‘They want the country to be what it was in 1776’: anger in Memphis after Republicans redraw voting maps

‘There’s nothing we can do. They’re taking rights away,’ says Kenneth Belcher. Photograph: George Chidi/The Guardian

From the bridge on Poplar Avenue, above the railroad tracks that cut through the Memphis neighborhood of Binghampton, you can’t see the rupture at the heart of the city. You can’t see the people living rough under the bridge, either.

Days after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act, rendering ineffective a part that prevented radical discrimination, Tennessee Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps last month – and eliminated its one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district.