the environment and I had fun doing it.” 

Living Lands & Waters is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1998 by Chad Pregracke. While living and working on the river around his home in East Moline, Illinois, Pregracke was disturbed by the immense amount of debris he saw dumped into the rivers. 

Expanding greatly from the once one-man mission, Living Lands & Waters now has a full-time staff with a fleet that includes four barges, two towboats, five workboats, two skid steers, an excavator, six work trucks and a crane. 

The history of the organization is visually present in every room of the barge where they work and live. In the classroom space, one wall is filled from top to bottom with toys found within the rivers during cleanups. On the ceiling, hundreds of lighters removed from their watery grave have been turned into a multicolored art piece and signs lost to the waves decorate the walls. 

Since its founding, Living Lands & Waters has removed more than 13 million pounds of trash from America’s rivers with the help of over 135,000 volunteers. 

The crew of Living Lands & Waters, who spend 6 to 9 months of the year living on one of the barges as they travel across 28 rivers in 25 states to host river cleanups, workshop classes and further conservation efforts, are no strangers to McKellar Lake. 

Since 2010, the crew and volunteers have removed more than 1.8 million pounds of trash from the lake. 

“There’s always a need,” Callie Schaser, programs manager and communications specialist with Living Lands and Waters, said about McKellar. “It’s a great place to bring a ton of students and get a lot done and then we fill up the barge in three weeks.” 

Due to the fast speeds of the Mississippi River, the crew can’t operate on the river itself for cleanup efforts. However, cleaning up McKellar Lake removes trash that inevitably will make its way into the Mississippi and possibly all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. 

ENDANGERED RIVERS IN US: Why Mississippi River is top of endangered rivers list. What West Tennesseans need to know

“McKellar Lake acts as this little net for us to catch everything and trap everything,” Schaser said. 

In removing trash from the lake, trash that made its way there from the streets of Memphis and Nonconnah Creek, Schaser said the students are reacting to an issue. While this is important, she and Living Lands & Waters hope that they return to their community knowing they can impact their community before trash ever makes it to a river. 

“This is reactive, but you guys can be proactive around your campus, around your hometown,” Schaser said. “Anything you see, if it’s near a storm drain and it’s on the ground that’s going in there and that’s going in the water.” 

FROM THE ARCHIVES: Historically low Mississippi River allows Memphis history to peek through

‘Mighty Mississippi is 2,300 miles of opportunity’

In bringing students to the river, Living Lands & Waters doesn’t want to only focus on conservation efforts. Through their Mississippi River Institute, they also hold workshops for students to learn all the occupational possibilities living near the Mississippi can offer. 

Separate from the barges they use in their trash-collecting efforts, Living Lands & Waters has built a second classroom barge, constructed from and decorated with recycled material, of course. This classroom barge is used to teach students how they can pursue one of the many careers the river can offer.

The program, which is traveling down the Mississippi River, offers workforce development programs and STEM-related jobs near riverfront cities, such as Memphis.

“We’re hoping to showcase the mighty Mississippi is 2,300 miles of opportunity,” said Rachel Loomis, the Mississippi River Institute manager. 

Soft launching in 2023, the institute had its first full year in 2024. In the spring and winter of 2025, the institute has been docked near the Mud Island Marina in Memphis to host workshops. After May 9, the institute will head to St. Paul, Minnesota, for its winter location. 

In a workshop on March 26, AP biology and health sciences students from White Station High School heard from employees of Wepfer Marine Inc., a tugboat company that operates out of Memphis and along the Mississippi, and from a commercial fisherman. The students were then able to tour one of the tugboats and ask questions of the captain and crew as they learned about what it’s like to live aboard the ship for weeks at a time. 

“Today is about a day of exploration,” Loomis said to the students during the workshop. “If you’re not able to know about these jobs, you’re not able to pursue them.” 

For the crew of Living Lands & Waters, there is an inseparable link between their tenets of protecting the river and working with and on it. 

“We have to respect the river before we learn how to make money on it,” Loomis said as one of the main lessons she hopes students take away from the workshop. 

Chris Day is a photojournalist at The Commercial Appeal. Contact him a cjday@gannett.com.

Mississippi State University may bring big energy to Starkville, MS, but it’s not just students calling the small town home these days. 

In recent years, Starkville has expanded beyond its college town atmosphere due to a lower cost of living, a bustling downtown, and nearby nature preserves for hiking and birdwatching.

The area has also been named the best small Southern town in the country by USA Today, which cited its Southern hospitality, rich history and charming streets.

It’s the second year in a row Starkville snagged the top spot, also in part due to its creative arts scene and amazing food.

‘It’s a college town with Mississippi State University here. It’s vibrant. The kids keep us busy over here, but there’s also a large retirement population coming in from both alumni and other parts of the state,’ local RE/MAX realtor Colin Krieger told the Daily Mail. 

‘It’s very welcoming. You feel safe. You walk the streets and it’s not as much of a throw down college atmosphere as you might think.’

The town has just over 25,000 residents and for history buffs, is home to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. 

Starkville has a relatively low cost of living, with homes available priced from $50,000 to $500,000. The average rental for a three bedroom house is $475 to $600 per month. There are more than 30 apartment complexes in town.

Starkville has a relatively low cost of living, with homes available and reasonably priced

Local realtor Colin Krieger

‘We’ve seen a lot of condominium development,’ Krieger said.

‘The town’s construction has been a ton of apartments made to make more room for the college kids. But the real estate market has continued going at full force now for 13-plus years, and has just continued going up every year.’

The current median home price is close to $300,000, he said.

‘You can find a nice clean house in a good neighborhood under $250,000. Then we have a large group of houses around $300,000 to $350,000 and another crop around $500,000.’

Residents are also drawn to the rich job market due to the university (the largest in the state with 22,000 students) and its surrounding businesses, including shops and bars. 

‘University Avenue is a large stretch, which starts with a cotton district and ends up in a more adult section of downtown that has its own restaurants so you’re able to separate from the college kids a little more,’ Krieger added.  

Growth in healthcare and technology companies has also spurred more jobs in the area. 

The town is also known for its friendly vibes and top notch schools. Many of them work in tandem with the university to use its facilities and have professors visit the kids.

Mississippi State University brings a lot of jobs and businesses to the area

Outdoorsy types love visiting the Starkville Wildlife Refuge to birdwatch

The town is also known for its friendly vibes and top notch schools that work with the college

The town also draws retirees due to its low living costs and nice community feel

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The Starkville Community Theater and Starkville-MSU Symphony Orchestra are both in town

‘They built a partnership with the middle school a few years back that’s actually integrated with Mississippi State University, so that the kids have access to some of the professors there. 

‘And they have a plan to approve a high school to do the same thing that should come up later this year,’ Krieger said. 

The town also draws retirees due to its relaxed atmosphere, low living costs, and access to state-of-the-art healthcare at nearby Oktibbeha County Hospital. 

Outdoorsy types love visiting the Starkville Wildlife Refuge and there is plenty of hunting, fishing and bird watching nearby.

Most locals participate in MSU’s college game days, including tailgates and bar parties. 

For arts lovers, the Starkville Community Theater and Starkville-MSU Symphony Orchestra are both in town.

Krieger says the only time it’s a madhouse is when MSU has a football home game. Yet, it’s still fun for the college kids and the locals to mix.

‘Of course there are times on SEC football weekends where it’s a madhouse and there’s traffic everywhere, but that’s one of the unique features I like about it for such a small town of the South.’

The college draws students and creates jobs but hasn’t caused a problem for locals

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In addition to downtown there is plenty of nature surrounding the area

The median house cost in the area is $300,000 for a new build in a development

MSU game day draws students and locals, many whom are alumni who have returned to live 

HGTV’s Home Town stars Ben and Erin Napier explained it is possible for people to ‘have it all’ while living in a small town

Alongside Starkville, USA Today also picked out various other small towns. 

This included Lewisburg, West Virginia, Inverness, Florida, West Monroe, Louisiana, Safety Harbor, Florida, Clemson, South Carolina, Thomasville, Georgia, Cocoa Beach, Florida, Williamsburg, Virginia, and Orange Beach, Alabama.

Small towns, especially ones located in Mississippi, also get the thumbs up from two very popular HGTV stars. 

Home Town stars Ben and Erin Napier explained it is possible for people to ‘have it all’ while living in a small town ahead of the premiere of a new season of the show.

The couple restores properties around their small hometown of Laurel, Mississippi on their successful show, which debuted in 2016.

The couple hopes the series it will convince viewers small towns can offer just as much as big cities.

The last season showed them working on projects nearby in Mississippi, including building gardens and greenhouses. 

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has declared April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, keeping alive a 32-year-old tradition that began in 1993.

A member of the Rankin Greys, a Sons of Confederate Veterans camp based in Florence, Mississippi, announced the proclamation in a post in the organization’s Facebook group on April 18.

The SCV annually asks governors to issue the Confederate Heritage Month proclamations.

“Whereas, as we honor all who lost their lives in this war, it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us,” says the governor’s proclamation, which is dated April 17.

“Now, therefore, I, Tate Reeves, Governor of the State of Mississippi, hereby proclaim the month of April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month in the State of Mississippi.”

The SCV is a neo-Confederate organization that espouses “Lost Cause” ideology, which promotes a revisionist version of history that whitewashes the Confederacy’s racist past and downplays the role of slavery in the Civil War. SCV owns and operates Beauvoir, the museum and historic home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis; the organization annually receives $100,000 from the State of Mississippi for development and maintenance.

Starting in 2016, Donna Ladd, then the editor of the Jackson Free Press and now the executive editor of the Mississippi Free Press, first reported on then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant’s Confederate Heritage Month proclamations. The Mississippi Free Press has reported on each of Reeves’ annual proclamations, including in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Each year, the Confederate Heritage Month proclamations appear on SCV Facebook pages, but neither the governor nor any other state official publicizes the proclamations or posts them on any public-facing state websites or social-media pages.

Reeves defended issuing the proclamations in 2021.

“For the last 30 years, five Mississippi governors—Republicans and Democrats alike—have signed a proclamation recognizing the statutory state holiday and identifying April as Confederate Heritage Month,” the governor’s office said in a statement to WAPT at the time. “Gov. Reeves also signed the proclamation because he believes we can all learn from our history.”

The governor’s annual proclamation routinely notes that state law designates the last Monday in April as Confederate Memorial Day. However, state law does not require governors to issue Confederate Heritage Month proclamations.

‘Thoroughly Identified With the Institution of Slavery’

After Kirk Fordice became Mississippi’s first Republican governor in a century while courting the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and criticizing efforts to atone for the state’s racist past, he issued the inaugural Confederate Heritage Month proclamation at the request of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1993.

Since then, one Democratic governor and three Republican governors have followed Fordice’s lead.

Despite issuing Confederate Heritage Month proclamations annually for his first seven years in office between 2011 and 2018, former Gov. Bryant did not issue one in 2019, his last year in office; he opted instead for a “Month of Unity” proclamation on behalf of a Christian religious organization.

The language in Reeves’ Confederate Heritage Month proclamations uses much of the same language as the one that former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who served from 2000 to 2004, issued in April 2000.

In 2023, Musgrove told the Mississippi Free Press that Confederate Heritage Month is “something that should not continue in today’s world.”

“I cannot say why the practice started, but it was one that should never have been started,” the former governor said. “It was one that I should not have signed, and it should have ended a long time ago.”

Former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour also signed Confederate Heritage Month proclamations every year between 2004 and 2016.

Though Confederate Heritage groups like SCV promote a whitewashed version of the South’s role in the Civil War that has often made its way into textbooks in the state and throughout the country, the historical record makes clear that slavery was the primary cause of the Union’s split and the subsequent Civil War.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi’s 1861 Declaration of Secession said. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”

Reeves’ ties to the SCV stretch back long before his time as governor. In 2013, he spoke to the SCV’s national gathering in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in front of a massive Confederate battle flag and in a room decorated with smaller Confederate flags and cotton plants. After then-Lt. Gov. Reeves congratulated the organization for “keeping history for our youth,” speakers defended the Confederate “cause” and compared “Yankees” to German “Nazis” in World War II.

Long before entering politics, Reeves was part of a Millsaps College fraternity known for Confederate-themed parties where members wore blackface and for lionizing Confederate General Robert E. Lee. When it became an issue in his 2019 campaign for governor, though, he said he never participated in blackface during his time in the fraternity.

Reeves’ Democratic opponent at the time, then-Attorney General Jim Hood, was also in a fraternity at the University of Mississippi, where members wore blackface; he similarly denied ever participating.

Reeves Denied Existence of ‘Systemic Racism’

In the decades after the Civil War ended, Confederate veterans, such as Mississippi State University inaugural President Stephen D. Lee, and groups like SCV began the work of remaking history in a way that shone a more favorable light on the South—muddying the waters over the cause of the war and falsely describing it as a “war of northern aggression.”

After the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction, Mississippi’s white leaders worked to enshrine white supremacy in state law, adopting a Jim Crow state constitution in 1890 (including a racist felony voter-disenfranchisement provision that remains in state law and continues to disproportionately disenfranchise Black voters). White supremacist leaders in Mississippi renewed efforts to enshrine Confederate heritage in the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement.

Mississippi’s Confederate-themed 1894 state flag flew over state buildings until 2020, when state lawmakers voted to retire and replace it following decades of efforts by Black Mississippians and in the wake of young Black Mississippians leading protests after the murder of George Floyd. Despite his campaign pledge not to use his power to change the flag, Gov. Reeves signed the bill retiring the old flag, calling it “a law to turn a page in Mississippi today.”

“It is fashionable in some quarters to say our ancestors were all evil. I reject that notion. I also reject the elitist worldview that these United States are anything but the greatest nation in the history of mankind. I reject the mobs tearing down statues of our history—north and south, Union and Confederate, founding fathers and veterans,” the governor said in 2020, criticizing Black Lives Matter protesters from across the country even as he signed the bill. “I reject the chaos and lawlessness, and I am proud it has not happened in our state.”

Even though his state had only just removed the emblem of the Confederacy from atop the Capitol building, Reeves continued to deny the lasting effects of the state’s white supremacist history. In 2021, he told Fox News that “there is not systemic racism in America”—contradicting mountains of evidence, including the vestiges of Jim Crow that remain in force in Mississippi law like the state’s 1890 voter disenfranchisement law.

Then, in 2022, Reeves signed a so-called “critical race theory ban” into law, which is a misnomer because, despite its legislative title, the law neither mentions nor describes critical race theory. As he signed the bill, the governor claimed that “critical race theory is running amok,” despite the fact that the lawmakers who drafted it admitted that they did not know of any public K-12 schools where the academic theory is taught.

The Mississippi governor also painted critical race theory, which addresses systemic racial inequalities in the legal system and throughout society, as a tool of indoctrination that is used to “humiliate” white people.

“Children are dragged to the front of the classroom and are coerced to declare themselves as oppressors, that they should feel guilty because of their race, or that they are inherently a victim because of their race,” he said at the time.

Reeves is expected to sign a bill into law by a Thursday, April 24, 2025, deadline that will ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities—curtailing efforts to ensure more hospitable learning environments for everyone regardless of characteristics like race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.

The governor has praised President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies.

“Small homegrown businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. And small business owners all across America are relieved that we have a new administration that is more focused on economic growth than DEI and pronouns,” he wrote in a Facebook post in January.

Mississippi will observe Confederate Memorial Day on April 28, with state and local offices closing to commemorate the men who died fighting in rebellion against the United States in order to preserve the institution of human slavery.

The Mississippi Free Press has reached out to Reeves’ office for comment on this story.

For more on the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “redemption” schemes, and the censorship campaign to romanticize and sanitize the Confederacy in southern and U.S. textbooks, read this in-depth piece about first Mississippi State University President Stephen D. Lee’s successful efforts to rewrite the Confederate narrative.

Disclosure: Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove has donated to the Mississippi Free Press. This does not affect our coverage.

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