FAYETTEVILLE — The schools helped bring Charles Rousseau to Fayette County — and the schools are what drew him to the political front lines.
It all started with a tense phone call his wife received from their son’s middle school principal that felt unfair and possibly discriminatory.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
That experience in the mid-1990s sent the soft-spoken Rousseau, who had spent his career in public policy, on a quest to review the county’s education system and political power structure.
It didn’t take long for Rousseau, who is Black, to find an ugly truth: Fayette had never elected a person of color to its school board or County Commission. And under its at-large electoral system that had been in place as long as anyone could remember, he believed it never would. Critics said the system was a discriminatory relic used to dilute Black voting power.
“We recognized we did not have a seat at the table where decisions were being made, resources were being allocated,” Rousseau said in a recent interview.
A fiercely contested federal lawsuit would eventually topple Fayette’s at-large system. The resulting settlement, adopted a decade ago, would pave the way for the election of three Black officials to countywide offices, including Rousseau. Proponents say it remade Fayette, bolstering African American political power, helping attract economic development and demonstrating the county was more reflective of the new modern South.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
“It was tremendously transformational,” said Ed Johnson, a pastor who in 2015 became the first Black mayor of Fayetteville.
But events in Washington this spring significantly weakened the legal instrument that eventually opened the door for elected officials of color in Fayette. Some local Black leaders worry it could lead to backsliding if they aren’t vigilant to protect these gains.
“We’re not going to lay down and let that happen, they can count on that,” said John E. Jones, a retired airline pilot who was head of the local NAACP during the bulk of the lawsuit.
‘Identify every race-based district’
In April, the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court gutted one of the core parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights statute that sought to eliminate barriers to the ballot box for Black people. The decision stated that the country had changed significantly since the 1960s and that the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared in recent presidential elections.
The ruling took aim at the portion of the Voting Rights Act that paved the way for the creation of majority-minority districts in local, state and federal offices by allowing critics to file legal challenges against discriminatory political systems and unfair district maps.
In the decades after the law passed, civil rights groups went to work all over the country targeting at-large voting districts.
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Because voting was typically racially polarized, they argued jurisdictions with at-large systems had the effect of preventing minority voters from electing candidates of their choice. If white citizens still made up the majority of a county’s population, they tended to vote for white candidates in countywide votes.
There had been nearly 100 lawsuits targeting at-large systems in Georgia over the years, according to one tally from the former head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, which spearheaded many of those cases.
The Fayette County suit was one of the last times a voting rights challenge was successful in Georgia, according to legal observers. Many election law experts believe similar discrimination cases would be virtually impossible to win today because of the Supreme Court’s decision. The court’s opinion raised the legal bar so high, they say, that the provision that allows for legal challenges against discriminatory districts is effectively dead.
GOP leaders trumpeted the ruling, saying the country is ready to move beyond race as a determining political factor and that election maps should be drawn to be “race neutral.”
Black leaders, faith groups and voting rights organizations, however, have warned that the ruling could make it easier for new political maps to be drawn that all but erase gains in representation at both the state and local level, including in places like Fayette. Even if the county’s current district-based system stays in place, voters of color could be spread across several districts to dilute their voting power, civil rights advocates have warned.
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
That’s because Republicans are in the majority in Georgia and control the redistricting process, and Black voters tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Under the new Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers are allowed to use partisanship as a basis for redrawing lines. Several states across the South have already redrawn congressional maps to give the GOP an advantage.
Where there is robust representation of Black citizens in the region, it has often been a result of lawsuits or federal actions taken under the Voting Rights Act, said Joseph Bagley, a history professor at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College who studies civil and voting rights litigation.
“There are quite literally thousands of Black representatives on local bodies that Black and brown communities fought to get them on those local bodies,” he said. “And none of that happens without the VRA.”
While there appears to be little appetite locally to revisit Fayette’s system, some conservatives are urging decision-makers in Washington to look at majority-minority districts that were created under the older interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
A day after the Supreme Court’s ruling, U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., wrote to top leaders at the Justice Department, directing them to provide a list of all districts — including for county, municipal and other local offices — that were drawn using race. His letter said the department should proactively review these districts and “determine whether they should survive.”
“The Department should not wait for private litigants to identify every race-based district one by one,” wrote Schmitt, who leads a Senate subcommittee with oversight of civil rights enforcement.
Harmeet Dhillon, the leader of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, responded right away.
“Senator — we are ON IT!” Dhillon posted on social media.
A changing Fayette
Driving through Fayette today, it’s possible to see what the county once was — and what it’s becoming.
There’s still rolling farmland, wild turkeys darting across country roads and streets named after Confederate generals. There are golf cart lanes and Starbucks drive-thrus, wine bars and million-dollar houses and a movie studio lot where several Marvel superhero blockbusters were shot.
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Not long ago, Fayette was known as a majority white, Republican bastion. Thinly populated by metro Atlanta standards, it grew popular with business executives and pilots because of its proximity to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Beginning in the 1980s, the county saw an influx of affluent Black newcomers, also drawn by the good schools, large lot sizes and slower pace of life. In 1980, Fayette’s population was about 29,000, with about 1 resident in every 25 being Black; by 2010 the population had grown to nearly 107,000, and the ratio was more than 1 in 5.
Some of those new Black residents grew interested in joining the county’s political system. But time and time again, Black candidates lost at the polls. Despite the population gains over several decades, Black voters still had no one who looked like them in county elected offices.
Local critics saw Fayette’s at-large election system as the culprit.
Elected officials are “going to listen to the majority because you want to get reelected,” Johnson, the Fayetteville mayor, said. “Well, the minority loses out, their voice gets silenced.”
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
The extent of the problem became evident in 2006, when a special election was held for an open seat on the Fayette County Commission.
Four Black candidates raised their hands to run, including two Republicans. One was the well-known vice chairman of the Fayette County Republican Party who had the support of the GOP establishment. On Election Day, the sole white candidate — a transmission shop owner who pledged to “maintain and preserve the heritage we have in our county” — ran away with the race, winning without a runoff.
The results were a wake-up call to the county’s Black leaders.
“The system essentially prevented anyone who was a racial minority from winning a seat. It didn’t matter whether they were Republican or Democrat,” said former state Rep. Virgil Fludd, a Tyrone Democrat who pushed for years to replace the at-large system and steer more resources to the more diverse northern part of the county.
Attempts by Fludd and other allies to transition to a district-based system at the state Legislature and County Commission were rejected. So they set their sights on the federal courthouse.
‘Uncomfortable with change’
In 2011, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sued Fayette on behalf of roughly a dozen Black residents, arguing the county’s at-large voting system diluted minority votes. The suit said that as a result, elected officials were “unresponsive” to the needs of Fayette’s minority community and neglected roads, parks and other infrastructure in their neighborhoods.
Fayette’s Black population had grown considerably since Rousseau conducted his research into the school system. And leaders believed there were enough Black voters clustered in the county’s northern pocket to merit the creation of a majority-minority voting district for the County Commission and school board.
The suit dredged up old racial tensions that hadn’t been seen in decades. County Commission meetings became testy. Proponents of the at-large system warned of “outside agitators,” of the possibility of white flight and of Fayette turning into Fulton or Clayton counties, which were majority-minority and had struggled with issues like crime and underperforming schools.
They argued that the at-large voting system had been a force for good because it gave voters more say in county elections and made their representatives more responsive to everyone, not just an individual district’s needs.
“We were the most prosperous county in the state of Georgia. It was that way for a reason,” recalled Steve Brown, a Republican who was chairman of the Fayette County Commission during much of the lawsuit. “… We had created something that was really working, and it was working for everybody."
A loquacious white conservative who is married to a Black woman, Brown had been a member of the NAACP. He said he was shocked after hearing from one prominent Black leader at the time that he felt racism every time he left the house.
After Black leaders rejected a counterproposal he suggested, Brown became a vocal defender of Fayette’s at-large system. He was backed by the other members of the all-Republican commission, who argued the system was working and didn’t need to be changed.
“Everybody had a voice on every person that was elected,” Brown said.
Fludd saw things in more stark terms.
“People, particularly in the South,” he said, “are uncomfortable with change.”
A new era
The legal volleys stretched for years. Each side spent upward of $1 million in legal fees. There were wins and setbacks on both sides.
The fight finally sputtered to an end in early 2016, after a federal judge ordered the parties go into mediation — and Black leaders began discussing an economic boycott.
“Only when it became potentially economically damaging did they relent,” said Wayne Kendall, the lead local attorney on the case.
The sides eventually agreed to a settlement that shifted the County Commission and school board away from five at-large seats to four geographical voting districts and one at-large seat. As part of the deal, both sides signed off on the statement that there was “no intentional racial discrimination in the county use of and defense of its at-large districting system,” which angered some Black leaders.
As the legal fighting approached its end stages, Pota Coston was elected in 2014 in a historic vote, becoming the first Black member of the County Commission in Fayette’s history. After she died of cancer six months later, Rousseau was elected to replace her. In 2023, Regina Daigre became the first Black person elected to the county school board.
For supporters, the new additions, along with Johnson’s ascent to the Fayetteville mayor’s office in 2015, represented a sea change.
On the County Commission, Rousseau has been the lone Democrat over the last decade, but he said he’s been able to build coalitions to advance priorities for his district.
“I looked at our communities and streets hadn’t been paved in decades, no recreational amenities, public health was an issue,” Rousseau said.
Kevin Pratt II, the current president of the local NAACP, said the lawsuit made government officials more responsive to the needs of the Black community. He cited an incident last year in which a group of high school students attended a volleyball game in blackface. Pratt worked quickly with the superintendent and school board to change the code of conduct, institute new awareness training and discipline the people involved.
“That would have never happened if we hadn’t had things like the district voting that raised awareness across the board that Fayette County can be better,” he said.
Is change coming?
In the years since the settlement, Fayette’s growth has continued to skyrocket, with an estimated county population of about 125,000 today. Outside of the people who were a part of the fight in courtrooms and the halls of county government, few remember the voting suit.
Since the legal battle, the county lost about 5,000 white residents and gained about 10,000 Black residents. The county’s political profile shifted too, from a safe GOP stronghold to one of Georgia’s newest political bellwethers. Mitt Romney won nearly two-thirds of the county’s vote in 2012, but President Donald Trump captured just 51% of the vote there in 2024.
Meanwhile, the county has attracted major business ventures.
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez
Trilith Studios, a 700-acre, 31-stage lot on the outskirts of Fayetteville owned by Chick-fil-A Chairman Dan Cathy, has expanded considerably. The county recently became home to one of Georgia’s largest data centers, as well as the new headquarters and national training center for the United States Soccer Federation.
Some observers attribute that growth at least in part to the lawsuit and legal settlement.
“I do think that as a result of us being viewed as a more open community, a more receptive community, people have looked at us that may not have looked at us previously,” Fludd said “Fayette County hasn’t dropped off the side of the Earth and gotten to be this unattractive place to live.”
Brown, the former commission chairman who stepped down in 2018, worries the county has backslid. He said it feels like other exurban counties such as Forsyth are advancing in key metrics while Fayette slips.
The GOP’s openness to redistricting in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling has prompted some to ask whether it’s possible Fayette could return to something resembling its old voting system. Brown said he recently “had some discussions” with elected officials about revisiting the issue and he said “there is an interest in doing it,” although he declined to name who he spoke with and who is on board.
“I would love to see the community come together and say, ‘Let’s come up with some logical boundaries and figure out what we want to be,’ because right now the boundary system we have is ‘us’ and ‘them,’” he said.
The County Commission could vote to change the system, or the Legislature could step in. Some observers have also questioned whether challengers could use the courts to deem majority-minority districts unconstitutional and racially discriminatory under justices’ reinterpretation of the Voting Rights Act.
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC
Lee Hearn, a white Republican who currently chairs the County Commission, had backed the at-large system during the lawsuit. He said the district-based system is working well and doesn’t need to be changed. He said he hasn’t heard a single complaint about it.
“These folks that are coming and looking for a place to invest money and grow and build and do something really special, they’re not wanting to come where there’s a lot of controversy and bickering on the County Commission,” he said. “They want nice stability.”
A voting rights fight, Hearn said, would fall in the negative column.
Data reporter Jennifer Peebles contributed to this article.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
