It is inarguable that Republican state legislators are engaged in an unprecedented and racist power grab that attacks  the foundation of local democracy in Tennessee.

And that was the case even before its recent gerrymandering ripped away Memphis’ voice in the U.S. Congress and ensured that all Tennessee districts will have white representative.

It is hard to imagine a starker illustration of state government’s contempt for Memphis voters – and democracy itself.

Podunk Towns Rule

First, legislators set out in recent years to strip Memphis of its home rule authority for self-governance and impose a top-down vision of governance that is simultaneously incompetent and profoundly unjust. 

And now, it has also erased the city’s Congressional district by carving Memphis into three pieces – with two of them stretching incredulously all the way to Williamson County, the wealthy and Republican county next to Nashville.  Lines for the new districts divide Memphis neighborhoods with no regard to historical ties or time-honored boundaries.

Daily Memphian’s Geoff Calkins wrote a brilliant column today about the gerrymandering and pointed to a place in Memphis where the three districts converge, allowing people to take a few steps and be in all three. 

This is not governance in any real sense. It is blatant partisan manipulation, a cynical attack on democracy itself to favor one party while disregarding the voices of the people most affected.

Meanwhile, only a few years ago, Nashville got similar treatment from legislators elected from rural Podunk towns with intimations of grandeur and who presume their limited knowledge of urban issues qualifies them to interfere in the running of Tennessee’s largest cities – its economic engines – rather than those elected by their residents to serve them.   

More Plantation Mentality

It makes the plantation mentality of Jim Crow Tennessee look like the good old days.  No longer do Black voters face a poll tax or literacy tests but Republicans have tapped into that legacy to do one better: obliterating Memphians’ right to vote for someone who understands their issues and stands for their interests.

In doing so, the Republicans in Tennessee and other Southern states that are gerrymandering are admitting that their party can’t win without thumbing their nose at political norms.  That it all is being done to please the most unpopular president in modern history suggests how hackneyed their logic is.

Tennessee’s Bait and Switch Governor, May 4, 2026

Most pathetic of all is in the face of stripping Memphis of its Congressional representative is the way they revel in how they have stuck it to the Blacks, all while denying that their racist actions are at all about race.  

If it walks like a duck…

Supreme Court Racism

Their racism was given official endorsement by the U.S. Supreme Court which issued a partisan ruling, all while enabling the most racially-motivated political movement since the Civil Rights movement to (never mind that Samuel Alito misunderstood the data he used misleading data).

The court’s ruling unleashed a flurry of activity that means that nowhere in the South will there be a district that is majority Black and or where a representative is elected who understands its needs and stands for its priorities.  It calls into question whether democracy in the United States even works.

This feverish race to unwind democracy for Memphis – and anywhere in the South – is reminiscent of when the Shelby County Republican Party decided that all countywide offices should be determined in partisan elections.  In the short term, they were elated and filled with pride but they failed to calculate its long-term impact; today, no Republicans are serving in a countywide position

If past off-year elections are an indication, Republicans are still likely to lose control of the House of Representatives this year (cross your fingers and light a candle).  With their gerrymandering, they have made it harder for the Democrats this year, but looking ahead, and considering redistricting opportunities by Democrats next year, they have started a battle that they could well lose in the long run.

Even before gerrymandering, Memphis was a target in a brazen, equally racist assault on the Memphis’ principle of local self-determination.  White legislators – think Mark White and Brent Taylor among them – are repeatedly telling majority Black Memphis what it may or may not do and what powers of self-governance it cannot exercise any longer.

Their actions reflect arrogance and conceit on a historic scale, a sense that they know what is best for communities they have never truly governed.

Real Consequences

This is no abstract criticism.

Their anti-democratic, narcissistic impulses have tangible consequences: seizing control of the Memphis airport, interfering with the composition of the MLGW board, taking over the Memphis Shelby County School District, preventing a living wage by city government, undermining the authority of the duly elected attorney general, and more.

It makes these political maneuvers to interfere in the operations of city government even more incredulous.  After all, none of us think reflexively of state government when we think of outstanding management and efficient operations. 

  • 158 inmates died in state prisons last year. 
  • The state road program is all about making the powerful highway lobby happy.
  • The state gets C- from American Society of Engineers for the condition of its infrastructure.
  • Highway Patrol officers have engaged in hundreds of unnecessary high-speed chases at speeds as high as 100 mph in Memphis, conducting pretextual actions with more than 40% of them result in accidents, according to the Institute for Public Service Reporting.
  • Millions of dollars are being spent for National Guard to stand around Memphis.

When given the opportunity to cut taxes, Governor Bill Lee and the Republican supermajority eliminated $1 billion in taxes for the private sector, benefiting corporations while leaving public services underfunded.

Business Leaders’ Involvement

State government’s last magic answer concerning Memphis schools was its Achievement School District, which failed in stunning fashion for its failure to improve student performance.  Now, the state government that is last of all U.S. states in its funding for schools now want us to believe they have a stronger commitment to our students. 

The legislature plans to take over the Memphis airport after approving a proposal brought by the house speaker from a town of 13,137 and a senator from a town of 4,939, who conveniently did not include their own regional airports.

There are indications that some Memphis business leaders have been communicating with state legislators, if not to encourage change, but apparently not to discourage it.  The Greater Memphis Chamber is noticeably silent about the gerrymandering, and as far as we know, neither has it or any business leader ever pushed back on the state’s previous usurping of city government powers.

There’s little secret they have been critical of city government and especially have looked for ways to avoid any interaction with City Council.  Adding two MLGW board members from the suburbs was pushed by the businessmen on MLGW board, because two suburban (likely white) members would give it more majority control over votes on issues they care about.

The customary way to add suburban members was by referendum, but instead, someone convinced state government to intercede and deny Memphians the right to vote on it.  

In addition, the quiet acceptance of the state takeover of the airport’s board appointments by its chair and other members’ silence suggests that they been conferring with state legislators about the change, driven by their interest in removing city and county mayors and City Council and Board of Commissioners’ authority to appoint Airport Authority board members.

Stripping Away Local Authority

In both instances, the state’s action was a solution in search of a problem.

This insider business support gives the veneer of local consent to what is fundamentally a state-led power grab, demonstrating that power in Memphis is sometimes aligned with undermining the city’s autonomy.

Because the state’s actions to rip away the historic autonomy of home rule governments like city and county governments, Shelby County Board of Commissioners is right to fund a legal challenge to the state’s latest – to take over operations of Memphis Shelby County School District.

The language of the state is revealing. It is not the language of careful, nuanced policy. It is the belligerent language of invasion, of threat, of political siege. It transforms school children into symbols, families into abstractions, and Memphis as an adversary to be conquered.

There is a grim efficiency to this approach. By focusing on those with the least political power – children and people of color – the people most affected by the legislators’ coup are also the least able to influence the system imposing those effects.

A Third Option for Schools

Here’s the thing about the school controversy.  It’s treated as a binary choice – pick either the school board or state government. 

It’s a false alternative. No one should be happy about the usurpation of state government of a clear local function.  If state government actually cared about better schools in our community, it would offer it a third option – one that resulted in bringing in more intellectual capital, more expertise, and more involvement by people from cities who have improved student performance.  

For that matter, Shelby County Government should already have launched development of that kind of third option itself rather than being flat-footed as the latest state takeover emerged.

In other words, don’t pay to file a lawsuit simply to oppose the state action; rather, file a lawsuit on the promise that given the opportunity, we can develop a reasonable, effective third option for our schools in our own county.

It is time to innovate, to demonstrate leadership at the local level, and to insist that governance serves people, not the vanity of legislators.

If it takes us filing lawsuit after lawsuit against state government, so be it, but we should not give up without a fight.

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