Mission

The Mississippi Center for Justice is a nonprofit, public interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice. Supported and staffed by attorneys, community leaders and volunteers, the Center develops and pursues strategies to combat discrimination and poverty statewide.

The Mississippi Center for Justice was established in June 2002 as a solution to the urgent need to re-establish in-state advocacy on behalf of low-income people and communities of color. Since its beginnings, the Mississippi Center for Justice has advanced social and economic justice in Mississippi by:

preventing 65,000 poor and disabled Mississippians (PLADS) from losing healthcare;
dismantling a Jim Crow-era school board election system in the Mississippi Delta;
ending the torture of juveniles in the state’s training schools, successfully fighting for their right to counsel, and helping pass sweeping juvenile justice reform;
attacking predatory lending practices in the migrant poultry worker community;
preventing the funneling of children from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse by teaching grassroots community organizers and defense attorneys to navigate the state’s convoluted juvenile justice system; and
facilitating development of a comprehensive strategy to eliminate poverty by economic justice advocates from across the Deep South.
fighting for the fair and equitable recovery of affordable housing for the citizens of Mississippi's Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Harnessing Resources for Effective Change

Social justice movements arise and respond to an ongoing community presence. By partnering with organizations with a physical presence in Mississippi, such as the Mississippi Center for Justice, national and regional organizations can decrease their response time, strengthen community partnerships, and avoid the “carpetbagger syndrome”.

Equality continues to elude most Mississippians in the areas of housing access, fair credit, quality public education, consumer protection, voting rights, employment opportunities, and fair working conditions. The Mississippi Center for Justice provides timely legal assistance in response to these community needs by providing legal representation, advocacy updates, civil rights brochures, self-help handbooks, and lay advocacy guides. Our attorneys also serve as a technical assistance resource for community leaders and legal practitioners.

Word-of-mouth referrals, media coverage, the expansion of work throughout the state and the need for similar programs have increased demand for the Center's legal support. Other advocacy organizations, such as the Mississippi Coalition for Citizens with Disabilities, the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, the Mississippi Education Working Group, Citizens for Quality Education, AARP and Southern Echo have turned to us for legal expertise and research.

The Mississippi Center for Justice is committed to brokering these partnerships and keeping them effective. Additional regional and national support allows the Center to respond more effectively to requests for assistance.

Helping Coalitions Help Communities

The Center seeks to empower multiracial and low-income coalitions with the knowledge, skills and support needed to protect the civil rights of the state’s disfranchised communities. To supplement local community efforts, it also recruits and deploys partners to provide community leaders with legal, policy and communications strategies by recruiting and deploying partners to supplement local efforts.

Our three-pronged strategy for pursuing this mission is achieved through the work of three projects:

Access to Democracy Project: Contributes to a fully functioning democracy by using the rule of law to protect civil rights, secure a responsive and transparent state government, and promote the civic participation of low-income and minority communities.

Educational Opportunities Project: Ensures that all children have equal access to quality educational opportunities by providing parents and communities with a powerful public voice, broad access to information, and zealous legal advocacy.

Economic Justice Project: Helps the poor attain economic self-sufficiency through financial literacy, social entrepreneurship, access to healthcare, asset development, safe working conditions, fair wages, and litigation support.

In response to requests from the Mississippi advocacy community, each of the Center’s projects operates on four principles:

Partnerships with leaders throughout the state: We convene stakeholders and connect communities with legal resources.
Generating the legal community’s commitment: We work with local leaders to develop legal strategies supportive of their campaign objectives and organize legal talent to support community goals.
Making every event a “call to action” event: We convene people in a way that generates commitments and causes “breakthroughs” in enrollment of leaders and legal talent.
Seeking, celebrating, and adapting models that work: We publicize and celebrate community and legal leadership examples that serve as inspirations, role models, and blueprints for action.

Thinking Nationally, Acting Locally

The Mississippi Center for Justice's reputation as a state-based legal advocacy center furthers the missions of its national and regional social justice partners. The Mississippi Center for Justice increases the knowledge, skills, and capacity of grassroots leaders to exercise influence in policy debates, to initiate needed policy reforms, and respond to shifting policy challenges; provides legal support for grassroots organizations collaborating on common issues; and enhances the strategic alliances between grassroots groups, state intermediary organizations, and national think tanks.

The Center’s past success provides a model for study and replication throughout the South. Our programmatic success has caused our growth from a local non-profit law firm to a national and regional technical assistance provider on community lawyering issues; and national civil rights organizations to consult with our office when completing strategic planning, creating public policy agendas, and drafting legislation.

Furthering a Fair and Just Multi-racial Democracy

The South needs multiracial, grassroots legal support to improve opportunities for low-income, rural, and minority communities. At this moment, there exists a unique opportunity to address the similar disenfranchisement of blacks, poor whites, Hispanics, and persons with disabilities in the South. Working with the Mississippi Center for Justice gives partners a perspective not previously available from New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, or Los Angeles. It gives partners an intimate view of Southern politics, allowing them to more closely monitor legislation, impact regional policy, and provide resources where they are most scarce.

Leaders of social justice campaigns in the Deep South desperately need effective, sustainable, legal advocacy support at the local level. By supporting these endeavors, potential partners have a unique opportunity to distinguish themselves as innovative organizations. Supporting the community-based work of the Mississippi Center for Justice underscores a partnering organization’s commitment to community empowerment. Largely missing from Mississippi are national and regional partnerships that use law, public policy, and strategic communications to advance opportunity, equity, and access. Partnering with the Mississippi Center for Justice fills that niche, as a compliment to existing and future nonprofit programmatic efforts. The Center's addition as a community-based, racial and economic justice provider will further a partner organization’s mission and ease its efforts to have a measurable impact in the South. Most importantly, this innovative collaboration addresses a void in the Southern philanthropic landscape.