Tennessee Republicans Leave Dark Stain on the History of Tennessee
The Republican-led Tennessee General Assembly redrew lines for congressional districts this week, splitting Memphis into three districts and leaving residents unaware of which district they now live in.
The act effectively dilutes the vote of Black Memphians by splitting District 9 into three new districts. They stretch from the city into rural areas and, in two cases, all the way to the outskirts of Nashville. In several cases, neighbors living on the same street have been placed in different congressional districts.
Republicans said the goal of the redistricting effort was to make all nine of Tennessee’s congressional seats red. Currently, District 9 is the only seat held by a Democrat, Congressman Steve Cohen.
The changes will take effect for the 2026 August primary. The legislature also changed a law that had mandated that new congressional district boundaries could only be drawn after each federal census.
The special session to redraw Tennessee’s congressional map came after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required the state to have at least one district whose population was mostly Black residents.
How can Memphians find out what district they now live in? Cardell Orrin, executive director of Stand for Children, created an interactive map for any Tennessean to look up their district by address.
Initially, he wanted it “to help people see how wild it was where they were trying to put us.”
Find your district
The Defend TN 9 website was created on Wednesday to allow Tennesseans to “join the fight before the legislature locks it in.” Now that the redistricting has passed, Orrin said he hopes it will allow Memphians to connect with people filing legal challenges and to become aware of who their potential representatives are.
Even though the new districts were passed and signed into law by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee Thursday, challenges to the redistricting will continue. The NAACP and others have already filed to challenge the new maps, and more lawsuits are anticipated to follow.
Orrin said he also hopes candidates and organizers — who have to figure things out “in pretty short order” — will find the tool useful.
“If more Democrats want to turn out more Democrats, they’ve got to quickly be working together with other folks across a pretty broad stretch of land from west to middle Tennessee,” Orrin said.
Tennesseans can also look up their address on the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury’s website. Detailed maps of the new congressional boundaries are also available online.
Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at katherine.burgess@mlk50.com
