The slow, steady increase in Black Mississippians being elected to public office is the direct result of actions of the federal government — the executive, legislative and most importantly the judiciary — and not because of actions of the state.
State officials have fought almost every effort of federal officials to expand voting rights for people of color and to increase the number of Black Mississippians holding public office. In the 1800s, the white political leadership crafted a state constitution, rooted in white supremacy and designed to block Black Mississippians from having or obtaining political power. Those Jim Crow efforts, well documented over the years, ranged from poll taxes to literacy tests and more. In the 1960s, laws were passed in Mississippi allowing potential voters to be disqualified based on their “character.”
Those efforts have continued to the modern day with efforts of white leaders to gerrymander political districts to weaken the political influence of Black Mississippians. And sometimes, those efforts have included reluctance and even outright refusal of white power brokers to remove some of those Jim Crow provisions.
The latest response from the federal courts to these continued decisions by the state’s white leaders is a recent ruling that forces the creation of three more Black-majority legislative seats: two in the Senate and one in the House.
As a result of that ruling, later this year candidates in 14 legislative districts (five in the House and nine in the Senate) will have to run in special elections.
Creating the three new Black-majority districts required the redrawing of multiple districts — 14 in this case — around the areas where the new districts were created.
It should not be a surprise that most if not all of those lawmakers are not happy that they are being forced to run for reelection in the middle of their four-year term. But this reality is the result of the Mississippi House and Senate leaders approving a redistricting plan that the federal courts found did not provide adequate representation for Black Mississippians.
The requirement forcing legislators to run in special elections is not unprecedented. In 1991, the Legislature passed a redistricting plan that was supposedly based on population shifts found in the 1990 Census. But the U.S. Department of Justice claimed, and the federal courts agreed, that the redistricting plan did not create enough Black-majority districts based on the population of the state.
After considerable legal maneuvering, the House and Senate created a legislative redistricting plan that the federal courts found did not dilute Black voter strength.
The federal courts ordered that all 174 House and Senate members run in a special election in 1992 under those newly drawn, racially fairer districts only a year after they had won election to a new four-year term. Many legislators were not happy about that.
To make matters worse in the mind of those lawmakers, they were having to run a year after passing over the veto of then-Gov. Kirk Fordice a 1-cent increase in the sales tax on retail items. Fordice promised to campaign in the special election against the lawmakers who approved the sales tax increase.
There is little evidence that Fordice was successful in defeating lawmakers because of the tax increase.
But the special election did result in a significant increase in Black representation in the Mississippi Legislature. As a result of that special election, the number of Black members of the 52-member Mississippi Senate increased from four to 10 and increased from 20 to 31 in the 122-member Mississippi House.
Those numbers have slowly but steadily increased since then because of the nature of population shifts and, yes, because of additional federal court actions.
The Black population of Mississippi is currently about 38%, and the Black voting-age population is a little less than that.
Even with these three new Black-majority districts approved recently by the federal courts, there will be 43 Black-majority districts in the House, making up just 35% of the membership in the 122-member chamber. On the other side of the Capitol, there are 16 Black-majority districts, comprising about 31% of the 52-member Senate.
Thanks to action of the federal government — and certainly not the state — the Mississippi Legislature continues to inch closer to a representation that looks like the demographics of Mississippi. But it’s still not there.
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