Alabama’s newly elected Black member of Congress stands on shoulders of family

By Dwayne Fatherree, Senior Investigative Journalist

Read the full story here

Friend,

Shomari Figures has lived his entire life in the shadow of public service. His uncle was an assistant U.S. attorney. His father, Michael Figures, was a civil rights lawyer who served in the Alabama Senate for 18 years. When his father died in 1996, his mother won his seat and took up the fight for justice, protection of children, women’s rights and education for the people of the Mobile area in the state Senate, work she continues to this day.

State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures said her son, even with his pedigree, was not initially interested in law school. Following his father’s death, he was one of three boys for whom she was responsible as she figured out how to carry on.

“Shomari and his two brothers were raised by a single mom from the age of 11,” she said. “It says volumes about single moms — and the people tearing down single moms who say that they can’t raise successful young men.”

Now Shomari Figures is poised to reach a political office higher than anyone in his family before him. Next month, at 39, he will be sworn in as the U.S. representative for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District.

The fact that Figures will be representing the capital city of Montgomery and a swath of counties across South Alabama is another milestone in the long struggle for equal representation in a state where the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act.

But it’s not only because Figures is Black — or because he is the scion of a family so deeply intertwined with civil rights history in Alabama.

The majority-Black district that he will represent was created after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 ruled that Alabama lawmakers had adopted a voting map that violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it discriminated against Black citizens, who would have had a majority in only one of seven congressional districts even though they comprise 26% of the state’s population.

Sincerely,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

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