EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

          Lovie West is a native of Olive Branch, Mississippi.  In 1982, she graduated from Jackson State College (now Jackson State University) and taught for four years in the public schools of the Mississippi Delta before going to law school.  She graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1987, and in 1988, she became the first African American to clerk for the Mississippi Supreme Court when she became the law clerk for the late Chief Justice Robert G. Gillespie.  In 1976, Judge West served as an Earl Warren Fellow Intern with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York.  In 1978, Judge West became the first African American assistant United States Attorney in Mississippi since Reconstruction when she was hired by the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi. Later, Judge West became the first African American to serve as the attorney for a Mississippi county when the Board of Supervisors of Humphreys County hired her in 1988 to serve as its attorney.