When Mississippi lawmakers met in 1861 and voted to secede from the union in an effort to continue enslaving people, they did so in what is now known as the Old Capitol Museum. From 1839 to 1903, lawmakers met at a building that witnessed some of the state’s most racist history.
And now, on 20 May, when members of Mississippi’s house convene for a special session to redraw state supreme court districts, they will do so at the Old Capitol, ostensibly because of renovations in the house chamber.
Jason White, Mississippi’s Republican house speaker, told local outlet WLBT that any special session called between now and January 2027 would be held in the Old Capitol house chamber. The state senate will still use the new capitol building.
The last time lawmakers met at the Old Capitol was in 2009, when they did so to ceremonially acknowledge restoration to the building, which had been damaged during Hurricane Katrina. When lawmakers have needed to meet outside the current capitol building previously, during extensive renovations in the 1980s, they met at the old Central high school building, also in downtown Jackson.
For some, the house’s decision to use the Old Capitol now is troubling.
“I was a little taken aback with the location of the Old State Capitol,” Kabir Karriem, a Democratic state representative who leads the Mississippi’s legislative Black caucus, said. “Even though they said that they were doing some remodeling, the optics of it are horrific for 1.2 million Black folks here in the state of Mississippi.”
Prior to the supreme court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais last week, which severely weakened section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Mississippi governor Tate Reeves called lawmakers back to Jackson to redraw the state’s three supreme court districts. Many legislators predict that lawmakers will redraw districts to dilute Black voting strength.
Donald Trump has also called for the Mississippi legislature to redraw congressional districts in an attempt to target Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s lone congressional Democrat, who chaired the January 6 committee hearings, even though primaries have already been held.
Using the Old Capitol at this time “feels like it’s almost a deliberate or intentionally cruel attempt, even if that’s not the way it’s being presented on its face”, said Safia Malin, policy director for One Voice Mississippi, a civic engagement organization.
“It feels like a cool reminder of our past as it relates to regaining full citizenship in the state and the path that we’re moving towards,” she said.
White supremacist lawmakers met there to establish the state’s 1890 constitution, which implemented Jim Crow and disenfranchised Black Mississippians for generations. More than 40,000 Black Mississippians are disenfranchised today due to those laws, which lawmakers at the time said were created solely to limit Black voting power.
Cheikh Taylor, the chair of the Mississippi Democratic party and a statehouse representative, said that the special session was about “power, and making sure Black Mississippians never have enough of it to threaten the people who currently hold it.
“And now they plan to do it in the Old Capitol, the same building where Mississippi voted to secede from the Union over slavery, and where white supremacist delegates crafted the 1890 Constitution that stripped Black citizens of their voting rights and ushered in decades of poll taxes, literacy tests and racial terror,” Taylor said in a statement. “Rep Kabir Karriem is right. It is a slap in the face to the 1.2 million African Americans in this state. It is also a confession. They are returning to the scene of the crime to try and finish the job.”
