Reuben V. Anderson
Center for Justice

ABOUT US

The Reuben V. Anderson Center for Justice was established to honor the life and legacy of Justice Reuben V. Anderson, who was the first African-American graduate of the University Of Mississippi School Of Law and the first African-American county court judge, circuit court judge, and Mississippi Supreme Court Justice.

The Center seeks to address systemic issues of educational inequity and poverty in Mississippi through the same legal efforts that Justice Anderson pioneered almost 50 years ago as a prodigious civil rights litigator, following his matriculation at Ole Miss Law, as part of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. Such transformational work is indicative of Justice Anderson’s lifelong commitment to the social and economic uplift of Mississippi.

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Our Mission

The Reuben V. Anderson Center for Justice was established to address systemic poverty and economic injustice through the programs in poverty reduction, educational advancement, criminal justice, access to quality health care, community and economic development, and protecting the legal rights of children. The Center is the first of its kind in Mississippi to address the intersection of race, poverty, educational inequity and economic justice.

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PROGRAM OFFERINGS

Community & Economic Development

One of the major planned initiatives of the Anderson Center is our Community Organization, Resource, and Education (CORE) Project in which we plan to partner with rural communities, nonprofit organizations, and local government, to implement community projects and provide services that include research, strategic planning, education and training in the four areas: (1) access to quality health care; (2) rural community and economic development; (3) educational advancement; and (4) financial and nonfinancial resource acquisition and allocation.

Education Advocacy

The Center, through a partnership with Mississippi College School of Law, has founded the Reuben V. Anderson Education Law and Policy Clinic. Since 2019, the clinic has worked with law students at MC Law and focused on providing pro bono representation to low-income youth in school disciplinary hearings, expulsion and suspension hearings, youth court hearings, as well as special education matters throughout the state of Mississippi. The clinic also plans to engage in impact litigation and legislative and grassroots policy advocacy related to broader issues of educational inequity.

Public Policy, Criminal Justice, & Other Initiatives

The Center also plans to establish a partnership with Tougaloo College to establish the Reuben V. Anderson Institute for Social Justice. The Reuben V. Anderson Public Policy Institute at Tougaloo will focus on four areas: (1) Educational Equity; (2) Economic Justice; (3) Public Health Inequity; (4) Criminal Justice; and (5) Leadership Development. The Institute will work with Tougaloo students in the Reuben V. Anderson Pre-Law Program to implement the following policy initiatives:

• Working on a project called Born 2 Lead that would be a pilot project targeted toward formerly incarcerated, disengaged youth and adults to provide transition services, career and job training and placement, academic enrichment and community service • Working with Delta Health Partners (DHP) of Owens Health & Wellness Center at Tougaloo to implement an Infant Mortality Initiative to partner the nurses and social workers of DHP to train nursing and social work students at the local colleges and universities to expand the number of nurse/social worker visits to indigent teenage mothers in order to address infant mortality issues as well as expanding community outreach; pilot project will be in Bolivar County • Developing a pilot project with the Mississippi Department of Human Services to use the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) grant to provide a State Earned Income Tax Credit for working families as well as develop worker-owned cooperatives and pilot state job-guarantee for long-term unemployed citizens of Mississippi • Developing a pilot project called I-Serve to provide academic enrichment and after-school tutoring to black, middle school students who are members of the Arts Infusion Brotherhood (AIB) and Arts Infusion Sister (AIS) sponsored by Greater Jackson Arts Council; the project will look at the viability of universal after schools and we will also address broader issues of education reform in Mississippi