Discrimination Against White Voters Down In Mississippi?

Source: ABC News

The Justice Department is using the 1965 Voting Rights Act in a case of white voter discrimination in a rural county in Mississippi. This is a first.

There's a guy who is accused of intimidating white voters for several years, and a clerk has been accused of rejecting white absentee ballots while accepting ones from black citizens.

It's so strange, really. While racial hatred goes both ways (and I'm saying this from personal experience), I'm not sure what to think about this.

Ike Brown is a legend in Mississippi politics, a fast-talking operative both loved and hated for his ability to turn out black voters and get his candidates into office.

That success has also landed him at the heart of a federal lawsuit that's about to turn the Voting Rights Act on its end.

For the first time, the U.S. Justice Department is using the 1965 law to allege racial discrimination against whites.

Brown, head of the Democratic Party in Mississippi's rural Noxubee County, is accused of waging a campaign to defeat white voters and candidates with tactics including intimidation and coercion. Also named in the lawsuit is Circuit Clerk Carl Mickens, who has agreed to refrain from rejecting white voters' absentee ballots considered defective while accepting similar ballots from black voters.

Brown shakes off the allegations.

"They've been trying to target me for years, the attorney general and all them, because we're so successful," the 52-year-old says. "Hey, if you're a failure, nobody will mess with you. But we're successful in east Mississippi."

The Justice Department complaint says Brown and those working with him "participated in numerous racial appeals during primary and general campaigns and have criticized black citizens for supporting white candidates and for forming biracial political coalitions with white candidates."

Whites once dominated county politics here, but now only one white person holds countywide office, and he says Brown tried to recruit an out-of-county black candidate to run against him three years ago.

Apparently, Brown has the same judge he had in another case years ago.

Brown, a former tax preparer, served 21 months in prison in the 1990s on a felony conviction of preparing fraudulent federal income-tax returns. He retained his right to vote. The same federal judge who handled his earlier trial is now overseeing the Justice Department case.

The person who brought this to the attention of the Justice Department is the one white guy from earlier who holds office.

The main white person who makes the claim is Ricky Walker, the county prosecuting attorney who believes Brown recruited an opponent for him simply because he's white, an action Walker called "racist."

Walker says that when he qualified to run again in 2003, Brown brought in a black lawyer from another part of the state to run against him. A circuit judge found that the lawyer, Winston James Thompson III, had not established residency, and Thompson was not allowed on the ballot.

"I think he just wanted to have a person in that office that he had some control over, a black person," Walker says.

Strange, indeed. Opinions, anyone? I'd especially love to hear from people who either live in the area or know someone who does.

Tags: [Justice Department], [Mississippi], [Noxubee County], [1965 Voting Rights Act], [Voting Rights Act being used in Mississippi case for white voter discrimination], [discrimination against white voters?], [Ike Brown], [Circuit Clerk Carl Mickens], [Ricky Walker], [Winston James Thompson III]