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Friend,
Anyone looking for the perfect model of urban blight need only look at the Black neighborhoods of Jacksonville, Florida.
Roads and sidewalks – if they are even there – need repairs. School buildings are old. Housing is decrepit.
But after a century and a half of neglect by white-dominated governments, hope is rising across this Atlantic Coast city.
On May 9, the Jacksonville City Council agreed to settle a federal lawsuit charging that the city has long deployed an unconstitutional, racially gerrymandered voting district map that denied Black voters fair representation in city council and school board elections.
The judge repeatedly rejected the city’s defense of its proposed alternative map and ordered it to use a new, fairer district map, offered by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The new map created a fifth district in which Black voters can elect preferred candidates.
One week later, in the first elections since the City Council agreed to the settlement, Black residents exercised their newfound political power in this fast-growing city, the 11th largest in the U.S.
“The court-ordered map, as part of the settlement, appears to have provided Black voters the opportunity to elect preferred candidates,” said Jack Genberg, senior staff attorney for voting rights at the SPLC.
“Community members were complaining about a liquor store set to be located next to a school. Now Black voters will have the chance to determine the actions their government takes.”
The old map artificially “packed” Black voters into four districts to diminish their political influence on other districts and ensure white majorities on the governing bodies. With generations of white political leaders assured of Black political impotence, their flagrant neglect of Black neighborhoods continued as standard operating procedure.
“[The ruling] means that we now have rare, political power as the electors,” said Rosemary McCoy, co-founder of the Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to register returning citizens and new and young voters in communities of color.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
More news from the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Nine years after deadly ‘incel’ attack, threat of male supremacism is growing — Read more here
SPLC lawyer Nancy Abudu confirmed to 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — Read more here
Anti-Asian violence underscores need for honest history, rejection of hate — Read more here
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