Thousands rally in Montgomery against Alabama redistricting fight

Thousands of people rallied in Montgomery on Saturday over a fight that could decide how much Black political power Alabama carries into the next election cycle. At stake is whether the state’s congressional map will continue to leave Black voters, who make up about 27% of Alabama’s population, with a majority in just one of the state’s seven House districts, the seat held by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell.

The dispute has turned on line-drawing as much as on raw vote totals. Plaintiffs have argued that Alabama illegally packed Black voters into Sewell’s district while splitting the rest across districts where they cannot reliably elect candidates of their choice. That same pattern has put the state at the center of a wider redistricting struggle, after a federal court struck down 12 Alabama legislative districts in a separate case as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Saturday’s rally carried the symbolism of a pilgrimage. Marchers retraced the 54-mile Selma-to-Montgomery route, beginning at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma and ending at the Alabama Capitol, reviving a civil rights march that is recreated every five years. This time, organizers cast the walk as a warning that the hard-won gains of the voting-rights era are once again under threat, not through literacy tests or poll taxes, but through maps that can dilute or concentrate Black political power.

The Alabama fight also reflects a national shift. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act that had protected minority representation in Congress, states across the country gained more room to redraw districts in ways that could favor Republicans. Redistricting has moved to the center of elections and state politics, and Alabama has become one of the clearest examples of how those battles now shape who gets heard in Washington.

For Black voters in Alabama, the issue is not abstract. It is about whether the state’s congressional delegation will continue to mirror a population that is more than a quarter Black, or whether the next map will again leave most Black voters politically fragmented while one district bears the weight of representation. As marchers reached Montgomery, the old route from Selma underscored how the struggle has changed and how much remains unfinished.