Greetings, my fellow civic-minded Williamson County neighbors.
Jared Sullivan here. By now, you’ve surely read the news about the redistricting that has resulted in Williamson County’s now being in the same Congressional district as Lake County, in rural north-west Tennessee near the Kentucky border, and downtown Memphis. Below, you can read a short essay that I submitted to The Williamson Herald1 on the matter.
Democracy is clearly in retreat in Tennessee (and has been for a good long while). In my view, the best way to punish Republicans for bad behavior is to vote for Democrats (especially in general elections). Fortunately, there are some very strong candidates running for local office — you can see a list here — and I know that they would appreciate your help in canvassing and getting the word out about their campaigns. If there was ever a time to take action, it’s now. I’ll send another email soon about the local and statewide races we have coming up.
Our Lawmakers Swear They’re Not Racists. Look at Their Records
Last week, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a new U.S. House map that obliterated a majority-Black voting district in Memphis, ripping it into three gerrymandered pieces. As a result, Black voters will almost certainly lose local representation in the U.S. House. This dramatic disenfranchisement of Memphis voters is a direct consequence of a recent disastrous Supreme Court decision that gutted large portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that was pivotal in securing Black Americans the right to vote, protected primarily Black voting districts from white-led gerrymandering, and helped bring an end to the Jim Crow era of racial terror that was commonplace in Southern towns like Franklin. (Never forget that in 1946, future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall was nearly lynched alongside the Duck River, south of town, and that Franklin High remained defiantly segregated for 13 years after Brown v. Board.)
All members of the Williamson County delegation, to their eternal shame, voted in favor of redistricting, holding that the decision to strip Memphis of local representation wasn’t about race — it was about politics, to help the GOP gain advantage in the upcoming federal midterm elections. (Apparently, none were troubled that disempowering a city runs counter to the Founders’ designs for the U.S. House and is deeply anti-democratic and unpatriotic.)
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling raises the bar in proving unlawful racial gerrymandering, requiring plaintiffs to prove lawmakers acted with racist intent, not just that the map produces racially disparate outcomes. Hence our local GOP lawmakers are insisting that racism is dead in Tennessee and that it played no part in their redistricting votes.
Such claims ask you to deny what your ears have heard and your eyes have seen.
If the Williamson County delegation truly opposes racism, why has not one of them publicly called for the removal of the Confederate monument, an ever-present symbol of white supremacy, in downtown Franklin? And why has none publicly championed the removal of the Confederate flag from the Williamson County seal?
And why, in 2024, did Senator Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), a co-sponsor of the recent redistricting bill, attend a ceremony dedicating a monument honoring the “valor” of Confederate traitors who fought against the U.S. in the Battle of Franklin — among them a general referred to as a “Texas negro killer” in a wartime newspaper? And why in campaign literature has Johnson boasted about sponsoring legislation to defund programs that foster diversity in the state government? And why in 2021 did he manufacture outrage over critical race theory being taught in public schools when it wasn’t? And — most horrific and damning of all — why in 2017 and again in 2020 did Johnson vote against removing a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the KKK, from the state capitol? (In 2020, he was one of only two lawmakers in the entire General Assembly to oppose a removal measure.)
The people of Williamson County are upright and decent and abhor racism in all forms. And we stand for fair representation. Our lawmakers should too. ◆
1I submitted the essay on Monday, but I haven’t yet received my weekly paper to know whether the piece ran.