About
“We’re all Mississippi now.” Those were the words that kept running through my mind after November 8, 2016, once it became apparent that a man who built a campaign on the kind of ignorance, bigotry, malice and cruelty so often associated with Mississippi would become president of the United States.
But in reality, Mississippi has always been America, and America has always been Mississippi. A quote widely attributed to Faulkner says, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” I don’t know if that’s true for the whole world, but I do know to understand the United States, you must understand Mississippi.
This state’s long history of racist, bigoted and other backwards excesses have made us a popular scapegoat for the nation’s sins. The truth is, we’re simply a mirror for the nation—reflecting clearly its sins along with its struggles and hopes.
The future of Mississippi is, after all, the future of America. As a Mississippian, I believe our perspectives and our insights are relevant to the nation as a whole, and a Mississippi perspective on national issues is what I’m offering with this newsletter.
And you don’t have to take my word for it: In the dissent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Mississippi case that overturned Roe v. Wade, three U.S. Supreme Court justices cited an interview I’d conducted two years earlier with Mississippi State Senator Joey Fillingane. In my May 2019 Jackson Free Press story, “The Fight For Roe Rages in Mississippi,” Fillingane told me that he and other Mississippi lawmakers’ goal in passing recent abortion bans was to “start testing the limits of Roe” in hopes that Donald Trump’s appointees had shifted the court enough to overturn it.
Three years and one month after that interview, the Supreme Court overturned the 49-year-old precedent in its Dobbs ruling, ending federal protections for abortion access nationwide.
“A state senator who championed both Mississippi laws said the obvious out loud. ‘[A] lot of people thought,’ he explained, that ‘finally, we have” a conservative Court “and so now would be a good time to start testing the limits of Roe,’” the dissenting justices wrote, citing my interview with Fillingane.
Whether the topic is health care, reproductive justice, LGBTQ rights, Christian nationalism, systemic racism, voting rights, or a host of other issues, Mississippi’s and America’s destinies are undeniably intertwined.
This is a newsletter for the nation from a Mississippian’s perspective. By signing up, you’ll receive regular updates where I’ll share Mississippi insights on current national issues as well as relevant stories from Mississippi–some by me and some by my colleagues, but all from those of us in the trenches here.
So, who am I?
My name is Ashton Pittman. I’ve been reporting on the ground in Mississippi since I was a student journalist at the University of Southern Mississippi, where I graduated with a journalism degree in 2014. For several years, I ran Deep South Voice, an online publication I founded in college that broke several important stories and drew national attention. From 2018 to 2020, I was the state reporter for the Jackson Free Press, where I broke major stories like the ones detailing Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s history at a segregation academy and former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant’s ties to the Brexit movement.
Since then, I’ve served as the senior reporter for the Mississippi Free Press, a nonprofit that accelerated its launch to March 2020 which saw us hit the ground running to deliver vital information and updates to the state during the developing COVID-19 crisis. I’ve also reported on everything from systemic racism on college campuses to the Christian dominionist movement and more.
If you’re interested in deep contextual reporting on important state and national issues (featuring always relevant Mississippi perspectives and insights), you can explore my MFP story archive here.
Additionally, I’ve been published in numerous other national and international publications, including, The New York Times and The Guardian. I’ve also been a guest on numerous national radio and television programs, including on MSNBC, ABC News, BBC World Radio, NPR, and more.
At the Mississippi Free Press, I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with my husband, William Pittman, on a number of stories, including our in-depth work on Brett Favre and the Mississippi welfare fraud scandal and our award-winning elections coverage that revealed serious issues with Mississippi’s elections management system.
Together, we live and work in South Mississippi with our two wonderful pit bulls, Dorothy and Drucilla (more commonly known as Dru).
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