Black Voters Sue Mississippi Over Its Shameful Jim Crow-Era Election Law

Mississippi voters will be choosing a governor and other statewide offices in November under a unique set of election rules that date to the 19th century. A federal lawsuit by four African-American citizens is challenging the system as racially discriminatory.

The target of the lawsuit is what was called "The Mississippi Plan," codified in the state's 1890 Constitution "to take political power out of the hands of African-Americans, and it was extremely effective," says Paloma Wu, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mississippi office.

The constitutional convention was called after Reconstruction when AfricanAmericans were winning elected office after the Civil War. The framers explicitly stated, "It is the manifest intention of this Convention to secure to the State of Mississippi 'white supremacy,' " according to the journal of the proceedings. []

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