Alabama, long considered the birthplace of the American voting rights movement, faces a new threat to Black political representation. A recent US Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v Callais has weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, enabling states to redraw congressional maps that previously protected majority-Black districts. This decision could eliminate two such districts in Alabama, entrenching Republican control from Congress down to county school boards.
Historical Context
During a peaceful voting rights demonstration in 1965, Alabama state troopers shot and killed church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson. In response, about 600 marchers set out from Selma across the Edmund Pettus Bridge toward Montgomery. The violent confrontation with state troopers on Bloody Sunday, broadcast nationally, created a moral crisis that led President Lyndon B Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act five months later.
Today, nearly 30% of Alabama's population is Black. The legal framework supporting Black political representation for six decades is now being dismantled. Sheyann Webb-Christburg, a Selma foot soldier who was eight years old on Bloody Sunday, called the ruling 'an assault on the civil rights movement'.
Immediate Impact
Within days of the Callais decision, Alabama Republicans voted to revert to an older map that would erase a majority-Black district ahead of the November midterms. On Tuesday, a federal court blocked the state from using the Republican-friendly map. Alabama Republicans plan to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Representative Shomari Figures, whose district is at risk, said: 'Republicans are doing everything they can to try to rush this to try to act as if this case is over, but it's not.' Representative Terri Sewell, the only other Black representative in Alabama, could also see her district collapse if Republicans redraw the map to further dilute Black voting power.
Broader Consequences
The ruling will have deep, long-term consequences for Black voters across Alabama at every level of government—state senate, county commissions, school boards—and on issues like infrastructure, water access, hospital closures, and prison conditions. Black voters and officials warn that without representation, life outcomes will worsen.
'I'm mighty afraid,' Sewell said. 'On our collective watch, we're going backwards and not forwards.'
History of Representation
The Selma marchers brought the country closer to multiracial democracy. Over six decades, Black political representation expanded slowly through legal battles. By 1980, the number of Black elected officials in the US had grown from about 72 to more than 1,500. A 1985 ruling, Dillard v City of Greensboro, forced Alabama counties to replace at-large elections with single-member districts.
Alabama state senator Bobby Singleton said: 'That case gave us the opportunity to elect officials in over 270 cities and 67 counties.' District 7, which Sewell represents, was created in the 1990s as Alabama's first Voting Rights Act opportunity district. Sewell has brought more than $334m to Alabama's HBCUs and temporarily cut child poverty in half by expanding the child tax credit.
Local Impact
Letitia Jackson, a community organizer in Dothan who recently defeated a 20-year incumbent in the Democratic primary for Houston county commissioner, said: 'Before Figures came along, Sewell was representing all Black people in the state of Alabama because we basically had no representation.'
Figures won his seat in 2024 after the Supreme Court's Allen v Milligan decision ordered Alabama to draw a second majority-Black district. In his first term, he secured nearly $19m in community project funds for rural counties. He highlighted the crisis of potential medical deserts, where 22 of 26 rural hospitals are at immediate risk of closure.
'We have to give voters a reason to go vote and believe in how we will look out for their communities,' Figures said.
Sanitation Crisis
In Sewell's district, former state representative Phillip Ensler described a basic sanitation crisis: thousands of residents are not connected to a proper sewage system, with straight pipes dumping sewage in backyards. Sewell's Black belt outreach coordinator Byron Evans said plans for a new National Park Service welcome center and a health and science school are threatened by redistricting.
Beyond Congress
The congressional seats are only part of the story. Alabama Republicans also moved to revert state senate maps, threatening two majority-minority districts in Montgomery. Singleton said the Black caucus has been able to kill bills on DEI, critical race theory, book bans, and history erasure because of their presence at the table.
At the county and local level, the implications may be even more consequential. The Brennan Center for Justice noted that nearly half of all Section 2 cases challenging at-large elections since 1982 resulted in hundreds of local bodies adopting fairer systems. All that is now in jeopardy.
Selma Mayor Johnny 'Skip' Moss III said: 'All politics start locally.' He noted recent local elections were decided by margins of three and 11 votes.
Grassroots Response
Thousands of demonstrators gathered at the Alabama state capitol to protest Republican redistricting. The day began with a silent march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said: 'The Supreme Court is undermining all those folks who fought and gave their lives in the voting rights movement.'
Jackson said grassroots organizers are returning to door-to-door organizing, voter registration, and sustained community engagement. Sewell said the rally energized people: 'Instead of bemoaning, people have become energized.'
Figures and Sewell intend to fight on. 'We go to work, continue to do everything we can to squeeze every bit of good and every bit of progress out of the time we have left,' Figures said.
The Rev Benny Tucker, beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, offered the same counsel: 'Keep marching. Our voice is going to be heard.'
