History contains many turning points – pivotal moments in time when forces gathered together, rose against the establishment and changed the course of things to come.
These moments are worth remembering, partly because it’s important to understand how the past impacts the present, but also to honor those whose actions changed things for the better. This month, the people of Chattanooga will have an opportunity to commemorate the decision 22 years ago by U.S. Federal Judge Robert Allan Edgar that led to the present form of government in the city.
On April 28, the Chatta-nooga Bar Association, the Federal Bar, the Tennessee Historical Society, and the U.S. District Court will conduct a seminar on Judge Edgar’s decision in Brown v. Board of Commissioners of Chattanooga.
The event will take place from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at the Theatre Center. Those who will be speaking include: Judge Edgar; Judge Curtis Collier, U.S. district judge; Rep. Tommie Brown, lead complainant; Laughlin McDonald, lead counsel for the plaintiff; Judge Richard Dinkins, Tennessee Court of Appeals; and James Blumstein, professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
In Brown v. Chattanooga, Judge Edgar ruled that the at-large method of electing the members of the city board of commissioners had been adopted with a “discriminatory purpose and diluted minority voting strength, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects the equal rights of minorities to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice,” writes McDonald in commentary he plans to share during the seminar.
In an at-large election, candidates are chosen on an individual basis rather than as representatives of a geographically designed single-member district.
The city of Chattanooga instituted its at-large and elected commission form of government in 1911. This effectively diluted the black vote, as the majority of blacks in the city were “geographically compact ... and whites voted as a bloc, usually to defeat the candidates of choice of black voters,” McDonald writes.
In 1987, 12 black Chatta-nooga residents challenged the use in the city of at-large elections as well as state and municipal laws that permitted nonresident property owners who collectively owned a small parcel of land to vote in elections, through a lawsuit. The complainants included Rep. Brown, Leamon Pierce, Rev. Herbert Wright, J.K. Brown, Annie Thomas, Johnny Holloway, George Kev, Lorenzo Ervin, Bobby Ward, Norma Crowder, Maxine Cousins, and Buford McElrath.
It was the first voting rights case in Tennessee since the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.
According to McDonald, Judge Edgar found that an important goal of the new commission was the elimination of black electoral power.
“From 1911 until the filing of the vote dilution lawsuit 76 years later, only one black person had been elected to the Chattanooga City Commission,” McDonald writes.
Judge Edgar also held that the property qualification scheme was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
According to content on the Web site of the Center for Constitutional Rights, at-large elections are an effective barrier to the election of black, Latino, Asian American and progressive candidates, who must gain votes citywide in order to win.
“Even with the overwhelming support of voters of color, a candidate of color in an at-large context will still lose the election because whites, usually a majority of the voters, customarily cast their votes as a bloc for only white candidates. This results in the total exclusion, or, at best, minimal black representation in municipal governing boards in communities where they are not a voting majority,” the article, which is part of the “Past Cases” archive on the Web site, reads.
In a subsequent order entered in 1990, the Court adopted a new form of government for the city consisting of a mayor and nine-member council elected from districts. At the special election to implement the plan, held in May of that year, four black candidates won election to the council.
Judge Collier says the decision in Brown v. Chattanooga was perhaps the most important case affecting the city of Chattanooga and its citizens in the last 40 years.
“In the early part of the last century, steps were taken across the South to dilute or eliminate the voting power of black citizens, who generally voted a straight Republican ticket. In many localities, the law was changed to make election of candidates blacks favored difficult, if not impossible. That happened in Chattanooga, where the law was changed to require every candidate for city council to run citywide instead of by districts.
“The plaintiffs in the Brown case attacked that practice, and used the Voting Rights Act as authority for their position. Judge Edgar’s decision accepted the opinion of the plaintiffs, and that led to the present form of government. The result has been a much greater voice and participation in the affairs of city government by the black citizens of Chattanooga. The city and all of its citizens have benefitted in that there’s a much larger pool of talent from which the city can draw,” he wrote in an email to the Hamilton County Herald.
Judge Collier will open the seminar, and then Judge Edgar will speak for a short time about his decision. Rep. Brown will then share her reasons for bringing the lawsuit against the city of Chattanooga.
McDonald and Judge Dinkins will follow with their comments, and then Blumstein will discuss the importance of the decision from a jurisprudential point of view. Following a question and answer session, a reception will bring the evening to a conclusion.
Speaking with the Hamilton County Herald by phone, Rep. Brown offered a preview of her comments. Brown, who at that time was teaching at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, says she arrived late at the meeting during which the decision was made to bring the lawsuit against the city, and wanted to go home because she was tired. She then thought about all of the things other black people before her had accomplished, and scolded herself for wanting to leave.
“We were being treated differently because of the color of our skin, and we had to do something about that,” she says.
Brown says she and the others who placed their names on the lawsuit simply “stood on the shoulders of the people who came before them.”
There’s no cost to attend the seminar. The doors of the Theatre Center will be open to the public.