Citing rising crime, Mississippi’s Republican-controlled House recently passed a bill expanding areas of Jackson patrolled by a state-run Capitol Police force and creating a new court system with appointed rather than elected judges.
“I have some cousins that live in Ohio,” said Norris, 54, who now owns the restaurant. “They came last year. They hadn’t been here in 22 years. They were completely shocked at Jackson.”
“It’s really a stripping of power and it’s happening in a predominantly Black city that has predominantly Black leadership,” said Sonya Williams-Barnes, a Democratic former state lawmaker who is now Mississippi policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund. “You don’t see this going on in other areas of the state where they’re run by majority white people.
The appointed judges would not be required to live in Jackson or even the county where it’s located. They would be appointed by the chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court — a position currently held by a white conservative from outside Jackson. The state-run Capitol Police department has been involved in several violent incidents, including the shooting death of a Black man during a traffic stop and a crash that killed another Black man during a police chase.
“It’s a way to disempower Jackson and its citizens,” said Primm, whose storefront window displays a handwritten sign: “Jim Crow Must Go” — a phrase on T-shirts that Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers had in his car the night a white supremacist assassinated him in Jackson in 1963.
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Black Mississippi capital distrusts plans by white officialsRandom gunfire, repeated break-ins and a decaying city water system are constant challenges at Mom’s Dream Kitchen, the soul food restaurant Timothy Norris’ mother opened 35 years ago in Mississippi’s capital. Citing rising crime, Mississippi’s Republican-controlled House recently passed a bill expanding areas of Jackson patrolled by a state-run Capitol Police force and creating a new court system with appointed rather than elected judges. Both would give white state government officials more power over Jackson, which has the highest percentage of Black residents of any major U.S. city.
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Black Mississippi capital distrusts plans by white officialsMississippi’s Republican-controlled House recently passed a bill that would expand areas of Jackson patrolled by a state-run police force and create a new court system with appointed judges, giving white officials more power over the majority-Black city.
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Black Mississippi capital distrusts plans by white officialsPeople in Mississippi’s majority-Black capital city say the mostly white state Legislature is trying to encroach on their rights of self-government.
Weiterlesen »
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