Memphis redistricting brings Tennessee's racist past present | Opinion

It should surprise no one who follows Tennessee politics that the state was the first out of the gate to ram through a mid-decade congressional redistricting map mere days after the landmark Supreme Court ruling gutting a key portion of the Voting Rights Act.

The Volunteer State’s progression as arguably the South’s most reliable and unyielding Republican stronghold has been building for nearly a quarter-century.

A majority of the electorate that in the past rewarded both Democrats and Republicans equally is now considered solidly in step with the GOP’s far-right wing. Except, that is, in a couple of places – notably, Shelby County and its main city, Memphis.

How Tennessee evolved from blue to purple to bloodthirsty red is rooted in the loss of rural moderate Democrats, the intransigence of top Republicans and the unrelenting demonization of Memphis, particularly its Black residents who make up 64% of the city’s population.

Tennessee's progression toward disenfranchisement

It all came together during a special legislative session on May 7 when the Republican supermajority, within three days, surgically dismantled the majority Black district that has been in the hands of Democrats since January 1975.

To make it happen so swiftly, Republicans also changed a state law banning reapportionment of congressional districts in the middle of a decade and dispensed with residency requirements to run for congressional seats.

GOP lawmakers kept the new district map under wraps until the day before the House of Representatives and Senate votes. They also did away with public hearings and limited floor debate before approving the most drastic changes ever to Tennessee congressional lines.

Instead of practically all of Memphis being in the Ninth District, the city is now divided into three districts, all of which stretch for some 200 miles into rural areas and suburban Nashville counties to ensure majority White and Republican-leaning voters outnumber each district’s Black population.

Critics have responded with angry accusations of a return to Jim Crow racism in Tennessee. Republicans insist the move is solely about putting all nine of the state’s congressional seats in the GOP column, and that race has nothing to do with it.

Republican State Sen. John Stevens of rural Huntingdon, a University of Memphis law school graduate, even had the gall to say he did not know that Memphis and Shelby County have majority Black populations.

Redistricting shows uncomfortable historical parallels

The NAACP is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed in Chancery Court in Nashville, challenging the redistricting law. And current Democratic Ninth District Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis is a party to a federal lawsuit that also seeks to stop the changes for the August federal primaries and November general election.

But if the new map stands, the decision creates the most racially divisive moment since the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis during a strike by the all-Black city sanitation workers.

In the aftermath of King’s murder, the city, the state and the nation sought to bridge racial divides and uphold the 1965 Voting Rights Act, particularly Section 2 that gave large swaths of Black voters the right to vote for the congressional candidates of their choice.

The Supreme Court’s April 29 decision severely weakened Section 2, holding that a Black Louisiana district was unconstitutionally created based on race. However, it’s questionable if the decision applies to Tennessee’s Ninth District.

In 1974, Black state lawmaker Harold Ford narrowly defeated four-term Republican incumbent Dan Kuykendall to claim the seat. At the time, the district was just 45% Black.

Then, racial population shifts, with White Memphians moving to the suburbs east of the city and to neighboring DeSoto County in Mississippi, led to Memphis becoming a majority Black city by the 1990 census.

Democrats at the time controlled both the state House and Senate, but the governor’s office rotated between moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans from 1970 to 2010.

Rural West Tennessee was home to several White moderate Democratic leaders, including former House Speaker and Gov. Ned McWherter, legislators Jimmy Naifeh, Roy Herron and Craig Fitzhugh, and longtime Lt. Gov. John Wilder.

Republicans finally took control of the legislature following the 2010 election, and any interest in seeking compromise with Democrats has eroded with each election cycle.

Once moderate, Tennessee is becoming more polarized

The rise of President Donald Trump has only made Tennessee Republicans more intractable. Gone are the voices of GOP moderates Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Bill Frist and Bill Haslam – all replaced by elected leaders eager to do Trump’s bidding, which includes dismantling the majority Black Ninth District.

Republicans in recent years have also sought to punish Memphis for a host of local decisions, from removing the statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from a city park to pushing for local gun control ordinances and seeking to end race-based police traffic stops.

And now this.

Democrats are vowing to fight back, and not just in the courts. Some Democrats, including former Rep. Ford, have told me they are expecting Trump’s sinking poll numbers will drive Tennessee’s independent electorate – estimated at more than 40% of the total – away from Republicans and their underhanded redistricting law.

Whatever the outcome, in Trump’s America, Tennessee is now as racially divided as it has ever been. Those who hold the power are not interested in common ground. Black Memphians are paying the price.

Otis Sanford is professor emeritus in journalism and strategic media at the University of Memphis. He is the author of the 2017 book, “From Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics,” and “Newsman: The Road from Route 2 Box 9,” set for release in June.