MOBILE, Ala. — Shalela Dowdy is one of the Black voters who successfully sued Alabama to have a bigger voice in Congress.
"It's about fair representation," she says sitting on a park bench beneath a sprawling canopy of live oak trees in downtown Mobile's historic Bienville Square.
"It's about just making sure you have someone that cares about your community," Dowdy says. "Just being willing to go in the community and talk to the people."
The lawsuit, Allen v. Milligan, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed that Alabama's congressional map discriminated against Black voters, in a state where African Americans make up about a quarter of the population.
When the Republican-controlled state legislature failed to create a new district that would give Black voters an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice, a federal court drew one with a Black voting age population of 48.7%. It stretches across Alabama, and includes much of the majority Black cities of Mobile, on the Gulf Coast, and Montgomery, the state capital.
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The new lines resulted in the election of a Black Democrat — Rep. Shomari Figures. So Alabama now has two Black members of Congress, out of its seven seats in the U.S. House.
Dowdy says it's made a difference. She's already had a face-to-face meeting with the newly elected Figures, and feels like she has a seat at the table for the first time.
What she wants to talk about is what's happening in the Department of Defense. She's an Army veteran and a West Point graduate upset that her alma mater has disbanded certain cultural clubs, including the National Society of Black Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers.
"We had a majority African American club that was kind of like our Black student union, but we call it contemporary affairs seminar — no longer able to operate," she says. "So if three or more Black students are gathered, it can look suspicious."
Dowdy, who still serves in the Army Reserves, says those groups provided a safe space when she was a student, and helped cadets excel.
The U.S. Military Academy disbanded the groups to comply with President Trump's executive order to remove race and sex-based preferences across the federal government, and to combat diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the private sector. Trump's order revokes President Lyndon Johnson's historic 1965 Equal Employment Opportunity directive.
Trump says federal laws already protect Americans from discrimination, and that DEI policies undermine national unity, and the traditional American values of hard work and individual achievement.
Dowdy sees it differently.
"It's the good old boy system — someone has a problem with people of color excelling," she says. "I feel like it's all about making America white again."
It's a reminder, she says, that when there's progress, there's pushback.
Historically, Alabama systematically disenfranchised Black voters. It wasn't until well after the Civil Rights Era, in 1992, that the state elected its first Black representative to Congress since Reconstruction.
The new congressional district is energizing to Jamorrey Gosha, a senior at Alabama State, a historically Black university in Montgomery.
"I think that it's an awesome opportunity for our voice here in this newly drawn district to be heard there in Washington, D.C.," he says.
Gosha hopes having a 39-year-old Black man in Congress might show other younger voters that participation matters.
"Sometimes when I talk to some of my peers, it seems as if they feel as if their vote does not matter and choose not to exercise their right, feeling as if they have no power," Gosha says.
Gosha runs a faith-based non-profit in east Alabama that offers minority scholarships, and is funded partly by federal grants. Grants, he fears, could be in jeopardy as the Trump administration slashes government spending. Gosha says the future is uncertain and nerve-wracking.
"It seems like the ultimate goal is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer," he says. "I feel like that's an attack on the freedoms of people who are often marginalized."
"A single vote in the House of Representatives can really impact the outcome of what a four-year cycle looks like for families," says Evan Milligan, the named plaintiff in the redistricting lawsuit.
He says having another congressional seat that gives Black voters an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice is promising. But he is also realistic about the potential for political influence given the current climate.
"It represents an opportunity, but it comes at a time where there's a lot of things in the air — what looks to be an administrative coup," Milligan says. "You know the importance of having more representation at a time when the idea of representation is being undermined, that's a really important thing."
And the litigation is not over. A three-judge federal panel held a trial in February that will determine what congressional map will be used for the rest of the decade, until the 2030 Census.
Sitting on the porch of a community center he runs in a former church, he reflects on how Montgomery has long been at the center of the struggle for racial equality.
"The development of civil rights in this country and civil liberties is a big part of who we are in this district."
The history is all around. The former slave market near the Alabama River; the steps of the state capitol where Jefferson Davis took his oath as president of the Confederacy; the spot where Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat; and the streets where civil rights marchers led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. demanded the right to vote.
"Our ancestors spilled a lot of blood to make sure we understood, hey, however small this seems, don't abandon this," Milligan says. "We have to believe in ourselves and believe that collectively we actually not only can resist, but, over time, transcend the direction that some are pulling this country in right now. That's a very difficult thing to do. But it starts with the hope."
Back in Mobile, two retired women are trying to get more people active in the democratic process. They've invited NPR to a street corner on the north side of town where traffic whizzes past a vacant lot, a couple of convenience stores, and a boarded-up beauty salon.
"What we're looking at is, I think, a community that has a great need," says Beverly Cooper. She and Amelia Bacon are co-founders of Stand Up Mobile, a voter advocacy organization that grew out of conversations in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Their mission is to show people that voting can bring about change to neighborhoods like this.
"We are encouraging those that have been excluded, didn't feel that they were part or could contribute their voice to what was going on in their community," Bacon says.
The women say the work is vital as they worry the federal guardrails and safety nets erected to protect African Americans are being dismantled. For instance, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
"Once you start removing those things that people have relied on for since the 60s, you're dealing with some territory that's really frightening to Black folks," says Bacon.
"If I could just say, 'all right, folks are going to be fair,' then fine we don't need all of these levels of protection," Cooper says. "That's not the case."
Bacon and Cooper are in their 70s, old enough says Bacon, to remember pre-civil rights America. "Let's face it, there is a playbook. We've been down this road before."
The women say it feels like a generation of racial progress is at stake.
That's unsettling for Mobile native Darron Patterson.
"That scares me because we are not going back," he says. "Nothing will ever allow Black people in this country to go back."
Patterson takes it personally, as a descendant of one of the enslaved people brought to Mobile on the last documented slave ship to arrive in America, the Clotilda. He grew up in Africatown, the community they founded after emancipation.
He's angry that the Trump administration is trying to change the narrative about difficult racial history.
"America is so arrogant, it chooses to use a broom, sweeping things under a rug instead of extending the olive branch to say, 'Let's work together,'" Patterson says. "If we work together, this country would be incredible. But there are people hell bent on saying the white race is the right race."
Patterson says a lesson he takes from the Clotilda survivors is never to underestimate the resolve of people who have been oppressed.
This story is part of American Voices, an occasional NPR National Desk series that explores how President Trump's policies are playing out across America.
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