In Fort Worth’s historic Lake Como neighborhood, a wall once stood. Not a metaphor, but a literal wall, built to divide Black families from the rest of the city. Today, that wall is gone, but its legacy lives on. It is now reinforced not by concrete, but by the lines of a conservative gerrymander that threatens to once again isolate and disenfranchise a community.
Tarrant County, Texas, is one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States. It is diverse, dynamic, and increasingly reflective of our nation’s future. Yet the response from those in power has not been to embrace this change but to resist it. The conservatives who run the county are redrawing maps not in the spirit of fairness but in the pursuit of control. What is happening in Tarrant County is not just a local issue. It is a warning to the nation.
This spring, the Republican majority on the Commissioners Court launched a surprise, mid-decade redistricting effort just four years after a bipartisan process lawfully adopted new maps based on the 2020 Census. There is no new data, no court order, and no legitimate public demand. Rather, there was a secretive contract with the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), a national group known for promoting voter roll purges and defending racially discriminatory maps. Behind closed doors, their consultants drew new lines that fracture historic Black and Latino neighborhoods like Como, Stop Six and Meadowbrook, dismantling districts that have long empowered communities of color.
On Tuesday, the Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to adopt one of the new maps. All three conservative commissioners voted in favor.
READ DEMOCRACY DOCKET’S IN-DEPTH REPORT ON TARRANT COUNTY’S REPUBLICAN GERRYMANDER.
My own district, Precinct 1, includes many of the Black and Brown neighborhoods that are central to our county’s history. Now, it’s being manipulated and packed. The map approved Tuesday concentrates voters of color into one district, freeing up adjacent areas to be drawn whiter and more conservative. The clear target is Precinct 2, a district that also empowers communities of color and is currently represented by the only Black woman on our Commissioners Court. The new map, if it stands, would effectively erase her seat, along with the voices, hopes, dreams and lived experiences of the communities she represents.
This is gerrymandering by cracking and packing. It is not a new tactic, but it is being used with precision. It is the New Jim Crow, not in rhetoric, but in effect. And it is not limited to Tarrant County.
We have seen this tactic play out across the South. In Galveston County, a federal court recently ruled that local officials — also represented by PILF — had violated the Voting Rights Act by dismantling the county’s only majority-minority precinct. (That ruling was reversed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, perhaps the most conservative appeals court in the country.) In Alabama, Black voters had to take their fight for fair maps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they secured a victory, forcing the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district. In Georgia, multiple maps were struck down for intentionally undermining Black political power. The common thread is clear: efforts by those in power to maintain it by breaking apart communities of color and counting on silence, fatigue or distraction to succeed.
But these communities did not stay silent. And neither will ours.
Across Tarrant County, the people are rising. Residents are attending public hearings in large numbers. They are speaking out, organizing and calling out injustice by name. They are confronting not just unfair maps, but the deeper truth that this process was never meant to include them. It was not a mistake that the new maps were drawn in the dark — but now the people are shining a light on the injustice.
This is not a fight about political parties. It is a fight about political power and who gets to wield it. It is about whether our democracy can grow to include those it has historically excluded. It is about whether we will allow a new generation of Black and Brown voters to be punished for daring to participate.
Tarrant County is a microcosm of the nation. It is a place where demographic change is undeniable. A place where growing communities of color are transforming what local democracy looks like. That makes what happens here a test for the rest of the country. If voter suppression can be normalized in Tarrant County, under the radar and in a state known for discriminatory voting practices, it sets a dangerous precedent for how those in power will respond to the country’s shifting population.
America is on the brink of becoming a majority-minority nation. The question is whether our democratic institutions will evolve to reflect that future or be manipulated to resist it. The outcome of our redistricting fight in Tarrant County is not just about lines on a map. It is about who belongs, who is heard and whether justice can prevail against those who redraw the rules to silence change.
We have been here before. Our ancestors faced poll taxes, literacy tests and fire hoses. Today, we face manipulated data, procedural loopholes and digital gerrymandering. The tools have changed, but the goal remains the same: to deny us a voice in our own future.
But we are not going away.
We will fight this. In the courts, in our communities and at the ballot box. We will not be drawn out, carved up or counted out. Not in Tarrant County. Not anywhere.
And we invite the nation to pay attention. Because what happens here will not stay here. It will shape what comes next for all of us.
Commissioner Roderick Miles Jr. represents Precinct 1 in Tarrant County, Texas