Birmingham: the Voting Rights Act, won and then lost
Birmingham is the blue heart of a deep-red state: Jefferson County votes about 56 percent Democratic, and the city is a historic centre of the civil rights movement.
Alabama is where the Voting Rights Act went back on trial. Black residents are more than a quarter of the state, yet the 2021 map, below, gave them a realistic chance of electing their candidate in just one district of seven. In Allen v. Milligan (2023) the Supreme Court agreed the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered a second opportunity district.
The legislature resisted; a court-appointed special master drew the 2024 map below instead, with a redrawn 2nd District running from Montgomery to Mobile. It elected Shomari Figures, and for the first time Alabama had two Black members of Congress at once. Then, in June 2026, the Supreme Court let the state put the old lines back for the midterms.
You are playing the Republicans. Keep Birmingham's Democrats sealed into a single seat, hold the suburbs, and win a majority of the three districts.
Biden 55.6%, Trump 42.5%. Jefferson County's 2020 presidential vote.
Alabama's 2021 map, shaded by the 2020 vote: one blue district of seven, the 7th, holding Birmingham's neighbourhoods and much of the Black Belt.
The court-ordered 2024 map: the redrawn 2nd District, Montgomery to Mobile, joins the 7th as a second district where Black voters can decide the seat.