Peter Johnson: I helped move Dallas City Council away from at-large elections which gave minority communities greater representation. But gerrymandering is...
A map of proposed U.S congressional districts is seen at a Texas legislators' public hearing on congressional redistricting in Austin on Friday, Aug. 1, 2025.Gerrymandering is deeply ingrained in the history of the United States.
It has long been a means of suppressing the voices of marginalized communities, perhaps more than anywhere else, in Texas. As someone who has spent a lifetime advocating for civil rights and fair representation, I have seen how gerrymandering has been used to diminish the electoral impact of Black and Latino voters, particularly in Dallas. In the 1960s, the system of at-large elections meant every voter in Dallas could vote for every council seat, as opposed to electing council members in single-member districts. Black or Latino candidates could not be elected to a seat, regardless of the size and concentration of their communities in any particular area. Even in neighborhood districts with mostly Black or Hispanic residents, the citywide ballot outcome would wash out any influence they had. It was a sophisticated form of voter suppression — legal, but not moral.I began working with local activists, church leaders and civil rights lawyers. We battled against the at-large system. We knocked on doors, held rallies, visited judges and filled courtrooms, demanding single-member districts that allowed communities to elect their chosen representatives.There was a fierce jurisdictional battle over the outcome. The entrenched benefactors of the system were not willing to give up their control. They called us “radicals” and “divisive” when they continued to cling to power through a system designed to disenfranchise some groups of voters.But we would not stop. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, through organizing and taking legal action, we finally moved the city of Dallas to adopt single-member districts. It took decades, but it meant a lot in many ways, restructuring Dallas’ face. For the first time, the Black and Latino communities were able to elect true representatives. But the struggle is not done in Dallas. Gerrymandering remains a statewide sickness in Texas. Each decade, after the census, the lines get redrawn, and the practice of drawing districts to gain partisan or racial advantage continues. In Texas, we have witnessed district maps that can be stretched and bent to pack minority voters into as few districts as possible, or crack them into many districts to diminish their power.Just in the last redistricting, as an example, Texas lawmakers were dragged into court over the claim that they intentionally used the mapping of districts to diminish the voting strength of communities of color, even as Latinos, African Americans and Asian Americans were driving the population growth of Texas. While the methods today are more sophisticated, the goal is the same: to keep the political power by determining whose votes really count. And now, it’s not just happening once a decade. It’s happening whenever powerful politicians decide to grab for more power. Gerrymandering is not just a political problem— it is a moral crisis. It is a theft of democracy and a violation of “one person, one vote.” It has corroded faith in our institutions and deepened divisions in our society.After more than 60 years of advocating for justice in Texas, I believe strongly that reform is long overdue. We need independent redistricting commissions to take the power of redistricting out of the hands of self-serving politicians. We need federal legislation, such as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would prohibit racial gerrymandering and ensure that all voters have an equal voice.This fight is about more than maps; this is about people. This is about making sure every child, whether they live in Dallas, Houston, El Paso or the Rio Grande Valley, grows up knowing that they live in a democracy where their voice matters, their vote counts and their community gets to be heard. The struggle continues, but as Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It is up to us to keep pushing, keep organizing and keep bending the long arc of the moral universe.Peter Johnson has been a civil rights leader in Dallas since 1969. He is a Dallas Morning News contributing columnist. His columns are written with assistance from Don Robinson, executive director of the Peter Johnson Institute for Non-Violence.
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