This is what a return to Jim Crow looks like. Mario Cantu/AP
Republican attempts to erase Black representation in the wake of the Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act have hit a few roadblocks in recent days. A federal court found that Alabama’s map, green-lit by the Roberts Court, intentionally discriminated against Black voters and blocked it for November. And the state senate in South Carolina adjourned a special session without passing a map that was designed to oust Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state’s lone Democratic House member and the first Black Congressman elected from South Carolina since Reconstruction.
But that shouldn’t distract from the damage that the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision has done to multiracial democracy. Republicans are already moving to eliminate at least half a dozen majority Black districts in the Deep South between now and 2028. That would trigger the largest drop in Black representation since the end of Reconstruction. On Thursday, the Louisiana legislature was set to pass a new gerrymandered map eliminating the district of Black Democrat Cleo Fields.
Watch our new explainer to learn how Republicans are reviving Jim Crow by targeting Black voters with surgical precision in the former Confederate states.