Published: July 26, 2023
By: Madeline Pistorius, LSU Manship School News Service
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50 years after fatal shooting: Milton Scott’s family, FBI agents talk about the emotional toll
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.
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Lawmakers on Tuesday overrode the governor’s veto of a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors.
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.
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50 years later, questions linger over the death of a Baton Rouge man during an FBI arrest
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.
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‘We’re not done yet’: Businesses key in preserving Cajun culture
Published: July 12, 2023
By: Jillian Elliott, Layne Miller and Taegen Heck, LSU Manship School News Service
When Alex Cook stumbled on a flyer for a local juke joint, he was confused about how he, a member of the Baton Rouge music scene, was unfamiliar with a spot just minutes away in Zachary.
This first visit sparked dozens of features in Cook’s 2012 book, “Louisiana Saturday Night: Looking for a Good Time in South Louisiana’s Juke Joints, Honkey-Tonks and Dancehalls.”
But what he intended to be a travel guide is now a last look at places on a growing list of family-owned Cajun businesses that have closed.
Read more at Shreveport Times.
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Hammond council clerk publishes 3rd book
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.
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What a Gulf of Mexico-bound storm feels like from the edge of the Caribbean
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.
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Tangi wins in new budget bills
Published: June 21, 2023
By: Poet Wolfe LSU Manship School News Service
Spending bills approved by the Legislature include millions of dollars for renovations at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Loranger Branch library and for health services, tourism, and economic development in Tangipahoa Parish.
An infrastructure bill, House Bill 2, directs $21 million to Southeastern, including over $20 million to renovate D. Vickers Hall, approximately $700,000 for a new sports complex and $600,000 toward construction of a campus nursing building.
Also in the bill: around half a million dollars for the Loranger Branch of the Tangipahoa Parish Library. State Rep. Nicholas Muscarello Jr., R-Hammond, said the funds will support locating the library next to the Loranger High School campus for use by students and members of the public.
Read more at The Daily Star.
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Bill passes to limit minors’ access to some library materials
Published: June 08, 2023
By: Jenna Bridges, LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE — A bill that would limit minors’ access to library materials that might be considered sexually explicit received final legislative passage Thursday.
While lawmakers are rushing to pass their bills before the session ends at 6 p.m. Thursday, the final version of Republican state Sen. Heather Miley Cloud’s library bill, Senate Bill 7, passed the House 68-26 and the Senate 21-13. The final version was worked out in a conference between House and Senate members.
Now, the bill will be sent to Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat. With less than two-thirds of the House and Senate in support of the bill, it is possible that he could veto it and the Legislature would be unable to override the veto.
Cloud’s bill would require public libraries to adopt a system that would allow parents to decide if their children could check out material that community members might consider sexually explicit, either at the library or online, through restrictions set on the minor’s library card.
If the bill becomes law, libraries would be required to adopt the policy no later than June 1, 2024.
Read more at Louisiana Forestry Association
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Edwards says he expects to veto three transgender bills
Published: June 09, 2023
By: Allison Allsop, LSU Manship School News Service
Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday he would veto three anti-LGBTQ+ bills.
BATON ROUGE—Gov. John Bel Edwards said he expects to veto three anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed in the legislative session that ended Thursday.
The bills—limiting health care for transgender minors, the use of alternate pronouns and classroom mentions of sexuality—were part of a push by conservative politicians around the country.
“Let’s focus on the real problems,” Edwards said in a post-session news conference. “Let’s don’t pick on very small minorities who have been in comprised of the most vulnerable, fragile children in our state, those most likely to engage in suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts. There’s nothing great in that.”
But Edwards, a Democrat, also expressed confusion about why the NAACP had issued a travel advisory for Louisiana, warning people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals that the state may not be safe for them in light of the legislation.
Edwards said that because those bills have not become law yet, he did not understand the need for the NAACP’s action, nor did he support it.
Read more at KATC
LSU Manship School Statehouse Bureau 
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