2025/10/30 by Eva Böhler · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Caribbean history, culture, and politics #African cultural and philosophical studies #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.65724/zssi8636
openalex publication_date 2025/10/30 · openalex created_date 2026/05/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The United States of America has a lengthy history of voter disenfranchisement. For Black Americans, this history of suppression is deeply embedded in our history and, unfortunately, still occurs in the 21st century. For example, on August 29, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the New Redistricting Map, giving the GOP an additional five seats and helping to sway the balance of power to favor Republicans for the 2026 election, while taking away political power from predominantly Black congressional districts such as Houston’s Congressional District 9, belonging Sen. Al Green, and Congressional District 18, previously held by late Senators Sheila Jackson Lee and Sylvester Turner. Shortly thereafter, California Governor Gavin Newsom responded by proposing that California redistrict by adopting new legislative districts, which would, in essence, nullify the gains made by Republicans in Texas. Proposition 50 will be decided by California voters on November 4, 2025. Gerrymandering, voter intimidation, and, at the state level as recently as 2023, expelling Black lawmakers from the Tennessee House of Representatives, are some of the ways that Black voting and legislative power has been targeted for generations. As a Black American, I have a personal connection to this history as a descendant of one Georgia’s first Black members of the Georgia State Assembly, Jacob P. Hutchings of Jones County Georgia, who was one was one of the “Original 33”, elected in 1868 but expelled the same year because of the efforts of white supremacists.