Appalachian Figures
In the hill country of east central Mississippi, county courthouses still anchor courthouse squares, and much of the real work of justice happens far from television cameras. For more than half a century, attorney and judge Johnnie Max “J. Max” Kilpatrick worked inside those rooms. From the Mississippi House of Representatives to the chancery bench and finally to the youth court of neighboring Kemper County, he built a career that shows how much power small county courts can wield over family life, juvenile justice, and even statewide economic policy.
This is the story of a Neshoba County native whose work in nearby Kemper County youth court shaped the lives of vulnerable children, whose chancery rulings drew national attention during the Katrina era, and whose hand administered the oath to Philadelphia’s first Black mayor on a courthouse lawn haunted by civil rights murders.
Growing up in Neshoba County
Obituaries and bar memorials agree on the basic outline of his early life. Johnnie Max Kilpatrick was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi on January 24, 1945, the son of Johnnie and Desma Hardy Kilpatrick.
He graduated from Philadelphia High School in 1963, then went to Mississippi State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting. After college he entered the University of Mississippi School of Law, finishing his Juris Doctor in late 1973 and gaining admission to The Mississippi Bar the same year.
His parents’ obituaries make clear that he came from a deeply rooted Neshoba County family. Desma Hardy Kilpatrick, a dorm mother at East Central Community College and active member of Beacon Street Baptist Church, was described as a longtime resident of the county; her survivors included “J. Max Kilpatrick and his wife Kathy of Philadelphia,” along with his siblings Linda and Gerald. Those notices, along with later obituaries for his brother Gerald, show a family network centered firmly in Philadelphia even as children and grandchildren scattered.
The bar’s Fifty Year Anniversary Members list for 2023 records “Max Kilpatrick” among attorneys admitted in 1973, a quiet marker of how long he practiced law in the state.
A young legislator from the 26th District
While still a law student, Kilpatrick stepped into electoral politics. A Supreme Court opinion in his 1990s divorce case notes that “in the fall of 1971, Max was elected to the Mississippi State Legislature,” a detail that lines up with legislative handbooks and bar memorials.
The 1972 legislative handbook of the Mississippi Legislature lists “J. Max Kilpatrick” among House members, and later summaries place him in the 26th House District, representing parts of Leake and Neshoba Counties from January 1972 through 1980. The Mississippi Lawyer memorial describes him practicing law in Philadelphia while serving in the House, showing that he was part of the familiar Mississippi pattern of “citizen legislators” who kept active practices back home.
House journals from the 1970s, though not easily searched online, form the main primary record of his legislative activity: roll calls, bills sponsored, committee votes, and the day to day work of representing a rural district at Jackson. Those journals, along with the Secretary of State’s Official and Statistical Register, are the obvious next stop for a researcher who wants to move beyond brief biographical sketches.
Prosecutor, county board attorney, and National Guard officer
After leaving the House, Kilpatrick shifted from making laws to enforcing them. The Mississippi Lawyer memorial notes that he “was later elected District Attorney for the 8th Circuit Court District” and served as board attorney for the Neshoba County Board of Supervisors for seventeen years. Both roles kept him rooted in the same cluster of east central counties where he grew up.
At the same time he built a parallel career in uniform. Obituaries from McClain Hays Funeral Home, Legacy, and the April 2025 Mississippi Courts newsletter all stress his twenty six years in the Mississippi National Guard and his retirement at the rank of major. In a region where Guard units are central to both local identity and disaster response, that service mattered politically and socially as well as personally.
Directories like Martindale Hubbell list his solo practice at 504 South Church Avenue in Philadelphia, with practice areas in domestic relations, criminal defense, and personal injury. Together with the NAACP “Blue Book” from 2008 to 2012, which lists “Judge J. Max Kilpatrick” with a Philadelphia mailing address and phone number, these give a sense of his public footprint as both lawyer and judge in the region.
On the chancery bench in District 6
In July 2005, Governor Haley Barbour appointed Kilpatrick to the chancery bench for Mississippi’s Sixth Chancery Court District, which covers Attala, Carroll, Choctaw, Kemper, Neshoba, and Winston Counties. A Mississippi Judiciary press notice, along with later summaries on the Better Chancery Practice Blog, confirms that he took the oath of office on July 1, 2005, to succeed Edward C. Prisock (and in another contemporary account, to replace Chancellor John Clark Love after his retirement).
Chancery courts in Mississippi are courts of equity. They handle divorces, child custody, land titles, estates, guardianships, sanity hearings, and, in counties without separate county or family courts, juvenile cases. For District 6 that meant Kilpatrick’s jurisdiction ran straight through the pine ridges from Carroll County on the Delta’s edge to Kemper County near the Alabama line.
In June 2010, as he prepared to retire from the bench, the Better Chancery Practice Blog announced a reception at the Neshoba County Courthouse “honoring Chancellor J. Max Kilpatrick,” noting that he was retiring effective June 30 after serving three and a half years of his elected term. A follow up post a few weeks later observed that the district had “already bade farewell to Judge J. Max Kilpatrick, who retired effective June 30, and have welcomed new Chancellor D. Joseph ‘Joey’ Kilgore.”
Those blog posts, written by another chancery judge and aimed at practitioners, are about as close as we get to an inside view of how fellow judges saw him. They place him firmly in the culture of Mississippi’s chancery bar, where a small number of chancellors preside over intensely personal disputes in counties that often know them as neighbors as well as judges.
A courthouse oath in a town haunted by 1964
One moment from his chancery years resonated far beyond the legal community. On July 3, 2009, the Neshoba Democrat reported that James A. Young was sworn in as mayor of Philadelphia by Chancery Judge J. Max Kilpatrick. Young, a Pentecostal minister and former county supervisor, became the first Black mayor in a town still internationally associated with the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Accounts of Young’s election from BlackPast.org, CBS News, and other outlets note how commentators framed that swearing in as part of Philadelphia’s attempt to build a “new legacy” on ground where law enforcement had once colluded with the Ku Klux Klan. Kilpatrick’s role in that moment was ceremonial rather than legislative, but it placed his chancery court in the visible center of a story about how small Southern towns reckon with their past.
The Fair Oil case and the reach of rural chancery courts
If the Young swearing in tied Kilpatrick’s name to civil rights memory, a different episode showed how a chancery judge in Winston County could shape statewide economic policy.
After Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi’s attorney general sued Louisville Tire Center, doing business as Fair Oil Company, accusing the firm of violating the state’s price gouging law. In November 2008, Chancery Judge J. Max Kilpatrick granted Fair Oil’s motion for summary judgment, ruling that the statute was unconstitutionally vague. Trade press summarizing the decision quoted his concern that phrases like “same market area” and “at or immediately before” an emergency did not give businesses fair notice of the law’s boundaries.
On appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court disagreed. In State of Mississippi ex rel. Jim Hood v. Louisville Tire Center, Inc. d/b/a Fair Oil Co., the justices reversed, holding that the price gouging statute was not void for vagueness and remanding the case.
However one judges the legal arguments, the paper trail matters. It shows a rural chancery court wrestling with technical issues of consumer protection and emergency economics in the Katrina era, and it underscores how much turns on the interpretations of judges who most people outside the county know only from a line or two on a ballot.
Youth court in Kemper County
After leaving the chancery bench in 2010, Kilpatrick returned to private practice in Philadelphia. At the same time, he took on a role that would tie him directly to Kemper County: serving as Youth Court Referee.
The detailed obituary published by McClain Hays Funeral Home, echoed on Legacy.com, states that he “served as a Referee for the Kemper County Youth Court until his retirement on June 30, 2022.” The Mississippi Lawyer memorial repeats the same point, placing this youth court service at the end of a career that ran from the House to the chancery bench.
To understand what that means, it helps to look at how Mississippi structures its trial courts. In counties that lack a separate county or family court, chancery courts either hear all youth court matters themselves or appoint a youth court referee to do so. The Kemper County government’s own “Courts” page explains that in sixty three counties with no separate family or county court, “the Chancery Court either hears all youth court proceedings or appoints a Youth Court Referee (Judge) to do so.”
State level youth court pages and training materials describe what those proceedings look like. Youth courts handle cases involving abuse and neglect of juveniles, status offenses and delinquent acts by children under eighteen, and related family issues. Proceedings are typically held without a jury and are closed to the public. Records are sealed in most circumstances, reflecting the state’s policy of shielding minors from public exposure.
Directory style listings such as CourtReference and RecordsFinder place the Kemper County Youth Court at P.O. Box 188 in De Kalb, Mississippi, with the same mailing address and phone number as the Kemper County Chancery Court. That shared footprint illustrates how closely youth court is tied to chancery practice in a rural county.
Working within that framework, Kilpatrick would have presided over cases that rarely show up in newspapers: emergency custody petitions when a child is removed from a dangerous home, delinquency proceedings for teenagers, questions about truancy or supervision. Because youth court records are sealed, there is no public docket that lays out his decisions. What we know for certain, from the obituaries and bar memorials, is that he carried that role until mid 2022, long after most of his contemporaries had retired entirely from the law.
A state judiciary document listing counties served by youth court referees, updated after his retirement, names “Amy K. Taylor” as Youth Court Referee for Kemper County. Other sources identify her as Kilpatrick’s daughter, and legal directories describe her as a Kemper County youth court referee and attorney. In effect, the role he had held for a decade passed to the next generation of the same family, extending the Kilpatrick presence in Kemper County youth justice.
A lifetime in local courts
Taken together, these fragments from obituaries, bar newsletters, judicial news items, and case law reconstruct a life spent almost entirely within a narrow band of east central Mississippi counties.
Kilpatrick was born in Philadelphia; educated at Mississippi State and Ole Miss; represented the 26th House District that included his home county; prosecuted cases in the 8th Circuit Court District; advised the Neshoba County Board of Supervisors; served as chancellor of a district that included Kemper County; and finally sat as youth court referee for Kemper County itself.
Along the way, primary legal sources show his name in very different contexts. In 1999 the Supreme Court published Kilpatrick v. Kilpatrick, a divorce case that reveals something of his finances and family life in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2011 the court’s opinion in the Fair Oil price gouging case reversed and remanded one of his chancery decisions, but only after laying out at length the factual and legal background of a Katrina era consumer protection fight. In 2016 an appellate decision in Estate of Elva Mae Crosby lists him as counsel in a will contest, evidence of his continued chancery practice after stepping down from the bench.
Yet for Kemper County and its neighbors, the parts of his career that leave the lightest paper trail may have mattered most. Youth court hearings where a judge decides whether a child can safely return home. Chancery proceedings where land, inheritance, and family custody intersect. A brief moment on the courthouse steps when a local chancellor swears in a Black mayor in a town whose name is bound to a civil rights murder case.
For historians of the Appalachian South and the wider upland region, Kilpatrick’s life is a reminder that the history of law is not just written in Supreme Court reporters or high profile legislation. It is also written in county rosters, bar newsletters, and the memories of people who sat in cramped waiting rooms outside youth court, hoping for a decision that would let them rebuild a broken household.
Sources and further reading
McClain Hays Funeral Home, “Obituary for J. Max Kilpatrick,” and Legacy.com reprint, providing detailed narrative of his life, education, offices held, National Guard service, and Kemper County Youth Court role.McClain-Hays Funeral Service+2Legacy+2
Mississippi Judiciary, “Retired Judge J. Max Kilpatrick died December 10,” news release and April 18, 2025 MS Courts newsletter memorial, confirming dates, family background, chancery and youth court positions.Mississippi Courts+2Mississippi Courts+2
The Mississippi Lawyer, Spring 2025, memorial section, “J. Max Kilpatrick, 79, of Philadelphia,” summarizing House service, DA role, chancery judgeship, National Guard service, and Kemper County Youth Court referee position.Mississippi Bar
Mississippi Bar, “Fifty Year Anniversary Members 2023,” listing “Max Kilpatrick” among attorneys admitted in 1973.Mississippi Bar+1
“Hand book: Biographical Data of Members of Senate and House, Personnel of Standing Committees, 1972 Session,” Mississippi Legislature, listing Rep. J. Max Kilpatrick of the 26th District.eGrove+1
Justia and FindLaw, Laura Gipson Kilpatrick v. Johnnie Max Kilpatrick, 97 CA 00550 SCT (Mississippi Supreme Court, 1999), detailing his early legislative career and financial background.Justia Law+2CaseLaw+2
State of Mississippi ex rel. Jim Hood v. Louisville Tire Center, Inc. d/b/a Fair Oil Company, 2009 CA 00052 SCT (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2011), reversing Kilpatrick’s Winston County chancery ruling that the state’s price gouging law was unconstitutional.Justia Law+1
Mississippi Judiciary, chancery and youth court overview pages, outlining jurisdiction over domestic, equity, and juvenile matters.Wikipedia+4Mississippi Courts+4Mississippi Courts+4
Kemper County, Mississippi, “Courts” page, explaining that in counties without family or county courts, chancery courts hear youth matters or appoint youth court referees, and listing chancery judges who serve Kemper County.Kemper County, Mississippi –
CourtReference and RecordsFinder entries for Kemper County Youth Court, documenting address, phone number, and its connection to chancery court.CourtReference+2Records Finder+2
MississippiCourtRecords.us, “How Does the Mississippi Youth Court Work,” describing youth court jurisdiction over abuse, neglect, and juvenile offenses, and the confidential nature of proceedings and records.Mississippi Court Records+2Mississippi Court Records+2
Better Chancery Practice Blog (Judge Larry Primeaux), “RECEPTION FOR JUDGE KILPATRICK” and “CHANGING LANDSCAPE IN CHANCERY COURT STATEWIDE,” which document his appointment to replace John Clark Love, his retirement effective June 30, 2010, and the succession of D. Joseph Kilgore.The Better Chancery Practice Blog+1
Mississippi NAACP “Blue Book” 2008 2012, listing Judge J. Max Kilpatrick with a Philadelphia mailing address and contact information, serving as a contemporary roster of chancery judges.NAACP Management System
Martindale Hubbell and other attorney directories for “J. Max Kilpatrick,” confirming education, year of bar admission, and office address in Philadelphia, Mississippi.Martindale+1
McClain Hays, Clarion Ledger, and Meridian Star obituaries for his mother Desma Hardy Kilpatrick, and Peebles Funeral Home and Legacy obituaries for his brother Gerald Allen Kilpatrick, documenting the Kilpatrick family in Neshoba County and confirming sibling relationships.echovita.com+5McClain-Hays Funeral Service+5Legacy+5
Mississippi Judiciary lists of counties served by youth court referees and Trellis profile of “Judge Amy K. Taylor,” identifying his daughter as Kemper County Youth Court referee after his retirement.Mississippi Courts+2Trellis Law+2
Neshoba Democrat article “James Young Sworn In As Mayor,” via W.E. A.L.L. B.E. repost, reporting that James A. Young was sworn in as mayor of Philadelphia on July 3, 2009, by Chancery Judge J. Max Kilpatrick.We All Be+1
Biographical and news accounts of Mayor James A. Young that tie his election as Philadelphia’s first Black mayor to the town’s association with the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.eGrove+3Wikipedia+3Vanderbilt University+3
Historical treatments of the 1964 Neshoba County civil rights murders, including summaries by the FBI, PBS, and the Zinn Education Project.Zinn Education Project+3Federal Bureau of Investigation+3Wikipedia+3