Tuskegee Redistricting Map

In May 1957, Alabama state senator Samuel M. Englehardt introduced legislation to redraw the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee so that they would exclude almost all of the city’s registered black voters from residency. He did so in response to increasing anxieties among white residents about the growing calls for voting and civil rights among Alabama’s African American citizens. In response, the black residents mounted a boycott of white-owned businesses and filed the lawsuit, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, that eventually overturned the legislation.

Courtesy of the Tuskegee University Archives