Tennessee Redistricting Splits Memphis House District

Memphis, Tennessee, residents Steve Fowler and Sam Wilson, who have performed together in a band on Beale Street for 21 years and lived as neighbors for a decade, now reside in separate congressional districts following a redistricting plan approved by the state legislature. The change, effective this week, divides the city's longtime Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat into three districts that pair Memphis's majority-Black population with mostly white, rural areas.

A line drawn down the middle of their East Memphis street places Fowler, who is white, in the 8th Congressional District, which stretches hundreds of miles across a dozen counties to central Tennessee. Wilson, who is Black, falls into the 9th District, which runs along much of the state's southern border and curves northward to include affluent Nashville suburbs. "I think it's horrible," Fowler said. "This isn't just going to be bad for Black folks in Memphis, but poor whites in these new districts also aren't going to get services. How are any of these congressmen going to serve all these different counties?"

The redistricting stems from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on April 29 that limited a key provision of the...