Johnson: The power of a Black womanâs voice should never be misjudged

This is an opinion column.

Never underestimate the power of a Black woman. Never. Ever.

Never underestimate her power to sway. With a look. With a tone. With words too brilliant to be debated. Too formidable to be outweighed. Too unerring to be undermined.

Black voters in Alabama will speak louder now, will finally have voice because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was there, because the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court Justice—a Black woman—was seated last October when Edmond LaCour, Alabama’s Solicitor General (our QB1 in state or federal court cases) tried, almost comically, to justify the state’s cockamamie legislative district lines. Its cockamamie, racist lines.

Lines that force Black voters, comprising 27 percent of Alabama’s population, to be represented by 14 percent of those elected to serve the state in the U.S. Congress. By just one among the seven: U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, whose District 7, as I wrote last fall, looks like it was Etch-A-Sketched after tequila shots to corral Black folks from Tuscaloosa to Selma to Birmingham to the Black Belt.

Not anymore.

Not anymore because Justice Brown, hearing her first oral arguments after an infuriating and unnecessarily degrading confirmation process, sliced LaCour like a science-lab frog—as I also wrote last fall. Because she deflated the inane, ill-thought argument that Alabama’s gerrymandered districts were “race-neutral” and that redrawing them could put Alabama in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it elevated race as a primary factor.

As he stood at the lectern facing the nine justices, Brown spoke. Spoke brilliantly, formidably, and unerringly on the history of the 14th Amendment—and how absurd that history, that truth, made LaCour sound.

“I don’t think we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an Equal protection problem,” she began. “I understood that we looked at the history and traditions of the Constitution at what the framers and the founders thought about. And when I drill down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the framers themselves adopted the Equal Protection Clause, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment in a race-conscious way, that they were, in fact, trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against—the [Black] Freedmen during the Reconstruction period—were actually brought equal to everyone else in society.”

That was just the beginning of the eloquent dress-down. I quoted her extensively in that aforementioned column—enjoy.

Sewell, a Black woman, was in the room that October day when Brown spoke.

Alabama wants to pervert the 14th Amendment to gut voting rights. So Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson decided to give them a much-needed history lesson. (As it turns out, originalism isn’t just for conservatives.) pic.twitter.com/1y3hgpGyjx

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) October 4, 2022

Sewell, like me and many others, steeled herself for a 5-4 ruling—but not this way: With two of the court’s six conservative judges, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, stunningly swayed and siding with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kegan, and Brown to rule what we all knew—that Alabama dilutes, diminishes and discriminates against Black voters.

Just as it did decades ago with poll taxes, jellybean jars, impossible quizzes—and death threats—to hinder Black voter registration.

Now, it must go back to the drawing board and create a second majority-minority district.

Because Brown spoke.

“She’s the key to the lock,” Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Tyson, a Black woman, told me. “She’s the key to the conscience of that court. Sometimes it only takes one person to shake and wake and snap you out of the daze you’ve been in for years. I think that’s what she did.”

“I’m proud,” shared state Sen. Merika Coleman, also a Black woman. “Representation matters. That we have a Black woman on the highest court in the land who was able to provide glowing, well-researched remarks to her colleagues and have personal experience as a person of color in this country definitely makes a difference.”

Because Brown spoke—spoke truth with power—Black voters in Alabama, trod upon far too long will have a voice. A voice with the power to select who represents them. (Along with our growing population of Hispanic voters.)

Because Brown spoke, Sewell will likely no longer be the lone Democrat representing Alabama in Washington, D.C. as early as 2024. (Yes, speculation on who’ll run for the seat has already begun; start your pool with every prominent Black mayor, county commissioner, and state legislator.)

Because Brown spoke, Black and Hispanic voters in Jefferson County might finally shift the commission’s entrenched 3-to-2 Republican majority. No doubt the SCOTUS decision boosted prospects for the group of organizations, led by Birmingham Ministries, that in April filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the commission gerrymandered districts to dampen Black voting power.

Because Brown spoke, legislators—Republican legislators, let’s be clear—in North Carolina, Ohio, and other states where gerrymandering has stifled minority voting power are quaking.

“This is a huge victory for minority voters across this nation,” Sewell added, “It’s an acknowledgment of ‘one man. one vote’ and that you can’t dilute the voting power of minority voters, be they African Americans in Alabama, or Hispanics in Texas.”

Nor underestimate a Black woman’s voice.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

Are we becoming the land of the bully and home of the nasty?

Through faith, former Birmingham news anchor finds unlikely new season as an actor

United Methodist member recalls effort in 1970s to merge Black and white congregations

Instead of forcing kids to hear the ‘Star-Spanged Banner’, they should study it

Questioning parenting after youth violence is real, but does not absolve lawmaker inaction

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Stay tuned for my upcoming limited series podcast Panther: Blueprint for Black Power, co-hosted with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj