The Impact of Redistricting on African-American Representation in the U.S. Congress and State Legislatures in the 1990s

The vast majority of states have completed the congressional and state legislative redistricting process and have held elections under the new districts. ¹ This paper reviews how the recent round of redistricting impacted African-American representation in Congress and state legislatures. The 1990s round of redistricting is the first to occur since Congress amended Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. These amendments lessened the requisite burden of proof for minority voters to establish a vote dilution claim and resulted in an increased awareness of the need to more fairly reflect minority voting strength. For this reason, we expected the 1990 redistricting process to lead to significant gains in African-American representation. In fact, the actual gains have exceeded our expectations.