Carroll Rhodes, Esq. is a civil rights and voting rights attorney in Mississippi, and serves as the general counsel for the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP. He received his B.A. Degree from Millsaps College in 1973 and his J.D. Degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1978.
Rhodes has been involved in hundreds of voting rights cases in Mississippi over the past 44 years, involving challenges to discriminatory voting practices at the municipal, county, district, and statewide levels. He was lead counsel in Kirksey v. Allain and Martin v. Allain – the first successful voting rights case challenging districts for the election of judges. He was also lead counsel in Watkins v. Mabus – the legislative redistricting case that resulted in a negotiated settlement doubling the number of majority African-American legislative districts and African-American legislators in Mississippi to more than 50.
Rhodes served as co-counsel for amicus curiae for the Jackson State University Alumni Association in the Ayers case (U.S. v. Fordice) which resulted in increased funding for Mississippi’s historically black colleges and universities.
He has served as a member of the Board of Trustees and the Board of Directors for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the recipient of many awards: American Bar Association’s John Minor Wisdom Professionalism and Public Service Award (1990); the National Black Caucus of State Legislators Nation Builder Award (1991); the National Conference of Black Lawyers’ Lawyer of the Year Award (1992); the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP Judicial Trailblazer Award and the Lawyer of the Year Award (twice); and the Magnolia Bar Association R. Jesse Brown Award (twice).
Rhodes is also the author of three law journal articles – Enforcing the Voting Rights Act in Mississippi Through Litigation; Changing the Constitutional Guarantee of Voting Rights from Color Conscious to Color Blind: Judicial Activism by the Rehnquist Court; and Federal Appellate Courts Push Back Against States’ Voter Suppression Laws. He also authored a short book – IT IS TIME (It Is Time to Increase the Number of Justices on the United States Supreme Court from Nine to Fifteen).
