Jackson isn’t just Mississippi’s capital. It’s America’s murder capital

Officers from the state-run capitol police and the city-run Jackson police stand watch outside a community meeting Jackson, Mississippi, on 14 February 2023. Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP

Jackson, Mississippi, knows the blues.

There’s the old men at sunset carting old amps through a full parking lot to the back of an otherwise nondescript bar, to deliver a fearless late-night symposium in the oldest school of blues.