Mississippi Today
Hosemann makes Senate committee assignments, keeping most of his leadership team intact

Most of the key chairs from the past four years will remain in place under the committee assignments announced Thursday by Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
Hosemann had his committee assignments read to the members, as is the custom, Thursday before the Senate adjourned for the weekend.
“We have spent hundreds of hours working on these assignments,” Hosemann told the senators. “My decision in these appointments is to place senators in the best position to serve the state of Mississippi and the citizens who sent us here.”
Republican Briggs Hopson of Vicksburg will remain as Appropriations chair, and Republican Josh Harkins of Flowood will continue as Finance chair, two powerful committees with jurisdiction over budget and tax policy.
Despite criticism from former state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who unsuccessfully challenged him in last year’s Republican primary election, Hosemann, as is the custom of past Republican lieutenant governors, continued to appoint some Democratic committee chairs — most notably Hob Bryan of Amory as the influential Public Health chair.
Bryan, the longest-serving state senator in the chamber, told Mississippi Today that he had not thoroughly analyzed the full list of committee chairs, but he believed Hosemann appointed qualified people to lead the committees.
“I have great confidence in the presiding officer of the Senate,” Bryan said of Hosemann.
In 2020, Hosemann named 13 Democrats as chairs. On Thursday, he named 10. The 52-member Senate has 41 committees.
Jennifer Branning, R-Philadelphia, who maintained her post as chair of the Transportation Committee, said, “Certainly diversity is not a bad thing. I do think the lieutenant governor recognizes the talent in this chamber. He has made a good effort to capitalize on the talent we have here.”
Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, who will chair Elections Committee, replacing Jeff Tate, R-Merdian, who will chair Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, said he believes Hosemann appointed hard workers as chairs.
“Mississippi is so much different than what they have in Washington,” England said. “… We have some great talent to offer regardless of party.”
Most, if not all, of the committees are comprised of a majority Republican membership that limits a Democratic chair’s power.
FULL LIST: The 2024 Senate committee assignments
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1912

March 9, 1912

Charlotta Bass became one of the nation’s first Black female editor-owners. She renamed The California Owl newspaper The California Eagle, and turned it into a hard-hitting publication. She campaigned against the racist film “Birth of a Nation,” which depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, and against the mistreatment of African Americans in World War I.
After the war ended, she fought racism and segregation in Los Angeles, getting companies to end discriminatory practices. She also denounced political brutality, running front-page stories that read, “Trigger-Happy Cop Freed After Slaying Youth.”
When she reported on a KKK plot against Black leaders, eight Klansmen showed up at her offices. She pulled a pistol out of her desk, and they beat a “hasty retreat,”
The New York Times reported. “Mrs. Bass,” her husband told her, “one of these days you are going to get me killed.” She replied, “Mr. Bass, it will be in a good cause.”
In the 1940s, she began her first foray into politics, running for the Los Angeles City Council. In 1951, she sold the Eagle and co-founded Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a Black women’s group. A year later, she became the first Black woman to run for vice president, running on the Progressive Party ticket. Her campaign slogan: “Win or Lose, We Win by Raising the Issues.”
When Kamala Harris became the first Black female vice presidential candidate for a major political party in 2020, Bass’ pioneering steps were recalled.
“Bass would not win,” The Times wrote. “But she would make history, and for a brief time her lifelong fight for equality would enter the national spotlight.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1977
On this day in 1977
March 8, 1977

Henry L. Marsh III became the first Black mayor of the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.
Growing up in Virginia, he attended a one-room school that had seven grades and one teacher. Afterward, he went to Richmond, where he became vice president of the senior class at Maggie L. Walker High School and president of the student NAACP branch.
When Virginia lawmakers debated whether to adopt “massive resistance,” he testified against that plan and later won a scholarship for Howard University School of Law. He decided to become a lawyer to “help make positive change happen.” After graduating, he helped win thousands of workers their class-actions cases and helped others succeed in fighting segregation cases.
“We were constantly fighting against race prejudice,” he recalled. “For instance, in the case of Franklin v. Giles County, a local official fired all of the black public school teachers. We sued and got the (that) decision overruled.”
In 1966, he was elected to the Richmond City Council and later became the city’s first Black mayor for five years. He inherited a landlocked city that had lost 40% of its retail revenues in three years, comparing it to “taking a wounded man, tying his hands behind his back, planting his feet in concrete and throwing him in the water and saying, ‘OK, let’s see you survive.’”
In the end, he led the city from “acute racial polarization towards a more civil society.” He served as president of the National Black Caucus of Elected Officials and as a member of the board of directors of the National League of Cities.
As an education supporter, he formed the Support Committee for Excellence in the Public Schools. He also hosts the city’s Annual Juneteenth Celebration. The courthouse where he practiced now bears his name and so does an elementary school.
Marsh also worked to bridge the city’s racial divide, creating what is now known as Venture Richmond. He was often quoted as saying, “It doesn’t impress me to say that something has never been done before, because everything that is done for the first time had never been done before.”
He died on Jan. 23, 2025, at the age of 91.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Judge tosses evidence tampering against Tim Herrington

A Lafayette County circuit judge ended an attempt to prosecute Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the son of a prominent north Mississippi church family who is accused of killing a fellow University of Mississippi student named Jimmie “Jay” Lee, for evidence tampering.
In a March 7 order, Kelly Luther wrote that Herrington cannot be charged with evidence tampering because of the crime’s two-year statute of limitations. A grand jury indicted the University of Mississippi graduate last month on the charge for allegedly hiding Lee’s remains in a well-known dumping ground about 20 minutes from Herrington’s parent’s house in Grenada.
“The Court finds that prosecution for the charge of Tampering with Physical Evidence commenced outside the two-year statute of limitations and is therefore time-barred,” Luther wrote.
In order to stick, Luther essentially ruled that the prosecution should have brought the charges against Herrington sooner. In court last week, the prosecution argued that it could not have brought those charges to a grand jury without Lee’s remains, which provided the evidence that evidence tampering occurred.
The dismissal came after Herrington’s new counsel, Jackson-area criminal defense attorney Aafram Sellers, filed a motion to throw out the count. Sellers did not respond to a request for commend by press time.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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