Some teens can’t wait to drive — or drink, or smoke, or have sex, or move out. I couldn’t wait to vote. In 2000, I was so annoyed not to be a voter that I made it my mission to convince as many eligible voters as I could find to cast their ballots. Teenage Anna attempted to engage teachers, custodial staff, cashiers, whoever would listen, really, in discussions about the urgency of elections and the privilege of voting. At least a few folks claimed that I’d swayed them to go to the polls; we’ll never know if they were humoring me, or serious.
We tend to think that whatever era we currently occupy is unusually fraught. Without historical perspective, without the aerial-view context of time’s passage, the present day tends to feel like the loudest, brightest, sharpest, and scariest. In 2002, when I cast my first ballot in a local election, fear and cynicism smoldered: Bush vs. Gore was recent news, September 11th still a fresh hell. Even though I knew my vote was merely a small stitch in a giant cloth, I felt empowered and energized, more than ready to add my voice to the adult conversation.
Last Tuesday, on May 5th, my stepson cast his very first ballot. He’s 18, politically aware, more than ready to add his voice to the conversation. But he’s joining the electorate at a vastly different time than I was, 24 years ago. Cynicism was rampant then, too, but I had never entertained the notion that my vote mattered any less than anyone else’s vote. I never imagined, back then, that Memphis would undergo the radical disenfranchisement we’ve confronted in May of 2026.
The future was supposed to be better than the past — wasn’t it? In school, we studied the history of women’s suffrage, without quite grasping the travesty that the suffrage movement of the nineteen-teens was strictly about white women’s suffrage. We learned about the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but no one ever mentioned what redlining had done to cities and citizens. We studied history as if time marched toward ever better, ever more just and equitable futures. Now, I’m not so sure.
I AM A MAN Plaza (Photo: Chad Robertson | Dreamstime.com)
On April 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court found, in Louisiana v. Callais, that a congressional map drawn in 2023, following Robinson v. Ardoin, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by purposefully creating a majority-minority district. The ruling immediately diminished the force of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, holding that the Act only protects against overt current racial discrimination and not against political manipulation, and opened the door to redistricting nationwide.
By May 7th, Tennessee legislators, emboldened by the Court’s decision, had redrawn this state’s congressional map.
Instead of a congressional seat centered in Memphis — where much of the population votes Democratic — Memphis will be part of three districts, all of which likely will be bright-red Republican. It’s no coincidence that Memphis votes for Democrats and that Memphis is majority-Black. Officially, if unconvincingly, the change is strictly a political gerrymander, and has nothing whatsoever to do with race. It’s the worst kind of lie: a lie whose falsehood is glaringly obvious yet near-impossible to prove.
The new map, swiftly signed into law by Governor Bill Lee, trisects Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District into three long, weird slashes, stretching all the way from Downtown Memphis to Williamson County, just outside Nashville; and to the far northern edge of the state in Stewart and Montgomery Counties; and to the cattle and whiskey of Bedford County. Shelby County will exist within three different Congressional districts.
State Senator Brent Taylor, a funeral home director and one of the strongest advocates for the bizarre new map, now says he plans to run for the U.S. House in the very District 9 he helped gerrymander into existence. He has created what is effectively the Brent Taylor District — and orchestrated a funeral for fair representation in the process.
Whoever is elected to represent my neighborhood in Midtown Memphis will also represent Centerville, Tennessee, and Hickman County (named for a man killed in an Indian attack at what’s now Defeated Creek, in 1791). That representative will not answer to my colleagues who live in East Memphis; instead, those folks will be sewn together with constituents in … Decaturville. Make sense? I didn’t think so.
The Ninth District has been the site of a generational battle between incumbent Steve Cohen and challenger Justin J. Pearson. Now, under the new map, neither Cohen nor Pearson lives in that district, and hyper-conservative State Sen. Brent Taylor — a vocal advocate of the redistricting — says he’ll seek the office. Cohen has indicated he wants to represent Memphis and that, if the new map stands, he won’t run.
Pearson and Cohen have both joined a lawsuit arguing the state has violated voters’ and candidates’ constitutional rights, and the two have joined together in rallying against the seismic shift. “This will not be good for your state,” Cohen told Republican lawmakers. “This is what happens when you allow tyranny to govern,” said Pearson.
One small glimmer would be the two men standing shoulder-to-shoulder after months of rancor. Cohen and Pearson have both joined a lawsuit against the new map, along with other Tennessee lawmakers and the state’s Democratic Party, arguing that the map violates the Purcell principle against procedural changes that affect elections midstream. The NAACP also is suing the state using similar procedural arguments.
The term gerrymander famously comes from an early 19th-century governor of Massachusetts, Elbirdge Gerry, and … a salamander (Gerry + –mander). When Gerry created a particularly odd congressional district for political gain, the new district’s shape was observed to resemble the moist amphibian. Both major parties in this country have engaged in gerrymandering over the past two centuries, and both parties are advancing efforts now to build political power via creative redistricting.
Removing representation from a metropolis the size and character of Memphis, though, is particularly violent. Memphis, where the Civil Rights Movement reached a fever pitch. Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for justice and in return was murdered. Memphis, long a bright blue dot in a great red sea.
“I AM A Man,” read the marchers’ signs in 1968, when Dr. King led Memphis sanitation workers in their battle for fair treatment under a segregated labor system. It needed saying then. It needs saying now, too. Memphis remains a majority-minority city, one too often counted out, sold short, and otherwise disrespected.
I happened to be out of town when the news broke of the redistricting. As soon as anyone heard my husband or me say the name “Memphis,” they started talking about what had happened with real animation. Back in Memphis, a few days later, and there’s much less energy to spare. This city can be admirably, fiercely obstinate, but sometimes I sense a heaviness in the air. It is so much harder to stand up and fight back if you are starting already depleted. People here are tired. So tired.
If the new map stands, and we effectively lose all national representation, it will be an American tragedy. And it will be yet another Memphis tragedy. This city has fought so hard simply to exist. We lost our charter in 1879, after yellow fever incited population loss and economic peril. We lost our hope in 1968, after Dr. King was assassinated. Yet Memphis has remained, bruised and battered though we are. We have built a culture of boisterous tenacity despite it all. I don’t know how we will persevere through this latest tragedy, but I believe in Memphis against all odds.
On May 5th, a glum and rainy day, I voted in the Shelby County primary. Having missed the window for early voting, I drove to my assigned polling place on Election Day. On my way inside, I chatted with two candidates for office. There was no line. No wait. I presented my ID, agreed to use a voting machine, and made my selections. I’d done my research, so the entire deed took under five minutes.
Relative to other primaries in recent years, voter turnout was high. Voter turnout was 16 percent. 89,848 of this county’s 577,527 voters cast ballots, and this exceeded expectations.
We weren’t electing a President that day, or a U.S. Senator, or a House rep.
We weren’t voting on Tennessee Republicans’ redistricting plan — because that was never on any ballot. Folks like you and me didn’t get a say. If this stands, even fewer folks will get a say, in any way that matters.
Memphis can be a place of miracles. Curses, too. We can weather this travesty, somehow, though we shouldn’t have to. We’ll need strong leaders to see us through. I hope those currently in office, and those seeking office, are up to the task. Time is not on our side.
State Representative Antonio Parkinson, responding to the news, said, “Perhaps the legislature should explain why Memphis should continue to be part of the state of Tennessee.” Parkinson, a Democrat, went on: “You’re constantly beating on us. Allow us out.”
