James Plemon "J.P." Coleman was born in 1914 in Ackerman. A graduate of George Washington University, he served as district attorney for the Fifth Judicial District from 1940 to 1946 and as a judge from 1947 to 1950. Coleman served as a Mississippi Supreme Court commissioner in 1950 and as attorney general from 1950 to 1956. Elected governor in 1955, he served in the Mississippi Legislature in 1959 and was appointed judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1965. He died in Ackerman on September 28, 1991.