Mississippi Today
Legislature will have to address judicial, legislative redistricting next year


Mississippi lawmakers next year will have to put together two complex jigsaw puzzles when they gather under the Capitol dome for their 2025 session.
State lawmakers will be required to redraw Mississippi’s 23 Circuit Court and 20 Chancery Court districts and comply with a federal court order to redraw some of their own legislative districts, as well.
“It’s going to be very, very difficult to do this,” Senate President Pro Tempore Dean Kirby told Mississippi Today.
Kirby, a Republican from Pearl and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said that Senate leadership plans to comply with an order from a federal three-judge panel who ruled earlier this year the Legislature must create new state Senate and House maps with Black-majority districts and conduct special elections in 2025 under those newly created districts.
The Mississippi Conference of the NAACP and Black voters from across the state filed a federal lawsuit against the state last year arguing the legislative districts that were drawn in 2022 by the state Legislature diluted Black voting strength.
The state has a Black population of about 38%. Currently there are 42-Black majority districts in the 122-member House and 15 Black majority districts in the 52-seat Senate.
The federal panel ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the state to create a majority-Black Senate district in the DeSoto County area in north Mississippi and one in the Hattiesburg area in south Mississippi. The panel also ruled the state must create a majority-Black House district in the Chickasaw County area in northeast Mississippi.
However, the Legislature will also have to tweak many districts in the state to accommodate for the new Black-majority maps. State officials in court filings have argued that the redrawing would affect a quarter of the state’s 174 legislative districts.
“None of us are happy we’re having to do this,” Kirby said.

Legislative leaders will also have to address changing the boundaries of the state’s chancery and circuit court judicial districts.
State law mandates the Legislature must complete judicial redistricting by the fifth year after the U.S. Census is administered. The last Census was performed in 2020, meaning the Legislature’s deadline is 2025.
If the Legislature does not redraw the districts by the deadline, state law requires the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to modify the districts.
Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, will be the main point-person in the Senate for judicial redistricting.
The current court districts have largely remained unchanged for 30 years. But Wiggins told reporters in November that he wants to substantially redraw the judicial districts based on population shifts and caseload data collected from the Administrative Office of the Courts, the Legislature’s watchdog and research office and other agencies.

The Jackson County lawmaker, over the objections of some Democrats, tried to push a bill through the Legislature during the 2024 session to overhaul the district boundaries, but negotiations between the House and the Senate stalled in the end.
Wiggins’ reason for trying to overhaul the district lines is that some districts around the state hear thousands more cases than others, and judges receive the same taxpayer-funded salary, regardless of the number of cases they deal with.
House Judiciary B Chairman Kevin Horan, a Republican from Grenada, is the lead House negotiator on judicial redistricting. He did not respond to a request for comment on the House’s plans for judicial redistricrting.
House Speaker Jason White, a Republican from West, said through a spokesperson that he will “continue to gather feedback from members” and plans to “come forward with a plan for judicial and legislative redistricting.”
The 2025 legislative session will begin on January 7.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippians honor first Black lawmaker since Reconstruction
Mississippians honor first Black lawmaker since Reconstruction

Former Mississippi Rep. Robert Clark Jr. lay in state Sunday in the Capitol Rotunda as family, friends, officials and fellow citizens paid respect to the first Black legislator in the state since Reconstruction.
Clark, a Holmes County native, was elected to the House in 1967 and served until his retirement in 2004. He was elected speaker pro tempore by the House membership in 1993 and held that second-highest House position until his retirement.
The Senate and House honored the 96-year-old veteran lamaker last week.

“Robert Clark … broke so many barriers in the state of Mississippi with class, resolve and intellect. So he is going to be sorely missed,” Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said last week.
Hosemann was among those who came Sunday to honor Clark. So did House Speaker Jason White, who like Clark hails from Holmes County.

Clark was the only Black Mississippian serving in the Legislature from until 1976 and was ostracized when first elected, sitting at a desk by himself for years without the traditional deskmates. But he rose to become a respected leader.
An educator when elected to the House, Clark served 10 years as chair of the House Education Committee, including when the historic Education Reform Act of 1982 was passed.
Clark served as the only Black Mississippian serving in the Legislature from 1968 until 1976.
“He was a trailblazer and icon for sure,” White said last week.




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.
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