Amicus Curiae Brief — Wes Allen, Alabama Secretary of State, et al., Appellants v. Evan Milligan, et al.

Nos. 21-1086, 21-1087

In the Supreme Court of the United States

JOHN H. MERRILL, et al.,

Appellants,

v.

EVAN MILLIGAN, et al.,

Appellees.

JOHN H. MERRILL, et al.,

Petitioners,

v.

MARCUS CASTER, et al.,

Respondents.

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Northern District of Alabama

______________

BRIEF FOR ALABAMA HISTORIANS AS AMICI

CURIAE SUPPORTING APPELLEE-RESPONDENTS

ROY T. ENGLERT, JR.

Counsel of Record

LEE TURNER FRIEDMAN

CAROLYN M. FORSTEIN

KRAMER LEVIN ROBBINS

RUSSELL

2000 K Street NW, 4th Floor

Washington, D.C. 20006

(202) 775-4500

renglert@kramerlevin.com

July 18, 2022

Counsel for Amici Curiae

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES...................................... iii

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ............................... 1

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF

ARGUMENT ........................................................ 1

ARGUMENT .............................................................. 5

I.

THE BLACK BELT IS A COMMUNITY OF

INTEREST

JOINED

BY

SOCIOECONOMIC, POLITICAL, AND

GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS .................................. 5

A. The Black Belt Population Shares A

Historic Identity: Slaves Concentrated

Amidst Extreme Planter Class Wealth ........ 6

B. The Black Belt Population Experiences

Intense Economic Hardship ........................ 10

C. Black Belt Residents Lack—and Have

Lacked For More Than A Century—

Access To Basic Social Services,

Including Healthcare and Education ......... 13

D. In

Response

to

Impoverished

Conditions,

the

Black

Belt

Communities Developed A Shared

Commitment to Civil Rights that

Transcended Alabama’s Boundaries .......... 17

II. THE BLACK BELT’S COMMONALITY

EXTENDS TO PARTS OF MOBILE AND

OTHER URBAN AREAS ................................... 25

A. Outward Migration from the Black Belt

Intermingled Black Belt Populations

with Coastal Counterparts.......................... 25

(i)

ii

B. The City of Mobile Shares Common

Characteristics with the Black Belt ........... 27

CONCLUSION ......................................................... 31

APPENDIX ............................................................... 1A

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Page(s)

Cases

Abrams v. Johnson,

521 U.S. 74 (1997) .................................................. 2

Bd. of Sch. Comm'rs of Mobile Cnty. v.

Davis, 84 S. Ct. 10 (1963) .................................... 28

Bolden v. City of Mobile,

542 F. Supp. 1050 (S.D. Ala. 1982) ..................... 28

Davis v. Board of School Commissioners

of Mobile County, 402 U.S. 33 (1971) .................. 29

Gayle v. Browder,

352 U.S. 903 (1956) .............................................. 21

Gomillion v. Lightfoot,

364 U.S. 339 (1960) .............................................. 23

Johnson v. De Grandy,

512 U.S. 997 (1994) ................................................ 2

Knight v. Ala.,

787 F. Supp. 1030 (N.D. Ala. 1991) ..................... 15

League of United Latin Am. Citizens v.

Perry, 548 U.S. 399 (2006) ................................. 2, 4

Pigford v. Glickman,

185 F.R.D. 82 (D.D.C. 1999) ................................ 11

Smith v. Allwright,

321 U.S. 649 (1944) .............................................. 19

Thornburg v. Gingles,

478 U.S. 30 (1986) .................................................. 1

United States v. Alabama,

192 F. Supp. 677 (M.D. Ala. 1961) ...................... 23

iv

Other Authorities

Alabama Black Belt Blues, ALABAMA

PUBLIC TELEVISION, (Oct. 20, 2020),

https://perma.cc/B64M-8VQA .............................. 24

Alabama Executive Order No. 22 ............................. 14

Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education: A

Debate in the Alabama

Constitutional Convention of 1901, 1

J. NEGRO EDUC. 49 (1932) .................................... 15

HORACE MANN BOND, NEGRO

EDUCATION IN ALABAMA: A STUDY IN

COTTON AND STEEL (1939).................................... 16

AARON BRENNER ET AL., THE

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STRIKES IN

AMERICAN HISTORY (2015) ................................... 27

Herdman F. Cleland, The Black Belt of

Alabama, 10 GEOGRAPHICAL REV.

375 (1920) ..................................................... 6, 7, 15

Katie Day, Southern Poverty Law

Center, Encyclopedia of Alabama

(July 23, 2007),

https://perma.cc/U8AF-HCZ3 .............................. 23

MICHAEL W. FITZGERALD,

RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA: FROM

CIVIL WAR TO REDEMPTION IN THE

COTTON SOUTH (2017) ...................................... 7, 18

MICHAEL W. FITZGERALD, URBAN

EMANCIPATION, POPULAR POLITICS IN

RECONSTRUCTION MOBILE (2002) ......................... 25

WALTER L. FLEMING, CIVIL WAR AND

RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA (1905) .................. 19

v

J. WAYNE FLYNT, ALABAMA IN THE

TWENTIETH CENTURY (2004) ........................ passim

KARLYN FORNER, WHY THE VOTE WASN’T

ENOUGH FOR SELMA (2017) .......................... passim

J. Sullivan Gibson, The Alabama Black

Belt: Its Geographic Status, 17

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 1 (1941) .......................... 26

Jesse Greenspan, How the Tuskegee

Airmen Became Pioneers of Black

Military Aviation (Mar. 18, 2016),

https://perma.cc/TW4G-V4D4 .............................. 21

H.R. Rep. No. 116-317 (2019).................................... 24

Caroline Rand Herron & Michael

Wright, The New Order in Mobile,

N.Y. TIMES (July 14, 1985)

https://perma.cc/UVC8-7SND .............................. 28

HASAN KWAME JEFFRIES, BLOODY

LOWNDES: CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK

POWER IN ALABAMA'S BLACK BELT

(2009) .............................................................. 22, 23

BRIAN K. LANDSBERG, FREE AT LAST TO

VOTE: THE ALABAMA ORIGINS OF THE

1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT (2007) .......................... 23

Marc Linder, Farm Workers and the

Fair Labor Standards Act: Racial

Discrimination in the New Deal, 65

TEX. L. REV. 1335 (1987) ...................................... 21

vi

Peyton McCrary et al., “Alabama,” in

QUIET REVOLUTION IN THE SOUTH,

THE IMPACT OF THE VOTING RIGHTS

ACT, 1965-1990 (Chandler Davidson

& Bernard Grofman, eds. 1994) .............. 19, 20, 22

J.R. Moehringer, Crossing Over, L.A.

TIMES (Aug. 22, 1999),

https://perma.cc/S2YY-EPPA .............................. 24

Alexis Okeowo, The Heavy Toll of the

Black Belt’s Wastewater Crisis, THE

NEW YORKER (Nov. 23, 2020) ............................... 14

Ivan Penn, “We Cannot Breathe:” A poor

Alabama town has lived with the

rotten egg stench of gas for 8 years,

L.A. TIMES (Oct. 15, 2016),

https://perma.cc/9YV9-ZLJA ............................... 30

MICHAEL PERMAN, STRUGGLE FOR

MASTERY: DISFRANCHISEMENT IN THE

SOUTH (2001) ........................................................ 19

Kenneth E. Phillips, Sharecropping and

Tenant Farming in Alabama,

Encyclopedia of Alabama (July 28,

2008), https://perma.cc/TX23-JREB ................ 8, 11

Dennis Pillion, Two Alabama rivers

named among 10 most endangered in

the country, AL.com (Apr. 21, 2022),

https://perma.cc/K2YQ-3EF4 ............................... 30

vii

ROGER L. RANSOM, CONFLICT AND

COMPROMISE: THE POLITICAL

ECONOMY OF SLAVERY,

EMANCIPATION, AND THE AMERICAN

CIVIL WAR (1989) ................................................ 8, 9

ROGER L. RANSOM & RICHARD SUTCH,

ONE KIND OF FREEDOM: THE

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF

EMANCIPATION (2d ed. 2001) .................................. 8

GERALD N. ROSENBERG, THE HOLLOW

HOPE: CAN COURTS BRING ABOUT

SOCIAL CHANGE? (1991) ....................................... 20

Connor Sheets, UN poverty official

touring Alabama's Black Belt: 'I

haven't seen this' in the First World,

AL.COM (Dec. 8, 2017),

https://perma.cc/E2AX-RWH4 ............................. 15

J. MILLS THORNTON, POLITICS AND

POWER IN A SLAVE SOCIETY:

ALABAMA, 1800-1860 (1978)................................... 7

ALLEN TULLOS, ALABAMA GETAWAY: THE

POLITICAL IMAGINARY AND THE HEART

OF DIXIE (2011) ............................................. passim

Allen Tullos, The Black Belt, Southern

Spaces (Apr. 19, 2004),

https://perma.cc/6B7P-UYFM............ 10, 17, 18, 22

U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, 1910 U.S.

CENSUS, vol. II (1913),

https://perma.cc/XM33-4XBF .............................. 26

viii

U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, 1950 U.S.

CENSUS, vol. II (1953),

https://perma.cc/AQF7-GCS6 .............................. 26

U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, 1990 U.S.

CENSUS CP-2-2, Alabama (1993),

https://perma.cc/8SDN-6X8Q .............................. 30

Kevern Verney, “Every Man Should

Try”: John L. LeFlore and the

National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People in

Alabama, 1919-1956, 66 ALA. REV.

186 (2013) ............................................................. 29

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, UP FROM

SLAVERY, ch. 7 (1901),

https://perma.cc/CK3N-KE27 ................................ 7

Gerald Webster & Jerrod Bowman,

Quantitatively Delineating the Black

Belt Geographic Region, 48

SOUTHEASTERN GEOGRAPHER 3

(2008) .................................................................... 14

Gerald R. Webster & Scott A. Samson,

On Defining the Alabama Black Belt:

Historical Changes and Variations,

32 SOUTHEASTERN GEOGRAPHER 163

(1992) ................................................................ 6, 12

Terance L. Winemiller, Black Belt

Region in Alabama, Encyclopedia of

Alabama (Sept. 18, 2009),

https://perma.cc/WJ26-82XY ........................... 7, 13

ix

Andrew A. Zekeri, Community Action in

Alabama's Black Belt TimberDependent Communities, 39 SOCIAL

INDICATORS RESEARCH (1996) .................. 13, 15, 18

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE

Amici are historians and scholars who have spent

their careers studying the history of Alabama and the

making of the modern South. Amici file this brief to

assist the Court in understanding why Alabama’s

Black Belt region constitutes an important and

discrete “community of interest”—with shared

historical, geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic

identities—that Plaintiffs’ experts appropriately gave

priority in proposing alternative districting plans for

Alabama.

A full list of amici can be found in the Appendix.1

INTRODUCTION AND

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

To assert a vote-dilution claim, a plaintiff must

show, among other things, that the minority group

whose vote allegedly is being diluted is “sufficiently

large and geographically compact to constitute a

majority in a single-member district.” Thornburg v.

Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 50 (1986).2 This criterion

“‘requires the possibility of creating more than the

1 Counsel for all parties filed blanket consents to the filing of

amicus briefs in these consolidated cases. No party’s counsel

wrote this brief in whole or in part; no party’s counsel contributed

money for this brief’s preparation or submission; and no person

or entity—other than amici and their counsel—contributed

money for this brief’s preparation or submission.

2 Gingles established three conditions that a plaintiff must

satisfy to prove a vote-dilution claim: that (1) the minority group

is “sufficiently large and geographically compact”; (2) that it is

“politically cohesive”; and (3) that the “white majority votes

sufficiently as a bloc to enable it … usually to defeat the

minority’s preferred candidate.” 478 U.S. at 50-51. This brief

addresses only the first Gingles factor.

(1)

2

existing number of reasonably compact [majorityminority] districts,’” while also “tak[ing] into account

‘traditional

districting

principles,’”

including

“‘maintaining communities of interest and traditional

boundaries.’” League of United Latin Am. Citizens v.

Perry, 548 U.S. 399, 430, 433 (2006) (LULAC) (quoting

Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1008 (1994) and

Abrams v. Johnson, 521 U.S. 74, 92 (1997)). Plaintiffs

assert that Alabama’s redistricting plan improperly

dilutes the votes of Black Alabamians by “packing” a

large portion of the Black voting age population into a

single district, and “cracking” the remainder across

several other districts. They argued in the district

court that Alabama could have drawn a second

majority-Black voting district in Alabama’s Black Belt

region while also balancing traditional districting

criteria. MSA 39 (PI Op.). Plaintiffs’ experts offered

several illustrative maps during the proceedings

below showing just such alternative districting plans.

MSA 41 (PI Op.).

The State of Alabama asserts that Plaintiffs

improperly considered only race when crafting their

alternative districting plans by setting out to create

two majority-minority districts, while subordinating

all other traditional redistricting considerations,

including maintaining “communities of interest” and

traditional districts. App. Br. 30-31. A “community of

interest” is a term of art defined by the Alabama

Legislature’s redistricting guidelines as “an area with

recognized similarities of interests, including but not

limited to ethnic, racial, economic, tribal, social,

geographic, or historical identities.” MSA 48 (PI Op.).

Keeping communities of interest together ensures

that voters “with recognized similarities of interests”

3

are able to express those preferences at the ballot box.

Id.

One significant area of disagreement between the

parties is the extent to which Alabama’s Black Belt

region—a majority Black part of the State—ought to

be given priority as a “community of interest” in

delineating Alabama’s voting districts. MSA 174 (PI

Op.). Defendants’ witnesses agreed at the preliminary

injunction hearing that the Black Belt constitutes a

community of interest, JA279 (Hinaman Dep.), JA752

(Bryan Testimony), but Defendants seek to

deemphasize the Black Belt compared to other

majority-white areas of Alabama. In particular, the

State argues that the district court erred in allowing

Plaintiffs to keep the Black Belt together at the

expense of splitting up other communities across

districts, including parts of Mobile County in the Gulf

Coast region of the State. App. Br. 60; see also

MSA 164 (PI Op.).

Plaintiffs argued—and the district court agreed—

that the Black Belt region itself is a critical

community of interest that warranted priority.

MSA 175 (PI Op.). The district court concluded, after

considering the parties’ extensive evidence, that

[t]he Black Belt stands out . . . quite clearly

[as] a community of interest of substantial

significance. . . . ‘The Black voters in the Black

Belt share a rural geography, concentrated

poverty, unequal access to government

services, and lack of adequate healthcare.’

Id. The court rejected the State’s argument that

Mobile and Baldwin Counties could not be split

4

consistent with traditional redistricting criteria.

MSA 180 (PI Op.).

The district court got it right. Residents of the

Black Belt share myriad “similarities of interest,”

including a common history stretching back to

Alabama’s earliest days and shared racial and

socioeconomic identities. The community shares a

unique history going back two centuries. That history

has deep roots in slavery and tenant farming, and

includes shared experiences such as navigating

economic disruption due to outward migration to

urban areas, lack of education and access to basic

services, and myriad forms of discrimination,

subjugation, and rights denial. Indeed, the seedlings

of the nation’s civil rights movement, including the

very passage of the Voting Rights Act at issue in this

case, were cultivated in Alabama’s Black Belt.

Moreover, these significant historical ties and

commonalities extend to areas of Mobile County,

including the city of Mobile, which is deeply linked

with the Black Belt community by both heritage and

lived experience.

Plaintiffs’ proposed plans may emphasize different

communities of interest than the State’s plans, but

Plaintiffs cannot be said to have failed to respect

“communities of interest” by proposing districting

plans that keep Black Belt communities together.

Voters in the Black Belt share not only racial

similarities but also unique, nonracial similarities

that make them an important community of interest.

Respecting this community of interest was reasonable

and consistent with traditional districting principles,

in satisfaction of Gingles’ requirement of “reasonabl[e]

compact[ness].” LULAC, 548 U.S. at 430.

5

ARGUMENT

I. THE BLACK BELT IS A COMMUNITY OF

INTEREST JOINED BY SOCIOECONOMIC,

POLITICAL, AND GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS

The Black Belt runs straight across the State of

Alabama. The precise boundaries of the region are a

matter of some debate. But the parties agree that the

Black Belt includes, at a minimum “the core counties

of Barbour, Bullock, Butler, Choctaw, Crenshaw,

Dallas, Greene, Hale, Lowndes, Macon, Marengo,

Montgomery, Perry, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Sumter,

and Wilcox,” and that “Clarke, Conecuh, Escambia,

Monroe, and Washington counties are sometimes

included within the definition of the Black Belt.”

JA155-156 (Joint Stip.).

Each of the counties in this geographically compact

region has a majority or near-majority Black voting

age population, JA155 (Joint Stip.). The map below

depicts the Black voting age population share in 2020:

6

SJA32 (Duchin Decl.) (explaining that “the Black Belt

rural counties are clearly visible running East-West

across the state”). The people in these counties share

historic and socioeconomic identities dating back to

the Antebellum period and continuing through the

present.

A. The Black Belt Population Shares A

Historic Identity: Slaves Concentrated

Amidst Extreme Planter Class Wealth

Ask any Alabamian “where the traditions and

prejudices of the Old South are strongest, and it will

be, ‘In the Black Belt.’” Herdman F. Cleland, The

Black Belt of Alabama, 10 GEOGRAPHICAL REV. 375,

375 (1920). The region’s rich black soil and early

enslaved population made the Black Belt a place of

prosperity for the white planter class—a place “‘noted

for men of wealth, intelligence, and political power.’”

Gerald R. Webster & Scott A. Samson, On Defining

the Alabama Black Belt: Historical Changes and

Variations, 32 SOUTHEASTERN GEOGRAPHER 163, 163

(1992) (quoting a “1908 public school text on Alabama

history”).

The fertile soil meant prime cotton-growing

territory. As the white planter class began intensive

plantation development—acquiring plots of land often

exceeding 1,000 acres—planters brought enslaved

peoples to labor in the cotton fields and tend to

plantation homes. See Cleland, supra, at 382; JA155

(Joint Stip.) (“The region has a substantial Black

population because of the many enslaved people

brought there to work in the antebellum period.”);

JA300 (Bagley Supp. Decl.) (“The Black Belt of

Alabama became home to not only the wealthiest

white plantation owners in the state, but to some of

7

the wealthiest individuals in the young nation, some

of whom held hundreds of people in bondage.”). Even

from this early period in Alabama’s history, before

emancipation, state politics were divided: at that

time, between the rich white population of the southcentral Black Belt, and poorer white voters in other

parts of the State. See generally J. MILLS THORNTON,

POLITICS AND POWER IN A SLAVE SOCIETY: ALABAMA,

1800-1860 (1978).

With roughly one slave for every ten acres, the

black population quickly ballooned in the Black Belt.

Cleland, supra, at 382. The Alabama Black Belt had

one of the largest concentrations of Black people in the

southern United States. Id. at 384. The Black

population reached an “all-time high of approximately

73 percent in 1900,” Terance L. Winemiller, Black Belt

Region in Alabama, Encyclopedia of Alabama (Sept.

18, 2009), https://perma.cc/WJ26-82XY, creating a

pocket of “counties where the black people outnumber

the white.” BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, UP FROM

SLAVERY, ch. 7 at 3 (1901), https://perma.cc/CK3NKE27.

Emancipation offered former slaves more

autonomy but not financial freedom. See generally

MICHAEL W. FITZGERALD, RECONSTRUCTION IN

ALABAMA: FROM CIVIL WAR TO REDEMPTION IN THE

COTTON SOUTH 107-132 (2017). White landowners

still needed the Black labor force in the region to tend

to the cotton crops. The Selma Morning Times

explained: “These lands would be worth nothing if the

Negroes were moved off of them.” KARLYN FORNER,

WHY THE VOTE WASN’T ENOUGH FOR SELMA 19 (2017).

That land “was never systematically redistributed

from white landowners and given to newly freed Black

8

people.” JA301 (Bagley Supp. Decl.). Black farmers

faced “three major obstacles” following emancipation:

they “had inherited nothing from slavery with which

to purchase land,” the “disorganized state of the credit

market” precluded them from borrowing the capital,

and the white population was “at best hesitant – and

in many cases openly hostile” to Black landownership.

ROGER L. RANSOM & RICHARD SUTCH, ONE KIND OF

FREEDOM: THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF

EMANCIPATION 81 (2d ed. 2001).

With few other economic prospects, newly freed

slaves continued to work the Black Belt as

sharecroppers and tenant farmers—“beholden to their

former masters.” JA301 (Bagley Supp. Decl.).

Sharecroppers and tenant farmers accounted for more

than 60% of farming in Alabama by the early 20th

century, with Black residents operating nearly 90% of

farms in some counties. See Kenneth E. Phillips,

Sharecropping and Tenant Farming in Alabama,

Encyclopedia of Alabama (July 28, 2008),

https://perma.cc/TX23-JREB; FORNER, supra, at 19.

Despite their newly freed status, Black farmers

remained financially stifled and impoverished. The

“way of life of most tenant farmers was inferior to that

of many people in medieval Europe,” with Black

farmers living in “primitive log cabins” without indoor

plumbing or running water and without hard-surface

roads for transportation, leaving farmers isolated and

“fac[ing] economic ruin if the roads were unusable at

harvest time.” Phillips, supra.

Exploitative credit practices also trapped many

Black farmers in a system of “debt peonage.” ROGER

L. RANSOM, CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE: THE

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SLAVERY, EMANCIPATION, AND

9

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 244 (1989).

Freedpeople

emerged from slavery with no money; and, “[b]ecause

they lacked any other physical assets, borrowing

against the coming crop was the only hope most

freedmen had of obtaining capital for farming.” Id. at

246. When the “value of the crop was insufficient” to

cover the cost of the loan, however, the farmer “would

be obligated to contract again with the same

merchant,” thereby creating “a cycle of debt that

bound the farmer to the same merchant year after

year.” Id. at 244.

When white landowners or merchants told Black

tenant farmers (truthfully or falsely) at the end of a

crop season that they had not produced enough to

cover their debts, the farmers had no recourse.

FORNER, supra, at 21-22. This system became an

“exploitive device[] that held blacks in a form of

peonage that effectively blocked any hopes of

economic advancement by the ex-slaves.” RANSOM,

CONFLICT AND COMPROMISE, supra, at 246. As one

newspaper described it, “[n]ever did a state of serfdom

more truly exist in Russia than in some parts of

Alabama.” FORNER, supra, at 22 (quoting

Emancipator, a “black weekly newspaper in

Montgomery”).

While the white planter class profited from

bumper crops and near-free labor, the people of the

Black Belt forged a community bonded by want and

scarcity. JA755 (Bagley Testimony) (describing the

legacy of tenant farming as “very, very long and

profound,” as even today the “Black Belt remains

characterized . . . by the fact that it is stricken by

poverty”).

10

B. The Black Belt Population Experiences

Intense Economic Hardship

The Black Belt region’s economic history is unique

in the State. In the late 1800s, a series of events sent

the Black Belt into “seemingly irreversible decline,”

and it spiraled from “one of America’s richest and

most politically powerful regions” into one of the

nation’s poorest.

Allen Tullos, The Black Belt,

Southern

Spaces

(Apr.

19,

2004),

https://perma.cc/6B7P-UYFM. More than a century

later, today’s Black Belt residents still suffer from the

region’s sustained economic downfall, with poverty

rates far exceeding those in the rest of Alabama and

the United States.

Freed slaves first began migrating out of the Black

Belt to Alabama’s more urban areas, including

Mobile, around 1865 in pursuit of better economic

opportunities and more freedom—and that outward

migration increased dramatically by the turn of the

century. JA303 (Bagley Supp. Decl.) (“The historian

Wayne Flynt has described a ‘massive hemorrhaging

of people,’ mostly Black people, from the Black Belt,

in the early Twentieth Century.”). The plantation’s

labor supply diminished. Those who stayed were

“[l]ocked into unfavorable contracts” of tenancy and

continued to have their debts increase as production

and profits decreased and merchants extended fewer

loans. FORNER, supra, at 33.

World War I further accelerated migration out of

the region by creating a need for thousands of workers

in industrial and war-related manufacturing factories

in the North.

Landowners in the Black Belt,

concerned about the “serious situation of labor,”

11

passed vagrancy laws to “round up idlers and compel

them to work in the fields.” FORNER, supra, at 43.

The Great Depression deepened the economic

struggles of the region. Then, President Roosevelt’s

New Deal plan took a hatchet to the tenant farming

model of the Black Belt. The Agricultural Adjustment

Administration, attempting to keep food prices

higher, paid landowners subsidies to reduce total

acreage planted, decreasing demand for tenant

farmers. See Phillips, supra.3 In addition, rural

agriculture in the 1940s saw shifts to cattle farming—

which

requires

less

manpower—and

the

mechanization of cotton production. See J. WAYNE

FLYNT, ALABAMA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 142

(2004); FORNER, supra, at 104, 108. Tenant farming

declined to 37% of all farming in Alabama by the mid1950s, and opportunities for work in the Black Belt

reduced to a trickle. See Phillips, supra.

By 1960, 52% of families in the Black Belt’s Dallas

County lived in poverty, with 43% of homes classified

as “deteriorating or dilapidated.” FORNER, supra, at

162. Textile manufacturing became a source of

3 In the 1990s, Black farmers would successfully sue the

federal government for discrimination by the U.S. Department of

Agriculture, resulting in a consent decree giving complainant

farmers redress of $50,000 or more each from the Department of

Agriculture in addition to debt forbearance. See Pigford v.

Glickman, 185 F.R.D. 82, 85 (D.D.C. 1999) (“As the Department

of Agriculture has grown, the number of African American

farmers has declined dramatically. . . . The United States

Department of Agriculture and the county commissioners to

whom it has delegated so much power bear much of the

responsibility for this dramatic decline.”), aff’d, 206 F.3d 1212

(D.C. Cir. 2000), and enforcement denied sub nom. Pigford v.

Schafer, 536 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2008).

12

industrialized jobs in the Black Belt in the 1960s, but

conditions in the factories were hard, and efforts to

advocate for workers’ rights met stringent opposition.

See id. at 171. By the 1980s, textile jobs had dried up

as textile mills closed. See id. at 201.

Farmers remaining in the Black Belt region faced

resistance when they attempted to make major

economic gains. In 1967, for example, Black farmers

obtained a grant from the U.S. Office of Economic

Opportunity (“OEO”) to form a cooperative association

to sell produce in bulk. With the co-op, farmers sold

more produce for more money than any had seen in

the past. See FORNER, supra, at 175-76. But some

powerful interests could not stand for Black people to

have even that small level of success. A delegation of

Black Belt “leading officials” flew to Washington to

ask the OEO to rescind the grant; when that didn’t

work, state troopers impounded trucks full of

vegetables for traffic violations and “besieged” the coop’s office with “nonstop investigations.” Id. at 176.

With the demise of farming and lack of alternative

job sources in the region, Black Belt residents were

faced with few economic prospects. What few jobs did

exist were plagued by discrimination and segregation.

By the 1980s, major Black Belt cities like Selma still

had soaring poverty and unemployment rates.

Unemployment rates remained “chronically in double

digits” through the 1980s,” and “[c]hild poverty rates

often climbed above 50 percent.” FLYNT, supra, at 143.

And, throughout the 1990s and continuing to the

present day, the region was described as an “economic

backwater.” Webster & Samson, supra, at 163. Today,

the percentage of Black Belt residents living below the

poverty level far exceeds the average in the rest of

13

Alabama—and the national average too. Andrew A.

Zekeri, Community Action in Alabama’s Black Belt

Timber-Dependent

Communities,

39

SOCIAL

INDICATORS RESEARCH 203, 211 (1996). Nine out of the

ten poorest counties in Alabama are in the Black Belt.

Winemiller, supra.

The population of the modern-day Black Belt

suffers from economic hardship not experienced by

most Alabamians. The region has been compared to

“developing nations in both Latin America and subSaharan Africa,” both for the nature of the extractive

economy and workforce and the conditions of the

workers in those economies. Winemiller, supra; see

also ALLEN TULLOS, ALABAMA GETAWAY: THE

POLITICAL IMAGINARY AND THE HEART OF DIXIE 163

(2011) (Birmingham News referring to the Black Belt

as “Alabama’s Third World”). In 2017, Selma, a hub

in the western Black Belt, was described as a place of

“boarded-up buildings and abandoned houses mix[ed]

with weary-looking homes” and “[p]ayday loan

stores.” FORNER, supra, at 3. Fifty-six percent of

Black residents in Selma lived in poverty, with 27% of

Black residents out of work. Id. at 232-33.

C. Black Belt Residents Lack—and Have

Lacked For More Than A Century—Access

To Basic Social Services, Including

Healthcare and Education

As the Black Belt economy stagnated through the

20th century, access to basic social services and

infrastructure remained woefully inadequate—and it

remains so today. The Black Belt community shares

“limited non-agricultural economic opportunities,”

“comparatively high rates of poverty and

unemployment,” “comparatively low levels of

14

educational attainment,” and “comparatively low

levels of community health including higher rates of

infant mortality.” Gerald Webster & Jerrod Bowman,

Quantitatively Delineating the Black Belt Geographic

Region, 48 SOUTHEASTERN GEOGRAPHER 3, 5-6 (2008).4

Take healthcare to start. The residents of the

Black Belt community lack access to basic necessities

and services for healthy living. Black women living in

the Black Belt have been shown to have nutrient

deficiencies during pregnancy, with some resorting to

eating dirt to access nutrients. FLYNT, supra, at 188.

Water quality in the Black Belt is notoriously poor.

Research from 2017 showed that more than a third of

residents in Lowndes County who were tested for

hookworm had the illness. In this respect, very little

has changed since the early 20th century, when diets

of cornbread, condensed milk, and salt pork “made

hookworm, pellagra, and tuberculosis common.”

FORNER, supra, at 20. “[E]mergency rooms remain few

and distant.” TULLOS, ALABAMA GETAWAY, supra, at

47.

At least 40% of households in Lowndes County in

2017 had an inadequate septic system or none at all.

Alexis Okeowo, The Heavy Toll of the Black Belt’s

Wastewater Crisis, THE NEW YORKER (Nov. 23, 2020),

https://perma.cc/EZ77-T4VW. Meanwhile, the Black

Belt remains home to the Chem Waste toxic waste

site, a site so large that it dubbed Alabama “the

4 The Governor of Alabama created a Black Belt Action

Commission in 2004 to address the region’s “high rates of

poverty, illiteracy, and infant mortality.” Alabama Executive

Order No. 22 by Gov. Bob Riley (Aug. 11, 2004). The State

recognized in doing so that the Black Belt was “the most

economically depressed area” in the State.” Id.

15

nation’s chemical septic tank.” TULLOS, ALABAMA

GETAWAY, supra, at 126. In 2017, the United Nations

Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human

Rights reported on the lack of adequate sewage

treatment and the unreliability of electricity in the

Black Belt, concluding that the sewage failure was

“very uncommon in the First World.” Connor Sheets,

UN poverty official touring Alabama’s Black Belt: ‘I

haven’t seen this’ in the First World, AL.COM (Dec. 8,

2017), https://perma.cc/E2AX-RWH4; see also JA240

(Bagley Decl.).

The Black Belt population also faces unique

barriers to access to education not experienced by

other Alabamians. Schooling, social organizations,

churches, and parks have all been de facto and de jure

segregated since the fall of Reconstruction. See

Zekeri, supra, at 219-220; Cleland, supra, at 385.

Attempts to erase those dividing lines have been

unsuccessful. Early 20th-century executives “worried

openly that too much education might spoil the

‘tractable’ labor force.” FLYNT, supra, at 115.

Since the early 1900s, funds for education in the

Black Belt region have disproportionately benefitted

white students. The funding system ratified by

Alabama’s 1901 Constitution “entrenched a system of

educational funding” built on “raiding black students’

portion of the public school fund” to further white

children’s educations. Knight v. Ala., 787 F. Supp.

1030, 1090-91 (N.D. Ala. 1991). By 1930, Black

children in Lowndes County received $5 for every $96

spent on white children. FLYNT, supra, at 223; see also

Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education: A Debate in the

Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1901, 1 J.

NEGRO EDUC. 49, 49 (1932) (“in the year 1929-1930,

16

Negro children received only 36 per cent of a fair

distribution” of Alabama’s state educational funds,

“while white children received 164 per cent”). This

funding gap was reflected in severely curtailed school

calendars for Black children in rural areas. FLYNT,

supra, at 225. During the 1919-1920 school year,

Black rural schools were open only an average of 87

days per year, compared to 123 days for white rural

schools, and 174 days for white urban schools. Id.; see

also HORACE MANN BOND, NEGRO EDUCATION IN

ALABAMA: A STUDY IN COTTON AND STEEL 258 (1939)

(In 1930, nine counties in the Black Belt “had no fouryear high school”). It was not until 1942 that the

Alabama legislature nominally extended the Black

school year to eight months, a “vast improvement over

the three- or four-month terms typical for rural

schools.” FORNER, supra, at 111.

The Black Belt ignored Brown v. Board and made

no strides at integrating schools for fifteen additional

years. It wasn’t until 1969, when thirty school systems

received federal court orders requiring them to

integrate schools, that they finally began to

desegregate. See FORNER, supra, at 178. In the 1960s,

most Black residents in Dallas County did not have

more than a fifth-grade education. See id. at 162.

Accounts describe children attending one-room

schoolhouses heated by a potbelly stove—in the 1970s.

See TULLOS, ALABAMA GETAWAY, supra, at 190.

Faced with begrudging desegregation in the late

1960s and early 1970s, white families in the region

opened private academies and offered white children

tuition cuts to attend. See FORNER, supra, at 178.

Around the same time, Alabama passed a series of tax

measures that placed caps on tax collection and

17

significantly undervalued farm and timber land, and

resulted in “chronic underfunding of schools,”

particularly in rural areas. FLYNT, supra, at 18.

Today, segregated education “remains a common

practice,” with white citizens putting their children

into private Christian academies that the region’s

Black residents can ill afford. Tullos, Black Belt,

supra; see also TULLOS, ALABAMA GETAWAY, supra, at

190. In Selma, for example, public schools are “almost

entirely” Black, while white children attend the

private John T. Morgan Academy or Meadowview

Christian School. FORNER, supra, at 3. Alabama

maintains a list of “failing schools”—comprising the

bottom six percent of the State’s schools: For the 20202021 school year, all 75 schools on the list were

majority Black, and most were in majority-Black

school systems in the Black Belt, Birmingham,

Montgomery, or Mobile. JA250 (Bagley Decl.) The

Black Belt faced additional barriers to educational

access during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Black

children in Alabama were more likely to lack access to

the internet or to the technology necessary to

participate in remote classes. JA232 (Bagley Decl.)

D. In Response to Impoverished Conditions,

the Black Belt Communities Developed A

Shared Commitment to Civil Rights that

Transcended Alabama’s Boundaries

The shared history of Black Belt residents includes

a unique legacy of oppression combined with fights for

civil rights. Until the late 20th century, save for a brief

window during and immediately after Reconstruction,

Black residents were not “participants in political

decision making”—community decisions on social

services including “taxes, school policy, or community

18

development were carried out by all-white elected

officials with no tie to the African American

community.” Zekeri, supra, at 209; Tullos, Black Belt,

supra. As one civil rights attorney put it, “for a

hundred years” after the Civil War, “the Black Belt

dominated state politics and the big landowners

dominated the Black Belt.” Tullos, Black Belt, supra

(quoting J. L. Chestnut).

After emancipation, Black men earned the right to

vote. For close to a decade, Black Belt residents

became an influential part of the State’s political

process, voting in large numbers. During the period

from 1867 to 1874, the Black Belt region

overwhelmingly supported Reconstruction, providing

the backbone for Republican majorities statewide.

Black Belt majorities elected three Black

Congressmen, two of whom were formerly enslaved,

and dozens of state representatives. The Black Belt’s

political support for Republican Reconstruction

policies contributed to efforts to bolster Alabama’s

economic development, spearheaded the creation of

Alabama’s public-school system, and supported

expansion of numerous public services. See

FITZGERALD, RECONSTRUCTION IN ALABAMA, supra, at

143-173.

After Reconstruction was overthrown, however,

the majority white areas of Alabama mobilized to strip

newly freed slaves of their voting power. A group of

Southern Democrats, known as “The Redeemers,”

engaged in a violent campaign to disenfranchise Black

voters. The Redeemers effectively formalized whitevoting-bloc dominance through the passage of

Alabama’s 1901 Constitution, still operative today,

which

legalized

myriad

disenfranchisement

19

techniques. The numerous ways in which the 1901

Constitution caused disenfranchisement of the Black

population of Alabama are hardly a secret: poll taxes,

literacy tests, gainful employment requirements, and

more. See Peyton McCrary et al., “Alabama,” in QUIET

REVOLUTION IN THE SOUTH, THE IMPACT OF THE

VOTING RIGHTS ACT, 1965-1990 44 (Chandler

Davidson & Bernard Grofman, eds. 1994); JA108

(Milligan Complaint).

And they worked: After

adoption of the 1901 Constitution, the number of

Black registered voters plummeted from over 180,000

to fewer than 3,000. See McCrary, supra, at 44;

WALTER L. FLEMING, CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

IN ALABAMA 806-07 (1905).

The Redeemers further disenfranchised Black

voters through the adoption of “white primaries,”

after turning the Democratic primary—rather than

the general election—into the real vote of

consequence. To exclude Black voters, the Democrats

then closed off membership in the Party to Black

citizens under the theory that the Democratic and

Republican Parties were private groups. See generally

MICHAEL PERMAN, STRUGGLE FOR MASTERY:

DISFRANCHISEMENT IN THE SOUTH, 1888–1908 (2001);

see also JA197 (Bagley Decl.) (describing how “the

Alabama Democratic Party adopted the ‘white

primary,’ whereby membership was limited, as in a

club, to white people, thus barring Black people from

participating in what had become the only election

that mattered”). The “white primary” lasted in

Alabama until 1944, when this Court held the practice

unconstitutional in Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649

(1944). JA171 (Joint Stip.).

20

Disenfranchisement tactics continued throughout

the 20th century through the “discriminatory

administration of neutral laws” in order to exclude

Black candidates, including “abolition of the office;

extension of the term of the white incumbent;

substitution of appointment for election; increase in

filing fees; raising of requirements for independent

candidates; increase in property qualifications;

withholding information on how to quality”; and the

“time-honored practices of gerrymandering, county

consolidation, [and] switching to at-large elections.”

Chandler Davidson, The Recent Evolution of Voting

Rights Law Affecting Racial and Language

Minorities, in QUIET REVOLUTION, supra, at 24

(quoting GERALD N. ROSENBERG, THE HOLLOW HOPE:

CAN COURTS BRING ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGE? 81

(1991)); see also JA171 (Joint Stip.).

In response to more than a century of substandard

treatment, the Black Belt community in southern

Alabama played a monumental role in the founding of

the nation’s civil rights movement—including the

adoption of civil rights laws and the very Voting

Rights Act of 1965 under which this case arises. That

legacy—and sense of pride for the community’s role in

fighting oppression—binds this unique community in

a distinct way not shared by the rest of the State.

The Black Belt did not become cradle to the

Nation’s

civil

rights

movement

overnight.

Incremental changes sowed the seeds. The 1938 Fair

Labor Standards Act, which called for minimum-wage

standards, was decried by white landowners in the

Black Belt as a “threat to the personal liberties of the

farmer,” FORNER, supra, at 89, even though the Act

provided only limited benefits to Black farmers. See,

21

e.g., Marc Linder, Farm Workers and the Fair Labor

Standards Act: Racial Discrimination in the New

Deal, 65 TEX. L. REV. 1335, 1335-36 (1987) (explaining

that the FLSA’s exclusion of farm workers from

maximum hour and overtime provisions was the

result of a political compromise to “obtain

modifications of New Deal legislation that preserved

the social and racial plantation system in the South”).

In 1941, the first Black pilots—who trained at the

Tuskegee Institute in the heart of the Black Belt—

were admitted to the U.S. military. Jesse Greenspan,

How the Tuskegee Airmen Became Pioneers of Black

Military Aviation, HISTORY.COM (Mar. 18, 2016),

https://perma.cc/TW4G-V4D4. The 992 pilots who

completed the Tuskegee program made history and

“helped lay the foundation for President Harry S.

Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces in

1948.” Id. They did so in the face of resistance from

the local white population lamenting the Institute’s

use of lands that should be reserved for “expansion for

white citizens of Tuskegee.” Id.

Some of the most significant moments in Black

civil rights history occurred in the Black Belt. Rosa

Parks was in the heart of the region when she refused

to give up her bus seat in Montgomery County on

December 1, 1955, sparking the movement that led to

this Court’s bus desegregation order in Gayle v.

Browder, 352 U.S. 903 (1956) (per curiam).

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not be law

today if not for activism rooted in the Black Belt, a

history that ties the community into the very fabric of

modern-day Alabama. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s

organization, the Southern Christian Leadership

Conference (SCLC), made voting rights a priority

22

because of the prolonged efforts in Alabama to

“protect[] white supremacy at the polls.” FORNER,

supra, at 110 (quoting the Selma Times-Journal). By

1964, only 19% of the Black voting-age population in

Alabama, a significant portion of which resided in the

Black Belt, was registered to vote. That was the

lowest percentage in the South (save for Mississippi),

which already had the lowest percentages in the

nation. McCrary, supra, at 38. The SCLC made

Selma a testing ground, based on the “strength and

determination of black Dallas County citizens” who

had been mobilizing and had a “history of voting

rights activism.” FORNER, supra, at 152.

After the fatal shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson in

the Black Belt’s Perry County on February 18, 1965,

the SCLC proposed the symbolic and now infamous

54-mile march through the heart of the region: from

Selma to the Governor’s office in Montgomery. The

“Bloody Sunday” beating made national headlines

and propelled voting discrimination to the national

stage. See HASAN KWAME JEFFRIES, BLOODY LOWNDES:

CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLACK POWER IN ALABAMA’S BLACK

BELT 44 (2009). President Johnson responded to

images of the attacks with an unequivocal message on

voting rights, shortly before laying out a new voting

rights bill: “It is wrong, deadly wrong, to deny any of

your fellow Americans the right to vote in this

country.” FORNER, supra, at 155. Two weeks later,

more than three thousand people successfully

marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, with

federalized Alabama National Guard members

flanking them on either side for protection. Id. The

National Historic Trail runs through Dallas,

Lowndes, and Montgomery Counties—all in the Black

Belt. See Tullos, Black Belt, supra.

23

The fight for voting equality continued in the Black

Belt even after passage of the Voting Rights Act of

1965. The National Democratic Party of Alabama

(“NDPA”) was formed in 1967 to enroll Black and

white voters who “officially supported the Democratic

Party’s national candidates.” JEFFRIES, supra, at 218

(2009). But it had little success in getting NDPAsupported candidates in office, so it “harness[ed] the

voting strength of the rural Black Belt.” Id. In

Lowndes County, Black candidates won “prominent

government positions” in 1970 “[f]or the first time

since Reconstruction.” Id. at 222. Three years later,

the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was

founded in Montgomery, Alabama, by two civil-rights

lawyers with roots in the Black Belt to push courts to

enforce newly enacted civil rights legislation. See

Katie Day, Southern Poverty Law Center,

Encyclopedia of Alabama (July 23, 2007),

https://perma.cc/U8AF-HCZ3. The SPLC gained

national attention in 1979 when it brought (and won)

litigation against the Ku Klux Klan following the

Klan’s attack on a peaceful civil-rights march in

northern Alabama. See id.

The Black Belt focus on civic activism also has

made the Black Belt community a leader in courtordered change. The litigation that shaped the legal

terms of the Voting Rights Act largely originated in

the Black Belt of Alabama. Tuskegee, in Macon

County, was the birthplace of both the concept of

racial gerrymandering condemned in Gomillion v.

Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 341 (1960) and the freezing

principle that led to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act

in United States v. Alabama, 192 F. Supp. 677, 678

(M.D. Ala. 1961), aff’d, 304 F.2d 583 (5th Cir. 1962),

aff’d, 371 U.S. 37 (1962). See generally BRIAN K.

24

LANDSBERG, FREE AT LAST TO VOTE: THE ALABAMA

ORIGINS OF THE 1965 VOTING RIGHTS ACT (2007).

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, only

one State—the much larger State of Texas—has

produced more successful voting rights cases and

Section

5

objections

than

Alabama.

A

disproportionate number of the successful challenges

came from the Black Belt (calculated from a database

prepared by amicus Prof. J. Morgan Kousser for his

testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Oct.

17, 2019, summarized in H.R. Rep. No. 116-317, at 5356 (2019)). The historic and ongoing struggle—and

shared history of civil-rights activism—makes

Alabama’s Black Belt unique and one of the most

historically rich regions in the southern United

States—a quintessential community of interest. 5

5 Shared cultural traditions provide a bright spot in the Black

Belt’s shared history, further tying the community together

through art. Specifically, Blues music and quilting became

popular in the early 20th century and persist into the modern

day as common expressions of culture in the rural Black Belt,

more so than other areas of Alabama. See JA521 (Milligan

Testimony). Today, the Black Belt Blues flow through rural

Alabama. See Alabama Black Belt Blues, ALABAMA PUBLIC

TELEVISION,

(Oct.

20,

2020)

at

36:00-38:00,

https://perma.cc/B64M-8VQA.

The most rural Black Belt

communities also found commonality and financial stability in

hard times through the art of quilting. What began as a simple

way to stay warm or earn some extra money was elevated to an

art form by the Gee’s Bend community in the Black Belt. See

J.R. Moehringer, Crossing Over, L.A. TIMES (Aug. 22, 1999),

https://perma.cc/S2YY-EPPA.

The Gee’s Bend quilts were

brought to national attention through the “Freedom Quilting

Bee,” a cooperative founded in 1966 to sell quilts in order to

supplement the quilters’ incomes after white county officials cut

off ferry service to the town, isolating the community. FLYNT,

supra, at 524-25.

25

II. THE

BLACK

BELT’S

COMMONALITY

EXTENDS TO PARTS OF MOBILE AND

OTHER URBAN AREAS

The State’s primary criticism of Plaintiffs’

proposed redistricting plans is that they split Mobile

County in order to keep Black Belt communities

together and to create two majority-minority Black

voting districts. App. Br. 21. The State overlooks the

significant historical ties and commonalities that

areas of Mobile County share with the Black Belt. The

outward migration from the Black Belt following the

Civil War flowed to Mobile, where the Black

population grew for decades. Many residents of Mobile

County, particularly in areas like Prichard and the

City of Mobile, have far more socioeconomic and

cultural links today to the Black Belt population than

to the rest of Mobile County.

A. Outward Migration from the Black Belt

Intermingled Black Belt Populations with

Coastal Counterparts

As the Black Belt experienced the waves of

outward migration described above, many former

Black Belt residents moved toward urban centers in

Alabama, including Mobile. In the immediate

aftermath of the Civil War, Mobile received a “huge

influx” of Black migrants, primarily “poverty-stricken

rural refugees.” MICHAEL W. FITZGERALD, URBAN

EMANCIPATION,

POPULAR

POLITICS

IN

RECONSTRUCTION MOBILE 21, 22 (2002). The Black

population of Mobile “increased from 8,400 in 1860 to

13,900 in 1870,” accounting for more than 43% of the

city’s population in 1870—up dramatically from prewar numbers. Id. at 24.

26

During the 1880s, 1890s, and early 20th century,

“many who left the farms and the small towns of the

Black Belt went to cities of Alabama,” with Mobile

attracting “many” of these residents. J. Sullivan

Gibson, The Alabama Black Belt: Its Geographic

Status, 17 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY 1, 16 (1941).

Mobile’s Black population continued to grow

throughout that period. In 1910, Mobile had 51,521

residents, of whom 22,763 (44.2%) were Black. U.S.

BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, 1910 U.S. CENSUS, vol. II, 60

(1913), https://perma.cc/XM33-4XBF (also reporting

that, as of 1900, Mobile City had a population of

38,469, with Black residents accounting for 44.3% of

the total).

The Great Depression and the New Deal continued

this trend. As the New Deal’s agricultural reforms

“displaced much of the state’s tenant population,”

residents were drawn to cities by “abundant

manufacturing jobs.” FLYNT, supra, at 401. Mobile,

specifically, saw rapid migration, as “Mobile

contained 29,000 black residents in 1940 and 46,000

10 years later.” Id.; see also U.S. BUREAU OF THE

CENSUS, 1950 U.S. CENSUS, vol. II, 2-54 (1953),

https://perma.cc/AQF7-GCS6 (as of 1950, the city of

Mobile had a population of 129,009, of which 35.5%

was Black).

The City of Mobile grew in large part out of the

Black Belt. Many Mobile residents who came from

that community have historical, familial, and cultural

ties to the rural regions of Alabama. See, e.g., JA288289 (Dowdy Decl.) (explaining that she, “along with

other Black people in both the City of Mobile and

Mobile County, can trace our family roots back to the

Black Belt,” and that “many Black people in the

27

Mobile area hav[e] family ties to the Black Belt”);

JA531 (Milligan Testimony) (noting the “shared

family and cultural and historical features that bind

those black communities in Prichard and Mobile

County to their relatives throughout the Black Belt”);

JA756 (Bagley Testimony) (“[B]lack people have left

in large numbers in a couple of different waves the

Black Belt for the city of Mobile, and they share then

the current residents of the urban core of Mobile that

history with black people in the Black Belt. And it’s

not just the migration. It’s not just ancestry and

heritage. It’s cultural, and it’s multifaceted when it

comes to the history.”).

B. The City of Mobile Shares Common

Characteristics with the Black Belt

Although Mobile is an urban rather than rural

setting, the Black population of Mobile faced much of

the same discrimination, poverty, and political

repression that faced the Black Belt throughout the

20th century. As Mobile’s population swelled in the

years preceding and during World War II, housing

and job shortages disproportionately affected Black

residents. “Bad problems for white residents were far

worse for black Mobilians.” AARON BRENNER ET AL.,

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF STRIKES IN AMERICAN HISTORY

131 (2015). Although the National Housing Agency

built 14,000 public housing units for white residents

of Mobile, it built only 934 units for Black residents.

Private Black housing often lacked sewage systems or

running water. Id. On the employment side, the two

major employers in Mobile during this period either

avoided hiring Black employees altogether or limited

Black workers to unskilled positions. Id.

28

Politics in Mobile were also engineered to prevent

Black participation.

Starting in 1870, Mobile

conducted “at-large” elections, which “were utilized to

negate black influence.” Bolden v. City of Mobile, 542

F. Supp. 1050, 1064 (S.D. Ala. 1982), on remand from

City of Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980). Singlemember districts were briefly reinstituted in 1907—

by which point the 1901 Constitution had already

effectively disenfranchised Black voters across the

board—but Mobile returned to at-large elections in

1911, further eliminating even the possibility of Black

voting influence, and maintained that system until it

was successfully challenged under the Voting Rights

Act in 1982. See id. at 1076. Mobile’s at-large

electoral system was adopted because “it was clear to

the Alabama Legislature and to Mobile’s white

leaders that the at-large form would ensure that the

black minority in 1911 and earlier in 1874 would

never be able to elect a black representative.” Id. As

a result, not a single Black candidate had been elected

to municipal government in Mobile between 1874 and

1982. See id. at 1054. Only in 1985, after Mobile

(following a ruling by a federal court) adopted a

mayor-city council system, was Mobile’s Black

population able to elect Black representatives to the

city government. See Caroline Rand Herron &

Michael Wright, The New Order in Mobile, N.Y. TIMES

(July 14, 1985) https://perma.cc/UVC8-7SND.

Education in Mobile was also highly segregated.

Although Brown v. Board of Education was handed

down in 1954, Mobile, like many Black Belt counties,

refused to integrate its schools for years. See Bd. of

Sch. Comm’rs of Mobile Cnty. v. Davis, 84 S. Ct. 10, 11

(1963) (Black, J., in Chambers) (“[T]he first Brown

decision was rendered in 1954—nine years ago. . . .

29

Yet this record fails to show that the Mobile Board has

made a single move of any kind looking towards a

constitutional public school system.”).

In 1963, the parents of 23 Black students filed a

lawsuit against Mobile County, which led the Fifth

Circuit to issue an order requiring the Mobile County

Board of School Commissioners to make a

desegregation plan. That case, Davis v. Board of

School Commissioners of Mobile County, would

remain active for 34 years as the litigants contested

the policies and implementation of desegregation.

See, e.g., 402 U.S. 33, 36, 38 (1971) (rejecting

desegregation plan that treated the “eastern part of

metropolitan Mobile, in isolation from the rest of the

school system,” when “94% of the Negro students in

the metropolitan area live on the east side”).

At the same time, the unequal conditions in Mobile

gave rise to sustained civil rights activism. John L.

LeFlore, a native of Mobile, helped found the Mobile

chapter of the NAACP in 1926 and led the group for

decades. After the NAACP was banned in Alabama,

he founded a local group to continue civil rights work

in Mobile. See Kevern Verney, “Every Man Should

Try”: John L. LeFlore and the National Association for

the Advancement of Colored People in Alabama, 19191956, 66 ALA. REV. 186, 187 (2013). LeFlore and other

local leaders, including Joseph Lowery and R.W.

Gilliard, played a key role in working to secure rights

both within and beyond the City of Mobile. The longrunning but ultimately successful legal challenges to

both electoral repression and educational segregation

in Mobile further reflect the civic activism of Black

Mobilians.

30

Black residents of Mobile have also faced much of

the same socioeconomic stratification that has

characterized the Black Belt—further tying them

more closely to the Black Belt communities than to the

white population of Mobile. By 1989, Black residents

accounted for 38.9% of the total population of the city.

For those 76,510 Black residents, the per capita

income was $6,572, with 41.9% of Black residents

falling below the poverty line. In sharp contrast, the

116,872 white residents of Mobile had a per capita

income of $16,502, with only 9.3% below the poverty

line. U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, 1990 U.S. CENSUS

CP-2-2,

Alabama,

37,

40

(1993),

https://perma.cc/8SDN-6X8Q.

And residents of

Mobile County, like those of the Black Belt, face

significant health threats from toxic waste and

pollution. See, e.g., Dennis Pillion, Two Alabama

rivers named among 10 most endangered in the

country,

AL.com

(Apr.

21,

2022),

https://perma.cc/K2YQ-3EF4 (noting that the Mobile

River was recently named the “third most endangered

American river” due to a coal ash storage site

containing 21 million tons of waste located next to the

river); Ivan Penn, “We Cannot Breathe:” A poor

Alabama town has lived with the rotten egg stench of

gas for 8 years, L.A. TIMES (Oct. 15, 2016),

https://perma.cc/9YV9-ZLJA (describing the lasting

effects of a 2008 chemical spill in Eight Mile, Mobile

County).

The common experiences of Mobile residents and

residents of the Black Belt, in addition to their

intertwined histories, continue to link the Black

population in Mobile to the broader Black Belt

community.

31

* * * * *

The voters in the Black Belt share not only racial

similarities but also key nonracial characteristics that

make them a community of interest. Many of these

characteristics are also shared by voters in Mobile.

The district court correctly concluded that Plaintiffs’

plans established the possibility of creating an

additional “reasonably compact” majority-minority

voting district while also respecting traditional

districting criteria.

CONCLUSION

This judgment of the three-judge district court

should be affirmed.

Respectfully submitted.

ROY T. ENGLERT, JR.

Counsel of Record

LEE TURNER FRIEDMAN

CAROLYN M. FORSTEIN

KRAMER LEVIN ROBBINS

RUSSELL

2000 K Street NW, 4th Floor

Washington, D.C. 20006

(202) 775-4500

renglert@kramerlevin.com

July 18, 2022

Counsel for Amici Curiae

1A

APPENDIX

Susan Ashmore

Charles Howard Candler Professor of History

Oxford College, Emory University

Michael W. Fitzgerald

Professor of History

St. Olaf College

J. Morgan Kousser

Professor of History and Social Science, Emeritus

California Institute of Technology

Peyton McCrary

Professorial Lecturer in Law

George Washington University Law School

Charles McKinney

Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies and

Associate Professor of History

Rhodes College

Regina M. Moorer

Assistant Professor of Political Science

Alabama State University

Derryn Moten

Professor of History

Alabama State University

R. Volney Riser

Professor of History

University of West Alabama

2A

J. Mills Thornton

Professor Emeritus

University of Michigan

Robert W. Widell, Jr.

Associate Professor of History

University of Rhode Island