In a letter sent to more than 250 companies, members of the Black Caucus urge them to condemn the redistricting efforts, which the lawmakers claim amount to “coordinated efforts to silence Black voices at the ballot box.”
“Corporations that have profited from black consumers, relied on black workers, and amassed wealth in part from black communities cannot look away while black political power is dismantled in plain sight,” Rep Yvette Clarke, chair of the Black Caucus, said in an interview.
The caucus last week called for black athletes to boycott public universities in states that are gerrymandering their congressional maps to redraw districts that were designed to favor black voters. The 59-member Congressional Black Caucus consists entirely of Democrats, including more than a third from Southern states.
President Donald Trump last year kicked off the unusual mid-decade round of congressional redistricting when he pushed Texas lawmakers to redraw their maps in a way that would add Republican seats. Democrat-led Calikfornia responded as did Democrats in Virginia. The Virginia effort failed after the state's Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional.
But it has been mostly Republican states redrawing their lines as the party tries to maintain its majority in the U.S. House during this year's midterm elections.
The effort was supercharged by the Supreme Court decision, which allowed even more Republican states to redraw congressional maps that did not favor a particular racial group.
