HATTIESBURG — Hattiesburg is one of the most crucial areas in Mississippi’s redistricting fight this year, and dozens of its voters packed a room on Thursday night to say they’re opposed to it.
Only a handful of the many people who addressed the Joint House and Senate Redistricting Committee said that they support efforts altering congressional and state legislative districts. The vast majority said they’re against it because they believe it would waste taxpayer dollars and diminish Black voting power.
“I ask you don’t disenfranchise the citizens that voted for you,” Deanna Douglas said. “Listen to us and please don’t do this.”
Thursday’s hearing was the sixth in a slate of eight public hearings the committee is holding across the state.
Hattiesburg will be a crucial area in redistricting and would likely determine whether the Republican Party can achieve a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate.
Lawmakers redrew legislative boundaries in 2022 to create two majority-white Senate districts in Forrest County, the county where Hattiesburg is located. Sen. Chris Johnson and former Sen. John Polk, two white Republicans, represented that area.
But a federal three-judge panel determined in 2024 that lawmakers diluted Black voting strength in the Pine Belt area and ordered the Legislature to redraw maps. The Legislature followed the court order and in 2025 made one of the districts majority Black. Sen. Johnny DuPree, a Black Democrat, won the seat in a special election later that year.
The Callais vs. Louisiana U.S. Supreme Court decision removed protection for majority-minority districts and cleared the way for Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw political lines in their favor. But Forrest County voter Kennen Walker said on Thursday night that he wanted DuPree to continue representing the area.
“I’m against mid-decade redistricting because I don’t want to lose representation we just voted for,” Walker said.
Gov. Tate Reeves is expected to call a special legislative session before the end of the year for lawmakers to redraw legislative districts. Will Spradling said he wants the committee to draw districts that elect more Republicans, so that lawmakers enact more conservative policies.
“Mississippi should be as conservative as states like California are progressive,” Spradling said. “No matter how these lines are drawn, these citizens will have their vote.”
A few people, including Petal Alderman Drew Brickson, asked legislators to specifically draw maps in a way that keeps the nearby town of Petal fully intact and not split between legislative districts.
The committee will conduct two more hearings: One on Sept. 22 at Gulf Coast Community College in Gulfport and another on Oct. 1 at the state Capitol in Jackson. Both will start at 6 p.m.
The public can also submit written comments to the committee by emailing ted.booth@peer.ms.gov.
