After SCOTUS destroyed the Voting Rights Act, Southern states rush to pass Jim Crow voting maps
Just a week after the Supreme Court effectively destroyed the key remaining provision of the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee on Thursday is set to become the first Southern state to pass a new redistricting map eliminating a majority-Black district.
The hastily drawn map abolishes the state’s last Democratic district by splitting the city of Memphis, which is more than 60 percent Black, into three districts: all of them predominantly white Republican held seats that stretch hundreds of miles deep into rural areas, effectively silencing the state’s largest Black community. (Memphis has had its own congressional district since 1923.) The map also divided the city of Nashville—which had already been spliced apart during the last redistricting cycle to pick up another GOP seat—into five districts to further dilute the power of minority voters.
The result is both practical and symbolic. It means the place where Martin Luther King Jr. waged his last civil rights campaign and was ultimately assassinated will have no districts in which Black citizens can elect their preferred candidates. Contemporary civil rights leaders, including King’s son, likened it to the return of Jim Crow.
“Do not dismantle the only Congressional district that provides Black voters in Memphis a fair opportunity to have a voice in our democracy,” Martin Luther King III wrote to Tennessee legislators. “Do not take this nation back to the days of Jim Crow.”
Tennessee is not alone. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down a second-majority Black congressional district in Louisiana, at least four other Southern states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina—are considering passing new redistricting maps before the midterms. This could eliminate anywhere from four to six majority-Black districts represented by Democrats, and significantly hinder Democratic chances of taking back the US House. Voting rights advocates warned that the Louisiana v. Callais decision could lead to the largest drop in Black representation in the South since the end of Reconstruction. The targeting of Black voters is occurring with alarming speed in the wake of the ruling. [Continue reading…]