Felicia Marshall could describe, in detail, what it felt like to sit through years of court proceedings after her daughter was murdered in 2017. Not because it happened long ago and the memory has softened. Because of how alone it made her feel.
“It felt like the state of Mississippi did not represent me or give me a voice in the criminal justice process.” — Felicia Marshall, FMS Webinar, March 2026.
She calls it one of the loneliest processes of her life. Then she built something out of it. Grant Me Justice, the organization she founded, exists because, as she put it, “the world keeps moving, but Grant Me Justice, we remember.” Marshall isn’t alone in this. In Jackson, a group called Mothers of Murdered Sons, founded by Jessica Frazier, after her own grandson was killed, has grown from one member to well over a hundred, almost entirely through word of mouth and among women carrying the same grief.
Marshall’s story is one story. But it points to something larger playing out across Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, where gun violence remains one of the region’s most persistent and least discussed public health emergencies.
BETWEEN STATISTICS AND STORIES
The numbers are hard to look away from. In 2024, Mississippi recorded the highest gun death rate and gun homicide rate of any state in the country. Louisiana ranked second nationally in gun homicides that same year. Arkansas posted the eighth-highest overall gun death rate in the nation in 2023. In all three states, firearms are now the leading or second-leading cause of death among children and teenagers. Research from Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) shows that even young people who are never physically injured carry the weight of exposure to gun violence, in the form of anxiety, PTSD, and disrupted schooling.
Those numbers hold at the state level, but they concentrate hard in specific places. In Mississippi, Leflore County—home to Greenwood, a town of under 14,000 people—has posted one of the highest per capita gun death rates of any county in the nation for years running. In Louisiana, the burden falls heavily on Orleans and East Baton Rouge Parishes, home to a fraction of the state’s population but a disproportionate share of its gun homicides. In Little Rock, AR, homicide rates have consistently outpaced the state average.
Numbers explain scale at which we are experiencing gun violence. But, statistics only tell part of the story. It’s important to examine what it’s like to live inside them. That’swhy stories like Felicia Marshall and Saletheo Perez are important parts of the narrative.
WHAT LIVED EXPERIENCE TEACHES THAT INSTITUTIONS CAN’T
Saletheo Perez spent two decades incarcerated before founding Books and Street Smarts Organization. He doesn’t talk about gun violence in the language of policy. He talks about what gets missed.
“One of the root causes of violence… that is overlooked is the trauma-informed care that is needed.” — Saletheo Perez, FMS webinar, March 2026
He talks about children who were never taught how to de-escalate a conflict, walk away from disrespect, or sit with anger without turning it into harm. His authority on this comes from somewhere institutions can’t manufacture.
“We are literally the root to what’s going on in our community.” — Saletheo Perez
It’s a plain statement of the kind of trust that takes a lifetime to build, and that no outside program can replicate overnight.
CARRYING IT TO SCHOOL
Ajani Crenshaw, a Tougaloo College student and CEO of Capital Dreamers, named something the adults in the room hadn’t quite put into words: how normal gun violence has become for his generation.
“It becomes so normalized in our society… when it comes part of our regular life, it changes how we necessarily think, how we move and how safe we feel every day.” — Ajani Crenshaw, FMS webinar, March 2026
His ask wasn’t for sympathy. It was for a seat at the table where decisions get made — not as a gesture, but as a requirement.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE FOUNDATION’S APPROACH
These are the voices informing how the Foundation’s 2025–2030 Strategic Plan takes shape on the ground. One of our goals (Goal 2.2) commits the Foundation to expanding access to mental health services in underserved communities by 25%—a goal that reads differently once you’ve heard Marshall describe trauma counseling as something she needed, not something optional. Goal 2.1’s commitment to safe, connected community spaces reads differently once you’ve heard Crenshaw describe carrying a lockdown drill in his body long after it ends. And the Foundation’s core value of community-driven solutions is, in practice, exactly what Perez is describing: the people closest to the problem are usually closest to the answer.
“Years ago, working with young people in Jackson, I saw how many of them had already lost a parent to gun violence—or to prison because of it. That doesn’t leave you. It’s part of why FMS looks for partners who treat trauma as the root of the problem, not an afterthought.” — Cassio Batteast, Economic Opportunities Program Officer
AN ECOSYSTEM, NOT A SINGLE FIX
Aqeela Sherrills, who moderated the March conversation, closed it with a line that has stayed with our team since:
“Gun violence is not inevitable.” — Aqeela Sherrills
It’s preventable — not only through programming or policy change, but through the kind of work Marshall, Perez, and Crenshaw represent: people who turned their hardest chapters into the reason someone else’s story might end differently.
“Gun violence doesn’t stop at a state line, and our response can’t either. Felicia, Saletheo, and Ajani are telling us something true about all three states—the work is figuring out how to answer with the same urgency everywhere.” — Gregory Johnson, President & CEO
These are stories that the data alone can’t tell. The Foundation for the Mid South is keeping these in view for our work spanning the entire region and, in every community,where someone is already doing this work quietly, without waiting to be asked.
Watch the full March webinar conversation between Marshall, Perez, Crenshaw, and Sherrills [link] for more of their stories.