Mississippi: The 300-Mile Majority-Black District
Lawmakers pack most of the state's African Americans into a single district.
Topline Takeaways
Mississippi lawmakers have successfully redrawn congressional districts for the first time since the 1990s after federal courts drew districts for the state in both 2000 and 2010.
Few changes were made to Mississippi’s congressional districts with the most significant change being the expansion of the state’s second district.
Much of Mississippi’s Black population is packed into MS-2. This guarantees their ability to elect one representative of their choice but also ensures that Black voters will be outnumbered in all other state congressional districts.
Who’s in Control?
Mississippi’s redistricting process is completely controlled by the state legislature. Republicans are firmly in the driver’s seat here as they hold majorities in both state houses. If the legislature is unable to agree on new districts (as was the case in both the 2000 and 2010 redistricting cycles) a back-up commission, overseen by federal courts, receives the task of drawing new districts. This cycle marked the first time since the 1990s that lawmakers agreed upon new districts, eschewing input from federal courts.
New District Breakdown
Republicans in Mississippi mirrored the national Republican strategy of defensive redistricting. The new congressional districts don’t shift the partisan or racial makeup of districts in any major ways: it retains three safe seats for Republicans and one safe seat for Democrats.
The Democratic seat, MS-2, has been a majority-Black district for decades. More than 1 in 3 Mississippi residents identify as African American. After receiving the right to vote, their impact on state politics was a pernicious worry for White voters across the state. The practice of packing a single district with as many Black voters as possible to ensure White electoral power in all other seats dates back to Reconstruction. For more than a century, Mississippi has had one (and only one) district anchored by its Black community. The population of MS-2 has shrunk since the 2010 census, forcing mapmakers to extend its borders. The new second district now holds the entirety of the state’s border along Mississippi River except for heavily Republican DeSoto county along the state’s northern border
The passage of the Voting Rights Act (alongside the reduction of House seats allotted to the state)1 is responsible for the continued existence of this majority-Black district. The VRA created legal protections for racial minority groups, ensuring that historically marginalized communities retain the power to elect representatives of their choice. Since Black people makeup a substantial percentage of Mississippi’s population, lawmakers are forced to retain enough majority-Black districts to avoid violating the VRA. Since Mississippi only has four seats, 1 majority-Black seat means that the 37% of Mississippi residents who identify as Black are represented by 25% of the state’s US House delegation.
This focus on creating at least one majority-Black district simultaneously ensures that Mississippi’s other three districts are predominately White. As a result, those three remaining seats are overwhelmingly Republican, so much so that Democrats often fail to nominate candidates since they’re widely expected to lose.
Leftover Links
I wanted to take a little more time to dissect this to show how the impact of a single majority-Black district changes as the number of House seats changes. At its largest, Mississippi’s US House delegation consisted of eight seats. When only one of those seats is majority-Black, the state’s Black community is underrepresented as it only controls 12% of the delegation. Today, the state’s Black community is more fairly represented because they control a larger share of the state’s US House delegation. (They also can’t control two seats without being over-represented.) So despite the fact that Mississippi has consistently had only one majority-Black district, the representative power of that seat has grown within the state as the number of seats shrinks.