Tennessee redistricting debate marked by fiery oratory about Black struggles for voting rights

During separate hours-long debates on redistricting in the Tennessee House and Senate on Thursday, Democrats delivered fiery oratory, often invoking the decades-long struggles of Black Tennesseans to secure voting rights, in opposing a Republican plan to divide Tennessee’s only majority-Democratic U.S. House district encompassing Memphis into three.

Republicans, who hold a supermajority voting power that guaranteed passage of the redistricting plan, largely remained silent with the exception of the measure’s sponsors, who were tasked with introducing the bill.

The measure, signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee, faced an immediate legal challenge from the NAACP Tennessee State Conference, which filed suit in Davidson County Chancery Court late Thursday, arguing the redistricting process violated both the state constitution and state law.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, Memphis Democrat

There are moments in this chamber where we are required to make very big decisions, decisions that are bigger than maps, that are bigger than how we normally do business. This is one of those moments. Because what is being proposed right here is not just a redrawing of districts. It is the breaking apart of a people. It is the fracturing of a history. It is the dilution of a voice that generations of people bled for, that marched for, that prayed for, that died to build. 

Memphis is a city of sanitation workers that proudly proclaimed, ‘I am a man.’ Memphis is not an accident on a map. Memphis is the balcony where the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated. Memphis is a place where he took his last footsteps. Memphis is sacred ground in our civil rights story in American history. 

And now, barely a few days after the Supreme Court weakened what remained of the historic Voting Rights Act, this legislature rushes to carve up a very community where Dr King gave his life fighting for dignity, economic justice and the rights of the oppressed, a city that is 64% Black, a congressional district that is 61% Black, and somehow we are supposed to believe that the dismantling of this district has nothing to do with race.

What do we say to children in school when we teach them about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, while simultaneously serving in legislatures that dismantle the political power of the very community where he died? What do we say to elders who survived Jim Crow and poll taxes and literacy tests and intimidation and segregation? What do we say to (former State Rep.) Johnnie Turner, who had to count the bubbles in a bar of soap? What do we say to those who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, who were jailed, who were in our courthouses, and who even gave their lives? Do we tell them we’re still learning nothing?  The people that came before us did not sacrifice so that their representation could become optional. They believed that America could become what it said it always has been, and today we’re being asked that very question: “Do we believe that America will be what it’s always said it’s going to be.” History is watching this vote.

Rep. London Lamar, Memphis Democrat

I rise today, not only as a senator, but as a daughter of Memphis, a daughter of the South and a beneficiary of the blood, sacrifice and courage of black people who fought for the right to vote. 

This is one of the most consequential votes any of us in this chamber will ever take in our lifetime, not because of lines on a map, but because of what those lines are designed to do: erase representation, dilute black voting power, and tell Memphis that our voice only matters when it is controlled. So let’s stop acting like this is ordinary redistricting. 

There hasn’t been new census data. There is no emergency for the people. The only emergency here is for Republicans in this chamber (who) saw political opportunity after a Supreme Court decision weakened the Voting Rights Act that they moved immediately to attack Black voting power. 

This map does not reflect Memphis. It diminishes Memphis. It slices our city into pieces and stretches our communities hundreds of miles away to places of different needs, different economies, different histories and different lived realities. You cannot take a majority Black city, fracture its voting power, and then tell us race has nothing to do with it. Racism does not become less racist because it’s called partisan. 

I never imagined as the youngest African American to ever serve in this body in the history of this state, that I’ll be standing here debating the dilution of political power of my city and my community. I never thought — as a mother of a child so many of you all love that you refer to as Baby Senator — that my baby will have less rights than his grandmother. This is an insult to Memphis. This is an insult to the Black community, and it’s an insult to me as a mother.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson, Memphis Democrat

How can you say this is not about race? Black representation in this state was not given freely. It was fought for. It was sacrificed for, in protest and generations of struggle. This chamber must decide whether the Black voice of Tennessee deserves protection. You cannot celebrate Dr. King in January and then turn around and kill the Black voice of Tennessee in May.

Sen. John Stevens, Huntingdon Republican:

The goal of this legislation is to support the national Republican party’s ability to maintain the majority in the United States Congress. 

It’s a razor thin margin. Our voters sent us here to draw these maps as part of our duties. That’s part of our duties: to maximize our partisan advantage for the priorities that Tennesseans have overwhelmingly voted to support: strong national defense, support for our military and veterans, border security, tax relief for working families like no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, permitting reform, pro-growth and pro-family policies. That’s what we’re voting on today, to ensure that a Republican majority can enact those policies.

Rep. Joe Towns, Jr., Memphis Democrat

The world certainly is watching America. Better yet, the world is watching Tennessee. All those ideas that we expound across the water, they know we’re lying. You can’t fool the people. They know we are lying because you’re saying one thing, but we do another…That’s what my grandmother called a bald faced lie. We’re lying to the people. 

What do you need an advantage for? You weigh 2000 pounds. The other man weighs 20 pounds. You gonna beat up on him and take the little thing he has? That’s cowardice. That’s weakness. That is not what men do. Men of honor, men of valor, men of commitment, don’t play it that way.

Rep. Justin Pearson, Memphis Democrat

These maps are racist tools of white supremacy at the behest of the most powerful white supremacist in the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. Memphis is the most beautiful place on the planet. It’s the place that raised me, my brothers, my parents, my grandmothers, and where my ancestors’ bones rest. And what you are doing today is eviscerating the only Black majority congressional district in our state because we are majority Black.

Stevens

In response to a question about whether he was aware the House district encompassing Memphis is the only majority African-American district in Tennessee: I have no knowledge of that.

Rep. Harold Love, Nashville Democrat

I don’t know what’s worse, to not think about Black folks, or to say that you have and not tell the truth. So oftentimes we have discussions about race, about racism. Many times you all have difficulty accepting we have pain still in our hearts because of the vestiges of slavery. The stuff that’s left over, the little things that you might not pay attention to, the microaggressions that we feel, the votes that I cast that still rip the scab off. So here we are again with another bill that members are saying to you is hurtful to us, because it says to us: “you are disregarding how I think, how I feel, how this bill will impact me.” It hurts. We about to do some more damage to Black folks with this vote.

Sen. Jeff Yarbro, Nashville Democrat

I have heard people claim that this is not about race, that this map is colorblind. It is colorblind only in that it sees in black and white.

That’s what it does. And just because the Supreme Court has issued this ruling — and people have interpreted it as sort of a not just a permission slip, but a requirement to go dismantle majority-minority districts — that is not what the Supreme Court said. That is not what our constitution allows.

We are trying to dress something up in political language, because that’s what Justice Alito’s opinion in Callais (v Louisiana) says. If we say we’re doing it for partisan reasons, we can get away with it. Well, Mr. Speaker, we have been playing that game in this chamber for 150 years. I’m sure there are people who, when they proposed the poll tax, said it was for raising revenue with no racial intent at all.

The degree to which this type of project has been aimed at this community in particular for the last 150 years is shocking.

Rep. Karen Camper, Memphis Democrat and House Democrat Leader

I served in the Army for 21 years to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, bear true faith and allegiance to the same. I took a similar oath when I came here to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the state constitution and not be injurious to the people. 

I took that oath. It meant something to me, and it still does. I think and truly believe these maps are injurious to our people, particularly those of us in Memphis, Tennessee. Man, when I saw that map, it hurt. It was like a stabbing in the heart in the center of my hometown. That hurt

Sen. Heidi Campbell, Nashville Democrat

Look up. Look at the gallery and look at the people who drove here from Memphis, who drove here from Chattanooga, from Knoxville, from Clarksville, from every corner of the state, to stand in these halls and to beg us not to do this. These aren’t partisans based from somewhere else. They’re not paid protesters. These are Tennesseans, teachers, farmers, veterans, grandmothers. They came here on a Thursday. They’ve been here all week because something about this is wrong enough to make them get in their cars. 

How do we look them in the eye and not recognize their humanity? You represent them too. Every single person in this gallery and in the halls is your constituent. Not just mine. Yours. Because the controlling party in a super majority has the most responsibility to these people, not the least. 

Power is not permission to stop listening. In the last presidential election, nearly 40% of Tennesseans did not vote for Donald Trump. That’s close to 1.2 million people. They pay taxes, they send their children to the same schools. They serve the same military. Under this map, the map this body may adopt those 1.2 million people will have diminished representation, not reduced representation.  Zero. No congressional voice at all. None. Nine congressional seats, nine Republicans, not because nine Republicans represent Tennessee, but because nine safe Republican seats is what this map was engineered to produce one week after the Supreme Court ruling cleared the legal path to do it, and that’s not a democracy. This is a map drawn by incumbents for incumbents in the service of one man in Washington who is not a Tennessean.

Sen. Sara Kyle, Memphis Democrat

You’re going to have to go home. And you can justify what you’re doing: “Oh, I didn’t realize we was biting up a black population.” Yeah, you did. Yes, you do. You come down there and enjoy our music, our cuisine, our way of living. Oh, you like it.…None of you want to walk around in an era of Jim Crow. Think, think what you’re doing. You are on a slippery slope of turning back the hands of time. 

Sen. Charlane Oliver, Nashville Democrat

I want to acknowledge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I know most of you. You speak to me in the hallways. I’ve gotten to know some of you, and I know you go to church on Sundays. I know you love your families just like I do, and I know you believe you are good people, and that is precisely why what I am saying to you right now matters the most.

Because good people, people who go to church, people who love their families, people who believe they’re good have, throughout the history of this country, done deeply, profoundly wrong things to Black Americans, and they told themselves it was about something else. They told themselves that it was about economics, heritage, party, patriotism. It was never about something else. And today it’s not about something else. 

There is no new Census. There is no court order.  There is no legal obligation that required this body to convene this week. The only thing that changed is that the Supreme Court removed the last legal protection standing between Black voters in Tennessee and this super majority’s naked ambitions, and you moved within hours. I’m sure daddy Trump will be proud of you.