Jackson Free Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi's capital city faces a shrinking population, aging infrastructure, financially struggling schools and other challenges, but the mayor and a former governor said Thursday that they believe Jackson's best days are ahead if people work for improvement.

Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, former Gov. Haley Barbour and the Rev. Keith Tonkel of Wells United Methodist Church spoke to more than 500 people during a fundraising luncheon for Operation Shoestring. The nonprofit group provides education and mentoring programs for low-income young people in central Jackson.

"A state has to have a successful, vibrant capital," Barbour said.

Lumumba and Barbour are both 66-year-old attorneys, and they're political opposites.

Lumumba, a Democrat, became mayor in July after four years on the City Council. He moved to Jackson from Detroit in the 1970s and was once active in the Republic of New Afrika, which he said advocated "an independent predominantly black government" in the southeastern United States.

Barbour is a native of Yazoo City, a small town in the Mississippi Delta. He worked for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, was Republican National Committee chairman in the mid-1990s and made his name as a big-dollar Washington lobbyist before serving as governor from 2004 to 2012.

During the gathering at the Jackson Convention Complex, the two politicians agreed on many points about how to improve the capital city, including the idea that schools are more successful when parents and community members are deeply involved. But Lumumba and Barbour politely disagreed about whether charter schools will help or hurt. Charters receive public money but are free from some regulations.

Some alumni say they might propose converting Jackson's Lanier High into a charter school. On a state grading scale of A to F, like a report card, Lanier is graded D.

"I'm very suspicious of anything that takes dollars from public education," Lumumba said, adding that he'd rather see efforts to improve all public schools.

Barbour said charter schools offer innovation.

"I think charter schools are a very good idea for providing competition so the parents have more choices, particularly in ... districts where the public schools are not getting the job done," he said.

Tonkel has worked since 1969 at Wells Church, which has a racially integrated congregation in a low-income Jackson neighborhood. In 1963, he was one of 28 white Methodist clergymen who signed a public letter against racism. He said Thursday that Jackson residents from different backgrounds need to work together to improve the city, but not in ways that might seem aggressive or intrusive to others.

"It's a matter of sitting and talking together," Tonkel said.

Jackson is Mississippi's largest city, though its population has dropped significantly in the past two decades as people have moved to the suburbs. The Census Bureau estimates Jackson had 175,561 residents in 2011, down from 184,256 in 2000.