Mississippi Today
Trailblazing state Rep. Alyce Clarke honored with portrait in state Capitol
Former state Rep. Alyce Clarke, the first Black woman to serve in the Mississippi Legislature, sat patiently in her motorized wheelchair Tuesday as her many feats and accomplishments were listed inside the Capitol.
But when it came time to unveil her portrait, the 84-year-old Clarke stood. Clarke had said it was important to have her portrait hanging in the Capitol so that โlittle boys and little girls who come to the Capitol could see someone who looks like them.โ Perhaps Clarke wanted to make sure that those little boys and girls saw her standing next to her portrait.
When Clarke was elected to the Mississippi House in a 1985 special election, there were three women serving in the Legislature. She is the first woman to have her portrait hung in the Capitol. A bust of former Lt. Gov. Evelyn Gandy is located prominently in a Senate committee room.
Clarke’s portrait was painted by Jackson artist Ryan Mack. The portrait was based on a photograph from 1985 when she was first elected to the Mississippi House.
Mack said on Tuesday that Clarke’s years-long work to establish drug courts that provided treatment opportunities for people convicted of crimes made the invitation to paint the portrait an even bigger honor.
“It is better to treat people than to incarcerate,” Clarke said in the past. “And that is what the drug court does.”
The portrait was hung in the House Education Committee room. She was a member of the Education Committee for most of her tenure, including serving as vice chair, and worked for many years to boost public education across the state.
Clarke’s tenure in the Legislature ended when she chose not to run for reelection in 2019. Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, said Clarke’s colleagues inquired of having her portrait placed in the Capitol. She said former House Speaker Philip Gunn supported the effort as did then-Speaker Pro Tem Jason White, who is now serving as speaker.
During Tuesday’s ceremony, current House Pro Tem Manly Barton, R-Moss Point, praised Clarke’s persistence in getting legislation passed. For years she filed bills to create a state lottery. When it was finally passed in 2018, Clarke’s colleagues chose to name the lottery in her honor.
Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader, said Clarke โenthused power but did so with grace and persistence.โ
Clarke, a nutritionist and educator, said during a 2019 interview on Mississippi Today‘s “The Other Side” podcast that she was first encouraged by peers to run for Jackson City Council, but her supporters came to her at some point later and said, โWe are no longer running for city council. We are running for the House.โ
But she added, โThe real person who made the decision was a lady in the Mississippi Delta. I called that person and she said, โHaven’t I always told you that you don’t know what you can do unless you try and you haven’t tried that.’ I said, โThank you, Mama.’โ At that point, she told her supporters she would run.
Clarke represented District 69 โ one of the most densely populated districts in Mississippi. But she grew up in rural Humphreys County.
“I picked cotton, and I took pride,” she said, “I guess in making sure no male in the field could beat me picking cotton.”
Clarke went to Alcorn State on a scholarship and later ended up in Jackson, where for decades she has been an integral part of the community.
Her portrait will forever hang in the Mississippi Capitol.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1875
Nov. 2, 1875
The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from voting, resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the state.
A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black Mississippians had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to challenge Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state.
Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, including a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton.
The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan.
John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: โIt was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.โ
A federal grand jury concluded: โFraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi Todayโs NewsMatch Campaign is Here: Support Journalism that Strengthens Mississippi
High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader support; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.
In a time when trusted journalists and media sources are disappearing, we believe the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without on-the-ground, trustworthy reporting, civic engagement suffers, accountability falters and corruption often goes unaddressed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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Every dollar raised strengthens our ability to serve you with fact-based journalism on issues that impact your everyday lifeโwhether it’s covering local election issues or reporting on decisions affecting schools, safety and economic growth in Mississippi. Your support makes it possible for us to stay rooted in the community, offering nuanced perspectives that help Mississippians understand and engage with what’s happening around them.
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We’ll examine what’s at stake if local newsrooms lose press freedoms and will discuss how you, as members of the public, can help protect it. This event is open to Mississippi Today and Verite News members as a special thank-you for supporting local journalism and standing with us in this mission. Donate today to RSVP!
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction โoverly broadโ in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as โfederal intrusion into RDC’s budgetโ โ especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.ย
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
โBut the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,โ the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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