Avoiding the tap water in Jackson, Miss., has been a way of life for decades
Residents accuse the largely white state government of neglecting the needs of a city that's 82% Black. White flight in the 1970s devastated the tax base, posing a major challenge to any solution.
The same day that 600 National Guard members deployed around Jackson, Miss., to distribute water to tens of thousands of people, one steady line of cars flowed instead through a quiet residential neighborhood, as they've been doing for months.
The Sykes Park Community Center got a large filter six months ago to purify water for local residents to pick up.
"We just don't do it periodically. We do it every single day," says Jason Page, a youth mentor with the group Strong Arms, who speaks as he directs traffic in and out of the parking lot. "The Jackson water has been messed up for a while now."
A week after more than
