The South is ground zero for the right's attack on Black America | Opinion

Writing in Newsweek, Rep. Steve Cohen and Michael Shank argue that Memphis exemplifies a broader pattern of political, physical, and public-health harms facing Black and Brown communities across the South. They point to Tennessee Republicans redrawing the state's one Black-majority congressional district after the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais ruling narrowed the Voting Rights Act, a map the ACLU is now suing to block.

The authors also cite multiple fatal shootings in Memphis this summer, including ones involving the Memphis Safe Task Force, and air pollution concerns from gas turbines at Elon Musk's xAI data centers. They frame these as three converging fronts: political freedoms, physical safety, and public health.

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