Playoffs Power Rankings: Vegas at No. 1? You bet!

For more than a century, one of Mississippi’s largest and most elaborate Confederate monuments has looked out over the lawn at the courthouse in the center of Greenwood, a Black-majority city with a history of civil rights protests and clashes. Protesters have demonstrated at the base of the towering pillar with six Confederate figures — some residents demanding removal amid a racial reckoning across the country, others advocating for the statue’s protection as a piece of history. Now, after years of debate, a new statue will be erected in Greenwood — one of Emmett Till, the Black 14-year-old who was brutally beaten and shot in 1955 by white men just 10 miles from the city.

As Tussahaw Elementary opened this week for a new school year, teary-eyed mothers led in kindergartners dwarfed by backpacks and buses dropped off fifth graders looking forward to ruling their school. The biggest clue to the lingering COVID-19 crisis was the masks worn by students and teachers — but not all of them. Georgia, like most states, is leaving it up to local schools to decide whether to require face coverings.