It also has sponsored numerous local events such as the Fondren ArtMix, JubileeJam, the Chick Ball, the "Race, Religion & Society Series" and the Crossroads Film Festival.

The publication's name is based on the original Mississippi Free Press, a civil rights movement newspaper started by a multiracial coalition including Medgar Evers, Rev.

[4] In July 2005, a team of JFP journalists, led by editor Donna Ladd, joined Thomas Moore and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation filmmaker David Ridgen in a trip to Moore's hometown of Meadville, Mississippi to investigate and call for justice for the 1964 KKK murders of his brother Charles, and his friend Henry Dee.

JFP's Adam Lynch broke the story on the publication's web site that the mayor had taken a group of young men to bust up an alleged "drughouse" with sledgehammers.

The JFP's efforts to fight the scheme,[8][9] which was blasted by Editor & Publisher magazine as a violation of independent publication's First Amendment rights,[10] was written up in media across the country.