Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era prohibitions on allowing people convicted of certain crimes to vote will remain after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the case today.
Despite being a 38% Black state, the Mississippi Senate has just 12 Black members, who represent 23% of the 52-member body.
The Mississippi Center for Justice is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Jim Crow voting law that Mississippi’s white-supremacist leaders adopted in 1890 in an attempt to disenfranchise Black residents for life.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted to uphold a Jim Crow law that Mississippi’s white-supremacist leaders adopted in 1890 in an attempt to disenfranchise Black residents for life.
For six hours on Thursday, Black Mississippi House representatives argued against a bill that would set limits on discussions of race in classrooms.
U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Black Democrat, was the lone Mississippi member to vote in favor of removing monuments devoted to white supremacists from the halls of the nation’s Capitol today. A 285-120 majority passed the bill, House Resolution 3005, this evening with all 120 nay votes coming from Republican members, including two from Mississippi.
The Poor People’s Campaign’s “Third Reconstruction” resolution highlights what it calls a congressional failure to elevate the poor through social programs, voting-rights expansion and the elimination of systemic racism. It details suggested solutions for each of these problems, including an increase in the long-stagnant federal minimum wage, provisions to expand insurance coverage, a large-scale reduction of student debt and prison reform.
It’s like it happened yesterday. Fifty-five years ago, I was watching the news in my parents’ home in Gary, Ind., when I saw the news that James Meredith had been shot. I couldn’t know then that some day I’d be married to the man gunned down in the middle of a Mississippi road for demanding equality for Black Americans.
A century after white Mississippi women gained the right to vote, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith reminded Black Mississippians of feminism’s painful past last week when she insinuated that the For The People Act, a new federal voting rights bill, could diminish women’s gains.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MS 39201
[email protected]
[email protected]
601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).