The Long Shadow of Gomillion v. Lightfoot
In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that a map could be unconstitutional if its sole purpose were to silence Black voters. Charles Gomillion, a professor at Tuskegee Institute, had watched as Alabama’s legislature redrew the city’s boundaries into a 28-sided figure—an act of cartographic violence designed to excise nearly all Black residents from the voting rolls surgically. Gomillion refused to accept this as mere politics. He saw it for what it was: a betrayal of democratic promise. In 1956, Gomillion, as President of the Tuskegee Civic League, filed a lawsuit to contest this electoral map. It took this case four years to wind its way to the Supreme Court.