The Coming War on Local Black Political Power

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.The Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, effectively demolishing a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is a “five-alarm fire,” former Representative G. K. Butterfield Jr. told me this week. As southern states rush to draw new boundaries eliminating majority-minority districts, as much as a third of the Congressional Black Caucus could lose their seats. Butterfield, a former CBC chair, knows that risk well. But he also knows the less visible yet still enormous effects that Callais could have at a local level in silencing the voices of Black voters.In 1928, George K. Butterfield Sr., a Bermuda-born dentist, moved to the eastern–North Carolina tobacco town of Wilson. Although roughly 48 percent of Wilson’s 19,000 citizens were Black, only about 40 Black people were registered to vote—but local authorities, pleased to have Butterfield in town, allowed him to register.Less to their pleasure, Butterfield founded the local NAACP chapter, and in 1953, he decided to run for town commission. By now, Wilson had more than 500 Black registered voters, although most of them were gerrymandered into a ward with many white voters in order to dilute their power. But when the votes were counted, Butterfield and a white candidate were tied, 382–382. A blindfolded child drew a name out of a hat, and Butterfield became the first Black elected official in eastern North Carolina since Reconstruction. Two years later, he won reelection after striking a deal with a mayor to support a new recreation center in exchange for his backing, then became the council’s finance chair. (Some of the details in this account are based on the younger Butterfield's recollections.)The city’s white power structure had seen enough. When the Butterfield family went on vacation, the council calle