89th Legislative Session

Texas NAACP Legislative Advocacy Day, March 19, 2025

“No capitulation: In Austin, Congressman Al Green calls for mass Trump protests”

https://austinfreepress.org/no-capitulation/

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12 Sheila Lee – 8/2/2022

Q. Is your belief that there was intentional

13 racial discrimination in the congressional plan based on

14 the belief that members must have been aware of racial

15 impacts and moved forward with the plan despite those

16 impacts?

17 MR. BLEDSOE: Object to form.

18 A. I’m going to just take a brief moment. I

19 don’t want to speculate what my answer may be and the

20 final conclusion thereof and your assessment thereof.

21 But let me tell you how emotional this process is and

22 how much of a fight it is to every ten years have to be

23 in a fight to preserve the historic 18th Congressional

24 District.

25 Q. (By Mr. Thompson) I’m going to listen to your

1

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answer, of course, but whenever a witness tells me that

2 something is emotional, I offer to let the witness take

3 a break, if you’d like one.

4 A. No. I’m going to continue on. And you’re

5 very kind, and I appreciate it. Dr. Martin Luther King

6 means a lot to me. It is emotional connection for many

7 of us. Our family, connected neighborhoods, my

8 husband’s family, and connected persons in the 18th

9 Congressional District. We take it seriously that this

10 district is somewhat of a baby district. It’s the

11 mother district of the opportunity districts that came

12 about through Dr. King’s persistence and the soldiers

13 that we call the civil rights soldiers, many of who

14 died. I am a beneficiary to the extent that others bled

15 and died. One of the greatest privileges I’ve had in my

16 lifetime is to serve with John Lewis, who bled on the

17 Selma Bridge, the Edmond Perez Bridge, on this issue of

18 voting rights. I take it very seriously.

19 I was a mentee of Barbara Jordan. Barbara

20 Jordan ran many times and never got elected because she

21 ran at-large. Never got elected. That means the

22 African-Americans that she grew up with or lived in

23 neighborhoods with – and they were in First, Second,

24 Third, Fourth Ward, Sixth Ward, Fifth Ward – had no

25 voice whatsoever. They liked Barbara Jordan, but they

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1 were not getting her elected at all because there was no

2 protection. Just – she was just running and being

3 great and losing. And white voters did not vote for

4 her, as eloquent and stately that she was.

5 It was only until after the 1965 Voting

6 Rights Act that there was even a smidgeon of recognition

7 for African-Americans in the south, and particularly in

8 Texas. And only with her work on a committee that I now

9 sit on that Texas was included by a southern president

10 and legislation that she proposed to be included in

11 these voting rights.

12 But rather than take this as a plus, at

13 least in the redistricting history that I have, every

14 single redistricting, the 18th Congressional District

15 has been fought against. I’ve always been a defendant.

16 I’ve always been in litigation because the district did

17 not protect the black voters. It did not protect them

18 having one vote, one person and choosing the person of

19 their choice. And in most instances, we were perceived

20 right.

21 I can’t, for the life of me, believe that

22 there are not remnants of that in terms of disregarding

23 protected districts and black voters. I’m not the

24 Expert. But I’ve heard, as I said, who was moved the

25 most? Black voters, number one, white voters along with

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1 us. White voters just strengthen and increase their

2 numbers, and black voters are just being dispersed like

3 the seeds on the earth. Just put them in anywhere you

4 can. And maybe we’ll be lucky enough to keep the 18th

5 the 9th.

6 Now, in three counties when both of our

7 districts were contiguous and compact within what one

8 should perceive as redistricting principles. Again, I

9 don’t want to practice law. Just what I’m come to learn

10 over my years of protecting the district and fighting

11 for the voters and the constituents in that district.

12 But it is interesting that I have been through the 18th

13 Congressional District redistricting fight at every

14 single census, every single one, and had the same fight

15 of trying to be assessed as a protected district.

16 so it appears to me that partisanship is

17 not the issue. It is why does it always seem to fall on

18 the districts represented by African Americans. And

19 then the numbers obviously that will probably

20 satisfactorily get a district. And I have to go back to

21 the original 2101. It was nonrecognizable. It was just

22 unacceptable in terms of just the mutilation of those

23 big neighborhoods that they took out. How could you be

24 so absent in context in taking out these large chunks of

25 black voters, even larger than what it resulted in

Sheila Lee – 8/2/2022

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1 MR. THOMPSON: So even though I enjoyed

2 your answer, for legal reasons I’ll have to nonetheless

3 object as nonresponsive.

4 MR. SPENCER: You mean partially

5 nonresponsive?

A Memorial for Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee