A coalition of civil- and voting-rights groups alleges in a legal motion
filed Friday that political districts approved by the majority-Republican North
Carolina legislature disenfranchise black voters and asks a state court to
declare the lines unconstitutional.
…The Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, said the Republicans
who took over control of the North Carolina legislature in 2010 have turned the
Voting Rights Act on its head, packing high concentrations of blacks into a
handful of legislative districts to boost the odds of GOP candidates winning the
rest.
“Before the Voting Rights Act, we called it Jim Crow,” Barber said Friday.
“Jim Crow wouldn’t let you vote. Jim Crow had literacy tests. Jim Crow had poll
taxes. Today in the 21st century, it’s James Crow, esquire. He puts on a suit,
goes in the back room of the General Assembly, gets out a computer and uses race
to split precincts in a deliberate way to try to determine a political
outcome.”
link to full story