Thousands of people gathered Saturday in Montgomery, Alabama, a city associated with some of the most influential chapters of the U.S. civil rights movement, to argue that recent court decisions have weakened federal protections for voting power. The rally was staged as the political fight over district lines and voting access intensifies in states preparing to change maps and election procedures.
Organizers said the gathering drew on history and urgency at the same time: speakers pointed to Montgomery’s role in the modern civil rights era, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. They also said they returned to the city because the legal changes at the center of the dispute are affecting later generations of voters.
Rev. Bernice King, speaking near the spot where her father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., addressed voting rights marchers in 1965, said the dedication and sacrifice of that generation changed the country’s trajectory. She said “Sixty-one years later, we come back as new generations to this same hallowed place to reclaim and redeem that legacy because the recent Supreme Court decision demands our presence,” adding that it was “not only a legal decision” but “a moral disgrace and a shameless assault on Black political power,” according to the remarks carried by the Associated Press.
King also said the decision strikes “at the very heart of my father’s and my mother’s sacrifice,” and called it a direct attack on the generations who faced attacks during the push for voting rights, describing the era’s violence and enforcement as “dogs and batons and bombs and billy clubs so that Black people and all marginalized communities could participate fully in this democracy.” Civil rights leaders, Democratic members of Congress, union leaders and pastors were among those who spoke at the rally titled “All Roads Lead to the South.”
The crowd assembled in front of the Alabama Capitol, near Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks statues that flank the statehouse grounds. The Associated Press described the event as lasting more than four hours, with attendees standing through summerlike temperatures and chanting “we won’t go back” and “we fight.”
Among the lawmakers speaking was U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, who called Montgomery “sacred soil” in the fight for civil rights. U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama said the gathering was not a protest but “a call to action,” and speakers repeatedly urged people to participate by showing their numbers at the ballot box.
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, told the rally, “They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant that they just awakened,” framing the renewed pressure on voting rules and districts as part of a continuing struggle rather than a resolved one.
Participants said the current effort to redraw lines echoes earlier eras. Camellia A Hooks, 70, of Montgomery, said “We lived through the ’60s. It takes you back. When you think that Alabama’s moving forward, it takes two steps back,” according to the report.
Speakers also pointed to the wider legal backdrop. The Associated Press reported that the Supreme Court ruling affecting Voting Rights Act enforcement weakened the law that was already narrowed and weakened by a separate decision in 2013, and that it helped clear the way for stricter voter ID laws, registration restrictions, and limits on early voting and polling place changes, including in states that once faced federal preclearance requirements.
Montgomery is also home to a congressional district that is being altered in response to the legal developments, according to the Associated Press. A federal court in 2023 redrew Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District after finding the state intentionally diluted Black voting power, with the court directing that there be a district where Black voters were a majority or near-majority with the opportunity to elect their preferred candidate.
But, the report said, the Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for a different map that could allow Republicans to reclaim the seat. The matter remained under litigation, while the state planned special primaries Aug. 11 under the new map, the Associated Press said.
U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, who won election in the district in 2024, said in remarks carried by the Associated Press that the dispute is not about him but about people’s opportunity to have representation. Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican, said the Louisiana-related ruling created an opportunity to revisit a map that a federal court had forced on the state.
A plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, Shalela Dowdy, said the fight would continue inside and outside the courtroom, and that a three-judge panel scheduled a May 22 hearing on a request to stop Alabama from switching maps. Dowdy said, “We are not going down without a fight. We are not going back to Jim Crow maps,” as quoted in the Associated Press report.