By SARA CLINE
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — For nearly three decades, the small town of Mansfield was represented in Louisiana’s congressional delegation by white Republicans, even though its population is about 80% Black and leans heavily Democratic.
That changed with the election last year of U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat who was able to win after a newly drawn political map carved out a second Black majority congressional district in the state.
Mansfield Mayor Thomas Jones Jr. said he and others finally feel as if their communities are being represented in the nation’s capital.
“We feel connected, like we have somebody that’s helping us,” he said.
Fields’ seat, and what Jones describes as the benefits of having him in Washington, might disappear depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a case it will hear Wednesday.
The district Fields represents is the result of a hard-fought battle by civil rights groups representing Black voters in the state. Leaders in predominantly Black communities across the 218-mile-long (350-kilometer-long) district said they feel he finally gives them a voice to represent their needs.
But opponents say the district was unconstitutionally gerrymandered based on race. If the court eventually rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the decision could have a ripple effect far beyond this one district in Louisiana. It potentially will kick out the last major pillar of the 60-year-old Voting Rights Act and prevent Black voters from challenging political maps that dilute their influence.
Court rulings prompt state to draw new district
Louisiana’s new 6th Congressional District, which roughly traces the Red River, runs across the state in a narrow, diagonal path. It stretches from the state capital, Baton Rouge, in southern Louisiana to Shreveport, in the state’s northwest corner.
The district encompasses part or all of 10 parishes. It connects swaths of the state that some argue are vastly different in their priorities, geography, economies — even their gumbo recipes.
Fields is aware of criticism about the district’s snakelike shape that helped make it majority Black, but he argues that it’s contiguous and said all the state’s congressional districts are geographically large, representing both urban and rural areas. More importantly, he said, the district gives “people of color an opportunity, not a guarantee, to elect a candidate of their choice.”
“You tell me I have to jump a certain height, I can work on that. You tell me I’ve got to run faster, I can work on that as well,” he said. “But you tell me I got to be white, there’s nothing I can do about that.”
In 2022, Louisiana’s GOP-dominated Legislature drew congressional boundaries that maintained one Black majority district and five mostly white districts, in a state with a population that is about one-third Black. A federal judge later struck down the map for violating the Voting Rights Act, and in a major case the following year the Supreme Court found that Alabama had to create its own second majority Black congressional district.
Rather than being forced to have a judge draw its map, the Republican-controlled Louisiana Legislature and its Republican governor passed the current map that created a second Black majority district.
Black residents now account for 54% of registered voters in Fields’ district, up from 24% under the previous boundaries.
A congressman who ‘understands the plight of our people’
Throughout much of the South, older Black residents still remember Jim Crow-era methods around voting such as literacy tests and poll taxes that were designed to disenfranchise them.
In Louisiana, civil rights groups argued that the lack of a second majority minority congressional district was a modern-day effort to dilute Black voting strength. For decades, with a brief exception in the 1990s, Louisiana had just one majority Black district.
“It almost feels like when you only have one Black congressman, that he’s a congressman for everybody that’s African American in the state,” said state Rep. Denise Marcelle, a Black Democrat in East Baton Rouge Parish.
When the second majority Black district was being created, some leaders said it didn’t necessarily matter whether their area was included in it. That it existed at all was more important.
“I’m not married, necessarily, to the current makeup of the maps. … I’m not even married to the representative being Congressman Fields,” said Baton Rouge Councilman Cleve Dunn Jr., a Black Democrat. “We just knew with having a second congressional district represent a minority population, then the person who sits in that seat will represent the values of the Congressional Black Caucus. That’s the important thing.”
Dunn said he had a rapport with the Republican who represented the district before it was redrawn and said he was accessible. But he also saw the world politically in a different way, Dunn said.
“We feel positive that we have a representative who understands the plight of our people, the need of our people, and is going to fight for things for our people,” he said.
Making Congress deliver for the district
Community leaders in Fields’ district listed an array of needs: supplying low-income housing, protecting and expanding Medicaid, keeping rural hospitals open, addressing food deserts and providing money for community centers and other infrastructure.
Some said the benefits have been tangible in the short time Fields has been in office — from helping residents access Social Security benefits to working toward securing federal funding for local projects. Several people mentioned Fields’ visibility in the district.
“The key thing, quite frankly, that I have done in the past nine months is to connect Congress to the people,” Fields said.
Jones, the mayor of Mansfield, said during his nearly 20 years working in local government, he can’t recall a time a congressman held a town hall meeting in his community. Fields has held three.
Among the priorities for the town of 4,000 has been obtaining grant money to fix and replace its ailing sewage system, which backs up in people’s homes and overflows into the streets when it rains.
Jones said he has been asking for funding for five years. While the town has received limited money that was used to make patchwork repairs, he said with Fields’ help it is in line to be approved for a grant next year that he hopes will solve the system’s problems.
It was the first time Jones could recall any member of Congress reaching out to say they might be able to make some appropriations and to ask for a list of the town’s priorities.
“I feel like he’s reaching down to make sure that someone knows our needs and gets us some help,” Jones said.
Associated Press writer Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.
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