Nov 14, 2024 Story by: Editor
The 2024 election, along with a court-ordered redistricting, has led to a historic outcome: Alabama will have two Black U.S. House members serving together for the first time. Shomari Figures, who was elected Tuesday night to represent the 2nd Congressional District, will join U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, who has represented the state in Congress since 2011 and was re-elected last week for her eighth term.
In a statement released Friday, Figures acknowledged the district’s history and the significance of his election in the context of representation.
“The opportunity for fair representation is an essential element of democracy, as it affords people from different backgrounds an opportunity to make sure their voices are heard and interests represented,” he said.
Sewell also expressed her support for the outcome, highlighting the importance of electing leaders who will advocate for the issues that matter most to their constituents.
“Too many Black voters in Alabama have had their power diluted by unfair congressional maps,” Sewell’s statement read. “By sending Shomari Figures to Washington, those voters finally get the chance to claim their seat at the decision-making table. I look forward to having him as a partner in Congress and working on behalf of all Alabamians, especially those whose voices have yet to be fully heard.”
Although Black Alabamians make up about 27% of the state’s population, they have faced centuries of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. During Reconstruction, when Alabama’s population was nearly 48% Black, the state sent three Black men—Benjamin Turner, James Rapier, and Jeremiah Haralson—to the U.S. House of Representatives. However, their terms did not overlap. Sewell and Figures’ districts today encompass areas that were represented by these men in the 1870s, with Rapier having represented Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, much like Figures.
By the time Haralson left Congress in 1877, Alabama had already begun implementing voter suppression laws, which culminated in the 1901 state constitution that effectively disenfranchised Black voters and poor whites. It would be another 115 years before Alabama elected another Black representative to Congress, when Earl Hilliard won the 7th Congressional District in 1992, a district specifically drawn to be majority-minority.
For decades, Sewell’s district, the 7th, remained the only one in Alabama to elect Black representatives. However, in 2022, a federal court found that racial polarization in the state—where white voters generally supported Republicans and Black voters supported Democrats—had caused Black voters’ influence to be diluted. The court mandated the creation of a second “opportunity district” to give Black voters a better chance to elect their preferred candidates. This led to the approval of a new 2nd Congressional District map in 2023, stretching from Mobile to the Georgia border and including Montgomery. The new district has a Black Voting Age Population (BVAP) of 48.7%.
The case, known as Allen v. Milligan, remains active. Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff, shared his cautious optimism in an interview on Wednesday, saying that he had been uncertain about the outcome of the lawsuit.
“At no point was it a foregone conclusion,” Milligan said. “I’ll say that, and it’s still not, because this is an active case.”
Milligan believes the law worked in their favor, citing the state’s long history of resistance to civil rights and voting rights protections.
“The only reason the law needs to point to it is because of the decades of resistance that the state of Alabama has had to uniform enforcement of civil rights protections and voting rights protections at every branch and every step of the democratic process,” he explained.
Benard Simelton, president of the Alabama State Conference NAACP and also a plaintiff in the case, expressed hope that the court would uphold the decisions made thus far. However, he admitted that he was less confident than before.
“Still, I think the courts cannot help but see that the way the state of Alabama had this, had gerrymandered the district and that they will rule in favor of keeping that district the way it is,” Simelton said.
Simelton also emphasized the importance of Black voter turnout in achieving this historic outcome.
“We expected the outcome of two Black candidates because we had a good candidate, and we did a lot of work trying to get people excited about voting,” he said. “It showed that again, when Blacks get an opportunity to elect and show up to the polls, they will do and elect the person that they want to represent them.”
Milligan reflected on the long-standing tradition of activism in Alabama, linking the current fight to a broader historical struggle for civil rights.
“I think in every generation there’s an opportunity for us to hold our state and to hold our nation to the values that are written down in our Constitution, because freedom and fairness and justice, those are action words,” Milligan said. Source: Alabama Reflector
