Federalsburg, Md., where close to half of the population is Black, made history by electing its first Black council members in its 200-year history.
Small-town elections where just a few hundred people cast ballots typically don’t get much outside attention. But Tuesday’s vote in Federalsburg, a 200-year-old enclave of about 2,800 people in Caroline County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, made history as residents elected the town’s first Black council members.In a community where about 43 percent of the population is Black, the election of Black leaders was long overdue, said residents and civil rights leaders who celebrated the wins.
The fight to upend Federalsburg’s voting system began in 2022 with the ACLU’s routine review of whether census data matched representation in Maryland communities. “When we saw the town is half-Black and there’s no Black representation, we reached out to the community and asked, ‘What did you think about this?’” said Deborah A. Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland.
The election of James and Hammond to the town’s four-member council may not have happened were it not for the concerted efforts of civil rights organizations and activists to push Federalsburg to changeDespite several rounds of public meetings to come up with a new way to elect leaders, the civil rights organizations were persuaded that the town was unlikely to come up with a suitable plan, Jeon said.
Carl Snowden, a longtime Maryland civil rights activist and former head of the Maryland attorney general’s civil rights office, said the situation in Federalsburg underscores the relevance of the nearly 60-year-old Voting Rights Act and its ongoing impact not only in Maryland, but across the country.
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