On this day in 1903
MARCH 10, 1903
Black leaders gathered at the First Baptist Church in Little Rock and demanded that Arkansas lawmakers reverse its law to have segregated streetcars. To drive their point home, they began to boycott streetcars in three Arkansas cities: Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Hot Springs. Their “We Walk” protests drew attention from newspapers and from streetcar companies, which saw the number of Black passengers plummet by as much as 90%.
The manager of one streetcar line announced that “all the trouble we have had was from whites.” White passengers became angry after sitting in parts of the streetcar where Black passengers had been forced to ride. An Arkansas Democrat editorial bashed the law as impractical.
Although the Jim Crow laws remained in place, Black leaders learned the power of such boycotts and used them elsewhere.
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Bill to put Jackson water under regional authority dies without a vote in House
A proposal to place Jackson’s troubled water system under a regional authority board — once it comes out from federal receivership — died on the House calendar without a vote with a Tuesday night deadline.
Senate Bill 2889 had met with fierce opposition from city leaders and most of Jackson’s delegation in the Legislature. Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, had amended the bill in House committee, an effort to appease a special federal court receiver now overseeing the system and city and legislative leaders who decried the regional water authority and other measures as a hostile state takeover of the capital city.
But Yates said House leaders decided to let the measure die without a House floor vote this year.
“I think there were multiple issues, but I would call it Jackson fatigue,” Yates said. “I think the sentiment was that there were going to multiple fights on the floor on multiple issues, and there’s still time to deal with this next year, look at it over the summer.”
But Yates said she still “absolutely” believes Jackson’s water system, which after decades of neglect routinely leaves residents without potable water or at times any water at all, needs new governance.
The “Mississippi Capitol Region Utility Act” would have created a nonprofit authority to control the system that covers Jackson, much of Byram and parts of Ridgeland. The nonprofit board would have included four people appointed by the Jackson mayor, three appointed by the governor and two appointed by the lieutenant governor.
In the original Senate version, the new authority would own the city’s water system. Under Yates’ changes, the city would have retained ownership and the authority would have a leasehold. Any money collected beyond what was needed to run the system would have gone to the city under Yates’ proposal.
Gov. Tate Reeves had recently weighed in on the issue, saying legislative efforts at state control of Jackson’s water system are “either a little bit too late or either a little bit premature.”
Reeves said he expects the federal conservatorship now in control of Jackson’s water system will remain for years to come, making state legislative efforts to take it over moot, at least for now.
The federally appointed administrator running the system now has estimated it will take him about five years to get the system running properly.
Opponents of the regional water authority proposal said the city should control its water system and accused those of pushing the regional authority of a money grab, with the city set to receive about $800 million in federal funds to upgrade it.
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Bill restoring ballot initiative remains alive, though some say it ‘stifles’ Mississippi voters
The Mississippi House, with most Democrats voting present, approved by a 75-9 margin on Wednesday a proposal to restore the ballot initiative process after it was struck down in 2021 by the state Supreme Court.
The measure required a two-thirds majority to pass.
Most Democrats did not want to go on record as defeating the legislation to restore the initiative, but at the same time did not want to vote for the latest proposal that they say would provide citizens fewer options to place issues on the ballot than the previous process that was struck down by the Supreme Court.
“You are not voting on an initiative process that the public wants. You are voting on a process a handful of legislative leaders want,” said Rep. Bryant Clark, D-Pickens.
Thirty-four of the 122 members, all Democrats, voted present. If they all had voted no, they could have killed the legislation. They voted present because they wanted to keep the proposal alive even if it contains provisions they oppose. Based on Wednesday’s vote, the proposal will remain alive. House and Senate leaders now will try to hammer out the differences between what the two chambers passed.
Both the House and Senate proposals, in their current form, are much more cumbersome and more restrictive than the initiative process that was struck down in 2021 by the Supreme Court.
Under both proposals, the Legislature by a simple majority vote can change or repeal the initiative approved by the electorate. And the House proposal would prevent the issue of abortion from being placed on the ballot by citizens.
Rep. Daryl Porter, D-Summit, told Rep. Nick Bain, R-Corinth, who was explaining the bill to members, that the proposal “was stifling” the rights of the citizens.
Bain said he did not believe that is the case. He said he is certain that Mississippians are anti-abortion so he saw no need to allow them to vote on the issue.
“I feel that way in my heart,” Bain said. Porter said there would be no way to verify Bain’s beliefs under the initiative process offered by the leadership.
Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, the House minority leader, said the legislation offered by the leadership is not a true initiative proposal.
“It gives the Legislature the power to change whatever the people want to do,” he said.
Rep. Hester Jackson McCray, D-Horn Lake, said the previous process that was overturned by the Supreme Court already was difficult enough for the citizens to use. She pointed out only three initiatives had been approved by the voters since it was enacted in 1992.
“The initiative process was not easy anyway. Now we as legislators are making it harder for our citizens,” said Hester McCray, who was the sponsor of an initiative to allow early voting when the Supreme Court struck down the process.
The court nullified the ballot initiative process in 2021 because it required the signatures to be gathered equally from the five congressional districts as they existed in 1990. The state lost a congressional district in 2000, making the process inoperable, the court ruled.
“The overall issue here is giving people a voice, but we want to maintain the sanctity and integrity of this body that is sent down here to make laws,” Bain said. He added it should be difficult to pass laws.
The House did quash one proposal of the House leadership on the floor Wednesday: to more than double the number of signatures needed to place an issue on the ballot. Under the proposal of House and Senate leaders, the signatures of at least 240,000 registered voters would be needed to place an issue on the ballot.
Rep. Joel Bomgar, R-Madison, successfully added an amendment to reduce the number of signatures to the same as in the process that was overturned by the Supreme Court. That process required about 110,000 or 12% of the total vote in the last gubernatorial election.
Bomgar said, “There is no possible way to gather that many signatures.”
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Bill to fully fund public education heads to House for consideration. Here’s what the changes would mean.
The Mississippi Senate on Tuesday unanimously approved two bills to change the state’s school funding formula and “fully fund” the new version, but the bills may face challenges in the House and from the governor.
The funding formula used to allocate money to public schools, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, was established by the Legislature in 1997 and has been consistently underfunded every year since 2008. MAEP funding provides the state’s share of funding for the basic operations of local school districts, ranging from teacher salaries to textbooks to utilities.
In broad strokes, the proposed changes would change the amount some districts pay towards the formula and adjust the way inflation is calculated. Every school district except five (Carroll County, Coahoma County, Laurel, Holly Springs, and Wilkinson County) would receive more money than last year from the state under the new formula, but the state would make a one-time allocation to those five districts for the first year the new formula is enacted.
READ MORE: Senate, Hosemann want to spend $181 million more to ‘fully fund’ public education in Mississippi
Chickasaw County School District Superintendent John Ellison called the new plan “a step in the right direction.”
“We got so far from full funding, it was almost like ‘How are we ever going to get there?’ So to me this was kind of a meet in the middle,” he said. “It probably has lowered the ceiling some on what full funding of MAEP looks like, but at the same time, it’s given most of us an increase in funding for next year, so that’s always a good thing for us. The other positive, too, is if they change the formula to where it’s more likely to be fully funded, then we know what to bank on each year.”
The changes to the formula do not alter the calculation of the base student cost, or the amount of money that is necessary to “adequately” educate a student, which some advocates have lauded. The base student cost is recalculated every four years and receives an adjustment for inflation each year in the intervening years — this inflation adjustment is one of the two aspects of the formula that the Senate plan changes. Under the new plan, inflation will be calculated using a 20-year average instead of current inflation rates, and the amount of costs subject to the inflation adjustment will be reduced.
Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leaksville, said the changes in inflation calculation will provide more stability for both the Legislature and school districts. Since the year-to-year cost of full funding will fluctuate less with the shift to a 20-year average, it will be easier for the Legislature to anticipate how much fully funding MAEP will cost.
“By fully funding it, which is what districts are mostly going to be keen on, I think districts can work with fluctuations in actual inflation as long as we are fully funding it,” he told Mississippi Today.
The bill would also change the portion that must be covered locally. Under the current formula, there is a provision known as the “27% rule,” which states that no school district shall bear more than 27% of the cost of public education for its schools. The new proposal would alter the percentage to 29.5%. This change would slightly increase the contribution by wealthier districts, since their property taxes generate more funds and they are the districts who benefit from this cap.
DeBar said for full funding of MAEP to be possible, some districts need to be more honest about the level of local funding they already provide, since most school districts levy property taxes above the required amount.
“In any scenario that increases the 27% threshold, by any degree, even if it’s just 2.5%, what you’re saying is, those property-wealthy districts that were benefiting from this loophole are going to benefit a little less,” said Zahava Stadler of New America, a national think tank. “It frees up state money … to be sent to districts that actually need the aid.”
Stadler said while she sees this change as positive progress, the existence of the 27% rule is still very unusual nationally. She said most states only pay the portion of their formula that local districts cannot cover through property taxes, or guarantee to cover a much smaller portion of the cost.
DeBar said this revision of the formula is “the beginning,” and the formula should be reviewed for tweaks more often, possibly each time the base student cost is recalculated.
“It’s going to be hard to make changes to the formula if we’re not fully funding it upfront,” he said.
For school districts, the biggest impact of the funding increase will be the ability to avoid budget cuts or update neglected facilities.
Adrian Hammitte, superintendent of the Jefferson County School District, said this money will save his district from making cuts to protect new curriculum resources and allow him to address damages to buildings from severe weather events over the last few years.
“Those additional funds will help us to continue to make sure that students have a safe, warm, and welcoming school environment,” he said.
DeBar emphasized the work the Senate has done over the last three years to build relationships with the education community, including advocates, administrators, and teachers as a vital part of the success of these changes.
“I think that (the unanimous passage) shows the work we put into bringing this forward, having everybody on board, has paid off,” he said.
While the proposal may have passed the Senate unanimously, the governor and some House members have expressed frustration that the proposal is being brought forward relatively late in the session.
“Be very cautious of a last minute change in funding formula that seems to have unanimous support amongst Democrats in Senate and liberal activist groups,” Reeves tweeted. “Very very cautious.”
When asked about these concerns, DeBar said that he understands people are only now getting to look at the proposal and review it, but hopes they will engage with him on any concerns they have.
“Most, if not all, of us have campaigned on being supporters of education and fully funding MAEP, and this is the vehicle that we have before us,” he said. “Is the formula perfect at this point? Some may say no, but it’s an honest effort to begin the conversation.”
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House revives state police expansion and bitter fight over Jackson ‘takeover’
The House of Representatives in a mostly partisan and racially divided vote on Wednesday revived its measure to expand the area inside Jackson where state-run Capitol Police can patrol to include neighborhoods where most of the capital city’s white citizens live.
After lengthy debate on Wednesday that served to highlight ongoing racial tension under the dome this session, the House passed Senate Bill 2343, which leaders overhauled with language that died earlier in the session that would expand the state police jurisdiction to only a specific district within Jackson, the Blackest large city in America.
The final vote was 67-45, with most white, Republican, non-Jacksonians voting for it, and all Black lawmakers, Democrats and all but one member of the Jackson delegation voting against. A few white Republicans also voted against the measure, most on grounds it would expand state government spending and state police powers.
Rep. Shanda Yates, an independent from Jackson and the only “yea” vote from Jackson’s delegation on Wednesday, said her legislation is aimed at curbing crime in northeast Jackson and helping an understaffed Jackson Police Department.
“This is simply a response to Jackson residents who live in this proposed district who want more police. That’s it,” Yates said.
The Senate passed a separate measure on Tuesday that would give Capitol Police jurisdiction inside the whole capital city, not just in a limited district like the House measure passed on Wednesday. The leaders of the two chambers would have to iron out that disagreement as the 2023 legislative session enters its final three weeks.
READ MORE: Senate passes House Bill 1020 over opposition from Jackson lawmakers
Meanwhile, bitter debate continues over several other measures that Jackson leaders, advocates and national media have labeled a hostile state takeover of governance of a majority Black city by a majority white state Legislature.
“This is the most depressing legislative session I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them,” Rep. Ed Blackmon, a Canton Democrat who has served in the Legislature for 40 years, said on Wednesday. “…The uncomfortable truth is, this has nothing to do with solving crime.”
Yates, who lives in a neighborhood already patrolled by Capitol Police after its jurisdiction was expanded last year, panned the overburdened and understaffed local Jackson Police Department during debate. She did not directly answer several questions from her fellow Jackson lawmakers about why the state has not appropriated funding for the city’s struggling police department.
“Right now, if you call 9-1-1 in Jackson, you will not get anyone at all … you will more than likely not get an answer,” Yates said in response to a question about the need for the bill.
Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, held a phone aloft during the House debate and told Yates, “We just called 9-1-1 and got an answer right away.”
“You’re lucky,” Yates responded.
Opponents of the bills to take over policing, infrastructure and other functions in Jackson say the state should provide the city resources to deal with a decades long loss of tax base, not take away its local sovereignty and create a separate police force and cordon off more white areas of the city. They say lawmakers have not, and would not, force such measures on other cities, and that such moves are a knock on Black governance.
Several Jackson lawmakers continue to point out that their white colleagues pushing this legislation have not brought them to the table to discuss how to address the city’s crime problems.
Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez, said Capitol Police, once a small force mainly charged with security in and around state office buildings downtown, doesn’t have homicide detectives, holding facilities, a 9-1-1 system or other infrastructure to police one-third of Mississippi’s largest city. He said the agency will be asking lawmakers for millions of taxpayer dollars to boost their existing presence and processes — funds he argued should go to the city or elsewhere in the state budget.
Proponents of the bills, though, say the state is trying to help with soaring crime rates, water and sewerage and other issues that have reached crisis levels.
During floor debate of her Capitol Police measure on Wednesday, Yates called it a “last-ditch effort.”
“I have constituents who will leave Jackson,” she said.
READ MORE: Constitutionality of House Bill 1020 comes into focus
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The Pulse: Supporters of transgender youth rally and express their opposition of House Bill 1125
Supporters of transgender youth rally and express their opposition of House Bill 1125 at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023.
READ MORE: Reeves signs bill banning gender-affirming care for trans minors
Mississippi health news you can’t get anywhere else.
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Constitutionality of House Bill 1020 comes into focus
A host of elected officials and attorneys who are increasingly scrutinizing House Bill 1020 say the original version of the legislation is likely unconstitutional — a point looming over lawmakers as they continue to debate and change the bill at the Capitol.
The bill, which passed the state House last month after four hours of debate, received national attention for seeking to create an appointed judiciary within the Blackest large city in the nation while all other similar judicial posts in the state are elected. It would also have broadly expanded jurisdiction of the white appointed state police department inside the Jackson city limits.
Many lawmakers have publicly argued the bill violates the U.S. Constitution because it denies a right to vote to the city’s 80%-plus Black population and allows the judges to be appointed by a white chief justice of the state Supreme Court.
“Only in Mississippi would we have a bill like this … where we say solving the problem requires removing the vote from Black people,” Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Jackson.
But Jackson Attorney Luther Munford, who specializes in constitutional law and previously served as the head of former Gov. Ray Mabus’ judicial nominating committee, recently opined the bill is unconstitutional on another level. He argues it creates a judicial system that is not allowed by the Mississippi Constitution.
“The Mississippi Constitution does not allow the displacement of elected judges. To be constitutional, the new court would have to be ‘inferior’ to elected judges and subject to their review,” Munford wrote in a recent Northside Sun op-ed. “Moreover, there is nothing in the Mississippi Constitution that would allow the chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court or anyone else to do what the bill asks, i.e. to appoint its members. The constitution does not contemplate filling any permanent judicial office by appointment, and the temporary appointing powers it gives belong exclusively to the governor.”
The permanent, appointed judiciary section recently was stripped completely from the House bill by the Senate. The Senate passed its version of the bill Tuesday, only including temporarily appointed judges to cover all of Hinds County, not just the Capitol Complex district.
The Senate version now goes back to the House, where leaders can choose to accept the Senate changes or invite conference to try to work out the differences.
READ MORE: Senate passes House Bill 1020 over opposition from Jackson lawmakers
Even though the Senate stripped the language creating the separate judicial district with the appointed judges, those provisions will remain alive this session and could be reinserted in the bill later in the process with the agreement of Senate leaders.
At one point, even Gov. Tate Reeves, who often has been critical of the elected leadership in Jackson and has brashly highlighted the city’s crime problems, seemed to question the constitutionality of the bill after it passed the House.
Reeves said in February his office was working with legislative leaders “to get to the point” where the bill provides “safety and security to the citizens of Jackson while at the same time meet(ing) constitutional muster and otherwise.” He said there was still work to do on the legislation.
But a few days later after the Senate Judiciary A Committee stripped the appointed, permanent judges from the bill, the Republican governor seemed less pleased with the proposal.
“The bill that was amended in the Senate I thought took a pretty big step back in terms of just sending money to the same entities and institutions that exist now, and I don’t think that is the right approach,” Reeves said.
When was asked if he would sign the bill in the version that passed the Senate Judiciary A Committee, Reeves said he hopes work continues on the legislation.
“I am hopeful a bill gets to me I can sign, but I don’t think it would be that one,” he said.
The Senate proposal would continue to allow judges appointed by Chief Justice Michael Randolph to hear cases in Hinds County through the end of 2026. But in 2026, a new judge would be elected and the appointed judges would be removed.
The effort is being undertaken, Republican leaders say, to help deal with crime and a backlog of criminal cases in Hinds County.
There already exists in the city of Jackson a legislatively created Capital Complex Improvement District where a state police force has jurisdiction. The House proposal would expand the district to cover more affluent and whiter areas of Jackson.
Instead of expanding the district, the Senate proposal would provide the state police jurisdiction throughout the city and require city officials and Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell to reach agreement on how that jurisdiction would work.
Many Jackson elected officials say a major problem with the Senate proposal is that it gives the final say over police jurisdiction to the state and not the city. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who oversees the Jackson Police Department, has said he will not sign a contract with the state if the current Senate proposal passes.
The author of the original House version is House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, a Repubnlican from Senatobia. He has reiterated there is no racist intent with the legislation.
“The Mississippi House is trying to help, not hurt, Jackson,” said Lamar on social media. Just two of the 38 Black members of the House voted in favor of the original proposal. No Black member of the Senate voted for the amended proposal.
Lamar argued the bill is constitutional. He said the Mississippi Constitution allows the Legislature to create “inferior courts,” and under his legislation the rulings of the appointed judges would be subject to review by the four existing elected judges in Hinds County.
But Munford said the process of appealing decisions of the appointed judges to the elected judges, as spelled out in the bill, is unworkable. Plus, the state constitution gives only the governor the authority to appoint judges — when a vacancy occurs and then only to the next election.
Lamar pointed out that state law does give the chief justice the authority to appoint judges in certain instances, such as to hear election challenges or when the judges in a district recuse themselves from the case.
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Like father, like son: The Carlyles of Yazoo City now own 13 state titles
This past week, the Yazoo High basketball Indians painted Mississippi Coliseum bright red, knocking off defending state champion Raymond 53-43 for the State 4A Boys State championship. This week, Coach Anthony Carlyle’s team finished ranked No. 1 among all high school teams in the state.
Nevertheless, today’s story begins 34 years ago when Archie Carlyle, Anthony’s daddy, coached at Northwest Rankin. Archie’s team was playing for the district championship. I was reporting the game from a folding chair on the stage right behind the Northwest Rankin bench. Beside me was a little, bright-eyed four-year old who dribbled a basketball for nearly the entire game. The boy’s name was Anthony, Anthony Carlyle, Archie’s son.
PODCAST: Like father, like son: The basketball coaching legacy of the Carlyles
During the game, which Northwest Rankin won big, Anthony would catch his daddy’s glance and Anthony’s eyes would light up in pure joy as if he were riding a bicycle for the first time. Archie would smile back before getting back to coaching. And, boy, is there a story behind the story…
At the time, Archie Carlyle was coaching not only the Northwest Rankin varsity, but the seventh, eighth and ninth grade teams as well. He was commuting from his home in Yazoo City. He was also teaching classes. And he was raising Anthony while his wife, Amanda, was living, barely, at University of Mississippi Medical Center, where she would never recover from multiple sclerosis, an evil, crippling disease of the spinal cord and brain. She died two years later.
After the game, as I was interviewing Archie, little Anthony picked up his dad’s office phone, handed it to him. “Daddy, call Mama,” the little boy said.
By then, Amanda’s illness had advanced to the stage she couldn’t speak on the phone. More to the point, she couldn’t even recognize her husband or her son. But how was Archie going to tell his little boy that?
But Archie Carlyle kept on coaching and kept on raising Anthony. Archie won hundreds and hundreds of games and seven state championships in all. His teams played man-to-man defense as if their lives depended on the outcome. They played a patient, motion offense, but could run when the situation called for it. They just won and won and won. Archie Carlyle was one hell of a basketball coach.
Anthony Carlyle practically grew up in a gym. He watched his dad’s team practice and play for years and then played for his dad, too, by then at Yazoo. The day after Anthony graduated from college he began coaching as his daddy’s assistant at Yazoo City. After several years helping his dad, Anthony moved on to take his first head coaching job at Velma Jackson where he won four state championships, and then on to Columbus where he won another in his only year there.
Then, Yazoo City called and Anthony Carlyle wasn’t sure he wanted to go back home until his dad convinced him. “You can do it here,” his dad told him. “They need you here.”
Yazoo had won eight games the year before Anthony took the job. They won nine his first year and have gotten better every season since. Now, in his fifth season back home, he won the big one. So make that six state championships for Anthony, just one short of the seven his dad won.
But then Anthony Carlyle is just 38. No telling how many he will win. He just wishes his daddy could have been there for this one. But Archie is in poor health, recovering from a stroke and some heart trouble. He couldn’t make it to the Big House last week, so Anthony took him the big gold ball trophy when he got back to Yazoo City.
“Oh man, he was happy,” Anthony said. “He had a big smile. He said, ‘Y’all did it, son. I knew you could.’”
What has the younger Carlyle, who is one hell of a basketball coach, taken from the older?
“A lot,” he answered. “Mostly his defensive principles and his game management.”
I asked Anthony if he and his dad are keeping the father-son score. I mean, his dad still has the lead in state championships seven to six.
Anthony smiled. “Nah, I told him I give him credit for all 13,” the son said. “He gave me the blueprint for how to be successful at this. He gets all 13.”
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