Thousands of people rallied Saturday in Montgomery, Alabama, the birthplace of the modern Civil Rights Movement, to mobilize support for voting rights as conservative states dismantle congressional districts that helped secure Black political representation.
Sacred Ground for Civil Rights
U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey called Montgomery “sacred soil” in the fight for civil rights. “If we in our generation do not now do our duty, we will lose the gains and the rights and the liberties that our ancestors afforded us,” Booker told the crowd, which responded with chants of “we won’t go back” and “we fight.”
Shalela Dowdy, a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, declared, “We are not going down without a fight. We are not going down to Jim Crow maps.”
The rally began in Selma, where a violent clash between law enforcement and voting rights activists in 1965 galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act. Participants then marched to the state Capitol, where the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “How Long, Not Long” speech that same year.
Historic Setting
The crowd gathered in front of the Alabama Capitol, where the Confederacy was formed in 1861 and where King spoke in 1965. The stage was flanked by statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks—dueling tributes erected nearly 90 years apart. Speakers noted that the spot once symbolized the Confederacy but later became holy ground for the Civil Rights Movement.
Camellia A. Hooks, 70, of Montgomery, reflected on the struggle: “We lived through the '60s. It takes you back. When you think that Alabama’s moving forward, it takes two steps back.”
Supreme Court Ruling Sparks Concerns
A recent Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana further weakened the Voting Rights Act, already eroded by a 2013 decision and subsequent narrowing. This has cleared the way for stricter voter ID laws, registration restrictions, and limits on early voting and polling place changes, even in states once required to obtain federal preclearance due to historical discrimination against Black voters.
Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement are alarmed by the speed of rollbacks. Kirk Carrington, 75, was a teenager in 1965 when law enforcement attacked marchers on “Bloody Sunday.” A white man on a horse wielding a stick chased him through the streets. “It’s really just appalling to me and all the young people that marched during the '60s, fought hard to get voting rights, equal rights and civil rights. It’s sad that it’s continuing after 60-plus-odd years that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then,” Carrington said.
Alabama Redistricting Battle
Montgomery is home to one of the congressional districts being altered after the Supreme Court ruling. In 2023, a federal court redrew Alabama's 2nd Congressional District, ruling that the state intentionally diluted Black voting power. The court mandated a district where Black residents, who make up about 27 percent of the state's population, have a majority or near-majority and an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice. However, the Supreme Court later cleared the way for a different map that could let Republicans reclaim the seat. While litigation continues, the state plans special primaries on August 11 under the new map.
Democratic Representative Shomari Figures, who won the district in 2024, said the dispute is about people's opportunity to have representation. “When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation, what the faces of representation, look like, what the opportunities, legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country, then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way,” Figures said.
Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican, said the Louisiana ruling provided an opportunity to revisit a map forced on the state by the federal court. “People tend to forget what happened. When this thing went to court, the Republican Party had that seat, congressional seat two. There’s been a push through the courts to try to overtake some of these red state seats, and that’s certainly what happened in that one,” Ledbetter said last week.
Evan Milligan, lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, acknowledged grief over the weakening of the Voting Rights Act but stressed the need to recommit to the fight. “We have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not. We don’t have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever,” Milligan said.
