NAACP Branch President Tom Savage said a march on the legislature this week tried to make a statement about this week’s redistricting session.
Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District covers Memphis and most of its suburbs, and is the only Democratic district in the state. The Cookeville Branch President Tom Savage said the redistricting is not among partisan lines, but based on race.
“If you have a representative in Memphis, Tennessee and someone who is in another county three counties away who do not represent an urban county, an industrial county, which that is what Shelby county is,” Savage said. “So then again, you’re, you’re disenfranchising a whole lot of people.”
Savage said 61 percent of Memphis’ population is Black, and the new redistricting would split up that population, leading to less political representation.
Savage said the protest just the first phase of mobilization and disruption to bring awareness to racial gerrymandering.
While it may not affect the predominantly white Putnam County, Savage said he expects similar remapping to occur across the state.
“If this passes, how else would it reshape the political representation for black and brown people across Tennessee?” Savage said. “It could affect all of the urban cities we’re talking about Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Johnson City. All of those areas and any micropolitan that actually is connected to them.”
Savage said the Voters Rights Act of 1965 recently weakened by the Supreme Court. He said it was signed out of necessity to counteract voter suppression and redlining following an era of Jim Crow Laws. Savage said the redistricting could immediately threaten the seats of seven elected Black officials.
“For the Supreme Court to flip the script on the 1965 Voting Rights act and for the governor of the state of Tennessee, before the ink had even dried, he has already called a session to do what Marsha Blackburn said and that is make this whole state red,” Savage said. “If you sit there and wait on other folk to say, ‘Hey, something’s terribly wrong about this,’ I dare you to be holding your breath because you’ll be black and blue,” Savage said. “People are ticked off. And this Supreme Court has been sticking it to people of color for a long time. And so we’re ticked about this. We’re highly ticked.”
Savage said he and his organization is calling for a political revolution, and they implore people to take to the polls to express their concern.
“We want people to be patient, but we want them to be active, to register their friends and their families and talk to people and explain what this injustice is,” Savage said. “And I think that if people understand this injustice, that they will support it. There’s something terribly wrong about this. We came too far to go back.”