*Mississippi still has over 30 school districts under federal desegregation orders.
The state is also looking at jails, police departments, and hate crimes in its broader civil rights work, which involves enforcing open desegregation orders, according to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, The Associated Press reports.
Clarke said the Justice Department aims to ensure school districts provide Black students in Mississippi with equal access to education programs.
“In our ongoing efforts to fulfill the promise of Brown vs. Board of Education, we currently have 32 open cases with school districts here in Mississippi,” Clarke said. “And in each of those cases, we are working to ensure that these districts comply with desegregation orders from courts.”
Last week, Clarke spoke to local residents and community leaders at the Holmes County Circuit Court Complex in Lexington as part of her “listening tour” throughout the Deep South, Yahoo reports.
As Complex reports, Clarke said the Justice Department “is learning where to direct resources and where it might need to mount civil rights lawsuits.”
She was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw segregation in public schools.
According to The AP, several Mississippi jails and prisons have come under federal scrutiny, Clarke said. A review of the facilities is underway to determine whether they provide adequate protection for prisoners from violence and if they meet national housing standards. The Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, and a Hinds County Jail are part of the investigation.
“What I hope she’ll do is seriously address the issues. Not gloss over them, say that she has heard about these violations, talk about them in detail and say that it is wrong if it is happening,” Jill Collen Jefferson, president of JULIAN, a civil rights organization, told NBC.
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