After Louisiana loses a majority-Black district, an 89-year-old voting rights plaintiff fears 'Jim Crow days'

When Press Robinson went to register to vote for the first time in 1957, as a young Black man in Florence, S.C., he expected a poll tax or a literacy test. The clerk told him to read and interpret the U.S. Constitution. "I read probably a line and a half [before] she said, 'Stop. Stop.' And that was the end of it," he recalled. He became the first in his family of sharecroppers to register.

Now 89, Robinson says the fight has come full circle. "We certainly should not be going back to Jim Crow days. But it seems like to me that's where we're going," he said.

From plaintiff to precedent

Robinson moved to Louisiana in 1963 to teach chemistry at Southern University in Baton Rouge, and served more than two decades on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board after a 1970s lawsuit he brought forced the board to adopt single-member districts. In 1980 he became the first Black person elected to that board.

Long after retiring, he became lead plaintiff in a 2022 lawsuit challenging Louisiana's congressional map, which had one majority-Black district out of six in a state where Black residents are about a third of the population. Courts ordered a second majority-Black district, stretching from Baton Rouge to Shreveport. A separate challenge to that map led to the Supreme Court's April 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down the district as unconstitutional and, voting rights advocates say, effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

New lines, fewer Black districts

After the ruling, Rep. Cleo Fields' majority-Black district was eliminated, the second time a court has erased his seat. Louisiana's only remaining majority-Black district is held by Rep. Troy Carter of New Orleans. According to The Associated Press, 32% of Louisianans are now in a different congressional district than in 2024. Members of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus called the change a "vicious race to the bottom."

Other worries

Robinson is also concerned about Louisiana's growing inactive voter list. In East Baton Rouge Parish, about 48,000 voters, or 16.8%, have been flagged inactive, and an ACLU analysis found Black registrants were flagged at higher rates than white registrants. He also opposes the proposed SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register, documents that cost money to obtain.

Supporters of the new maps argue that drawing districts by race violates the Constitution's equal protection guarantees, a view a majority of the Supreme Court accepted.

'We cannot give up'

Robinson calls the civil rights era a "second Reconstruction" and sees today's rollback echoing what followed the first. Asked what tools remain, he said he would leave that to the lawyers. "Legally, what do we fight with? Is it the Fourteenth Amendment? Is it the Fifteenth Amendment? I don't know," he said. "The only thing that I know is we cannot give up the fight."

Voting rights groups are urging Louisiana voters to confirm their registration status and polling place before Nov. 3.