TIL that in the 1930s Communist organizers and local farmers #unions in rural #Alabama hid their weekly meetings from #police by calling them “Bible meetings” and recorded meeting minutes by underling relevant words and phrases in a Bible #history#labor
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted essential parts of the Voting Rights Act, allowing GOP legislatures to enact some of the most racially discriminatory district maps in state history.
Last year, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that GOP-drawn maps were discriminatory and unlawful because they diluted Black voting power and ignored the state’s growing Black population.
In North Carolina, voting rights advocates filed suit charging GOP legislators with racially gerrymandering the state House and Senate maps by deliberately diluting the voting power of majority-Black areas.
And in Louisiana, a federal court determined that GOP-created maps violated the Voting Rights Act by weakening the power of Black voters. The state was ordered to finalize a new map
early this year.
Recently in Alabama, the Republican legislature refused to comply with a federal judge’s order to create fair voting maps that better represented Black voters. It had to be enforced by court order.