In the ashes of the Civil War, Florida voters elected Josiah Walls, a Black Republican to Congress. He served between 1871 and 1876. But as Jim Crow laws and the Black Codes went into effect, the state quickly reversed course on Black representation in politics: It went more than a century without sending any Black representatives to Congress.
That changed in 1993, after a federal court ordered Florida to draw new lines to allow minority candidates the opportunity to elect their own representatives. Since then, a minimum of three elected Florida members of Congress have been Black, representing both Democrats and Republicans.
Depending on the outcome of next Tuesday's primary election in Florida's 20th Congressional District, that number could go down to two, a historic low.
The district, encompassing large parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, was newly redrawn to make it a non-Black majority district. The simple prospect of losing Black representation depending on the outcome of the race has alarmed advocates.
“By simple math, that's regression,” said Dwight Bullard, a former Democratic state senator and senior political advisor at Florida Rising, an advocacy group supporting communities of color. “Florida is home to the second largest concentration of Black residents in the country. Texas, then us.”
Bullard told WLRN that the situation Black Floridians find themselves in is due to a combination of factors. First is the “racist” redistricting maps hastily passed by Florida lawmakers this year that stand to diminish Black representation, he said.
At the behest of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022, lawmakers had already eliminated a district in North Florida that had been majority-Black for decades, a redistricting move that is tied up in litigation.
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Earlier this year the Legislature took the rare move of redistricting mid-decade, eliminating the Black-majority status of Florida's 20th. It was part of a nationwide strategy President Trump pushed last summer try to to prevent losses in the 2026 midterms.
The state’s 24th Congressional District, in Miami-Dade, remains the only Black-majority district left in Florida.
The winner of next week’s Democratic primary there is almost assuredly going to be the next member of congress for the district. All the candidates are Black. Democrat Maxwell Frost, a Black-Cuban Democrat, has already won reelection to Florida’s 10th Congressional District in Central Florida after he drew no challengers.
Controversy with Wasserman Schultz
The second reason Florida’s Black representation is at risk is Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s controversial decision to run in the district. She previously represented Florida's 25th Congressional District, which was redrawn and tilts in favor of Republicans.
The Black community was up in arms when Wasserman Schultz chose to run in the district, which has been represented by Black Democrats since 1992, saying her move was a threat to progress on representation that Black Floridians have won.
Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried said she was "disappointed" with the congresswoman. Wasserma Schultz does not live in the district, although she enjoys significant name recognition and congressional seniority, which could give her a leg up in the primary election. All of her opponents are Black Democrats.
Third is the recent history of Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the Haitian-American Democrat who resigned her seat in the 20th Congressional District earlier this year after she was indicted on federal fraud charges. In effect, the district is not currently represented by anyone. She also faced serious ethics questions in Congress. Her resignation left no incumbent in the district.
Cherfilus-McCormick is running for her seat again, claiming she is innocent of any wrongdoing.
“ It really kind of puts the district in a very precarious position because if [Cherfilus-McCormick] were successful, there's still very much the real threat of her having to resign again,” said Bullard. ”The hope — knock on wood — is that the voters in District 20 will understand the severity of the situation.”
Crowded primary race
The other Black candidates running for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 20th are former Broward commissioner Dale Holness; progressive political newcomer and perennial candidate Elijah Manley; and hip-hop icon and community activist Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell.
History clearly shows Black candidates can win in districts that are not majority-Black. Republican Congressman Byron Donalds, who is now running for Florida Governor, has represented Florida’s 19th Congressional District since 2021, a district that is only about 6% Black.
Elections that took place in 1996 also have relevance. After the Supreme Court ruled that a 50% Black seat in North Florida held by Democrat Corinne Brown was illegally drawn to pack Black voters into a single district, new maps were drawn by the Florida Legislature, and the district was no longer half Black.
Questions arose at the time of whether a Black candidate could win in districts with fewer Black voters. Rev. Jesse Jackson warned that the dilution of Black voters by court decision would lead to ''a kind of ethnic cleansing” in Congress. The American Civil Liberties Union warned of a ''bleaching of Congress.”
The doomsday predictions were wrong. Brown won her reelection campaign in the newly redrawn district. Four other Black candidates in Georgia and Texas won their races in districts that were similarly redrawn. Notably, all of them were incumbents.
The historical high for Black representation in Congress across the U.S. is right now. A total of 67 Black lawmakers were sworn into office in 2025, a fourfold increase from where it was in 1975.
Much of the progress has come because states — including Florida — drew majority-Black congressional maps to conform to the Voting Rights Act over the last decades.
The Supreme Court earlier this year opened the door for states to roll back many of those “minority access” districts, and states across the country have moved forward with redrawing maps in a way that diminish Black electoral power.
Diminishing Black representation
The choice to redistrict the state in April was done in order to diminish Florida’s Black representation in Washington, said Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder and senior advisor of the Equal Ground Education Fund.
Her group is suing the state over the newly drawn maps, claiming that it violates a Florida constitutional amendment passed by 63% of voters in 2010 that banned the state from drawing maps to disadvantage any particular racial group or political party.
Lawmakers have denied they redrew the maps with race or political affiliation in mind, even as DeSantis’ office first released the maps with color-coded lines to Fox News, a map that showed Democrats losing half of the seats they currently hold.
All the combined dynamics make the race for Florida’s 20th Congressional District incredibly important, said Burney-Clark.
“ The stakes are incredibly high for the Black community in this congressional district,” she said. “ Black leadership. Black political power. We are not short of that in this race. There are options. There are great options for people to choose from in this particular race.”
Even as elections with the redrawn maps are moving forward, the court case against them is still underway. Burney-Clark’s group recently asked a judge for a jury trial in the case, and she vows to keep fighting for Black representation in Florida.
“ If you take away minority access seats in this state, we potentially could not see Black access districts again in the state of Florida,” Burney-Clark told WLRN. “Redistricting is going to continue to happen year after year after year if we are not preserving the historical wins that have been hard fought in this state.”
