defend Black – Thousands rallied in Montgomery, Alabama, pressing for a new voting rights era as courts and conservative-led states redraw congressional districts and tighten voting rules. Speakers including U.S. Sen. Cory Booker and Rev. Bernice King tied the moment to the
Thousands of people rallied Saturday in Montgomery, Alabama—an early landmark of the modern civil rights era—to push for what they called a new voting rights push as conservative states move to dismantle congressional districts tied to Black political representation.
U.S.. Sen.. Cory Booker of New Jersey called Montgomery “sacred soil” in the fight for civil rights.. “If we in our generation do not now do our duty. we will lose the gains and the rights and the liberties that our ancestors afforded us. ” Booker said.. The crowd answered with chants of “we won’t go back” and “we fight. ” and Shalela Dowdy. a plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case. warned: “We are not going down without a fight.. We are not going down to Jim Crow maps.”
The rally—held on Saturday. May 16. 2026—placed the politics of voting access in a place loaded with symbols: a stage set in front of the city’s historic Alabama Capitol. where the Confederacy was formed in 1861 and where the elder Martin Luther King Jr.. spoke in 1965 at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March.. The setting was framed by statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and civil rights icon Rosa Parks. two tributes created nearly 90 years apart.. Speakers said the site was once a temple of the Confederacy and became holy ground for the Civil Rights Movement.
Crowd members said the effort to redraw lines carried echoes of earlier battles. Camellia A Hooks, 70, of Montgomery, Alabama, said, “We lived through the ’60s. It takes you back. When you think that Alabama’s moving forward, it takes two steps back.”
At the center of the gathering was anger directed at the changing legal ground for voting protections.. A recent U.S.. Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana hollowed out the voting rights law that had already been weakened by a separate decision in 2013 and then narrowed further over the years.. Advocates said the shift helped clear the way for stricter voter ID laws. registration restrictions. and limits on early voting and polling place changes.. They pointed to states that once needed federal preclearance before they could change voting laws because of their historical discrimination against Black voters.
Rev. Bernice King, the daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said the ruling was a direct attack on the legacy of generations who faced “dogs and batons and bombs and billy clubs so that Black people and all marginalized communities could participate fully in this democracy.”
The emotional contrast landed sharply with veterans of the movement. who described the rollbacks as happening far faster than they believed the country would move backward.. Kirk Carrington. 75. said he was a teen in 1965 when law enforcement officers attacked marchers in Selma on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” He described a white man on a horse wielding a stick chasing him through the streets.. “It’s really just appalling to me and all the young people that marched during the ’60s. fought hard to get voting rights. equal rights and civil rights. ” Carrington said.. “It’s sad that it’s continuing after 60-plus-odd years that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then.”
Civil rights leaders. members of Congress from across the country. union leaders and pastors spoke during a rally that lasted four hours.. U.S.. Rep.. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said, “They think they can draw us out of power.. They do not know the sleeping giant that they just awakened.”
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the politics of representation in Alabama have become a live dispute rather than a distant policy fight. Montgomery is home to one of the congressional districts being altered after the Supreme Court ruling.
A federal court in 2023 redrew Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District after ruling that the state intentionally diluted the voting power of Black residents. who make up about 27% of its population.. The court said there should be a district where Black people are a majority or near-majority and have an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.. But the Supreme Court cleared the way for a different map that could let the GOP reclaim the seat.. While the matter remains under litigation, the state plans special primaries Aug.. 11 under the new map.
Democratic Rep.. Shomari Figures. who won election in the district in 2024. said the dispute is not about him but about people’s opportunity for representation.. “When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation. what the faces of representation. look like. what the opportunities. legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country. then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way. ” Figures said.
Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter. a Republican. said the Louisiana ruling provided an opportunity to revisit a map that was forced on the state by the federal court.. “People tend to forget what happened.. When this thing went to court, the Republican Party had that seat, congressional seat two,” Ledbetter said last week.. “There’s been a push through the courts to try to overtake some of these red state seats. and that’s certainly what happened in that one.”
Evan Milligan. the lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case. said there is grief over the implosion of the Voting Rights Act. but urged people to recommit to the fight.. “We have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not,” Milligan said.. “We don’t have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever.”
The sequence of decisions and consequences described by speakers lined up in a single arc: the Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana hollowed out a voting rights law already weakened in 2013. which advocates said then opened the door for new restrictions like voter ID laws. limits on early voting. and changes to polling rules—while the same chain of legal developments reshaped the map for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District and set the stage for special primaries Aug.. 11 under the new lines.
The rally’s path itself mirrored that push.. It began in Selma. where a violent clash between law enforcement and voting rights activists in 1965 galvanized support for passage of the Voting Rights Act. before moving to the state Capitol where King gave his “How Long. Not Long” speech that same year.. On this day. speakers framed the movement as both a return to history and a fight for the next voting era—told with chants of “we won’t go back” and warnings that they would resist “Jim Crow maps.”
Montgomery Alabama voting rights Voting Rights Act redistricting Alabama 2nd congressional district Supreme Court ruling Louisiana special primaries Aug. 11 Cory Booker Bernice King Shomari Figures Nathaniel Ledbetter