Mississippi Today

U.S. Supreme Court ends efforts to right wrongs of the 1890 Mississippi Constitution

Published

2 years ago

July 16, 2023

For decades, starting primarily in the 1950s, the federal courts have stepped in to right the wrongs of Mississippi’s racist 1890 Constitution.

Let it be known that on June 30, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court said in its view the wrongs had already been corrected. The nation’s highest court announced its refusal on that day to hear a case challenging the centuries-old Mississippi Constitution provision that imposes a lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies.

The provision, it was clear at the time — even boasted by the framers of that 1890 constitution — was enacted as one of the many tools to keep Black Mississippians from voting.

There was a racist belief then that African Americans were more prone to commit certain crimes, so they imposed the lifetime felony voting ban. At the time, the provision imposed a lifetime voting ban on a person convicted of bigamy or perjury, for instance, but not for someone who committed murder or rape.

The Mississippi Center for Justice and other groups that filed the lawsuit in 2017 on behalf of people who have lost their right to vote argued before the federal court that because of the racist origin of the provision, it should be struck down. The federal courts in landmark cases have struck down other Mississippi constitutional provisions designed to keep African Americans from voting, such as the poll tax and so-called literacy tests. And, of course, other provisions of the state’s 1890 Constitution not related to voting, such as the absurdly labeled separate-but-equal schools, have been famously invalidated by the federal court.

The Supreme Court justices did not say why they refused to hear the felony suffrage case.

But a majority of the U.S. 5th Court of Appeals ruled in 2022 the provision was not unconstitutional because “the racial taint” from 1890 had been removed by actions taken in the 1950s and 1960s by the Mississippi Legislature. The 5th Circuit reasoned that legislators passed resolutions approved by voters to add murder and rape as disenfranchising crimes. The changes removed the racial taint, the judicial majority ruled. Notably, the electorate was not given an opportunity to vote on whether to keep the original racially motivated crimes as disenfranchising crimes.

So, some including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown, who disagreed with the majority decision not to hear the case, questioned whether the racial taint had been removed.

“Constitutional wrongs do not right themselves,” she wrote.

Those who say the racial taint had been removed perhaps would have a stronger argument if the Legislature would allow voters to decide if they want to maintain the provision banning people from voting for life even after they complete their sentence. Most other states — more than 40 — do not have lifetime bans on voting.

In 2020 Mississippians were given an opportunity by the Legislature to remove another provision placed in the 1890 Constitution to discriminate against Black people. And given the opportunity, Mississippians by an overwhelming majority — 79% to 21% — voted to remove the provision.

The provision required all elections for statewide office to be decided by the Mississippi House if a candidate did not obtain a majority vote and win a majority of the 122 House districts. The provision was placed in the Constitution to prevent Black residents, who were a majority at the time, from winning statewide office. The framers also had drawn House districts in a manner to keep Black candidates from winning a majority of them, thus making it difficult for African American statewide candidates to gain approval from the House.

Of course, voters had the opportunity to repeal the provision thanks to the action of the courts.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan of Mississippi’s Southern District told state officials if they did not remove the provision that he might be inclined to do so himself. But first, he said, he hoped the Legislature would give the citizens the opportunity to remove the provision.

The federal courts took no such action on felony suffrage.

While the federal courts appear to have stopped its crusade on the racist provisions of the Mississippi Constitution, federal judges now are being asked to strike what some say is a racist Mississippi law. The law takes away the right to elect judges to newly created judicial posts in predominantly African American Hinds County and instead gives the white state Supreme Court chief justice the authority to appoint those judges. The right to elect judges is not taken away in any other area of the state except for Hinds County, where Black residents make up 75% of the population.

Whether the federal courts see a racial taint in the controversial law remains to be seen.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1912

Published

3 hours ago

March 9, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-03-09 07:00:00

March 9, 1912

Portrait of Charlotte Bass Credit: Wikipedia

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

Published

1 day ago

March 8, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-03-08 07:00:00

On this day in 1977

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today
March 8, 2025

March 8, 1977

Henry Marsh — Henry L. Marsh III became the first Black mayor of the Confederacy’s capital.

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

Published

2 days ago

March 7, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Molly Minta – 2025-03-07 15:08:00

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.