Editorial: How They Stole an Election
Written by admin on July 2, 2010 – 9:30 am -
by Anthony Witherspoon
Mississippi Tribune
June 25, 2010
Where can anyone get justice in McComb or Pike County Mississippi? The Mississippi-Tribune covered the trial of Mayor Zach Patterson versus the Selectmen of the City of McComb back in May, and to this date, Judge Michael Taylor has not rendered a decision. It is pretty obvious at this point that the justice, or should I say “just-us”, system is definitely a part of this good-ole-boy network.
Both circuit court judges David Strong and Taylor were chastising the mayor prior to hearing the facts of the case before them. Simply put, even Stevie Wonder could see what was about to happen. Before you write me off as being wrong about these two judges, ask some of the folks from the black community about the way they’ve been treated when standing before these two.
They have allowed all sorts of slanderous testimony to enter into the courtroom under the guise of the “clean hands doctrine”, in order to feed the Enterprise-Journal’s smear campaign. Remember Judge Strong first ordered the mayor to answer questions about his alleged “baby mommas”, then later changed his decision? He changed his decision because he knew it was a bad decision from the outset. Too late, “damage done”  to the mayors image in the minds of some folks (who don’t know any better). But this is only one example of how the courts conspire with the Enterprise-Journal to sway the public opinion and intimidate others about taking a stance against injustice.
Judge Strong even refused to recuse himself from presiding over the trial after the mayor’s attorney pointed to the conflict of interest that he posed by practicing law with Wayne Dowdy prior to becoming a judge.
The truth of the matter is we have black mayors and majority black boards in the cities of McComb, Summit and Magnolia, and it’s still business as usual. The white power structure is still in place because black elected officials are afraid to take charge.
It’s absolutely ridiculous to see Wayne Dowdy as the board attorney for the Town of Summit, the City of McComb, the Town of Magnolia and the Pike County Board of Supervisors. When I meet with other elected officials from around the state (black or white) and tell them of how Dowdy has monopolized the legal seats of the entire county, they marvel in disbelief.
But we, the black community, must own up to our share of the blame here. We have sat back in silence as a small group of white elitist have hijacked an election. Those of the civil rights movement who invested so much of their lives into the political advancement of black people are no doubt turning in their graves when looking at how we’ve wasted so much opportunity.
Black elected officials are sitting around the board room table, but lack the ability and the courage to govern; Dowdy’s monopoly and control is proof of that. This is no coincidence, this was done by design. The only way that the black elected officials will be able to govern the city of McComb is by the changing of the special charter to a state annotated code form of government. Anyone who knows the notorious history of Mississippi’s political “Reconstruction Period” understands how the institution of the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws and the granting of special charters to local cities were policies put in place to put black people in their place.
The mayor’s attorney Carroll Rhodes was one of the NAACP attorneys that sued segregated school districts across the state, forcing them to comply with federal desegregation laws. Shortly after private white academies were created and white flight into the out-skirts of Mississippi cities and towns occurred — whites started building their own subdivisions?
You ask why? Well, the first reason is obvious; it’s called the “Browning of America”. Census reports and other enumerating data showed a trend in blacks increasingly becoming a majority within towns and cities across America. And simply put, a lot of whites did not want to live next door to blacks who were moving into their community and attending the same schools with their children. People let’s get real, don’t get mad with me because I’m not afraid to tell the truth about it. Today we are still just as segregated as we were in the 1960’s.
The second reason for white flight was due to the fact that nearly 60% of property taxes is used to fund the public school system. White flight sent the message that whites refused to pay taxes into a school system that they did not plan to have their children attending.
White flight turned out to be a political miscalculation, especially for white elitist such as Norman Gillis, Wayne Dowdy and others businessmen who’s commercial property taxes were soon to be under the control of black elected officials. So, in the late 1980’s a decision was made to amend the charter to create a city administrator position and transfer a great deal of power and control into the hands of this individual who will be appointed by the board.  In other words the white elites had come to terms with the fact that black people, because of white flight, would now be able to elect a black mayor and predominately black board members.
The idea of the white elites was to stop spending money on election campaigns, and start using their money and influence in the boardroom to get their people into appointed positions of power: thereby maintaining control over of the city’s tax collections and distributions.
People this fight is not about the mayor. This fight is about disempowering the office of mayor now that black people have the power to elect a mayor from their own community. In spite of the attempts to disempower the mayor that we elected, Mayor Patterson has fought hard and has made tremendous accomplishments.
The Mississippi-Tribune believes in truth-telling, and that’s what we’ll be doing every week with a series of editorials about the politics of McComb during this election year. You will know the truth, and the truth will make us free.
We’ll continue this discussion next week.
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