I am tired. I want to say that plainly — not as an admission of defeat, but as an act of radical honesty that Black organizers in the Deep South rarely allow themselves in public.
I am tired, and I am tired of being tired. (Shout out to Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer.) Tired of fighting for the same thing: respect for my humanity.
When Nina Simone wrote “Mississippi Goddamn,” she did not do so as a song of surrender. She wrote it as a bellow born from exhaustion and love — the kind that only comes when you don’t have clean water but still find yourself at the door of the courthouse demanding justice. That’s where we are right now. That’s where we have always been.
And then the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
In a 6-3 ruling, six people decided the fate of millions — striking down Louisiana’s congressional map and stripping the state of its second majority-Black district. Justice Kagan, in dissent, said plainly what the rest of us were already thinking: this ruling renders Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter.”
Let me translate that for the people in Canton, Mississippi, where I’m from. Section 2 was our last legal line of protection against Jim Crow laws designed to silence our voices, specifically the provision that said you cannot draw maps designed to drown out Black votes. After the Court gutted preclearance in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, Section 2 was one of the last remaining legal tools. Now the Court has dulled that blade to near uselessness.
This is not abstract. This is not a legal footnote. This is about who sits at the table when they decide what your children’s schools look like, what your water pipes are made of, and whether your neighborhood gets a hospital or a highway. In Mississippi — where Black people make up nearly 38 percent of the population — fair maps aren’t a nicety. They are the difference between representation and erasure.
When this decision came down, my plane had just touched the tarmac in Boston, and my phone erupted. Partners. Community members. Elected officials. Faith leaders. All are asking the same thing: What do we do now?
What we do is what Black Mississippians have always done. We fight.
That’s why THOUSANDS came together this week to Rally for Our Rights. These are our rights; we demand representation, and we will be heard.
History will NOT repeat itself. We won’t let it.
Now, I hear you. Black exhaustion is real. It is the compound weight of watching systems that were designed to harm us, functioning exactly as they were designed to. It is registering voters and knocking on doors, only to have six justices in Washington move the goalpost one more time. I carry that exhaustion, too.
But I am a sixth-generation Mississippian. I carry the legacy of fighting for freedom. My great-great-great-grandfather, John “Booth” Boose, was a soldier in the 52nd Colored Infantry of the Union Army. The same battalion that first fought and won against the Confederacy.
He didn’t just survive for freedom — he fought for it. That is the legacy I now hold and has become my obligation.
The battle for Black political power in the South is not a regional story. It is the American story. The maps drawn here shape who controls Congress, who controls policy, and who controls the narrative about what this country is willing to be.
To all those from across the state who converged in Jackson this week, this is only the beginning. There will be many more moments when we will need you to show up and show out again. In the meantime, check your voter registration and VOTE. Lines can only erase our power if we allow them to.
If you are outside of Mississippi, understand what is at stake. Tell your elected officials that gutting Section 2 cannot stand without a Congressional response. Do not let the South be sacrificed for the comfort of inaction.
We are exhausted — but we are not giving up, and neither should you.
We are not done yet. In fact, we’re just getting started.
Waikinya J.S. Clanton is the Mississippi State Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center
