A multiracial coalition of civil rights leaders organized rallies Saturday in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, to mobilize opposition to recent voting rights rollbacks and congressional redistricting. NAACP President Derrick Johnson told the Associated Press that the coalition needed to respond quickly to an effort he described as an attempt to “shrink us backwards into a 1950s reality.” The events occurred 61 years after voting rights advocates were first attacked by white law enforcement officers on Bloody Sunday, but organizers said this weekend’s gatherings were intended to serve as a catalyst for renewed legislative and electoral action.
Two weeks earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, determining that states should not consider race when drawing congressional and other electoral district boundaries. The decision permitted states to redraw heavily Black districts that had historically elected Democrats by arguing the designs were based on party interests rather than race. President Donald Trump praised the ruling as “a BIG WIN for Equal Protection under the Law, as it returns the Voting Rights Act to its Original Intent, which was to protect against intentional Racial Discrimination.”
Republican-led state legislatures moved swiftly to implement the decision. Lawmakers in Alabama and Louisiana reverted to single majority-Black districts, discarding second districts that lower federal courts had previously ordered under now-reversed Voting Rights Act interpretations. Tennessee legislators split greater Memphis into three sprawling congressional districts, a redistricting strategy the court had previously forbidden. Anticipating the outcome, Florida and Texas proceeded with redistricting before the ruling, while Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called a June session to redraw congressional lines for the 2028 cycle. Mississippi and South Carolina delayed their redistricting plans.
South Carolina state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey resisted the redrawing plans, stating that not even pressure from Trump could convince him to disenfranchise Black South Carolinians instead of prioritizing the state’s interests. Other white conservatives in the region continued to discuss openly ousting Reps. Jim Clyburn and Bennie Thompson, the only Black House members from South Carolina and Mississippi, respectively. Jared Evans of the Louisiana-based Power Coalition for Equity and Justice said the push would extend beyond federal seats. “Look for them to go after state house and state senate seats — and then it will be the local level,” Evans said, predicting the redistricting efforts would lead to an “entire erasure of Black representation.”
The racial realignment of Southern districts directly impacts midterm campaigns for control of the U.S. House. Heavily minority districts drawn under the Voting Rights Act before the Callais decision nearly always elected Democrats, and Latino and Hispanic voters in most places continue to lean Democratic. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, told parishioners that the post-ruling political environment amounted to “Jim Crow in new clothes.” Warnock assured the congregation that “your adversaries know that your voice matters” because they were actively working to diminish it, and he urged voters to pursue political and economic power.
Rep. Terri Sewell, who represents Alabama’s Seventh District including Selma, said her immediate legislative priority was to “reform and reintroduce” the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act. Sewell said Democrats wanted to “completely” eliminate partisan gerrymandering and “bring back pre-clearance,” the federal approval requirement the Supreme Court struck down in 2013. “We need to come up with a modern-day formula for showing just how egregious the behavior of these state actors is,” Sewell said. Her seat could face challenges under the new redistricting framework.
Evans said the Voting Rights Act had been the “foundational nucleus of the Civil Rights Movement,” and that conservative lawmakers had effectively taken it away. He argued that what remained was a need for sustained mobilization. “Our response must be and will be a second Reconstruction period,” Evans said. The NAACP and allied organizations have filed legal challenges against new maps in multiple states despite the Callais ruling, while simultaneously focusing on driving midterm voter turnout among Black communities.
Johnson noted that there was currently no single leader directing the modern voting rights movement, much as the movement of the 1950s and 1960s contained internal strategic tension. He pointed to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which took 17 years and additional court battles to implement in most Southern school districts. Johnson said the coalition recognized the difficulty of harnessing disparate organizations, but emphasized that the scope of the issue extended beyond regional or partisan boundaries. “It’s not a Black problem,” Johnson said. “That’s an American problem.”