Category: Uncategorized

Published: January 17, 2024

By: Piper Naudin, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE—The Louisiana Senate voted 27-11 Wednesday to approve a congressional redistricting map that would provide two majority-minority districts and has the support of Gov. Jeff Landry.

The bill next goes to the House, where a map that draws the districts somewhat differently was approved by a committee Wednesday. The full House will decide how it wants to proceed.

Both maps would turn the 6^th district seat now held by Republican U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves into the state’s second a majority-minority district and locate much of it in the center of the state.

Read more at Concordia Sentinel.

Published: July 21, 2023

By: Myracle Lewis, Amelia Gabor and Birdie O’Connell, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE — Beverly Shabazz did not have a job and was seven months pregnant with her second child when her husband, Milton X Scott, was shot and killed outside their home in 1973 by FBI agents attempting to arrest him.

“I was thinking I have these two kids to raise,” she said. “I don’t have any help from their father, and it was a while before I could adjust to the situation.”

Shabazz depended on Social Security benefits for their children and then went back to school so she could work as both a cosmetologist and an elementary school teacher. As they grew up, the children hardly saw her, and they missed the emotional support and stability that their father could have provided.

It was a loss compounded by the fact that the shooting arose from a case of mistaken identity. The FBI agents had thought Scott was an Army deserter, and the fatal battle outside his door would not have happened if they had known he had never been in the Army. 

“The toughest day of my life happened before I was even born,” his son, Milton Scott Jr., said recently.

Read more at Verite News.

Published: July 19, 2023

By: By Allison Allsop, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–Lawmakers on Tuesday overrode the governor’s veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. 

That was the only veto override that made it through both the House and Senate, and lawmakers called an end to the special session late in the day.

Gov. John Bel Edwards had vetoed the gender-affirming care bill, authored by Republican Rep. Gabe Firment of Pollock. Now that more than two-thirds of the members in both chambers voted to override that veto, the bill will make it impossible for youth to receive any type of care for gender dysphoria including hormone treatment, gender reassignment surgery and puberty blocking drugs. 

The new law takes effect on Jan.1, 2024. 

Read more at Minden Press-Herald.

Published: July 16, 2023

By: Myracle Lewis, Amelia Gabor and Birdie O’Connell LSU Manship School News Service

On a hot, quiet morning in July 1973, 21-year-old Milton Scott heard a loud knock on the front door of his Baton Rouge home.

Scott was lying in bed with his pregnant wife, now Beverly Shabazz, and their 2-year-old daughter, Andrea. He felt uneasy about a bloody nightmare he’d had that night.

“I had to do everything I could do to calm him down, to let him know that he was just having a bad dream,” Shabazz said before releasing a loud sigh.

But the unconscious terror would soon become reality.

Read more at The Advocate.

Published: June 26, 2023

By: Lauren Madden LSU Manship School News Service

On a hot summer day in 1990, a woman gave her life to God. Now, 33 years later, she continues living in this promise – and has written three books about it.

The Hammond City Council clerk, Lisa White-Cockerham, 58, made this hot summer day promise, and she does more than attend bi-weekly council meetings and keep record of all the proceedings. She’s a mother of two daughters, grandmother to twin granddaughters, minister, friend and three-time self-published author.

Her most recent book published April 30, 2023, “An Insatiable Hunger for God: Resting in his Gaze,” centers on strengthening one’s relationship with God. This relationship strengthens in realizing he wants you as much as you want him.

Read more at The Daily Star.

Published: June 24, 2023

By: Will Mari LSU Manship School News Service

LES TROIS-ÎLETS, Martinique — On this tropical island that’s part of France, my family and I encountered the first tropical storm of the season from the other side of the Gulf of Mexico.  

My wife and I are assistant professors at the Manship School at LSU, and we’re here studying journalism in the Caribbean. Our year-and-a-half-old son and three-year-old dog, Roux (a choodle from Houma), are here with us, too.  

When the warnings from the regional Météo-France office (their version of the National Weather Service) declared that Tropical Storm Bret was inbound to Martinique and to the Lesser Antilles (the easternmost chain of islands in the Caribbean), we began to prepare, just like we would back in Baton Rouge.  

Read more at WWL-TV.