Thousands Rally in Mississippi for Voting Rights After Supreme Court Ruling

Thousands of Mississippians, joined by allies from other Southern states, gathered Wednesday at the War Memorial Building auditorium in Jackson to protest a U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The rally took place on a site central to the state’s history of Black disenfranchisement.

“Section 2 stopped states, counties, cities from passing redistricting maps that discriminate against Black voters and it led to the biggest growth of Black political power since Reconstruction,” said Amir Badat, southern states director for Fair Fight Action. “And now, the Roberts court has opened the door to the biggest destruction of Black political power since the end of Reconstruction.”

The rally was organized by a coalition including the People’s Advocacy Institute, Mississippi Votes, Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, One Voice, Fair Fight, Mississippi for a Just World, and the NAACP. It followed the “All Roads Lead to the South” rally in Montgomery, Alabama, over the weekend.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Southern states have moved quickly to redraw congressional districts, often diluting Black political power. Florida’s Republican governor signed a new map shortly after the ruling. Tennessee Republicans eliminated the state’s only Black-majority congressional district, and Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia have followed suit.

Mississippi, with a population nearly 40% Black, was initially headed for a redistricting battle. Gov. Tate Reeves called a special session for May 20 but later reversed course, though he said he expects the state to redraw maps before the 2027 elections.

The rally site was chosen deliberately: In 1890, white supremacist Mississippi legislators gathered at the Old Capitol, adjacent to the War Memorial, to enact a new state constitution implementing the “Mississippi Plan” to disenfranchise Black voters. The special session Reeves had called was also to be held at the Old Capitol, the site that effectively ushered in Jim Crow in Mississippi.

“We had to come here to the crime scene because it’s time to arrest the state of Mississippi,” said Danyelle Holmes, senior social justice organizer with Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign. “Today we come to serve notice that we will not go back to the days of Jim Crow. We will not go back to 1890. We are a people who will take a stand and fight.”

Many attendees held signs bearing images of Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary murdered for his efforts to secure voting rights for Black Mississippians. Other signs read “Protect our vote” and “Jim Crow Must Go.” The crowd heard from a series of speakers, activists, and advocates who warned about redistricting efforts across the South. They sang freedom songs from the civil rights movement, engaged in call-and-response chants, and offered prayers evoking Black church traditions.

Chanting demonstrators marched from the Old Capitol past the state capitol, the governor’s mansion, and other government buildings to the Jackson Convention Complex, where the rally continued. The crowd swelled into the thousands at the convention center.

On stage, speakers included Rep. Bennie Thompson, whose congressional district Reeves and other Mississippi Republicans have targeted; Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP; Eddie Glaude, an author; and others.

Justin Jones, a Tennessee state representative, drove six hours from Nashville to attend the rally. He helped lead the march alongside student activists from Mississippi for a Just World.

“We’re not going down without a fight,” Jones told the audience. “We may not be a swing state in Mississippi or Tennessee or Alabama, but we’ll swing back on you. We’ll fight back with everything we have. We come in the spirit of our ancestors. We come in the spirit of those who aren’t intimidated by bully clubs and water hoses. We are an intergenerational movement. We come as one, but we stand as 10,000.”

The rally reflected growing anger across the South over the Supreme Court’s erosion of federal voting rights protections and the subsequent redistricting efforts that threaten to reduce Black political representation.

Organizers said the demonstration was part of a sustained campaign to push back against attempts to roll back progress made since the civil rights era, vowing to continue mobilizing voters ahead of future elections.