The Battle Over Black Representation in a White Mississippi County

DeSOTO COUNTY, Mississippi. — Hester Jackson-McCray witnessed the beginning of the economic boom in this Mississippi Delta county when she moved south from Chicago in 1999.

Year after year, she has watched the county attract newcomers and grow culturally and economically, cotton fields giving way to subdivisions and shopping centers.

Other Black families like hers — from the rural Delta to Tennessee — were drawn to DeSoto for the promise of jobs, better schools, healthcare access, and proximity to the airport in Memphis, Tennessee.

But they are encountering roadblocks that make it much harder to build political power here.

The county’s Black population has grown from roughly 11% in 2000 to 36% today. In response, the state legislature created two new judgeships as part of its redistricting plan, to be filled by this upcoming November election. The shift is meant to give Black voters greater representation on the bench, but that gain is now under legal attack: White voters have sued in federal court to cancel the upcoming election.

The challenge in DeSoto County mirrors a broader pattern across the South, where states have moved to eliminate Black voting districts following the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and cleared the way for Republican lawmakers across the region to dismantle heavily Black districts. Black voters and civil rights groups — including the ACLU of Mississippi and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, representing the DeSoto County NAACP and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. — are fighting to preserve the election.

Last week, they won part of the battle when a judge ruled that the November judicial election will take place, against the wishes of four white residents. But with only about 10 weeks before the election, it’s not clear whether the war is over.  

The litigation is ongoing, and the case will proceed to a trial; however, the schedule has not been set yet. The white voters could appeal the judge’s decision to a higher court, and what the Black voters in the county have been fighting for could be delayed, once again, or removed with the stroke of a pen.  

The ruling is a rare victory for Black voters in the South, coming just months after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais. Although judicial elections are nonpartisan, this case is a litmus test for what happens when the Black population increases and pushes for more representation, candidates, elected officials, and attorneys told Capital B. 

Sara Rohani, assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, one of the legal teams representing Black voters, says this is one of the first lawsuits post-Callais in which residents are suing in response to redistricting that empowers majority-Black districts.

“I think this is foreshadowing what could potentially come throughout the country,” she added. “The next census comes out in 2030, and legislatures are required to redistrict. We can expect to see that this is going to be something that happens over the next few years.”

For Jackson-McCray, diverse representation is long overdue, and she sees last week’s legal win as a step in the right direction. When she became the first Black state representative from DeSoto County in 2023, she recalls how citizens outside her district called to discuss their concerns.

“They must remember that the population is growing, and we want some representation,” she said. “It’s fine for y’all to represent us for certain things, but we need our own representation. Somebody they can call and call their own.”

The circuit and chancery court candidates

Longtime DeSoto resident John Hughes has been going door-to-door meeting residents where they are for months. He’s running for circuit judge, but he says some voters didn’t even know there was a judicial election. 

Other voters didn’t want to talk about the new subdistrict. He didn’t know why, but it didn’t stop him from wanting to educate people about the circuit court’s role. It was too crucial, he says. In Mississippi, circuit courts hear civil and felony criminal cases that involve claims over $200. It can also review appeals from county courts and decisions made by county supervisors and municipal governments.

“When [citizens] step into the courtroom, it’s important when you can see a representation of yourself because you see someone who has shared experience,” Hughes continued. “That shared experience gives them an opportunity to understand what your plight may be in that situation, and that’s important because that weighs into how justice is served.”

Hughes is running against Lucious Edwards. In the second race, Gwendolyn Baptist is running against Malenda Harris Meacham, the only white candidate, for chancery court judge. Chancery courts hear cases involving divorce, child support, wills, and estates, as well as property disputes. It can also hear appeals from the county court.

Capital B reached out to all the candidates, but did not hear back from Edwards, Baptist or Harris Meacham by the time of publication.

A legal fight a year in the making

The lawsuit stems from House Bill 1544 and Senate Bill 2768, signed into law last year and set to take effect in January 2027. 

The Mississippi Constitution requires the Legislature to redraw its circuit and chancery courts districts across the state within five years of every census. As a result of redistricting, the Legislature split several counties into subdistricts to account for population growth and caseload data. 

One of those counties is DeSoto. 

Because of its significant growth, it gained its own chancery and circuit court, and the Legislature allocated two judges to be elected by voters in Horn Lake and Southaven, two Black cities. However, those judges will serve countywide. 

Currently, DeSoto has three circuit court judges and two chancellors — each will gain a seat after the election. The voting-age population in the new district is 50% Black and 41% white, compared with DeSoto County’s entire voting-age population, which is 25% Black and 67% white, according to the complaint. 

In July, the plaintiffs — Robert Foster, a sitting county supervisor and former state representative; Katie Ligon; Kirby Carter; and John T. Williams — sued the state. They argued that the laws are “racially motivated and mathematically problematic,” because voters who don’t reside in the subdistrict can’t cast a ballot for the judges, according to their original complaint. 

Unlike the other plaintiffs, Carter does live in the subdistrict and claims that, as a white voter, her vote is diluted based on race. 

“The Mississippi Legislature exceeded its constitutional authority, as the creation of the Majority-Minority Subdistrict benefits only the private Black citizens,” the plaintiffs wrote.

The plaintiffs asked the judge to declare the district unconstitutional, strike it down, order a new special election, and grant a preliminary injunction to speed up a ruling. 

Channing Curtis, counsel for the plaintiffs, did not respond to multiple requests from Capital B.

On Aug. 13, U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock rejected the plaintiffs’ requests and warned that granting them would risk voter confusion at this stage. She cited Purcell v. Gonzalez, a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled federal courts should not alter election rules when an election is too close.

Aycock also wrote that the plaintiffs did not show how the legislation was passed with “unequal treatment” stemming from discriminatory intent. Nor did they present evidence to show white voters are unable to select the candidates of their choice.

“It is clear that race was discussed by members of the Mississippi House of Representatives. But the problem with the Plaintiffs’ theory is that that fact alone is insufficient,” Aycock wrote. “The Plaintiffs must do far more than point to a map they dislike.”  

The growth doesn’t equal representation

The largest cities in DeSoto County — Olive Branch, Southaven, and Horn Lake — are connected by Getwell Road, the busiest and most congested street. Despite industrial growth and a growing Black population, representation has not kept pace.

In DeSoto, no Black person holds a countywide office, except Republican Thomas Tuggle II, elected in 2023 as the county’s first Black sheriff since Reconstruction.

However, others have won elections on the local and state level.

Last year, Theresa Gillespie-Isom became the first Black and female state senator elected from the county, which flipped the Republican supermajority in the chamber. In 2023, Rodney Hall, a military veteran, became the state’s first Black Republican representative since Reconstruction. In 2017, librarian LaShonda Johnson became the first Black woman to win an elective leadership position in municipal government, becoming an alderwoman in Horn Lake.

Johnson grew up in the county and only saw white leadership. It was an unspoken rule that “those are the people who are in charge,” she said. “It’s only right and fair that you see people, your neighbors, are represented by people who look like them.”

She knew she wanted to make a difference. First, she ran in 2013, but didn’t get elected. While out canvassing with her father, a white man looked at her and firmly said, “Get away from my porch.”

She tried again, and finally won. But it wasn’t without racist remarks from white people.

“One of the previous aldermen, who is no longer with us, said, ‘I knew we’d get one.’ And he slapped the table and said, ‘A Democrat’ and started laughing,” she recalled.

However, she isn’t fixated on the racial tension. She says she’s received support from others — Black and white. Johnson believes the new subdistrict signals progress.

Hughes agrees. 

For the county to be as progressive as its development and diversity, Black voters need a chance to be heard with their ballots and beyond, Hughes says.

“That doesn’t make it wrong. It just makes it a different way of approaching things,” he said. “I think that the realization that everybody has to come to is that in our governmental system in DeSoto County, everybody is going to eventually have a voice. We’ve got to all be comfortable with that.”

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