Victor McTeer
Columnist
Every four years following the election of the president, the government releases “The Plum Book,” a listing of more than 7,000 jobs that the President-Elect will fill during his or her term of office.
President-elect Obama and his transition team will have the monumental opportunity to fill thousands of federal jobs in every state and all over the world. The Plum Book, however, does not include the federal judiciary, including the lifetime appointments of judges to serve in the United States District Courts, Courts of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. In the months and years to come, appointments to these positions will be made by this president as current members of the federal courts reach the mandatory retirement age of 70.
Frankly, I hope that this president remembers the black folk of the rural Mississippi Delta when he considers making his appointments. Any change will be a change for the better because past presidential appointments of African-Americans from the rural Mississippi Delta to patronage, supervisory, judicial or policymaking positions have been of two kinds – few and rare.
It’s not like presidents don’t know the rural Delta has talent. When Georgia Governor, Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, Hodding Carter III, editor of Greenville’s own Delta Democrat Times Newspaper was picked to become White House “press secretary.” In 1985, President Ronald Reagan selected Yazoo City native, Haley Barbour, to become his White House “political director.” When Texas Governor, George W. Bush became president, Delta businessman and banker, Mike Retzer was tabbed to become United States ambassador to the African nation of Tanzania. But similar appointments of African-Americans from the rural Mississippi Delta have been few and far between.
Only President William Jefferson Clinton seemed to have recognized the possibilities of African-American appointment when he selected Congressman Mike Espy of Yazoo City to serve as secretary of agriculture.
It is even more troubling that after years of African-American support for successful and unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidates so few Delta blacks have been selected for presidential job appointment.
Consider, for example the federal judiciary of Mississippi. Only one African-American has ever been appointed to the federal bench in the entire State of Mississippi – Hon. Henry Wingate who serves in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi in Jackson.
Meanwhile in the Northern District of Mississippi, a region encompassing the largely African-American population of the rural Delta so loyal to the Democratic Party, no African-American has been selected to hold the position of district judge even though blacks in the region have ably served as attorneys and elected state trial court judges for years.
When was the last time that you recall an African-American being appointed from a rural Mississippi Delta County to any federal patronage, supervisory or policy-making position?
What about appointments to some of the jobs that really affect us on a day to day basis in federal agencies like the United States Postal Service, Agricultural Research Service, the Department of Agriculture, Homeland Security, Army or Air Force, the Judiciary, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Farm Credit Administration, the Delta Regional Authority, the Small Business Administration, the Veterans Administration, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, just to name a few.
No larger contiguous group of citizens in this State has remained a more consistent voting bloc favoring Democratic presidential and other party candidates than the rural African-American population of the Mississippi Delta.
The people of the Delta have supported the party when Democrats have won and when they have lost. It is long past time for a president elect to make meaningful appointments of African-Americans residing in the rural Mississippi Delta to federal supervisory, policymaking, judicial and patronage positions.
The Delta can produce great federal appointees – folk like Mrs. Minnie Geddings Cox who was appointed post-mistress in tiny Indianola Mississippi at the age of 22 by the President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison in 1891. She was reappointed by President William McKinley and, reappointed again by President Theodore Roosevelt until she was forced to resign when a racist Mississippi governor instigated white citizens’ violence against Ms. Cox and her family if the African-American woman dared to continue to hold the position. So ended the tenure of the first African-American woman to head a Postal Office.
Today, there are many able and competent people in rural Mississippi, like Minnie Cox, and they deserve the consideration and support of their President.
It’s time for change. Time is long past for those who think the Delta is a deep dark hole whose pool of qualified possible appointees is limited to one race and not all. Look again.
We stockpile brilliant people who have been ignored for generations. The same Delta that produced talented white citizens who have served as judges, press secretaries or chiefs of staff, has birthed minorities who can serve the same roles and even more. If Republicans can turn an esteemed white hamburger salesman into an ambassador, than is a respected world traveler like former Mayersville Mayor and author, Unita Blackwell, any less qualified to be appointed ambassador to England.
President Obama does not need to go to Jackson to find competent and able professionals to fill federal posts including judgeships. In the Delta there are talented and brilliant judges and lawyers available to serve on the federal bench – both male and female- with records of experience and capability.
African-Americans of the rural Delta remain the often ignored but talented majority of this region. Like Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” they are often treated as if seen but unseen – necessary but unrewarded. We remain the loyal Democrats who have consistently cast our ballots for Democratic presidential candidates without reward in good times and bad. It’s time for a change.
As we celebrate the victory and buy the Obama commemorative coins, paintings and rugs inscribed with the picture of the handsome young man and his family, maybe we should stop and ask this question. Can a qualified and able African-American from a rural Mississippi Delta county finally be appointed to the federal bench in North Mississippi or become an ambassador, or serve as head of the Delta Development Agency or head the Agricultural Research Service in Stoneville or be appointed state director of any federal agency such as the Department of Agriculture or the Small Business Administration or the Farm Credit Administration or . . . all of the above?
I pray that the new President-Elect will soon answer that question with a resounding – “YES WE CAN.”
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
The reader may access the 2008 “Plum Book” online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plumbook/2008/index.html
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