Mississippian says court ruling, redistricting push aim to strip Black representation

Margaret Ann Niven, 72, said the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais and subsequent calls by some Mississippi Republicans to redraw electoral maps are intended to eliminate Black representation in the state, she told the Voter Voices series.

Niven said she views the ruling and the redistricting push as part of a broader public policy agenda that harms Black residents. She also pointed to the Legislature’s failure this year to expand Medicaid as a policy with disproportionate impact, the report said. Both chambers of the Republican-dominated Legislature passed Medicaid expansion bills in 2024 but could not agree on a final proposal amid opposition from Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, the report said.

Raised in the Delta, Niven said her family followed the work of Hodding Carter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered Jim Crow-era Mississippi, and that his reporting shaped her mother’s views on race and voting. She recalled a 1960 election day outside her grandfather’s store, the town’s only polling place, when her mother told her children she would vote for John F. Kennedy as they passed Black men standing on the sidewalk.

Niven said her years as a librarian in the Arkansas Delta, where more than 90% of her students were Black, informed her view that many proponents of the current redistricting push lack experience with the communities most affected. “I realized how lucky I was,” she said.

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