In 2020, a Mississippi state lawmaker promoting a “Stop the Steal” rally called Jackson “Mordor on the Pearl,” likening the state’s capital, a city that is 80% Black, to the dark realm of orcs and trolls in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Around the same time, another House member tweeted that Mississippi should “succeed” [sic] from the Union and form its own country. His district includes one of the poorest counties in a state that depends on federal money for roughly 40% of its budget.
Those comments are part of a long, tense relationship between state leadership and Jackson, a tension that flared again during the water crisis that crippled the city’s system. But the numbers suggest that contempt is a luxury Mississippi can’t afford.
The Jackson region holds a fifth of the state’s population and is Mississippi’s only metro area among the nation’s 100 largest. Yet the city has lost nearly a third of its residents since 1980. From 2020 to 2024, it lost more than 12,000 people, the steepest per-capita drop of any U.S. city over 100,000. Jackson is now officially the fastest-shrinking city in America.
Don’t Look Around, a new narrative podcast hosted by Melvin Robinson, takes on what may be Mississippi’s most existential problem: brain drain.
Jake McGraw, a Mississippi native, explains why the issue can’t be separated from Jackson. Mississippians who leave aren’t heading to rural West Texas or South Georgia; they’re moving to Southern cities like Dallas, Houston, and Atlanta. College graduates move across state lines about twice as often as everyone else, so they set the pattern. And what starts as a brain drain doesn’t stay one. Potholes linger, stores close, houses fall into blight. Soon, anyone with the means to leave does.
The most striking finding comes from a survey conducted with Mississippi Today. Asked about their ideal place to live, Mississippians, and especially those who have already left, chose mid-sized cities of 100,000 to 500,000 people by a wide margin. In other words, they want a place like Jackson — they’re just not choosing Jackson.
As McGraw puts it, every community in the state is tied to Jackson’s fate, whether people realize it or not. Stopping the brain drain starts there, he says.
Listen to Don’t Look Around here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Image: Depiction of Mordor from “Lord of the Rings” (via fandom.com)
So weird how cities have suffered since Reagan flooded them with guns and crack while doing jack shit about the AIDS crisis.
P.S. Vote Scott Colom for Senate!!