The question of democratic representation in Mississippi has long been a barometer of the nation’s unfinished reckoning with race and power. Once again, that question sits before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the mid-2020s, as in the 1960s and 1980s before it, Mississippi’s political boundaries—and the rights they either protect or constrain—have become the terrain upon which the meaning of citizenship is contested.
The nation’s highest court is currently weighing three redistricting cases that together could redefine the scope of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 statute born of the Civil Rights Movement. For nearly six decades, that law has served as a crucial instrument for Black Mississippians seeking to dismantle the architecture of disenfranchisement that shaped the state’s political order since Reconstruction.
Among the cases under review is one from Mississippi itself, in which state Attorney General Lynn Fitch has appealed a decision by U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock. Aycock’s ruling held that Mississippi’s Supreme Court districts unlawfully weaken Black voting strength and therefore must be redrawn—a finding that, if upheld, would alter the racial composition of one of the state’s most enduring bastions of white political authority. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has since halted its review while awaiting direction from the Supreme Court.
At issue are claims brought by a coalition of Black voters and candidates who argue that the state’s current judicial districts impose structural barriers to Black electoral success, ensuring that the composition of the Mississippi Supreme Court remains largely insulated from the demographic realities of the state it governs. The litigation echoes earlier moments in Mississippi’s history when Black citizens turned to the courts to secure representation long denied through law and custom.
This is a fight that Black Mississippians have fought before.
In 1971, state Rep. Robert Clark Jr., Mississippi’s lone Black legislator, joined NAACP leader Aaron Henry and Fayette Mayor Charles Evers in a Mississippi courtroom to challenge a political structure that had, for generations, ensured Black disenfranchisement. Their victory in the case contesting the state’s “open primary” law marked a decisive moment in Mississippi’s modern political history. Beyond its immediate legal implications, the ruling set in motion a series of judicial interventions that would culminate in one of the most significant expansions of Black political representation in the United States since Reconstruction.
Aaron Henry, a pharmacist from Clarksdale, stood as one of the most enduring figures in Mississippi’s long freedom struggle. A veteran organizer whose activism stretched back to the 1940s, Henry combined professional respectability with political courage, channeling both into institutional leadership. As president of the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP branches, he navigated the treacherous terrain of white retaliation—facing arrest, economic reprisals and violent intimidation—while maintaining a disciplined commitment to nonviolent protest and legal redress. His approach reflected the core tenets of the institutional civil rights tradition: methodical organization, coalition-building and faith in the capacity of democratic institutions to reform themselves. Henry’s influence reached its zenith during the 1964 Freedom Summer and in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s historic challenge to the state’s all-white delegation at the Democratic National Convention, moments that exposed the moral contradictions of American democracy before a national audience.
Charles Evers, by contrast, brought a more populist and confrontational style to Mississippi’s evolving Black political landscape. The elder brother of slain NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, Charles returned to the state after the 1963 assassination determined to extend his brother’s legacy through direct political action. In 1969, his election as mayor of Fayette made him the first Black person to hold such office in Mississippi since Reconstruction—a symbolic and practical victory that revealed the transformative power of Black enfranchisement in the post–Voting Rights Act South. Evers’s leadership was marked by independence and tactical pragmatism; he courted white allies when expedient but remained unyielding in his insistence on Black political autonomy and control.
Alongside Robert Clark Jr.—who, in 1967, became Mississippi’s first Black state legislator in nearly a century—Henry and Evers embodied a transitional generation in Southern politics. Their careers signaled a decisive shift from protest to governance, from mass mobilization to electoral participation. Together, they represented a new political vanguard, one that refused to accept the exclusion that had long defined Black life in Mississippi and insisted instead on shaping the institutions that structured it.
Following the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Mississippi’s white political leadership sought new mechanisms to maintain racial control within an ostensibly democratic framework. While the federal law outlawed overt discrimination in voter registration and participation, the state legislature pursued subtler means of preserving white dominance. Chief among these were at-large and multi-member election systems, which effectively diluted Black voting strength by subsuming Black majorities within larger white constituencies. The “open primary” law represented a further evolution of this strategy—an electoral device designed to nullify the growing influence of newly enfranchised Black voters under the guise of reform.
Clark, Henry and Evers, representing distinct strands of Mississippi’s Black political tradition, recognized the law’s implications immediately. Together they filed their lawsuit, arguing that the measure violated both the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required federal preclearance of any election law changes in jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination. Their argument was grounded not only in constitutional principle but also in empirical evidence of the law’s intent and effect: the suppression of emerging Black political power.
In 1971, a three-judge federal panel agreed. The court invalidated the open primary statute, ruling that it had never received the requisite federal approval and therefore could not stand. The decision was more than a technical rebuke—it was an acknowledgment that Mississippi’s electoral infrastructure had been deliberately engineered to marginalize its Black citizens. “We plan for this to be a revolutionary year,” Clark declared following the decision. In hindsight, his prediction was apt.
The ruling paved the way for a broader judicial reconsideration of Mississippi’s redistricting practices. The subsequent Connor cases—Connor v. Johnson (1971), Connor v. Waller (1975), and Connor v. Finch (1977)—systematically dismantled the state’s at-large and multi-member district systems. Federal courts ordered the creation of single-member districts, a shift that would allow geographically concentrated Black communities to elect representatives of their choice for the first time in the twentieth century.
The political effects were dramatic. Following the implementation of new district maps in the 1979 elections, Mississippi witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented cohort of Black legislators. The “class of 1980”—seventeen newly elected African American lawmakers—joined Robert Clark, who had spent nearly a decade as the state’s only Black representative. This influx marked a fundamental reconfiguration of political life in Mississippi. For the first time since Reconstruction, African Americans possessed a substantial and organized presence within the state legislature. They formed the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus in 1980, chaired committees, and influenced key policy areas such as education, economic development, and public health.
By the mid-1980s, Mississippi had achieved a distinction few would have predicted two decades earlier: It possessed the highest proportion of Black legislators of any state in the nation. This development was neither an accident of demography nor a spontaneous evolution of race relations. It was the product of persistent litigation, federal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, and the strategic collaboration of Black leaders who understood that structural change required both courtroom victories and electoral mobilization.
Clark’s long tenure in the legislature symbolized the bridge between eras—the solitary endurance of the 1960s and the collective assertion of the 1980s. His pragmatic leadership style, informed by both his rural constituency and his civil rights grounding, enabled him to navigate the complexities of a political system still resistant to change. “They can kill me or Aaron Henry or Charles Evers,” he once remarked, “but we ain’t staying home anymore.”
Today, as the U.S. Supreme Court once again considers cases that may weaken the Voting Rights Act, Mississippi’s history offers a crucial reminder of what is at stake. The state’s current litigation over redistricting—including challenges to its Supreme Court and legislative districts—echoes the same fundamental questions that animated Clark, Henry, and Evers half a century ago: who is represented, whose voice counts, and how power is apportioned in a democracy.
For Black Mississippians, redistricting has never been a neutral or administrative exercise. It has been the terrain on which questions of citizenship, equality, and belonging are fought. The victories of the 1970s and 1980s demonstrate that lines on a map can either enshrine exclusion or enable participation. As federal courts and the Supreme Court reconsider the limits of the Voting Rights Act, the lessons of Mississippi’s redistricting battles remain clear: democracy is not self-sustaining. It must be drawn, defended, and redrawn again.
Image: Robert Clark, Charles Evers and Aaron Henry (L-R) after winning their court case in 1971 (archival photo via Newspapers.com)
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