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USM ends 18-game skid against Memphis
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Th u r s day, f eb r ua r y 2, 2012 • 50¢
People
www.v ick sburgp ost.com
Suit charges mayor with sexual harassment Former chief of staff files in federal court
By Danny Barrett Jr. dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com
More Winter Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow
B4 WEATHER
Ever y day Si nCE 1883
Mayor Paul Winfield’s former chief of staff has filed a federal lawsuit against the City of Vicksburg charging him with sexual harassment. Kenya Burks says in the suit that she and the mayor had a consensual sexual relationship and that nearly
Mayor Paul Winfield
Kenya Burks
$10,000 in back overtime pay in 2011 was an attempt by Winfield to continue that relationship. The suit, filed in Jackson
by Jackson attorney Louis H. Watson Jr., says Burks is entitled to damages under federal law because she was “subjected to unlawful sexual harassment, sex discrimination, sexually hostile environment in the workplace, and retaliation.” “I did not have any sexual relations with Miss Burks,” Winfield told reporters in his office Wednesday afternoon with city attorney Lee Davis Thames by his side. “I question the timing of this type
Online Complete filing: www.vicksburgpost.com of action. But, it’s improper, it’s inaccurate and it’s an outright set of lies.” The lawsuit says Winfield, 37, who is married with a 7-year-old son, and Burks, hired in July 2009 to promote the mayor’s agenda at $72,000 a year, had a “consensual sexual relationship.”
Mississippi River:
32.6 feet Rose: 0.4 foot Flood stage: 43 feet
By Holbrook Mohr The Associated Press
A7
DEATHS • Lois LaFran Adams • Eugene Bell • Herbert Wallace Curry • Ernest Evans • S.E. Lowe • Verna Leggett McInnis • Albert Lee Shorter • Nancy B. Walker • Robbie M. Williams
A7
TODAY IN HISTORY 1653: New Amsterdam — later New York City — is incorporated. 1912: Frederick R. Law parachutes from the torch of the Statue of Liberty in a stunt filmed by Pathe News. 1922: The James Joyce novel “Ulysses” is published in Paris by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Co. on Joyce’s 40th birthday. 1943: The remainder of Nazi forces from the Battle of Stalingrad surrender in a major victory for the Soviets in World War II. 1992: Longtime “Miss America” emcee Bert Parks dies in La Jolla (HOY’-uh), Calif., at age 77.
INDEX Business................................A5 Classifieds............................. B6 Comics...................................A6 Puzzles................................... B4 Dear Abby............................ B3 Editorial.................................A4 People/TV............................. B4
See Mayor, Page A5.
High court taking look at pardons
MOVING DAY
Tonight: mostly cloudy tonight, chance of rain, lows in the mid- to upper 50s Friday: rain Friday, highs in the lower 70s
In an accompanying Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint filed April 22 against the City of Vicksburg and in the suit, Burks contends she was not entitled to the back pay, which the Board of Mayor and Aldermen approved in a closed session April 4. Her position was eliminated April 18 on a 2-0 vote, with Winfield abstaining. The board agreed to pay
Brenden Neville•The Vicksburg Post
Victor Barnett, an employee of Biedenharn Moving and Storage, wheels boxes into the old Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Depot building Wednesday as the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau moves into its new home after four years in a trailer near the bureau’s Clay Street
office. The VCVB is moving into the second floor of the city-owned building it will share with a proposed transportation museum and Vicksburg Main Street offices. The move had been delayed by the spring Mississippi River flood that inundated the 105-year-old building.
Vicksburg teen headed to ‘Idol’ fame By Josh Edwards jedwards@vicksburgpost.com The reigning champion of Warren Central Idol is belting out tunes for a shot at a big-time recording contract. Ashley Proctor, 17, of Vicksburg surpassed hundreds of other contestants at the American Idol auditions in Denver, Colo., and will compete in Hollywood in the show’s second round Wednesday or a week from
today. The Warren Central junior is back at school but has an agreement with the Fox network not to Ashley talk about Proctor her experience on the television show, said her father, Kenneth Proctor. She told American Idol
On TV “American Idol” airs at 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays on Fox. Ashley Proctor is expected to appear in one of next week’s shows. producers that her musical family was her biggest inspiration to audition and that she has been performing for almost as long as she can
remember. “The first time I sang in public was when I was really, really young because my parents — my mom and my grandfather — are in a band together, so they’ve been playing together for a while,” she said in a video interview on “American Idol’s” website. Her mother is Melissa Proctor. She also got plenty of
JACKSON — The Mississippi Supreme Court said Wednesday it will take up the legal challenge to the pardons ex-Gov. Haley Barbour gave out in his last days in office. State Attorney General Jim Hood, a Democrat, wants to invalidate dozens of the 198 pardons that Barbour, a Republican, handed out before his second four-year term ended Jan. 10. Ten of the people were still incarcerated when they received reprieves. Only about two dozen of the people pardoned followed the Mississippi Constitution’s requirement to publish a notice about their reprieves in their local newspapers for 30 days, said Hood, who wants the others invalidated. Barbour has said the pardons are valid and that he gave them because he’s a Christian and believes in second chances. Most of the people who could lose their pardons already have served their sentences and have been out of prison for years. Some of them were convicted of comparatively minor crimes as far back as the 1960s and 1970s and have never been in trouble again. Five of the pardoned are being held on a temporary restraining order issued by Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green. The Supreme Court extended that order until it can rule on the matter. It set a hearing for
See Proctor, Page A7.
See Pardons, Page A5.
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Brenden Neville•The Vicksburg Post
Caton Blackburn, 8, center, the daughter of Melissa and Jeb Blackburn, dances freestyle on stage Wednesday night.
Tiny dancers in Vicksburg are hoping their twists and turns will spin them right into TV’s big time. Decked out in bright turquoise tutus, tie-dyed leggings, hot pink gloves and Skecher Bella Ballerina tennis shoes, 11 dance students ages 7 to 9 laid it on thick Wednesday night at the Southern Cultural Heritage Center in front of two video cameras, all in hopes that their dance will spin them into a national commercial. For now, dance teacher Chesley Sadler Lambiotte said, the film will be shown within the Skecher organiza-
Online Dance video: www.vicksburgpost.com tion. But Lambiotte is hopeful, along with the dancers, that this could be See Dancers, Page A5.