ATLANTA — Alleging racism, Black Georgia lawmakers assailed Gov. Brian Kemp’s call for a special session to redraw election maps, saying Republicans want to drag the state back to the era before the civil rights movement.
“It’s despicable that Georgia is following this racist playbook and taking us back to Jim Crow,” said Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, chair of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus.
The Democratic lawmakers who met outside the Capitol Thursday were reacting to the Republican governor’s signing of a proclamation Wednesday that calls lawmakers back to the Capitol on June 17.
They will contend with two election-related issues.
Kemp asked them to address the July 1 deadline they set two years ago to cease using QR codes for tallying votes. Despite meeting for two regular legislative sessions since passing that law, the Legislature has neither authorized nor funded an alternative process.
Kemp also is convening them to redraw voting districts after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a new majority-Black district in Louisiana. The April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais raised questions about future legal interpretations of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a legacy of civil rights protests.
The Black leaders gathered at Liberty Plaza, next to the Gold Dome and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Christopher Bruce, with the ACLU of Georgia, referenced the road’s namesake along with others who had marched with him and had beaten and bloodied for it.
“Our ancestors did not die for us not to fight now,” he said.
Merritt and the others called for protesters to fill the streets and to turn out for upcoming elections. The primary is May 19 and the general election is Nov. 3.
She also called on leading businesses and the chambers of commerce to rally against the redistricting, recalling the historic alliance between white and Black leaders and business interests in Atlanta.
Atlanta was known as “the city too busy to hate,” she noted, setting it apart from the rest of the South and putting it on a prosperous path that she said was now in jeopardy. The state’s image and its ability to attract international investors are at risk, she said.
Sen. Harold Jones II, D-Augusta, the state Senate minority leader, said Republicans see the electoral tide turning against them, have run out of ideas, and are “dusting off the same playbook of racial hate, fear, and racial divisiveness.”
He observed that lawmakers will be returning to the Capitol amid the throngs of soccer fans who will come to Atlanta for the World Cup.
The Republican-led General Assembly will be on a world stage, he said. Viewers “will see that the Republicans have opted to continue racial oppression,” he said. “And they will see protests and they will see stories about the old South and racial divisions.”