MEMPHIS, Tennessee — Cicely Sharp never saw herself becoming a full-time voting rights organizer. After what happened in May, though, she felt like she had no choice.
Her brother, who lives in New Jersey, was texting her to coordinate a visit to Memphis, but she wasn’t paying much attention to him. She was watching legislative proceedings on television, as Tennessee Republicans prepared to slice up the district containing Memphis. The majority-Black city was mostly in the 9th Congressional District. But on May 7, it was split among the 5th, 8th, and 9th districts, and the new lines now heavily favor Republicans, according to the Cook Political Report.
With early voting underway through Oct. 29, Black organizers across all generations are working to keep voters informed and engaged as the political landscape shifts beneath their feet. Tapping into a deep well of resolve, they’re door knocking, mobilizing churches, and educating voters about their rights and safety at the polls.
“I was in disbelief — it happened so fast,” Sharp, 37, said of the map’s approval, speaking with Capital B at a bustling coffee shop in midtown Memphis, near the center of the city she had spent the summer canvassing. “I was like, ‘What district am I in? And which candidates can I vote for?’”
But Sharp quickly realized that she wouldn’t be the only Black Memphian asking those questions. After she had her “three seconds to get it together,” she leaned into organizing full time. She had volunteered before as a poll observer, so several friends sent her a job opening at Organize Tennessee, which was looking for someone to work on the ground in Shelby County, where Memphis is. She applied and got the job.
By July, she was one of many organizers in the city helping voters to navigate unfamiliar congressional boundaries and encouraging them to make their voices heard at the polls.
Cracking Black Memphis
The power of the old 9th was years in the making. It took shape following the 1980 census, when the Memphis-based district became majority Black. The safely Blue district had been represented by a Democrat for more than four decades; Republican challenges eventually became mostly nominal. Additionally, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibited maps that unlawfully diluted Black voting power.
But then came April 29, 2026. That day, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, a landmark case in which the conservative majority dramatically narrowed Section 2. In a matter of days, Tennessee Republicans had chopped up Memphis. The new 9th runs from South Memphis into Middle Tennessee, and it includes a number of rural white counties.
Its Black voting-age population plummeted from about 60% to 32%.
“There’s this sense of disbelief that you have to fight all over again for stuff that your parents and your grandparents fought for,” Ian Randolph, a longtime Memphis voting rights organizer who described his age only as “seasoned,” told Capital B, referring to the long road to meaningful Black political representation.
He was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the name Shelby County Voter Alliance, the organization that he founded to work on everything from redistricting to giving voters rides to the polls.
For Randolph, the fight over the 9th fits into an older history of battles over Black power in Memphis. He mentioned the Memphis Massacre of 1866, when white mobs, including police officers, murdered dozens of Black residents and burned Black homes, churches, and schools. This was early Reconstruction, when newly freed Black Americans were attempting to build lives and institutions outside slavery.
More than 150 years later, Randolph views the struggle over representation as yet another reminder of how fiercely Black political influence has been contested in the city and beyond. But he also sees Memphis, nestled in the heart of the South, as a place where that power can be rebuilt.
“When Memphis rises, the South is gonna rise,” Randolph said. “Who is Memphis? We Memphis.”
“Turning up the heat”
This determination to make Memphis rise again was on display on a warm fall evening, when dozens of supporters of state Rep. Justin J. Pearson packed into a campaign meeting a few weeks before Election Day. The 31-year-old Democrat is vying to represent the redrawn 9th, which now means that he must attract a coalition that extends beyond the city where he began his political career in 2023.
Devante Willis, 23, was among the people in the room, where a call-and-response refrain of “Who’s fired up? We fired up!” periodically broke out. He was drawn to Pearson’s campaign because of his support for Black voting power and his opposition to the rapid expansion of data centers. Memphis is home to Colossus 2, xAI’s massive artificial intelligence facility and the largest data center operating in the country.
“I believe what he stands for and how he’s helping the community — how he wants it to be better,” Willis told Capital B, referring to Pearson. “He doesn’t want corporations to take over or pollute the city.”
The energy inside the room captures a slice of how Black Memphis is responding to the new map. Instead of treating the cracking of a majority-Black district as the end of their voting power, residents and organizers want to help people to understand what has changed and persuade them that the stakes are simply too high for anyone to sit out. This has meant revising outreach plans, teaching people which district they now live in, and educating voters who might arrive at the polls without knowing the candidates on their ballots.
Some of that work is happening in one of the oldest Black organizing institutions: the church.
Sweetrica Baker, 46, who works on civic engagement with the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope, is helping to lead a Souls to the Polls effort through New Direction Christian Church, where she’s a member. The goal is to recruit clergy across the city to motivate their congregations not simply to vote but to head to the polls together, she told Capital B.
“‘We need you to do more than just make an announcement,’” Baker said of the message organizers are giving pastors. “‘We need you to encourage and express the importance of voting to your membership.’”
For Baker, the urgency of the political moment has forced organizers to reach beyond their usual circles. Along with the church effort, she’s working on voter registration, postcard campaigns, and voter protection. All of this is part of what she described as “turning up the heat” as November approaches.
That outreach included spending time at the Orange Mound Parade in September. As Baker moved through the historically Black Memphis neighborhood, she encountered older residents sitting outside in lawn chairs, some with their grandchildren nearby. She asked about their voting plans for November, as well as the voting plans of their families.
It seemed as if at least some residents understood what had happened to their political power: “They crackin’ up our city,” Baker recalled people telling her. Others assured her that they would educate their relatives and get them to the polls: “I’m telling all of them that they better get out and vote.”
Such determination has deep roots in Memphis.
The former Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, sits near the center of Pearson’s state House district, the 86th district. He told Capital B that he thinks often about the history surrounding it, including how King came to Memphis to support a movement that sanitation workers and other residents had already built.
“Those were Memphians who went on strike, who made sure that their neighbors were able to eat when they weren’t getting wages and kids had the resources they needed,” Pearson said. “We are not backing down. We are not quitting. We have never and will never quit in our pursuit for full citizenship rights in this country.”
Pearson’s Republican opponent, state Sen. Brent Taylor, sees the new map very differently. Taylor has praised the redrawn 9th for mixing urban, suburban, and rural communities, arguing that congressional districts ought to “represent the interests and values of Tennesseans” and that this is better achieved through districts that “look like Tennessee” than with one anchored in a large urban area.
Carrying on a family tradition
For Sharp, addressing this new political geography will play out one knocked door at a time. Over the summer, she and other organizers canvassed Memphis neighborhoods in and outside the 9th, showing residents sample ballots and explaining to them whom they could — and could not — vote for.
The conversations, she said, made clear just how disorienting the new map could be. She recalled people asking her what had happened and why they could no longer vote for candidates they had expected to see on their ballots. Some even wanted to know more about redistricting and the special legislative session that had reshaped the city.
The work has also made Sharp think about her own family. Her grandfather, who passed away earlier this year, was born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and grew up on the land there. He came from a generation that witnessed Black voting rights move from something abstract to something more concrete, and he watched the political changes of this year in horror.
But Sharp doesn’t want this horror to ossify into disillusionment about the power of the ballot box. She’s starting with her own family. When she went to cast her vote in the August primary, she brought her 4-year-old daughter. She wants her daughter to grow up viewing voting not as an occasional response to a political crisis but as an ordinary, yet absolutely fundamental, part of life. It’s the same lesson that her parents and grandparents instilled in her.
“I want her to know that this is what we do,” Sharp said. “This is what we do as a family.”
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