We're going backwards': Black political power under threat in Alabama after Voting Rights Act gutting

In 1965, a voting rights march from Selma toward Montgomery was met with state troopers on horseback, billy clubs, tear gas, and a sheriff’s posse, after which Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed. The televised violence on “Bloody Sunday” created a moral crisis that led President Lyndon B. Johnson to translate it into federal law through the Voting Rights Act five months later. Nearly 30% of Alabama’s population is Black, and the legal framework has supported Black political representation for decades. A Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakened Section 2, allowing states to redraw maps that protected majority-Black districts. Alabama Republicans voted to revert to an older map that would erase a majority-Black district, and a federal court blocked the change while appeals are planned.

"During a peaceful voting rights demonstration in 1965, an Alabama state trooper shot and killed church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson. In response, about 600 marchers set out from Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, toward the state capitol building in Montgomery to demand the right to vote. What met them on the other side state troopers on horseback, billy clubs, teargas and a sheriff's posse was broadcast that evening on national television. The images from Bloody Sunday produced a moral crisis that President Lyndon B Johnson translated into federal law five months later: the Voting Rights Act."

"Now, in a state where nearly 30% of the population is Black, the legal framework that has supported Black political representation for six decades could be dismantled. Last month, the supreme court decision in Louisiana v Callais weakened section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, enabling states to redraw congressional maps that protected majority Black districts. Sheyann Webb-Christburg, a Selma foot soldier who was eight years old on Bloody Sunday, called it an assault on the civil rights movement."

"Within days, Alabama's Republicans voted to revert to an older map that would essentially erase a majority-Black district ahead of the November midterms. On Tuesday, a federal court blocked the state from using the Republican-friendly map. While Alabama Republicans plan to appeal the latest decision to the supreme court, the representative who represents the district Shomari Figures, one of the only two Black members of Congress from the state said he is holding out hope his district will not be erased."

"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, he said."

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