\n<\/p>\n
The central tenet of American democracy is the right to vote.<\/p>\n
But in practice, for Black voters, especially in the South, it wasn\u2019t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that their access to the voting booth was fundamentally improved. The law eradicated many Jim Crow-era intimidation tactics.<\/p>\n
The act also required electoral maps to be drawn in a way that allowed Black voters a chance to vote for someone of their choice, in part by requiring federal approval for maps in certain states and counties. Those changes led to a clear shift in representation in the U.S. House of Representatives for the South, where Black leaders and volunteers had been beaten, jailed and even killed during the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n
Since then, the number of Black lawmakers in the chamber has rapidly increased across the United States.<\/p>\n
Even so, Black representation didn\u2019t always stem from changes made under the new law. And although many Black majority districts have elected Black representatives, not every candidate backed by Black voters was Black. In Tennessee, for example, Representative Steve Cohen, a white Democrat, has represented a majority Black district for about two decades.<\/p>\n
Here is a closer look at how the Voting Rights Act, which was dealt a blow on Wednesday by a Supreme Court ruling, changed Black representation in the House in Southern states.<\/p>\n
Louisiana is at the heart of the ruling.<\/p>\n
After the Civil War, the state was one of the few to elect a Black member to the House, Charles Edmund Nash, in 1874. But, as Southern states moved to aggressively restrict Black voting rights, the state wouldn\u2019t elect another until 1990.<\/p>\n
That meant Black lawmakers have made up a small fraction of the state\u2019s representation.<\/p>\n
As of early 2024, the last time Louisiana redrew its congressional maps, Black residents made up 33 percent of its population. Even as the population has changed over time, Black residents have consistently made up between 30 and 50 percent of the state\u2019s total population.<\/p>\n
A lack of roughly proportional representation has been used by civil rights groups as evidence that Black voters have been denied a chance to elect a representative of their choice.<\/p>\n
The Voting Rights Act never required minority populations to be represented proportionately. Still, Kareem Crayton, a vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said \u201cin a perfectly representative society,\u201d it would be reasonable to expect the share of representatives for a set of areas to roughly match the share of their communities they serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen those are wildly out of sync with each other, that\u2019s usually an indication that something is peculiar,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
A New York Times analysis of a selection of Southern states calculated the number of Black lawmakers that would be proportional to a state\u2019s Black population, and rounded down to the nearest full House seat. It found that for most of Louisiana\u2019s history, at least two Black representatives would have constituted a proportional share.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s represented by the gap between the dotted line and the orange areas in the chart.<\/p>\n
But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing the majority opinion for the court in the Louisiana case, said arguments citing the correlation of Black representation to Black population \u201cfailed to disentangle race from politics.\u201d He focused on voter registration and turnout instead, citing increased Black voter participation as evidence of \u201cvast social change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several Black leaders and voting rights groups rejected that assessment and said the ruling had rendered the law ineffective.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s ruling struck down Louisiana\u2019s voting map, and the secretary of state said on Thursday the state\u2019s House primary elections would be delayed.<\/p>\n
Georgia and Texas were the first Southern states to send Black lawmakers to the House after the Voting Rights Act. (It had been nearly a century since Georgia did so in 1870.)<\/p>\n
Georgia<\/p>\n
01010<\/p>\n
If proportional to Black population<\/p>\n
187019652026<\/p>\n
Texas<\/p>\n
2030<\/p>\n
Black House members<\/p>\n
Non-Black members<\/p>\n
187019652026 <\/p>\n
Barbara Jordan, a former state senator, was elected to a Houston-area seat. Andrew Young, an aide to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was elected to a seat including metro Atlanta.<\/p>\n
North Carolina and South Carolina were among the early Southern states that sent Black lawmakers to the House after the Civil War. (South Carolina joined Georgia in doing so for the first time in 1870.)<\/p>\n
North Carolina<\/p>\n
044812<\/p>\n
If proportional to Black population<\/p>\n
187019652026<\/p>\n
South Carolina<\/p>\n
Black House members<\/p>\n
Non-Black members<\/p>\n
187019652026 <\/p>\n
But after Jim Crow laws took hold, they wouldn\u2019t do so again until the 1990s.<\/p>\n
After a series of court rulings in 2023, Louisiana and Alabama both redrew their congressional maps. The changes paved the way for each state to elect an additional Black lawmaker \u2014 Cleo Fields in Louisiana and Shomari Figures in Alabama \u2014 to the House in 2024.<\/p>\n
Louisiana<\/p>\n
03369<\/p>\n
If proportional to Black population<\/p>\n
187019652026<\/p>\n
Alabama<\/p>\n
Black House members<\/p>\n
Non-Black members<\/p>\n
187019652026 <\/p>\n
Mississippi and Tennessee each have only one district with a majority Black population. Those districts are the only ones in the states that have sent Black lawmakers to the House after Reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Mississippi<\/p>\n
03369<\/p>\n
If proportional to Black population<\/p>\n
187019652026<\/p>\n
Tennessee<\/p>\n
Black House members<\/p>\n
Non-Black members<\/p>\n
187019652026 <\/p>\n
On the periphery of the South, both Florida and Virginia have also grappled with questions of fair representation and electing Black lawmakers to the House.<\/p>\n
Florida<\/p>\n
077142128<\/p>\n
If proportional to Black population<\/p>\n
187019652026<\/p>\n
Virginia<\/p>\n
Black House members<\/p>\n
Non-Black members<\/p>\n
187019652026 <\/p>\n
They are also at the center of a broader redistricting fight this midterm cycle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The central tenet of American democracy is the right to vote. But in practice, for Black voters, especially in the South, it wasn\u2019t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that their access to the voting booth was fundamentally improved. The law eradicated many Jim Crow-era intimidation tactics. The act also required electoral maps to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[4308,706,3460,671,15244,702,3578],"class_list":{"0":"post-48947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-act","9":"tag-black","10":"tag-bolstered","11":"tag-house","12":"tag-representation","13":"tag-rights","14":"tag-voting"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}