The Dictatorship
‘Sinners’ gives the Mississippi Delta’s hoodoo culture the reverence it deserves
“Sinners”is a hoodoo movie, deeply and unapologetically so. In making the film set in the 1930s Mississippi Delta, director Ryan Coogler and producer Zinzi Evans were intentional about displaying the real culture of this region I call home, and they leaned on scholars such as Yvonne Chireau to explore conjure as a sophisticated spiritual technology. For instance, we see the hoodoo in the sacred symmetry of twins Smoke and Stack, brilliantly played by Michael B. Jordan. Smoke and Stack mirror the Marassa, those divine twins in the Haitian Vodou and West African Yoruba Ife tradition who navigate the world as a singular, divided soul. They move with a grace older than the roads they travel, their every choice colored by myths finally given flesh, blood and consequence.
Here in the Black South, the speculative is more than a genre. To make a film that speaks of conjure or haints is to engage in a deep cultural reclamation.
This grounding brings a visceral magic to the screen. “Sinners,” for good reason, was nominated for a record-breaking 16 Oscars, including for best picture. (The film picked up four wins on Sunday night, including best actor honors for Michael B. Jordan, best original screenplay for Coogler and a historic win in cinematography for Autumn Durald Arkapaw. But it lost in several of the other major categories to “One Battle After Another,” which took home best director and best picture.)
Here in the Black South, the speculative is more than a genre. It is an inherited truth. To make a film that speaks of conjure or hintsas Coogler did, is to engage in a deep cultural reclamation. When “Sinners” embraces this, we see the ancient future in action: the understanding that ancestral knowledge is the key to navigating worlds yet to come. Coogler, who grew up in California, wrote “Sinners” to honor his Mississippi ancestors, including his uncle James, who loved the Delta blues and regaled the young Coogler with stories about his home. Coogler’s vision trusts the ancestors enough to let the spirits walk alongside the living, just as they always have in our free verse and folktales.
There is a persistent, hollow noise in our cultural discourse that dismisses Black American culture as a happy accident rather than what it is: a deliberate, brilliant construction. Our traditions are too often discussed as found items rather than legacies forged in unique crucibles. Our culture was born from blood and bone, and it has produced high art forms crafted by those who turned survival into a song. Nothing about Black Americans’ spiritual and cultural traditions are accidental, no matter our geography.
But place matters. Regional specificity is the antidote to the monolith myth that wrongly renders the Black culture in the Delta and the Gullah-Geechee Sea Islands and Appalachia as one and the same. Coogler captures the authenticity of the Delta with his details, like the tamale sign in the backdrop, a quiet nod to the intersecting bloodlines — Indigenous, African and European — that created the creative genius of the Delta. Whether it’s the Chows, whose presence is an acknowledgement that Chinese families have long been embedded in the community fabric of the Deltaor the compacts made by the Choctaw leader Chayton (Nathaniel Arcand), our history is itself a crossroads. When we see sibling relationships and rituals treated with reverence, we see Coogler’s refusal to whitewash our origins.
Perhaps most significantly, Coogler’s screenplay dramatizes the 1930 Delta’s spiritual landscapes with an elegant precision, refusing the easy binary of “demonic” vs. “devout.” We see it in the bitter resentment of the Irish vampire, Remmick — portrayed with frightening intensity by Jack O’Connell — who carries the scars of a native faith forcibly stripped away. He’s a contrast to Sammie Moore, played by Miles Caton, who emerges from the sanctuary of a praying family. This foundation of faith grants him the agency to choose his own vocation, proving the film is a meditation on the varied ways we reach for the divine to stay strong.
Nothing about Black Americans’ spiritual and cultural traditions are accidental, no matter our geography.
I think of the Mississippi Delta as a living, breathing archive, a landscape where the river’s curve mimics the spine of a people who refused to be broken. In the quiet theater of our lives, we often look for mirrors, but what we truly need are portals.
One of the film’s most breathtaking movements — the jook joint musical sequence — becomes such a portal. As the ancestors pulse alongside the living to the notes of Raphael SadiqBoo Mitchell and Rhiannon Giddensit proves the difference between a ghost and a memory: one haunts the house, the other haunts the blood.
Black American cultural contributions are among the nation’s most significant exports, but the fruit is too often severed from its roots, and we see our rituals absorbed into the mainstream without a nod to the specific communities who nurtured them. We must demand visions such as Coogler’s that understand that the spirit remembers what the map forgets.
American cinema needs more of this raw truth — stories that pulse in the blood and set spirits free. We don’t need endless remakes. We need the conjure, the haints and the original hope that comes from knowing exactly who we are. Coogler believes in the alchemy of cinema and sound, and in “Sinners,” he bottled that lightning, letting the frequency of the Delta resonate through the theater and into our hearts.
By the time the lights come up, we carry the weight of that geography. Even when the world tries to wash the records away, the river remembers. Our stories are a laying on of hands, a calling up of a frequency that resonates in the marrow. They remind us that some magic is real, rooted deep in the soil and carried on the music, waiting for the right hands to call it forth. Vision made manifest is not just about what we see on a screen; it is about the stories we have always told ourselves to stay whole.
Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning author, poet and editor whose work is inspired by myth and folklore, natural science and the genius of the Mississippi Delta. Her most recent book is “Mojorhythm”(Third Man Books, 2025). An Octavia E. Butler Award winner, she edited the World Fantasy Award-winning anthologies,”Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the Africa Diaspora,””Dark Matter: Reading the Bones,” and”Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction.”
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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