Mississippi AG has Few Black Lawyers on Staff in State with Highest Black Population
- Staff
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
“Every government agency should reflect the population”
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who signed on with letters opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices at companies and investment firms, reveals herself to be a reason DEI exists.
Black Girl Times information requests to the Mississippi Attorney General’s office revealed a total of 26 attorneys working in three of Fitch’s biggest departments in June. These include the Consumer Protection division, the Public Integrity Division and the federally co-funded Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
Information from the Mississippi Personnel Board reveals, however, that of these 26 attorneys, only two are African American.
“The absence of nonwhite people in an office that is supposed to be responsible for justice for all is a problem in the 21st century,” said Mississippi attorney Jaribu Hill. “Every government agency should reflect the population.”
Mississippi is nearly 40 percent African American.
Sources speaking with BGX complained when Fitch arrived on the scene, she hired mostly white attorneys at higher starting pay, which catapulted their incomes over that of many veteran African American attorneys left from the administration of former Democratic AG Jim Hood.
In 2020, Mississippi Today wrote that white women working in Fitch’s office saw a median salary increase of $9,500 while the median salary of Black women dropped about $1,200 since Fitch entered the AG’s office in 2020.
Sources speaking with BGX complained when Fitch arrived on the scene, she hired mostly white attorneys at higher starting pay, which catapulted their incomes over that of many veteran African American attorneys left from the administration of former Democratic AG Jim Hood.
Fitch’s office did not respond to follow-up questions for this article.
As Mississippi’s only woman working in statewide office, Fitch has disparaged the need for DEI initiatives in government and workplaces. A letter she singed in 2023 addressed to investment firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. describes diversity encouragement as “morally repugnant and anti-American.” Fitch also added her name to a letter addressed to “Fortune 100 CEOs,” claiming “race discrimination in employment and contracting … violates state law.”
The only two Black employees in the three departments that BGX researched work in the AG’s Public Integrity Division. As of July, Fitch had no Black employees filling attorney roles in her Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, despite that department being funded by a 75% match from the U.S. government.
While Black residents make up 38% of the population of the state of Mississippi, they comprise more than 60% of its prison population.
Critics say the absence of diversity in a prosecutor’s office, like the AG, can aggravate the state’s incarcerated racial disparity even further.
“There’s an incredible amount of discretion in a prosecutorial office,” said Dawn Blagrove, executive director of Emancipate North Carolina. “Here in North Carolina our prosecutors have an incredible amount of power to decide who gets charged and what kind of charges they get, and all of that plays into the way systemic and institutional racism works.”
Prosecutors in the Mississippi Attorney General’s office, for example, have the discretion to funnel certain cases into either felony or lesser, civil actions because state and federal law does often prevent them from picking and choosing which offenses to consider. The decision whether to press for charges that could culminate in 10 years of incarceration or a slight $2,000 fine for a particular suspect is largely up to the attorney and the chief attorney presiding over the caseload.
Blagrove said it’s no surprise the decision to pursue a minor fine or prosecute to the fullest extent of the law can come down to how well the prosecutor feels they relate to you.
“It may not even be a conscious bias,” Blagrove told BGX. “If you look like the kid living down the street from me it’s easier for me to see you having a future. But if I don’t see myself in you, it’s much easier to demonize you, to criminalize you and to read into all the racist tropes that make up America.”
“Just having Black folks and Hispanic folks in the room during these conversations [between lawyers] changes the tenor of those conversations,” she added. “I know what it’s like to be the only person in the room that’s advocating for fairness all the time. I stayed at my last job for many years, and for the last two I was only there because I felt I had to be in the room — because I could only imagine the shift in the way the clients would be treated if I wasn’t there.”