Defiance against a newly redrawn congressional district map continues to grow after the Memphis City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the new District 9 boundaries at the Tuesday, May 12 meeting.
Council member JB Smiley introduced the resolution during the morning meetings. Personnel and Governmental Affairs Committee members unanimously agreed to add the item to the afternoon meeting agenda using the same night minutes.
Smiley read a statement in the afternoon, after “withholding” his comments earlier in the day.
“For generations, Congressional District 9 has ensured that the voices of the people of Memphis are heard at the federal level. Now the state legislature has fractured our community and diluted our collective voices for partisan gain,” said Smiley. “Memphis has always fought through adversity and we’ll fight through this too, because no map can erase the people of this city, our history or our power.”
On May 7, Republican state lawmakers in Nashville approved redrawn lines during a special session called at the request of Republican Gov. Bill Lee.
Opponents argue the lines were redrawn to end the Democratic Party’s dominance in the state’s only district with a majority Black population. The overhaul also splits Shelby County among three congressional districts — the 5th, 8th and 9th — ending decades of Memphis-dominated representation under a compact urban district. Tennessee currently sends a 8-1 delegation to Congress.
State Republicans jumped at the opportunity, after the conservative-led Supreme Court set the table by narrowing the scope of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It prohibits discriminatory voting procedures based on race, color or membership in certain minority groups.
District 9 is currently represented by Rep. Steve Cohen. Moreover, the district has been represented by a Democrat since being drawn following the 1980 census.
“These particular events that are going on at a national level state-by-state are wrong. What we’re looking at is not political gerrymandering. This is a reinstitution of Jim Crow, intentional or not,” said Jeff Warren.
At 70 years old, Warren is the elder statesman of the body. The native of Salisbury, North Carolina moved to Memphis in 1989. The longtime area physician remembers the plight of Black Americans struggling to gain a basic civic right.
“When I was a young man, I remember the civil rights marches. I remember people being sprayed with cannons and attacked by dogs. I saw that on TV at night. I knew how hard it was for people to actually get the right to vote and then actually get the right to have their own voice represented in our own houses of government,” recalled Warren.
For another council member, the memories are recounted through the ancestral narratives of her grandmothers. Both suffered the humiliations and human rights of abuses of Jim Crow law.
One was lucky enough to guess the number of beans in a jar— a common hurdle black voters had to clear to vote. Other methods included poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and intimidation.
“And because she guessed how many beans were in a jar, they sicced a dog on her that bit her ankles — because she wanted to vote,” said Yolanda Cooper-Sutton. “Eventually, they did let her vote, but the trauma that we as a country and we as a people have gone through just to have a right to vote has been minimized to. You don’t want our vote and you don’t even want our voice anymore.”
According to the council woman, her surviving 98-year old grandmother isn’t surprised by the recent turn of events. Redistricting came up during a recent Mother’s Day visit.
“She kind of smiled and said, ‘there is nothing new under the sun. As long as evil exists, you will always see the same thing being replayed through history,‘” said Cooper-Sutton.
Despite the philosophical outlook, there was room for criticism. The family matriarch is disappointed in the lack of action by the nation’s current Black leadership.
“They didn’t have a plan and (didn’t) see this coming,” quoted Cooper-Sutton.
