Tennessee’s War on Black Political Power Demands Not Just Outrage But Resistance

Part of the Series

Voting Wrongs

There are moments when history moves so fast that distraction becomes dangerous. Last week was one of those moments. While much of Memphis and Shelby County were pulled into the familiar rhythms of election analysis, political frustration, and personality-driven debate, something far more consequential was unfolding in Nashville.

Tennessee’s recent congressional redistricting effort, including the dismantling and cracking of Memphis’s former Congressional District 9, comes on the heels of recent Supreme Court decisions that further weakened key protections of the Voting Rights Act, making it significantly harder to challenge racial gerrymandering and voter dilution before harm is done. In the wake of those rulings, states across the South, including Tennessee, have moved more aggressively to redraw political maps in ways critics argue weaken Black voting strength and reduce pathways for legal remedy.

With stunning speed and remarkable arrogance, Tennessee Republicans passed a new congressional map designed to fracture Memphis and further dilute Black political power in one of the largest concentrations of Black voters in the South. The effort to crack Congressional District 9 was rationalized under the familiar language of “fairness,” “representation,” and political necessity. But for many of us in Memphis, the truth beneath the legalese is painfully familiar.

This is not merely redistricting — this is racialized political containment.

What Tennessee lawmakers have done is part of a long U.S. tradition of manipulating maps, courts, and laws to diminish the political influence of Black communities while pretending race has nothing to do with it. The old segregationists relied on poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and jellybean jars. Today’s segregationist politics arrive dressed in procedural language, judicial reasoning, and carefully constructed talking points designed to make injustice sound administrative rather than ideological.

Republican strategist Lee Atwater explained this evolution decades ago when he admitted politicians could no longer openly say the ugliest racial slurs or campaign explicitly on white supremacy. Instead, race-conscious politics would be disguised through coded language like “states’ rights,” “forced busing,” tax policy, and supposedly race-neutral governance that still produced racially unequal outcomes.

They Don’t Say It Loud Anymore

Communities like mine no longer experience explicit racial insults as frequently from elected officials. But we still experience racial subordination through public policy. Memphis, Jackson, Nashville, Birmingham, Atlanta, and other majority-Black cities are routinely politically managed, economically constrained, criminalized, or structurally undermined while politicians insist race has nothing to do with it.

And the outcome of Tennessee’s congressional map is obvious: dilute concentrated Black political power in Memphis by combining portions of Shelby County with predominantly white suburban and rural counties in ways that advantage conservative political control.

Even Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who has consistently attempted to work across partisan lines with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and even with Donald Trump-aligned political figures around issues like public safety and economic development, was not treated as a governing partner when the future of Memphis representation was at stake. Young distanced himself from aspects of Trump-era immigration politics, yes, but largely pursued cooperation with Republican leadership on matters affecting the city.

Yet neither Governor Lee nor Tennessee Republicans thought enough of Memphis to meaningfully consult its leadership before maneuvering to weaken Black political representation through redistricting.

That should teach all of us something important about political power: Cooperation without leverage rarely produces justice.

Likewise, many conservatives continue framing this redistricting effort as though it is simply a neutral exercise in partisan map-making rather than a process carrying profoundly racialized consequences. Shelby County Commissioner Brent Taylor publicly minimized the role of race by framing objections primarily as partisan complaints rather than concerns about the dilution of Black political power. But the politics surrounding the new maps tell a different story.

For years, Republican candidate Charlotte Bergmann repeatedly ran in the former Congressional District 9 despite long odds in a heavily Democratic, majority-Black district. Yet once Tennessee Republicans cracked District 9 and redrew the map to create a more Republican-friendly seat stretching far beyond Memphis, there was no serious effort to preserve Bergmann’s candidacy or reward her persistence. Instead, political maneuvering accelerated almost immediately. Within hours of Governor Lee signing the maps into law, Commissioner Taylor announced his candidacy for U.S. Congress in — wait for it — the newly configured District 9.

Because it reveals something deeper—this effort was never simply about abstract ideology or “fair representation.” It was (and always is) about power. Once the maps transformed a historically Black district into a more favorable Republican opportunity, political actors moved swiftly to consolidate electoral advantage under newly engineered conditions.

But while Tennessee lawmakers may believe they have secured permanent advantage, they are underestimating something history repeatedly teaches us: Organized people can defeat organized oppression.

Faith Without Organizing Is Dead

The legal pushback has already begun. Civil rights organizations, voting rights advocates, and legal scholars have filed legal challenges rooted in racial dilution, equal protection, and democratic fairness. Those lawsuits matter. They may stall, reshape, or weaken aspects of this effort.

That is why grassroots organizations, legacy civil rights institutions, and faith-based communities must immediately shift into organizing mode. Across Memphis and Shelby County, there is already renewed conversation around voter education, civic engagement, registration drives, and districtwide coalition-building. Black clergy are organizing. Community leaders are assessing relational networks in counties newly connected to Congressional District 9. Voter empowerment efforts are increasing.

Because this moment requires more than outrage — it requires infrastructure.

The maps Tennessee Republicans designed appear built upon several assumptions: that Shelby County turnout will remain depressed and that Memphis will remain politically isolated from surrounding counties where Black churches, Black voters, and persuadable independents already exist. Tennessee Republicans are banking on Black voters not rising to the occasion and overwhelming the suppression with massive turnout.

If turnout in Shelby County rises substantially, if Black political education deepens, if younger voters are organized, and if meaningful coalition-building emerges across this newly configured district, the political math changes.

But this cannot merely be about surviving the next election.

We need a 10 to 15-year strategy to reclaim and secure civil and human rights for the next generation. That means (re)building political infrastructure, strengthening Black civic education, cultivating courageous candidates, reshaping legal institutions, and expanding long-term voter engagement beyond moments of crisis.

We must also work harder to ensure that those we elect choose Black communities as a top priority, even while governing for the broader public good — because representation without accountability eventually becomes symbolism. And symbolism alone cannot protect or preserve democracy.

What Tennessee has done should alarm anyone who claims to care about democratic participation and representative government. But Memphis has seen this story before.

Freedom Summer, launched in Mississippi in 1964, was not simply a season of protest. It was a coordinated effort led by civil rights organizers to confront Black voter suppression through mass voter registration, political education, community organizing, Freedom Schools, and extraordinary moral courage in the face of violence and intimidation. And Memphis played a critical role in that struggle, serving as a strategic hub for organizing, training, fundraising, transportation, clergy support, and movement coordination for activists working throughout Mississippi and the Mid-South.

It reminds us that democracy has never expanded because powerful people voluntarily surrendered privilege. It expanded because ordinary people organized themselves into extraordinary movements. Freedom Summer was never simply about protest. It was about political education, voter registration, disciplined organizing, coalition-building, and moral courage.

Memphis is once again becoming ground zero for democracy and Black self-determination.