Kirksey v. Board of Supervisors of Hinds County

• Decision Date: 25 April 1975
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 4939(N).
• Citation: 402 F. Supp. 658
• Parties: Henry J. KIRKSEY et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF HINDS COUNTY et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Mississippi

402 F. Supp. 658

Henry J. KIRKSEY et al., Plaintiffs, v. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF HINDS COUNTY et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 4939(N).

United States District Court, S. D. Mississippi, Jackson Division.

April 25, 1975.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Frank R. Parker, Herman (Tex) Wilson, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, Jackson, Miss., for plaintiffs.

Thomas H. Watkins, William A. Allain, John M. Putnam, Jackson, Miss., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

NIXON, District Judge.

FINDINGS OF FACT

(1) This action was filed on July 27, 1971, for declaratory and injunctive relief against the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, the Hinds County Election Commission, and the Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee, the named plaintiffs seeking to represent a class of persons composed of "all black citizens in Hinds County, Mississippi, who are registered voters qualified to vote for candidates for the post of county supervisor, justice of the peace, constable and other county officers elected from districts in Hinds County, Mississippi." The plaintiffs, who are black registered voters of Hinds County, alleged that the redistricting of the five supervisors' districts of Hinds County in 1969 violated their rights secured by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and by 42 U.S.C. Sections 1971, 1973, and 1983, and that this Court had jurisdiction of their claims pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sections 1343, 1344, 2201 and 2202, and 42 U.S.C. Sections 1971(d) and 1973j(f).¹

More specifically, the plaintiffs challenged the 1969 Hinds County redistricting plan on the grounds that the defendants were under a duty to submit the plan to the Attorney General of the United States under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 42 U.S.C. Section 1973c, and had failed to secure the approval of the Attorney General with respect thereto (Count I); that the 1969 redistricting was a racial gerrymander drawn with the purpose and effect of diluting Black voting strength in Hinds County (Count II); and that the 1969 districts were malapportioned in violation of the one-man, one-vote rule (Count III).

(2) On August 2, 1971, after a hearing thereon, this Court denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction seeking to enjoin the defendants from conducting the 1971 county primary and general elections in Hinds County under this 1969 redistricting plan. Pursuant to the plaintiffs' request, a Three-Judge Court was designated on August 5, 1971, as required under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On July 6, 1972, the plaintiffs moved for leave to amend their complaint to dismiss Count I, primarily to avoid the duplication brought about by the filing of a complaint by the United States seeking to enforce Section 5 objections to the 1969 redistricting plan in the case of United States v. Board of Supervisors of Hinds County, Civil Action No. 4983 (Southern District of Mississippi). This Court granted the motion to dismiss Count I without prejudice and dissolved the Three-Judge Court, thereby leaving plaintiffs' Counts II and III for decision by a single Judge. (Order dated July 31, 1972).

(3) On December 15, 1972, a conference was held in this matter at which time counsel for both plaintiffs and defendants agreed that an order requiring the drawing of a new redistricting plan would obviate the necessity of a determination on the issues raised by Counts II and III of the complaint.

Accordingly, on December 26, 1972, this Court entered an Order, without objection by counsel representing any of the parties herein, which allowed the plaintiffs' Motion for Leave to Amend the Complaint to add additional parties as noted hereinabove; specifically found that there was in fact a good faith effort to redistrict Hinds County in 1969 pursuant to the Order of this Court in Smith v. Board of Supervisors of Hinds County, Civil Action No. 4483, decided December 19, 1969; that the five districts of Hinds County had substantially the same number of persons in each district when the redistricting plan of 1969 was ordered implemented; and that subsequent thereto a malapportionment of population or population variances violative of the one-man, one-vote requirement of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had developed among the five supervisors' districts as demonstrated by the 1970 census, published on March 3, 1972 by the Bureau of Census, Department of Commerce.

The defendant Board of Supervisors were therefore directed to file within six months of the date of that Order a new redistricting plan in strict accord with the requirements of the one-man, one-vote rule and the plaintiffs were given thirty days thereafter in which to file objections thereto. This Court's Order further required that "(d) said plan shall be formulated without regard to the race, creed, sex or national origin of any citizen of Hinds County, Mississippi. (e) there shall be incorporated in said plan a description of the election districts thereunder and a designation of the voting places thereunder."

(4) On June 25, 1973, the defendant Board of Supervisors filed a redistricting plan prepared by Comprehensive Planners, Inc. pursuant to this Court's Order of December 26, 1972, and within thirty days thereafter plaintiffs filed a timely objection to this plan. It was the plaintiffs' contention in the objections filed to this 1973 proposed redistricting plan that the plan constituted a racial gerrymander drawn with the purpose and/or effect of minimizing and canceling out black voting strength in the five Supervisors' districts of Hinds County, that the plan deprived black Hinds County voters of the two black majority districts which existed prior to 1969, and that the plan unconstitutionally fragmented and dispersed black population concentrations in the City of Jackson sufficiently populous and compact to form one or more black majority districts among all five districts, thus diluting black voting strength. The plaintiffs further contended that the proposed districts under the 1973 redistricting plan disregarded natural and geographic boundary lines and political subdivision lines, lacked compactness, preserved incumbents in their respective districts, unnecessarily altered existing precincts, and was based on discriminatory criteria unrelated to proper redistricting and constitutional guarantees.

(5) On January 22, 1974, this Court directed the parties to make efforts to obtain certain racial data with respect to the population of the five districts in question in order to allow this Court to properly consider the merits of the objections raised by the defendants to the 1973 proposed Board plan. Pursuant to that Order, counsel for plaintiffs and defendants employed Comprehensive Planners, Inc. to develop the required information which was admitted into evidence as Plaintiffs' Exhibits 29 through 36, inclusive, at the hearing held in this matter.

(6) On August 1, 1974, after the receipt of the racial statistics provided by the defendants' planning agent showing the racial composition of each of the defendants' proposed districts, the plaintiffs filed a proposed alternative county redistricting plan which was based on "Census Tracts". The defendants contend that the plan submitted by the plaintiffs is wholly impractical and unacceptable in that it is a racially motivated gerrymander and furthermore, that it creates two relatively small districts wholly within the City of Jackson without any county road or bridge mileage included and without any effort to utilize land areas or rural and urban populations.

(7) This action was tried before the Court on August 19 and 20, 1974, the plaintiffs calling four witnesses, Henry J. Kirksey, Dr. James W. Loewen, Dr. Gordon G. Henderson, and Johnny Ross, and presenting approximately seventy documents for introduction into evidence. The defendants called one witness, Mr. Hoyt T. Holland, Jr., and presented approximately four exhibits for introduction into evidence. This Court has subsequently carefully considered the transcript of this proceeding, the exhibits introduced into evidence, and the proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, and accompanying memoranda of law, presented by the parties in this case in support of their respective positions.

(8) The population of Hinds County, Mississippi is concentrated in and around the City of Jackson, the county seat of the First Judicial District of Hinds County and the capital of Mississippi. The remainder of the county is much less developed and populated, thus resulting in an uneven population distribution. As noted by the Fifth Circuit in the case of Moore v. Leflore County Board of Election Commissioners, 502 F.2d 621 (5th Cir. 1974), this is the situation in many areas of the South and presents an extremely complicating factor in any reapportionment equation. The case sub judice is also analogous to Moore, supra, in that the black population of Hinds County is most heavily concentrated in forty-eight contiguous, majority black census enumeration districts located in the center of the City of Jackson, containing 58,198 black persons, or 69% of the total black population of Hinds County. (Plaintiffs' Exhibits 37, 38). In Moore, supra, close to one-half of the county's blacks, one-fourth of the entire population, were concentrated in a five square mile quadrant of the county seat of the town of Greenwood.

Unlike the situation in Moore, however, the majority of the residents of Hinds County are white. According to the 1970 United States census, Hinds County has 214,973 residents, of whom 130,592 (60.75%) are white, 84,064 (39.10%) are black, and 317 (.15%) are of other races. The City of Jackson has 153,968 residents, of whom 92,651 (60.1%) are white, 61,063 (39.7%) are black, and 254 (0.1%) are of other races. (Plaintiffs' Exhibits 37, 38).

(9) The 1973 Hinds County redistricting plan approved by...