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Republican lawmakers in Louisiana advanced a congressional map today to eliminate one of the state's two majority-Black districts. That's after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the current lines unconstitutional. That recent decision gutted a key section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As NPR's Sam Gringlas reports, the Baton Rouge-based district at the heart of the case shows that battles over the landmark law continued long after it passed.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: Three mornings a week, usually before 7, a half dozen or so seniors finish exercising at the community gym and commandeer a hallway lined with plastic chairs.
PRESS ROBINSON: We call ourselves the old men down the hall (laughter).
GRINGLAS: Eighty-eight-year-old Press Robinson is a retired chemistry professor. In track suits and sweatpants, the men drink coffee, eat donuts and talk.
ROBINSON: It's a great way to get your day started.
GRINGLAS: When the group met a few Fridays ago, the Supreme Court ruling was still fresh. Not only did Republicans get clearance to break up this congressional district, the decision is also the latest to weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, making it much harder to challenge discrimination in redistricting.
ROBINSON: They've just killed the Voting Rights Act. It has no teeth at all.
GRINGLAS: For 91-year-old James Verrett, the ruling was a gut punch. He protested for voting rights after returning from military service abroad as a paratrooper, only to find Louisiana still treated him second class.
JAMES VERRETT: I've been beaten with billy sticks, dogs and tear gas. But now, the Supreme Court and the state courts are making it back up to where it was.
GRINGLAS: When Robinson and Verrett were young men, very few Black southerners were registered to vote. Robinson became the first in his family to register, despite a test to interpret lines from the Constitution. Ten years later, the Voting Rights Act prohibited these arbitrary barriers. But the law did not immediately result in a swell of Black elected officials. In East Baton Rouge, the Parish School Board still had no Black members.
ROBINSON: Kids were still getting books that was third-, fourth-generation, with names of white students all over them.
GRINGLAS: Robinson was determined to change that. The tool he reached for was Section 2 of the VRA.
ROBINSON: It was the keystone because that provided the legal background for us to go into court and argue these issues.
GRINGLAS: A court ruled the Parish wards illegally diluted Black voting power, and in 1980, Robinson was elected to a new majority-Black school board district. When the VRA came up for renewal two years later, Congress strengthened the law, and by 1992, the number of majority Black congressional districts nationally nearly doubled.
CLEO FIELDS: And it was because of that one act - the Voting Rights Act.
GRINGLAS: One of those new members was Cleo Fields, then just 29 years old. Fields was elected to a new majority-Black seat here. He got to work, secured a grant for the local historically Black college - at that point, its largest federal award ever. This showed, Field says, how representation in Congress matters. But in 1996, a federal court ruled the zigzagging district lines an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
FIELDS: People throughout that district - you know, they had felt a sense of inclusion, and the district was wiped away.
GRINGLAS: Fields left Congress. Nearly three decades went by. Then Press Robinson, the retired professor, decided to go to court one last time. He filed another Section 2 lawsuit, arguing Louisiana's congressional map diluted Black voting power. A federal court agreed, and Fields, who arrived in Washington a young man, returned to Congress, now in his 60s.
FIELDS: You know, I had a chance to do it as a kid, and now I get a chance to do it as a grown man.
GRINGLAS: Once again, a lawsuit came, and once again, a federal court - this time, the U.S. Supreme Court - two weeks ago struck down Louisiana's map.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Shouting) Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Shut it down.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Let's go.
GRINGLAS: At the state Capitol, Republicans raced to eliminate a majority-Black district. The best way to end race-based discrimination, Governor Jeff Landry said, is to stop making decisions based on race. Louisiana is one of several Southern states now slashing districts no longer protected by the VRA.
From his Baton Rouge office, with a view of the state Capitol, Fields sees echoes of the late 19th century, when the Jim Crow era reversed gains in Black representation.
FIELDS: I look at pictures of the number of Blacks who were in Congress, and then after Reconstruction, they were all wiped out.
GRINGLAS: Robinson says he feels less optimistic now than when he was finally able to register to vote some 70 years ago.
ROBINSON: Here I was, just registered. Now I had a voice for the very first time ever. I thought it had been won.
GRINGLAS: Robinson says what he knows now is the fight is everlasting. It has to continue, and Robinson says, it will.
Sam Gringlas, NPR News, Baton Rouge.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMMON AND JOHN LEGEND SONG, "THEY SAY (FEAT. KANYE WEST)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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