Gov. Tate Reeves has called lawmakers back to Jackson on May 20 for a special session to redraw Mississippi’s three state Supreme Court districts, and House leaders plan to convene in the Old Capitol Museum, the House announced.
Black lawmakers told Mississippi Today that moving the redistricting debate to the Old Capitol — where the 1890 state constitution that disenfranchised Black voters was drafted — is insulting and tone deaf. Rep. Kabir Karriem, who leads the Legislative Black Caucus, called the decision “a slap in the face to the 1.2 million African Americans in this state,” Mississippi Today reported.
The House is relocating because its chamber in the current Capitol is undergoing renovations, House leaders said. The Senate plans to meet in the current Capitol. A federal judge ruled last year that the state unlawfully diluted Black votes in its Supreme Court districts and allowed the Legislature to redraw them, the judge’s ruling shows. After the U.S. Supreme Court last week narrowed federal Voting Rights Act protections, Reeves ordered lawmakers to return to Jackson to redraw the lines, Mississippi Today reported.
The Mississippi Department of Archives and History says lawmakers met in the Old Capitol from 1839 to 1903. The agency noted that legislators voted there in 1861 to secede from the Union, that the state’s first Black lawmakers served there during Reconstruction, and that white supremacist delegates later used the building to craft the 1890 constitution and impose Jim Crow laws.
Some lawmakers said the move is not malicious but is nonetheless striking. Rep. John Faulkner said meeting in the Old Capitol is “ironic” given the timing, and Rep. John Hines, a member of the House Management Committee, said logistics and cost guided the decision. “We didn’t get elected to debate locations,” Hines said. Mississippi Today reported that President Donald Trump has pressed Reeves to add congressional redistricting to the special session agenda, an effort critics say could target the state’s lone congressional Democrat, Rep. Bennie Thompson.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
