Across the South, some state legislatures are rushing to redraw Congressional district lines after the Supreme Court cleared the way. Black voters say their voices are at stake.
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A movement is underway that could alter the political landscape for generations to come in the Deep South. Republican-controlled states are rushing to consolidate GOP power after the Supreme Court further gutted the Voting Rights Act in a case out of Louisiana. Two weeks ago, the court limited how race can be used to draw the borders of congressional districts. Black voters say that their voices are now at stake. NPR’s Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Black representation in Congress saw historic gains after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a game-changing achievement in the Civil Rights Movement. Here’s the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in a famous speech outside the Alabama State Capitol after a pivotal voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
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MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: How long?
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: How long?
KING: Not long. Because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yes, Sir.
KING: How long?
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Not long.
KING: Not long.
D ELLIOTT: Now, civil rights activists see the arc bending backwards. The Supreme Court’s Louisiana ruling has served as a wake-up call.
DORIS DOZIER CRENSHAW: We’re in a very dangerous period.
D ELLIOTT: Dorothy (ph) Dozier Crenshaw has been fighting for civil rights ever since the 1950s when she was a teenager, active in the Montgomery bus boycott. She says this moment feels just as pivotal.
CRENSHAW: And I think if people stay silent, then we will lose the democracy.
D ELLIOTT: Crenshaw says she’s ready to fight after Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a plan last week to change congressional maps. It’s a move that would eliminate one of the state’s two largely Black districts.
CRENSHAW: They came here to do what they were assigned to do. So we need to do what we’re assigned to do. And that is to fight for justice and equality in this country.
D ELLIOTT: The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for Alabama to void the results of next week’s primary. Instead, it will hold a special election in August under the different congressional map. It creates a more difficult path to reelection for the two Black Democrats in Alabama’s seven-member delegation in the U.S. House. The other five are all White Republicans. In a social media post, Republican State Attorney General Steve Marshall lauds the victory, saying his job was to put the legislature in a position to draw a map that favors Republicans.
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STEVE MARSHALL: For years, federal courts have forced Alabama to draw its congressional and legislative maps around race, ordering the state to create majority/minority districts under the Voting Rights Act. We have fought for years against courts forcing Alabama to sort its citizens by race. And we were right to fight.
D ELLIOTT: Elsewhere, Tennessee split up a majority Black district in Memphis. A similar plan is moving ahead in Louisiana, but an effort in South Carolina was blocked. Republican leaders say while the Supreme Court’s ruling eliminates race as a criterion, it does allow gerrymandering along party lines. So Alabama State Senator Chris Elliott says that’s what they’re doing.
CHRIS ELLIOTT: As a partisan – right? – as a Republican senator, I’m interested in making sure we have as many Republicans to support the president, to support Speaker Johnson as possible.
D ELLIOTT: In a statement, the GOP caucus in the Alabama House bragged of doing their part to ensure, quote, “Congress stays red.” Freshman Democratic Congressman Shomari Figures of Mobile holds one of the targeted seats. He calls the redistricting push a last-ditch effort to assure that President Trump has unchecked power.
SHOMARI FIGURES: This is their way of moving the goalposts, of changing the rules during the game, of stacking the deck, of rigging the outcomes, whatever terminology you want to use. That’s what’s motivating this. I think they’ve been pretty clear about that. And unfortunately, we’ve seen far too many states just bend the knee and just be willing to do whatever he tells them to do.
D ELLIOTT: The result, Figure says, takes away the opportunity for African Americans to have a say in who represents them in Congress in a state where Black people make up just over a quarter of the population. During debate, GOP State Senator Greg Albritton invoked the nation’s founding document to justify removing race.
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GREG ALBRITTON: We all, in this body, believe the almost scriptorial axiom from our Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
D ELLIOTT: State Republicans like Alabama Senate president pro tem, Garlan Gudger, argue no one is taking away anyone’s right to vote.
GARLAN GUDGER: We should be about a – partisan lines, not about race.
EVAN MILLIGAN: I don’t really feel like the question is about, is it party or race? It’s both.
MILLIGAN: Something can have an impact that is viewed as racist, but the intent is not racist. We don’t intend to be racist. But – and I think that’s the same but that’s happened, like, since the founding of the country, is we don’t (laughter) – all men are created equal but…
D ELLIOTT: In much of the Deep South, Black voters tend to vote Democratic, so Milligan says when you gerrymander for party, the result can disenfranchise Black voters. He sees the move to consolidate power for one party as a threat to the country. Fighting it, he says, will take a new wave of activism and a change in mindset.
MILLIGAN: You’re either going to recognize I’m a human being and that I have the capacity to benefit you as a leader and that it’s probably more to your advantage to engage with me with some degree of equality than be locked into some type of eternal conflict with me.
D ELLIOTT: The conflict over voting rights is one that’s likely to remain in the courts, both state and federal. It’s exhausting for Black voters, Milligan says, but about forcing America to live up to its ideals. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Montgomery.
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