Partisan redistricting efforts sweeping across Republican-led states have significantly reshaped majority-Black and plurality-Black congressional districts throughout the South.
The mid-decade redistricting push, initiated by President Trump, was accelerated by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened key Voting Rights Act protections against racial discrimination in map-drawing.
In Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Black communities that were once linked have been absorbed into majority-white areas under newly redrawn congressional maps.
Voting in these six states is generally racially polarized, with nearly 78% of Black voters supporting Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, making them a critical Democratic voting bloc.
Republicans have argued the redrawn districts are simply about strengthening their party’s position ahead of crucial midterm elections, not about race.
Texas moved first in response to Trump’s redistricting call, enacting a new map that shifts five seats toward Republicans and has already resulted in reduced Black congressional representation in the Houston metro area.
The Texas redistricting pitted two Black Democratic incumbents against each other, with Rep. Al Green losing to Rep. Christian Menefee in the May Democratic primary runoff for the newly drawn 18th District.
In late April, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, a ruling that has since enabled the dismantling of largely Black districts in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee.
Florida’s new 20th District saw its Black population share fall from nearly 53% to 45%, with majority-Black neighborhoods in Belle Glade, Riviera Beach, and West Palm Beach redistributed into surrounding districts with significantly smaller Black populations of 15% and 26% respectively.
Louisiana’s redrawn map eliminates one of its two Black-majority districts, with Shreveport, where Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters three to one, now absorbed into the predominantly Republican northwest part of the state.
Alabama’s redistricting, originally struck down by a lower court as intentionally discriminatory before the Supreme Court allowed its use, similarly eliminates one of two majority-Black districts and separates Mobile and Montgomery into districts that are only 27% and 42% Black respectively.
Montgomery now shares a district with some of the strongest Republican precincts in southeastern Alabama, where Trump received between 70% and 80% of the vote, representing a dramatic political realignment for the majority-Black city.
Tennessee Republicans removed the state’s only majority-Black district entirely, cracking the 62% Black 9th District concentrated around Memphis into three separate districts, cutting the Black population in the new 9th to just under 33%.
North Carolina’s 1st District, which had the highest Black population in the state at around 42%, was redrawn in 2025 and merged with solidly Republican eastern shore counties, reducing the district’s Black population share to approximately 34%.
The scale and coordination of these redistricting efforts across six states represents one of the most significant reshaping of Black political representation in the United States in recent decades.
