JACKSON, Miss.—Mississippi voting rights advocates say they are preparing for a longer fight over redistricting after Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special session that had been expected to focus on new electoral maps. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Jackson on May 20, the day the special session had been scheduled to begin, to protest possible changes they say could weaken Black voting power in Mississippi. State leaders have indicated new maps could still be drawn within the next year, according to WLBT.
Reeves told SuperTalk Media that canceling the special session was appropriate after a federal appeals court vacated an order requiring Mississippi to redraw its Supreme Court districts.
“There is no longer any reason for the legislature to come in next Wednesday for judicial redistricting,” Reeves said, according to SuperTalk Media. Reeves also said he supports redrawing Mississippi’s congressional map in the future, though he said doing so before the next election would be complicated because the state has already held congressional primaries.
The cancellation came weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, a redistricting case involving race, majority-minority districts and the Voting Rights Act. In the ruling, the court said the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district and that no compelling interest justified the state’s use of race in drawing that map.
Voting rights advocates said they worry the decision could encourage more states, including Mississippi, to redraw maps in ways that reduce Black voters’ influence. Similar redistricting fights are already unfolding elsewhere. On May 26, a federal court blocked Alabama from using a congressional map that judges said intentionally discriminated on the basis of race.
At the Jackson rally, some demonstrators connected the current redistricting debate to Mississippi’s history of voter suppression and the long struggle for Black civil rights.
Arekia Bennett-Scott, director of Mississippi Votes, said redrawing maps is part of a longer history of oppressive actions by Mississippi government.
“The plantation politics don’t stop. I’m exhausted with examples,” Bennett-Scott said.
For some attendees, the issue was personal.
Sandra Husband and Deborah Griffin attended the May 20 Mississippi Day of Action in part to honor the legacy of their grandfather, Lamar “Ditney” Smith. Smith was a World War I veteran and voting rights activist who was shot and killed in 1955 on the Lincoln County Courthouse steps after collecting absentee ballots from Brookhaven residents.
“When they shot him, he had 27 (absentee ballots) in his hand,” Griffin said.
Griffin said the Supreme Court’s decision made the fight feel renewed for her family.
“I’ve got to call my family together again, because the U.S. Supreme Court has killed him again, and we got to plan a funeral,” Griffin said.
A Broad Coalition
The 2026 Day of Action was organized by the Mississippi Voting Rights Act Rapid Response Coalition, a group formed in November 2025 in response to redistricting concerns.
The coalition includes about 40 advocacy organizations from across the state, including the NAACP, Mississippi Center for Justice, Mississippi Votes, One Voice and the League of Women Voters.
The Jackson rally was part of a broader movement across the South. On May 16, activists from Mississippi Votes joined a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery with about 400 demonstrators, Bennett-Scott said.
“Folks across the South are standing in solidarity. Now, all eyes are on Mississippi,” Bennett-Scott said.
Waikinya Clanton, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mississippi chapter, said the coalition’s range of organizations is one of its strengths.
“You have so many people who are coming to the table all in the name of this fight, the fight for voting rights, the fight for inclusion and for representation, and that’s what’s making it so beautiful,” Clanton said.
Clanton, who moderated the May 20 rally, said voting rights should not be treated as an issue for one group of Mississippians.
“I want people to leave here fired up. I want them invigorated. I want them ready to work. I want them ready to organize their communities, their churches, their youth groups—whatever they have access to—their family reunions,” Clanton said. “Whatever they got, I want them to be thinking about voting as the center of that.”
‘You Still Have a Vote’
Despite concerns that redistricting could weaken Black voting power, advocates at the rally urged Mississippians to continue voting.
Clanton said exercising the right to vote is one way to protect it.
“They have not taken your vote. You still have a vote, and that vote is powerful,” Clanton said. “If they want to take your power, they’re going to have to work … Redrawing the maps, diluting it—that’s the first step, but erasing it takes a whole lot of work.”
Melanie Sowell, chair of the Forrest County Democratic Party, said voting could affect redistricting and voting rights policy beyond Mississippi.
Sowell referenced the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would expand federal oversight in states with repeated voting rights violations.
“We need people that believe in that to be at the federal level to actually pass it. That will make real changes, not (just) for Mississippi, but for the entire United States,” Sowell said.
Griffin said voting also honors those who died while fighting for voting rights.
“We might not win today, but there’s tomorrow,” Griffin said. “We’re looking forward to changing this around in the state of Mississippi. They done died one time; there’s no need for them to die again because they fought hard—(Smith) and Vernon Dahmer and all the rest of them who were killed for what we are here for today.”
This article first appeared on RHCJC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
