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A man who sued the Lexington Police Department alleging violence and racism says an officer assaulted him in retaliation for that litigation.

That man, Malcolm Stewart, is “still in pain” after being bonded out of jail, said Jill Collen Jefferson, whose nonprofit JULIAN brought the lawsuit on behalf of Stewart and four other Black men. “He went to the hospital immediately after being released. He had a knot on the back of his head.”

Police Chief Charles Henderson disputed the accusation by Stewart, who was charged April 16 with aggravated assault on an officer, failure to comply and disturbing the peace. There are certain people who “make these accusations every time they’re arrested,” the chief said.

He encouraged an outside investigation of this case, predicting that in the end, “We’re going to come out on top.”

The police department came into the national spotlight last summer when the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, now part of Mississippi Today, obtained a recording of a white law enforcement officer bragging about killing 13 people in the line of duty, saying, “I shot that n—– 119 times, OK?” 

Jefferson identified the voice as then-Police Chief Sam Dobbins, who was fired the next day by the city council in Lexington, an 85% majority Black town on the edge of the Mississippi Delta. The council chose Henderson to take his place.

Stewart’s arrest came less than a week after U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee dismissed Stewart’s claims in an October lawsuit.

In that litigation, Stewart alleged that Henderson threatened to kill him in September 2019 as he sat in his car on private property because Stewart had refused to leave the premises — an allegation Henderson denied in court records.

Stewart quoted Henderson as saying, “If you don’t get the f— off this lot, your family’s gonna be wearing a black suit or a black dress by Sunday.”

Henderson, who is now running for constable, called Stewart’s claim “misleading” in court records.

In that litigation, Stewart also said he worked off outstanding fines by servicing police vehicles, only to be arrested after a community meeting where he voiced concerns about police.

On June 30, Stewart said that an officer saw him in a car and “reached in and yanked his shirt collar, … continuing a pattern and practice of excessive force and retaliation.”

Jefferson said Stewart was arrested on a charge of possession of stolen property.

“He was in a car that didn’t belong to him,” she said. “He’s a mechanic. He was fixing the car and didn’t know it was stolen. The police still charged him.”

Lee concluded that the bodycam video showed that the officer had probable cause to arrest Stewart and used reasonable force. The judge dismissed Stewart’s false arrest claim.

In an April 17 letter, Jefferson told Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division that Stewart “somehow exceeded his prepaid gas amount and went inside the station to advise the clerk. Words were exchanged which resulted in the clerk calling 911.”

When an officer arrived, he “struck Mr. Stewart in the back of the head,” she wrote. “Malcolm Stewart suffered injuries in the process.”

She asked the Justice Department to join in the litigation to protect members of the Black community from police harassment and attacks. “This is a last-ditch effort,” she said. “There is no accountability for these officers.”

The post Lexington man says police assaulted him for filing lawsuit appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The ink was barely dry on Gov. Tate Reeves’ signature of legislation designed to create a separate judicial and law enforcement district within the city of Jackson before the NAACP filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new laws.

Reeves signed controversial House Bill 1020 and its companion legislation Senate Bill 2343 on Friday afternoon. Later that day, the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed lawsuit in federal court of the Southern District of Mississippi.

“These laws target Jackson’s majority-Black residents on the basis of race for a separate and unequal policing structure and criminal justice system to which no other residents of the state are subjected,” the lawsuit reads.

Earlier this year the legislation generated national attention by creating a separate judicial district in the whiter and more affluent areas of Jackson, the nation’s Blackest large city. The legislation calls for judges in the district to be appointed by the white chief justice of the Supreme Court instead of elected by the city’s majority Black voters.

The legislation also expands the borders of the existing Capital Complex Improvement District to encompass more of the whiter and more affluent areas of the city and expands the jurisdiction of the state law enforcement. The state police, under the authority of the state-run Mississippi Department of Public Safety, will have primary jurisdiction in the capital complex area and secondary jurisdiction throughout the city.

According to the lawsuit, the new laws expand “the CCID to approximately 17.5 square miles to include roughly half of the white population of Jackson, when only 15 percent of the entire population of Jackson is white.”

During sharply divisive debate on the legislation in the recently completed 2023 session, both Reps. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, and Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, said they were speaking on the House floor “to make a record” for the lawsuits that would be filed.

Among those filing the lawsuit were the national, state and city chapters of the NAACP. Included as a plaintiff in the lawsuit is Derrick Johnson, who is the national president of the NAACP and a Jackson resident.

In signing the legislation Friday afternoon, Reeves said, “The fact is that Jackson has so much potential. It is our capital city and the heart of our state … But Jackson has to be better. Downtown Jackson should be so safe that it is a magnet for talented young people to come and live and work and create.

“This legislation won’t solve the entire problem, but if we can stop one shooting, if we can respond to one more 911 call – then we’re one step closer to a better Jackson. I refuse to accept the status quo. As long as I’m governor, the state will keep fighting for safer streets for every Mississippian no matter their politics, race, creed, or religion – regardless of how we’re portrayed by liberal activists or in the national media.”

In a news release, the governor went on to highlight Jackson’s crime problem, citing numerous statistics, including the claim that Jackson makes up 6% of the state’s population but accounts for 50% of Mississippi’s homicides.

Many quickly rebutted Reeves’ cited statistics. Brannon Miller, who runs Mississippi-based Democratic political consultant firm Chism Strategies, pointed out Reeves’ statistics were misleading.

Miller said that based on statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control, “Mississippi had 576 murders in 2020 – the highest murder rate of any state,” and 128 of those or 22% were in Jackson. “And to be clear, that’s really high,” Miller wrote. “But even if you take Jackson out of the statistics, Mississippi would still be No. 2 in murder rate.”

Only one of the 53 Black members of the Legislature supported the bills. Black lawmakers conceded that Jackson has a crime problem and most agreed some type of state help was warranted. But they argued that members of the Jackson delegation were denied the opportunity to have input in what that help would be. They said white legislators routinely are consulted when legislation is drafted impacting their constituents.

Plus, African American legislators said the help should not include taking away the vote from Jackson’s Black majority population.

Most white members of the Legislature supported the legislation that had the backing of House and Senate Republican leaders. They argued there was no racial intent in the legislation, but only a good faith effort to solve an agreed-upon crime problem in the state’s largest and capital city.

The Senate leadership did win an argument to make the appointed judges temporary instead of permanent as was proposed by House leaders.

In the lawsuit, the NAACP makes an equal protection argument, saying it is discriminatory to force something on the residents of Jackson, including a large African American majority, that does not apply to other citizens of the state.

The lawsuit reads, “H.B. 1020 deprives and disenfranchises the predominantly Black population of Jackson of the rights accorded to every other Mississippi resident.”

The lawsuit also contends the bills make it more difficult to hold peaceful protests within the Capital Complex Improvement District, which includes the Capitol, Governor’s Mansion and other state buildings.

While the lawsuit was filed in federal court on the grounds the bills are in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, there is an argument that the legislation also violates the state Constitution that calls for elected judges. That argument, though, might have been more convincing under the original bill when the judges were appointed permanently.

Past legislation impacting the city of Jackson already is being challenged in court. A lawsuit was filed in past years after the Legislature stripped the Jackson municipal government of some of its governing authority of the Jackson- Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport.

The post NAACP files lawsuit arguing House Bill 1020 violates US Constitution appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Talamieka Brice is an award-winning artist, photographer, and filmmaker. She sits down with Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey to discuss her documentary, A Mother’s Journey, her mural of President Barack Obama, her family, and how her art helped her cope during trying times. 

The post Mississippi Stories: Talamieka Brice appeared first on Mississippi Today.

APRIL 23, 1951

Barbara Johns, the 16-year-old niece of civil rights leader Vernon Johns, stood before the all-Black student body at the R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. She proposed a walkout to protest deplorable conditions inside the school, which had no laboratories, no gym and no cafeteria. 

When some students said they were afraid they would be arrested, she replied, “The Farmville jail isn’t big enough to hold us.” And walk out they did, all 450 of them. 

Johns’ hopes ran high. “People would hear us, would see us and understand our difficulty, would sympathize with our plight and would grant us our new school building,” she wrote. “It would be grand, and we would live happily ever after.” 

Two weeks later, the students returned, but instead of a new building, they were met with anger from administrators. Johns reached out to the NAACP, which challenged the segregated system. 

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case that resulted, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, as part of Brown v. Board of Education. 

A statue of Barbara Johns has been built on the grounds of the state Capitol in Richmond, and the Ninth Street Office Building, where the Virginia attorney general’s offices are housed, has been named after her. 

She died in 1991 of bone cancer. The state of Virginia is now replacing the statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee with a statue of Johns in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

The post On this day in 1951 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Based on the budget passed hurriedly and with barely any debate in late March during the final days of the 2023 session, legislators apparently were saying all of the state’s problems had been solved.

They were saying:

• Education — pre-kindergarten through graduate school — is funded at an adequate level.
• All state employees are paid at an acceptable rate.
• The state Crime Lab is adequately staffed and can respond to the needs of local court jurisdictions and law enforcement in a timely manner to prosecute those accused of committing crimes.
• Crime, not only the much ballyhooed problems in Jackson, but throughout the state is being solved.
• Health care needs for Mississippians — young children as well as senior citizens — are being met.
• The economy is thriving.

Empirical evidence does not bear out those statements. Compared to other states, Mississippi continues to have the highest infant mortality rate, shortest life expectancy, one of the lowest work force participation rates (a fewer percentage of eligible people working) and highest homicide rate.

Oh by the way, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which provides for the basic needs of local schools, was underfunded — again — this time $150 million or more depending on how the shell game the Legislature played in 2023 with education funding is interpreted.

Despite all these problems, legislators left money on the table — probably close to $1 billion. That is right — the Legislature had another $1 billion to address the state’s needs.

Never in the history of the state has that much available revenue been left knowingly unspent.

Back in November, the 14 members of the Legislative Budget Committee, which includes Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Speaker Phillip Gunn, met with Gov. Tate Reeves to adopt an official revenue estimate for the upcoming fiscal year beginning July 1.

The governor and the committee agreed on an estimate of $7.52 billion based on the recommendations of economists and other financial experts. After 2% of that amount was set aside to provide a safeguard if revenue collections do not meet the estimate, the Legislature had $7.37 billion in general funds to budget on those needs during the 2023 session.

Yet, the 2023 Legislature appropriated $6.55 billion of those funds, leaving $710.3 million unspent. And it is important to note that all of the state’s reserve funds are filled to their statutory limit.

But wait, there is more.

Normally, legislative leaders on the Budget Committee would have met again near the end of the session to hear input from the state’s financial experts on whether they should revise the revenue estimate, meaning increasing or decreasing the amount of money available to spend in the 2023 session for the upcoming fiscal year.

Legislative leaders normally meet to consider revisions because obviously more information about upcoming revenue trends is available months later at the end of the session than in November weeks before the session begins.

In the past 25 years, the number of times legislative leaders have not met at the end of the session to revise the revenue estimate could be counted on one hand.

Yet, this year, even as collections for the current fiscal year through March are a whopping $601.9 million above the estimate, legislative leaders did not meet.

The responsibility for calling that meeting rested with Speaker Gunn. The lieutenant governor and speaker alternate each year chairing the Budget Committee.

Gunn, who is not seeking re-election, apparently did not want to preside over a final session where such a large increase in state spending occurred, thus, he balked on calling the traditional revenue revision meeting.

If that meeting had been called, it is safe to assume that financial experts would have, based on current collections, recommended increasing the revenue estimate by another $200 million or more. If that revision had occurred, legislators would have left $1 billion or more on the table based on the budget they passed.

That would have been enough money to address some of the needs facing the state, while providing a one-time rebate to Mississippians like many other states have done. Many legislators indicated that they did not want to pass an additional tax cut after the $525 million income tax reduction they passed last year — the largest in Mississippi history. They fear that in future years as revenue collections slow — as they surely will — an additional tax cut could make it difficult to fund state services.

But a one-time rebate instead of enacting a tax cut would not have impacted revenue streams in future years.

The bottom line is that legislators could have done a lot they did not do. But by the budget they passed, they send the message nothing else needs to be done.

The post Legislators leave money on table, opting to leave needs unmet appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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APRIL 22, 1892

Fiery civil rights pioneer Vernon Johns was born in Darlington Heights, Virginia, in Prince Edward County. He taught himself German and other languages so well that when the dean of Oberlin College handed him a book of German scripture, Johns easily passed, won admission and became the top student at Oberlin College. 

In 1948, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, hired Johns, who mesmerized the crowd with his photographic memory of scripture. But he butted heads with the middle-class congregation when he chastised members for disliking muddy manual labor, selling cabbages, hams and watermelons on the streets near the state capitol. He pressed civil rights issues, helping black rape victims bring their cases to authorities, ordering a meal from a white restaurant and refusing to sit in the back of a bus. 

No one in the congregation followed his lead, and turmoil continued to rise between the pastor and his parishioners. In May 1953, he resigned, returning to his family farm. His successor? A young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. 

James Earl Jones portrayed the eccentric pastor in the 1994 TV film, “Road to Freedom: The Vernon Johns Story”, and historian Taylor Branch profiled Johns in his Pulitzer-winning “Parting the Waters; America in the King Years 1954-63”.

The post On this day in 1892 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Legislation that would create a separate judicial district within Jackson, the state’s capital and largest city, was signed into law Friday by Gov. Tate Reeves.

Reeves had indicated earlier in the week he would sign the legislation.

House Bill 1020 generated national attention by creating a separate judicial district in the whiter and more affluent areas of Jackson, the nation’s Blackest large city. Judges in the district will be appointed by the white chief justice of the Supreme Court instead of elected by the majority Black voters.

There are questions about the constitutionality of the bill. Many have speculated it would be challenged in court because it takes the right to elect judges away from the citizens of Hinds County. The Mississippi Constitution calls for judges to be elected, though there are examples where judges are appointed on a temporary basis by the Supreme Court chief justice. Whether House Bill 1020 creates an allowable exception for usurping the electoral rights of Hinds County citizens could be decided by the courts.

The final version of the bill sent to the governor watered down the more controversial aspects of the legislation as it was introduced during the 2023 session, but it still garnered the support of only one of the 53 African American members of the Legislature.

Jackson legislators conceded the city needed help with its spiraling crime problem, but said the proposal that passed the Legislature and was signed Friday by the governor created more problems than it solved.

Debate on the proposal in both the House and Senate was racially raw.

“When you take away the right of people to elect their officials who have traditionally been elected, how else are they going to see it?” asked Rep. Ed Blackmon, a Democrat from Canton. “ … The right to vote may not mean much to some of you, but when you look at history that got us to where we are today, when it took so long and lost so many lives … ”

READ MORE: Mississippi’s racial divides were on full display as HB 1020 got its final debate and passing vote

Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, the author of the legislation, said his sole intent was to help the city of Jackson and said he resented that he was made to look like his intent was racially motivated intense during debate on the House floor.

“Gentleman, you have not been beaten for asking for the right to vote,” Blackmon said to Lamar. “You have not been locked up for asking for that. I have. Yes, I am sensitive to that.”

Rep. Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth, said he had heard from many Jacksonians who said they wanted help with crime issues facing the city.

“This is the capital city of Mississippi,” Bain said. “It belongs to each and every one of us in this room.”

He said the legislation was intended to provide that help, not to create racial divides.

In a news release, Reeves said, “This legislation won’t solve the entire problem, but if we can stop one shooting, if we can respond to one more 911 call – then we’re one step closer to a better Jackson. I refuse to accept the status quo. As long as I’m governor, the state will keep fighting for safer streets for every Mississippian no matter their politics, race, creed, or religion – regardless of how we’re portrayed by liberal activists or in the national media.”

The bill creates a separate judicial and law enforcement district within the Capital Complex Improvement District. Four judges will be appointed by Chief Justice Michael Randolph, who is white and from Hattiesburg in south Mississippi. An additional court would be created within the district to hear misdemeanor cases and to conduct preliminary hearings in felony cases.

Unlike the original version of House Bill 1020, the specially appointed judges would be for a set period of time — through 2026 — instead of being in place permanently.

The legislation gives the state Department of Public Safety the authority to send to prison those convicted of misdemeanor crimes that carry jail time. Normally such sentences are served in local jails.

The bill also provides more prosecuting attorneys and public defenders.

Companion legislation — Senate Bill 2343 —also was signed by the governor. The bill would expand the jurisdiction of a state police force both in the Capitol Complex Improvement District and the city overall. That bill also is expected to be signed.

The legislation gives a state police force primary jurisdiction within the Capitol Complex and secondary jurisdiction throughout the city.

The state is expected to have 150 state law enforcement officers patrolling in Jackson.

The post Gov. Reeves signs racially divisive HB 1020; Legal challenge could loom appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Felecia Nave is out as president of Alcorn State University, according to a press release from the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees. 

The board approved the change during executive session at its regular meeting Thursday. Ontario Wooden, the provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, will serve as interim president at the state’s oldest historically Black university, effective immediately. 

It was not clear why the board bid Nave goodbye; an IHL spokesperson did not immediately return an inquiry from Mississippi Today. IHL’s press release does not say if she resigned or if the board terminated her contract, which was set to end on June 30, 2023. Tom Duff, the board president, is quoted saying “the Board wishes Dr. Nave well as she pursues new opportunities.”

Nave’s departure makes her the fourth university president to step down or leave since June 2022. In each instance, IHL has provided little information about the circumstances surrounding those decisions — details on why presidents leave usually comes from the individuals themselves.

The first Black woman to lead Alcorn State, Nave was named president in 2019 in a unanimous decision. 

The campus was initially excited about her presidency, but some turned sour in 2021 leading to dozens of students protesting her leadership in the fall. A group of alumni called Alcornites for Change later produced a report alleging the campus faced widespread issues like declining enrollment, dozens of resignations and abysmal facilities. 

Nave did not attend IHL’s Thursday board meeting with the other university presidents — Wooden appeared in her stead.

“I want to thank you — the board, Commissioner Rankins — for your continued support of Alcorn State University,” he said. “I bring you greetings on behalf of Dr. Nave.” 

Wooden came to Alcorn State in 2020. Prior to that, he spent 12 years in administration at North Carolina Central University. 

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