Tennessee Senator Warns That New State Map Could Be the Biggest Blow to Black Political Power Since Reconstruction

On Thursday, Tennessee Republicans passed a new congressional map that would split Memphis, a city with a population that is over 60 percent Black, according to Census data, into multiple districts stretching into predominantly White suburban and rural areas. The bill comes mere days after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakened protections under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Critics believe this opens the door for other Republican-led states to redraw Black-majority districts across the South.

In an emotional speech on the Tennessee Senate floor this week, state Sen. Raumesh Akbari (D) warned lawmakers that this action would become a defining moment in the state’s history.

“You are deliberately trying to silence the voices of a community,” Akbari said to her colleagues. “This is an act of hate…You cannot call it anything but racism.”

Akbari, who represents Memphis, said that in practical terms, Black residents could lose meaningful representation in Congress and face reduced access to resources, infrastructure funding and economic investment.

“What you’re doing is you’re making their vote not really count,” she said in an interview with The Root before the vote. “There’s no way that the community of Black voters in Memphis can select a candidate of their choice because their vote is diluted and washed away because of how the district is stretched.”

Akbari said she believes Tennessee could become one of the clearest early examples of how states move to weaken Black voting power following the Supreme Court’s decision.

“This is the new Southern strategy,” she said. “To completely dilute and spread out Black voters so that their voices do not matter.”

She called the moment “the greatest blow to Black representation and Black political power since the end of Reconstruction.”

“And the fact that we’re facing this in 2026 is absolutely unbelievable,” she added.

Still, the senator says the fight is far from over. “We’re going to show [Republicans] they can do whatever they want to do with these maps; someone is going to sue. If we are not successful in lawsuits, we’re going to vote, and we’re going to organize and fund races so that they will look back and regret what they did,” Akbari told us.