The mayor of Mississippi's capital was secretly recorded saying that a proposed state takeover of the municipal water system was intended to help "make the city no longer Black" — prompting one council member to accuse him of injecting race into the debate.
"To turn it into a race thing I think is a mistake," Jackson City Council Member Ashby Foote told the Clarion Ledger newspaper in a report Monday. "I don't think that serves anybody's interest to try and twist this as if it's all about race. It's really about clean drinking water."
Foote, who is white, also called Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba's comment "adversarial" and an "overreach," the Clarion Ledger said.
Foote, a Republican, was the only member of the majority-Democrat council willing to address the remark made by the Democratic mayor in 2022, the Clarion Ledger said.
Lumumba's comment surfaced in June during a civil trial over the 2022 firing of a city water official, local TV station WLBT reported at the time.
Lumumba told the former official, who made the recording, that there was a "coordinated effort" to take over Jackson's troubled water treatment plant that was "bigger than the little politics that we get into."
"If that happens, that is going to be the first step of trying to make the city no longer Black," Lumumba said.
Lumumba, who is Black, has stood by that assertion, saying during a July 8 news conference that it was "consistent with everything I've always said," according to the Clarion Ledger.
"Let me say this unequivocally, just in case anyone's confused or it's not clear: I am proud that I live in a majority-Black city and I don't apologize for that," Lumumba said. "Now, does that mean that I have any ill intent or ill will or any designs against anybody else? Absolutely not."
Jackson's largest water treatment plant was knocked out by flooding in August 2022, leaving more than 150,000 residents without safe drinking water for weeks.
President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency and the federal government earmarked $600 million to stabilize and rebuild the city's aging and dilapidated water system.
Retired engineer Edward "Ted" Henifin, a former director of public works in Hampton, Virginia, was also named the water systems' interim manager under an agreement between the city, state Department of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Last year, the Republican-controlled state Senate passed a bill to transfer control of the water system to a regional board but the measure died in the state House, according to the Associated Press.
In March, the state Senate passed a slightly modified version of the bill, which Lumumba has called an attempt by the majority-white, Republican-controlled Legislature to seize control from a majority-Black city, AP said.
That bill failed to pass in a House committee the following month, according to the LegiScan website.
