THE SUPERVISOR Norman Seawright III

A Clerk’s Work is Never Done The woman who helped others get elected now fills the demanding role of chancery clerk. w hen she returned to Greenville after college, Marilyn Hansell threw herself into the effort to re-elect the city’s first black councilwoman, Sarah Johnson. “It was an opportunity to do something for the community and to practice the political science I had been studying,” said Hansell, who coordinated the successful campaign.

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After that, when elections rolled around, she always seemed to be involved — local races, county races, gubernatorial races — but always behind the scenes. She worked on Robert Clark’s losing congressional campaign and was the regional church coordinator on Mike Espy’s winning one. And she worked as field director for Bennie Thompson when he was elected to Congress.

Then she went to work for Thompson, and Hansell found that helpful organizations were disappearing from the Delta as funding eroded.

“There was still a need in the Delta to do some things,” Hansell said. “We had found ourselves in the congressional office really taking on the aspect of a lot of development groups that were supposed to have been working in the Delta, so when constituents contacted us about sewer projects or water projects, we got involved.”

She ran for chancery clerk in 1999. She has found the job rewarding but realized she had much to learn once she got the job. “A lot of what I learned, I learned by participating in training,” she said. The state requires yearly training offered by the Mississippi Judicial College.

She has a busy job. In Mississippi, chancery court is also family court. It deals with child custody, child support, adoption, divorce, probate matters, equity and land, as well as collecting delinquent taxes. On top of that, she is clerk to the board of supervisors and responsible for safekeeping countless county records.

“When you start looking at the role of the chancery clerk, you begin to wonder, ‘How in the world can one person have all of those responsibilities?’ ”

Hansell has 10 employees, and during the summer she employs high school and college interns. “They always like to come back,” she said. “I had a student last year, and he’s over at the junior college now, and he called me this morning.”

“It’s a very unique position, but it’s a wonderful opportunity to be able to touch so many people. That’s what I like,” she said.

Outside the office, Hansell is active with the Girl Scouts and the Progressive Art and Civics Club, affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. She serves on the Mississippi State Democratic Executive Committee.

She is proud of how her work influenced her 27-year-old son, who has earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of Southern Mississippi.

Hansell, 56, loves Greenville but believes it could stand improvement. She said a common goal of local officials is to fix and clean up battered and messy areas of the city. Another age-old problem, racial tension, needs to be addressed if Greenville is to move forward, she said. “It’s for the key shareholders in the community to make it happen.”

Hansell believes the fate of Mississippi is intertwined with the fate of the Delta: “So goes the Delta, so goes the state of Mississippi.”

Standing on the steps of the courthouse and discussing her political career after so many campaigns helping others get elected, Hansell recalled one early race that wasn’t going so well. Voter apathy was a problem and she was tired and frustrated.

She recalled the words of the late Greenville activist Charles Moore, who saw her frustration, smiled at her and told her to be patient.

He told me, “Just remember, Marilyn, to the victor goes the spoils.”

fter more than 40 years in public life, Al Rankins thinks he knows something about fairness. Rankins, a member of the Washington County Board of Supervisors, became an African-American police officer in Greenville in the late 1960s, when that was still a very rare thing. He vividly remembers how the first African-American officers before NORMAN SEAWRIGHT Al Rankins, a veteran member of the board of supervisors, is retiring this year. He says the county needs more jobs and needs to find ways to train people for them. a

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him were treated.

They could arrest people only of the same color and couldn’t follow their investigations to fruition in court, he said. They had to hand over the cases to white officers to follow through.

“There were only seven AfricanAmerican officers on the force,” Rankins recalled. “But two of them were the first African-American sworn officers in the state of Mississippi. They got hired in 1950, when it was unheard of.”

The first was Willie Carson and the second was George Davis. AfricanAmerican officers were assigned to work only on weekends in neighborhoods where mostly African-Americans lived, Rankins said.

“I was the first juvenile officer they ever had,” he said.

Rankins was lucky in his timing. He was able to work as an independent investigator. While other black officers had to turn over information to white investigators who then took over the cases, Rankins carried out his own investigations and presented them in court.

He liked his work.

“When I was in law enforcement, it was all about protecting life and property. That was my main concern. Me being an African-American and growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, people’s rights were always dear to me, because I grew up under segregation,” he said.

Over time, he moved up the ranks. But he also ran into a barrier of his own when he was denied the department’s top job. Instead, he had to settle for deputy chief. The memory still stings.

“It’s one of those things that really stands out,” he said. “I think that was because of the politics. I was just as qualified. I’m a graduate of the FBI Academy, Mississippi Law Enforcement Academy, Louisiana State Academy, Southern Police Institute, so I had all of the qualifications. I didn’t make chief because of politics. It was strictly politics.”

After he retired from the police department, Rankins thought his life would be quieter and simpler. Then friends pushed him to run for the board of supervisors. In his first foray into politics, he won.

“I like people, I’m a people person,” he said. “This is a team thing, not an individual thing.”

Rankins has been on the board for more than two decades. Over time, he rose to the presidency, and he attributes his success to his ability to work well with others.

“The board has changed ever since I’ve been here,” he said. “There are people who have been defeated, and new people have come in. I’ve been able to fit right in with them. Really, this has been an enjoyable experience for me.”

As a board member, Rankins has a priority of not overspending tax money: “Government operates off of taxes. If people pay no taxes, you are out of business. My thing is always to try to give services, the necessities that people need. People are entitled to those services without being overtaxed. I think I’ve done that.” He said the board has consistently held taxes down over his tenure.

Rankins noted that school taxes do increase. For that reason, he believes that school board members should be elected rather than appointed.

He is retiring in December, but Rankins still has ideas about Greenville’s future.

“We’ve been unable to retain some of the jobs that we have and bring in new industry. I think that has come from the labor force. I think that we have people who are willing to work, who want to work, but ... through the years when we should have been educating our people through technology, we still were — guess what? — thinking in terms of agriculture.”

To bring in jobs, Greenville must look to the future and train its workforce in technology, Rankins said. “We’re trying to get there. We’re behind some of the rest of the state.”

Rankins likes to spend time at the soul food restaurant of his good friend S.B. Buck, across the street from the courthouse. Recently, he showed up there after a supervisors meeting, a stately man wearing a mauve dress shirt under a gray cardigan, with thin-framed round glasses resting on his nose.

A smile came to his face when he discussed his family. He’s been married for 41 years to Mary, a retired schoolteacher. They have four children — a girl and three boys. His sons all went to public school and are college graduates, and his eldest son holds a Ph.D. and works for the state College Board. His second son lives in Baton Rouge, La., and works in agriculture after attending Alcorn University and earning his master’s degree. His youngest son lives in Birmingham, Ala., and attended Mississippi State University, where he earned his degree in golf and turf. He builds golf courses. Rankins’ daughter is a hospital administrator in Atlanta.

When he leaves office at the end of the year, Rankins knows he’ll have a lot more time to soak up the atmosphere, the companionship and the soul food at Buck’s, and maybe see more of his family more often.

“It’s time for me to do other things that I wanted to do with my family, my grandkids,” he said.