Voting Rights, with Jemar Tisby

Historian and New York Times bestselling author Jemar Tisby joins Mark Labberton to confront the Supreme Court's 6–3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which has eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and reopened the door to racial gerrymandering across the South. Recorded in the immediate aftermath, the conversation traces the long arc from the Three-Fifths Clause and Dred Scott through Selma to this hour.

“This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we’ve seen during the Trump administration.”

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Tisby reflects on the history of black disenfranchisement, the cynicism of colorblind jurisprudence, and what remains of multiracial democracy in America. Together they discuss how the legal architecture of Jim Crow reemerges under neutral language, John Roberts’s decades-long campaign against the Voting Rights Act, Justice Kagan’s umbrella analogy, the suspension of Louisiana’s primary, the black church's response, and why this midterm may be the country’s last political chance.

Episode Highlights

“This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration, and that's saying a lot.”

“It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land who have been to all these Ivy League schools, have literally decades of experience, can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning.”

“Colorblindness only works if you’re starting from a level playing field.”

“These are not good-faith actors, not people wanting a representative democracy, but people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule.”

“If you can’t win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office.”

About Jemar Tisby

Jemar Tisby is a New York Times bestselling author, historian, speaker, and professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MDiv from Reformed Theological Seminary, and a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi, where he studied race, religion, and social movements in the twentieth century. He is the founder of The Witness, Inc., a black Christian collective, and the author of The Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance. His commentary appears on CNN and in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and he writes Footnotes, a top-ranked history publication on Substack.

Helpful Links and Resources

Jemar Tisby's website: https://jemartisby.com Footnotes by Jemar Tisby (Substack): https://jemartisby.substack.com The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance (most recent book): https://jemartisby.com/the-spirit-of-justice/ The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism (bestseller): https://www.zondervan.com/9780310113607/the-color-of-compromise/ How to Fight Racism: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/how-to-fight-racism-jemar-tisby The Justice Briefing podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/footnotes-with-dr-jemar-tisby/id1460240056 Louisiana v. Callais, opinion of the Court (April 29, 2026): https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf Elie Mystal, “The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act,” The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/ ”Sing Out, March On”—Joshuah Campbell's tribute to John Lewis, Harvard 2018 Commencement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=mKNRXQemxWQ NAACP Legal Defense Fund—Louisiana v. Callais case page: https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais/ Brennan Center for Justice—Louisiana v. Callais: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/louisiana-v-callais

Show Notes

• Why this conversation now: the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act last week
• News breaking through a group text of lawyers, organizers, clergy, nonprofit leaders
• “This has landed in the black community harder and heavier than a lot of what we've seen during the Trump administration.”
• John Lewis, SNCC, and the march from Selma to Montgomery
• A baton hard enough to crack the skull, the hardest bone in the body
• “It boggles the mind that folks sitting on the highest court in the land…can get it so wrong and stand so arrogantly on such faulty reasoning.”
• Allen Temple Baptist in Oakland—watermelons, bubbles, and jelly beans on a Sunday morning
• The Three-Fifths Clause and the architecture of representation
• Dred Scott v. Sandford—“property can't sue”
• Reconstruction Amendments: 13th, 14th, 15th—birthright citizenship newly under threat
• Jim Crow's neutral codes: poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of the civil rights movement
• Edmund Pettus Bridge—Bloody Sunday going viral in its day
• LBJ signs the bill with Rosa Parks and MLK in the room
• Elie Mystal in The Nation: gerrymandering with plausible deniability—https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act/
• Shelby County v. Holder, 2013—preclearance gutted
• Roberts's tautology—stop discriminating to stop discrimination
• “Colorblindness only works if you're starting from a level playing field.”
• Cast and umbrella analogies for premature dismantling of civil rights remedies
• Plaintiff Bert Callais's January 6 ties; Louisiana's roughly one-third black population
• Governor Jeff Landry's emergency order suspends Louisiana's May primary mid-election
• “These are not good faith actors…people wanting to consolidate power, which we call minority rule.”
• “If you can't win on the merits of what you believe, then you have to rig the system so that no one can get you out of office.”
• The activism horizon—courts, churches, voter registration, midterm turnout, NAACP, LDF, Brennan Center
• The last political chance before competitive authoritarianism

#VotingRightsAct #JemarTisby #LouisianaVCallais #SCOTUS #CivilRights #BlackChurch #FaithAndJustice #SelmaToMontgomery #Democracy #MarkLabberton

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Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.