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Supreme Court soon Louisiana vs. Callais decisioneffectively dismantling a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is a “five-alarm fire,” former Rep. GK Butterfield Jr. he told me this week. As southern states rush to draw new boundaries that eliminate minority districts, such as one-third of the Black House of Representatives in Congress they may lose their seats. Butterfield, the former chairman of the CBC, knows the danger well. But he also knows the effects that are not so visible and yet serious Callis it may be at the local level in silencing the voices of Black voters.
In 1928, George K. Butterfield Sr., a dentist born in Bermuda, moved to the tobacco town of Wilson in eastern North Carolina. Although about 48 percent of Wilson’s 19,000 citizens were Black, only about 40 Black people registered to vote—but the local authorities, pleased to have Butterfield in town, allowed him to register.
To their dismay, Butterfield founded a local chapter of the NAACP, and in 1953, decided to run for city commission. By now, Wilson had more than 500 Black voters registered, although most of them had been drawn into predominantly white counties to reduce their power. But when the votes were counted, Butterfield and the white candidate were tied, 382–382. A blindfolded child drew a name from a hat, and Butterfield became the first Black official elected in eastern North Carolina since Reconstruction. Two years later, he won re-election after making a deal with the mayor to support a new recreation center in exchange for support, then became the council’s finance chairman. (Some of the details in this account are based on Butterfield’s memoirs.)
The white power structure of the city had seen enough. When the Butterfield family went on vacation, the council called an emergency meeting and changed the electoral system from wards to at-large seats—in other words, every voter in town would now vote for every seat, not just the seats in their ward. This reduced the Black vote because Butterfield now had to run not against a single opponent but against an entire line. The new laws also mandated that voters had to vote for every seat on the ballot—meaning that Black voters could not try to work as a bloc by voting for only one or two Black candidates and leaving other seats open. It worked: Butterfield lost his 1957 reelection bid.
If Wilson’s maneuver had occurred with the Voting Rights Act fully implemented, it would likely have been thrown out under Section 2, which prohibits discriminatory voting systems, and Section 5, which required certain jurisdictions to “pre-empt” any changes by the US Department of Justice. But the VRA was still several years away. When Butterfield’s partner challenged the system in 1961, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled against it; the following year, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
These events greatly impressed Butterfield’s son and his name. “I was 10 years old, and I quickly realized that laws can determine the outcome of an election,” he told me. Butterfield Jr. participated in college voting, attended law school, and then returned home. “I came home with the intention of filing some kind of voting rights claim against the city, kind of revenge for what happened to my father,” he said. Working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he successfully contested a large district in Wilson County. That was the beginning of a political career that culminated in more than 18 years in the White House.
Lots of answers to Callis so far it has focused on how it could affect the White House and state legislative districts. This is understandable because these bodies are stronger, and the immediate effects will be more measurable. But the possibility of local and county councils deciding not to draw new lines but to remove them entirely will also have a negative impact across the South.
When the Voting Rights Act was passed, Martin Luther King Jr. he said he hoped the law would lead not only to Black government representatives but also “county commissioners, sheriffs, city councilmen, police chiefs and even Black mayors.” This dream has come true. One reading calculated that in 1964, the year before the law was passed, only 56 blacks held local elected office in the South. By 1980, 2,265 did. The results were not merely symbolic: These offices control things like schools, parks, roads, and sanitation—services that have a direct daily impact on the lives, especially of the poor. As a new paper findsincreased representation brought about significant material improvements in the lives of Black citizens, and in many cases whites as well. (Butterfield Jr. emphasized to me that the VRA did not create the right to elect Black officials; it created an opportunity for Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice, regardless of that person’s race.)
These measures depended on the abolition of large districts, which had long been common throughout the South. This was slow work, but the VRA and subsequent court decisions made it effective. Data collected by J. Morgan Kousserhistorian at Caltech, documented more than 1,000 successful challenges to major voting systems throughout the South from 1965 to 2024. Brennan Center for Justice says challenges to large systems still contribute to many cases of vote reduction.
Now that progress can be reversed. Although the Department of Justice has he swore to bring charges against districts issued under the VRA beforeCallisKousser told me that he expects the initial efforts to focus on federal and state elections. “I don’t think the Justice Department is going to reach out during the Trump administration,” he said. However, he predicted that this was only a matter of time. “I think the Justice Department is going to go after every little Democratic office.”
Some local leaders may not be waiting for Washington. On April 22, a week before Callistwo GOP state representatives introduced a bill to change city council elections in Jacksonville, another city in eastern North Carolina, from a combination of wards and at-large seats to an at-large election. The ward system has been in use since 1990, when a lawsuit successfully challenged the at-large system as discriminatory against Black voters. Wyatt Gable, one of the representatives who introduced the bill, described it as a way to ensure “equality and an equal voice in local government” – a thoroughly Orwellian justification. (Neither Gable nor Phil Shepard, another sponsor, responded to requests for an interview.)
Whether the bill will become law is unclear, but in the past, efforts to roll back large districts would have been particularly vulnerable to a legal challenge. In CallisHarvard Law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos states, “The Court changed the framework for Section 2 vote reduction claims in ways that make these cases unwinnable.” At the very least, they will be more difficult, because plaintiffs will have to prove intentional racism to succeed. And if Congress doesn’t pass new voting rights legislation, similar efforts may succeed throughout the South. The result may be the obscuring of Black political representation and influence, not only in Washington and in state capitals but also in cities and counties—a step back toward the days when George K. Butterfield Sr. he was a rare and dangerous exception.
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