On April 17, 2026, the U.S. Department of Interior listed McFerren Grocery and Oil Company in Somerville, Tennessee, on the National Registry of Historic places. My parents, John and Viola McFerren, lead activists of the Fayette County Movement, owned the store that became “ground zero” for African Americans voting rights campaigns and other civil rights activism during the 1960s.
Listing the store on the National Registry came after months of hard work by a consultant group, a sibling, and me to create the best historical application possible. When I learned of the store’s listing, I was ecstatic. Preserving the history of McFerren’s Grocery and Oil Co. memorializes the challenges overcome by civil rights activists to create a more just nation. Its history also memorializes the worst periods of racial inequality for minority voters’ participation in the political process — both then and now.
Twelve days later, I was disheartened. On April 29, 2026, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais changed the legal standard of proof for showing racial discrimination where gerrymandering results in the dilution of the voting strength of minority voters.
The Fayette County Movement began in 1959 when my father John McFerren and his best friend, Harpman Jameson, led a voter registration campaign to register African Americans. The Civil Rights Division, created under the 1957 Civil Rights Act, sued white Fayette County landowners who had been evicting Black sharecroppers who registered to vote. On July 26, 1962, this case concluded with a consent decree, or agreement, signed by the White landowners who agreed not to evict Blacks who registered to vote.
For John McFerren, the consent decree was a Pyrrhic victory. During the 1960s, the DOJ maintained no oversight of white landowners or local elections after the federal court accepted the consent decree. Despite being approximately 70% of the population during the 1960s, and despite extensive voter registration campaigns to get voters to the polls, the Black community of Fayette County could not elect any official of their choice until August 1966, when six African Americans were elected to the Fayette County Quarterly Court (now the Fayette County Commission). Only two years prior, in 1964, a white candidate for Sheriff, L. T. Redfearn, lost despite being the Black community’s preferred candidate. County activists alleged elections were stolen. Election results did not match African-American voters’ turnout, and activists stated they observed poll watchers destroy ballots cast by Black voters. My father and others knew that the federal government had to provide more protection of minority voters to ensure their votes counted in the political process. They got it.
The passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a watershed moment for the civil rights movement. It embodied the efforts and dreams of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Ella Baker, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the many civil rights movements in the South, and so many other activists who marched, protested and demanded legislation to protect the voting rights of African Americans. Until the Callais decision, minority communities relied on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to help ensure their voices had impact in electing officials accountable to their political needs.
Since the Voting Rights Act passage in 1965, courts, including the Supreme Court, reviewed the constitutionality of gerrymandering under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to determine if the redistricting had the “effect” of limiting minorities from electing candidates of their choice. Despite years of legal precedent supporting this standard of review, the Supreme Court in Callais dealt a lethal blow to Section 2. It held that it is not enough to show that the “effect” of gerrymandering impacts minority voters; but rather those objecting to the constitutionality of gerrymandering must show that the gerrymandering was intended to intentionally discriminate against minority voters.
The “intentional” discrimination standard is a high legal hurdle to meet. Figuratively speaking, a “smoking gun” is required. Evidence of racist statements or writings, clandestine meetings or other acts that clearly show that racial discrimination was intended by the gerrymandering is required. If a legislature can show that the gerrymandering of a district was for “political,” not “racially discriminatory” reasons, the gerrymandering is constitutional. However, this is a distinction without a difference. This is especially so for African Americans who overwhelmingly vote Democratic.
After the Callais decision, the State of Tennessee rushed to gerrymander the Ninth Congressional District, a minority-majority district in Shelby County. A White Democratic Congressman, Steve Cohen, has represented this minority-majority district since 2007. On May 7, 2026, the Tennessee Legislature cleaved the Ninth District into three separate districts encompassing rural areas in other counties. Rep. William Lamberth, House Majority leader (R. Portland), claimed that this was their effort to balance out the city (Memphis) with the rural populations “to ensure each Congressional district represented a mix of population densities for balance and fairness”
This gerrymandering, however, will give a political advantage to Republicans in the mid-term election. Yet if “population densities for balance and fairness” was the real issue, why did the Tennessee Legislature fail to allegedly balance out the rural and city populations for decades prior to the Callais decision? Furthermore, there was no redistricting of minority-majority neighborhoods in Democratic districts like Chattanooga and Knoxville that lean Republican. According to Ken Blake, a data journalism professor at Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Journalism and Strategic Media, the “question becomes, does it bother you as someone who draws these maps, to separate Black voters from Black voters and move them into districts where they will no longer have majority voice like they did in their original district”? It should.
When I speak about the history of the Fayette County Movement, I tell audiences that I am in the first generation on both my mother’s and father’s side of the family that could freely vote when I came of voting age and elect candidates that expressed the political will of people like me. In the short and long term, the Callais decision will result in the exclusion of minority voices in the political process, including my own.
