Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District is centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis and has a score of D plus-23 on the Cook Partisan Voting Index. It is the state’s only congressional seat held by a Democrat, Rep. Steve Cohen, and the only one in the Volunteer State where Black voters have a reasonable chance of electing someone who supports their interests.
But today, eight days after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in its Louisiana v. Callais ruling, the Republican supermajority in my state passed a redistricting proposal championed by Sen. Marsha Blackburn that splits the district where I live, pastor and teach into three parts, diluting Black political strength and giving every congressional district in the state a Republican majority.
On top of the obvious racism, Tennessee lawmakers are sowing confusion into the elections process.
That’s why you shouldn’t see what’s happening to us here in Memphis as a fight over political boundaries. You should see it as the Republicans’ naked attempt to erase Black political power and influence even as they use the sanitized language of law, procedure and “fair representation.”
On top of the obvious racism, Tennessee lawmakers just sowed confusion into the elections process. Candidates, including those who have already qualified to run for office under the existing maps, only have until next Friday, May 15, to decide if they want to run in the newly drawn districts.
As the Tennessee Lookout reported Thursday, “While typical election rules require district and precinct boundary changes to be published in newspapers and voters to be notified by mail, this bill appears to allow county election commissions to meet notice requirements solely by posting any changes to the commission’s website, if they have one.” The primaries for the congressional elections are scheduled for Aug. 6, and of course the general election is Nov. 3.
The dilution of Black political power that will result from splitting the 9th District into three parts won’t be an unfortunate, accidental consequence but the very point of that split. The new map is the latest example in what is a long American tradition of power brokers in the white establishment using maps, policies and courts to minimize the political power of Black communities and then claiming with a straight face that neither they nor their actions are racist.
But splitting this Southern state’s Black district into three is racial redlining dressed up as governance. It is the latest iteration of Jim Crow. We might call it in this case James Crow, Esq.
Though activists in my city have rightly been chanting “Hands off Memphis!,” many Americans remain dangerously naive about how sophisticated modern segregationist politics have become. The old segregationists often shouted their racism openly. But as the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater infamously explained in 1981, the party had already become expert in appealing to racists and promoting racist policies without using explicitly racist language. Today’s segregationist politics arrive wrapped in constitutional arguments, data analysis, partisan framing and carefully constructed talking points designed to make injustice appear acceptable.
But no amount of legal sophistication can conceal the moral ugliness of disenfranchisement. History is remarkably consistent on this point.
Every generation of racialized oppression eventually collides with the truth. Pharaoh is eventually confronted by Moses. Bull Connor is eventually confronted by the children of Birmingham. George Wallace is eventually forced to confront the evil he helped unleash on the world. Every attempt to permanently suppress the democratic aspirations of marginalized people eventually runs into the reality that injustice contains the seeds of its own destruction.
That does not mean justice arrives quickly or that progress is inevitable. And it certainly does not mean we can afford political laziness or civic disengagement.
To the contrary, we must draw from the ancestral wisdom of those who confronted these same forces generations ago. Those freedom fighters organized when the odds were worse, the laws were harsher and the violence was more explicit and even deadly. They built institutions, cultivated political consciousness, challenged unjust courts, educated voters, developed leaders and fought relentlessly for representation even when the system was openly hostile to their humanity.
Our generation must adopt their long-range vision. We need a disciplined long-term strategy to reshape the courts, influence statewide elections, cultivate courageous candidates, strengthen voter education and build civic infrastructure throughout the South.
The situation that confronts us requires more than outrage. It requires a massive, fully funded voter education and empowerment campaign capable of confronting the political miseducation and apathy that have allowed so many people to deny or underestimate what is being rolled back. It also requires a theological and civic reconstitution within Black churches and allied institutions that reconnects spiritual formation with justice-centered organizing, public advocacy and courageous political engagement.
Finally, it demands aggressive legal and policy challenges to expose, stall and ultimately defeat the antidemocratic redistricting schemes and voter suppression efforts emerging from legislatures and courts across the South.
History has already shown us that no system built on exclusion, deception and racial domination can forever withstand the persistent force of organized people, ancestral wisdom and the righteous demand for justice.
Earle J. Fisher
The Rev. Earle J. Fisher, Ph.D. is Senior Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church (Memphis), founder of #UPTheVote901 and author of "The Rev. Albert Cleage Jr., and the Black Prophetic Tradition: A Reintroduction of The Black Messiah" published by Lexington Books.