Updated October 16, 2026 at 4:30 PM MDT
What does the story of an 8-year-old girl sneaking out of the house have to do with the 2026 midterms? A lot, if you ask longtime Alabama resident Sheyann Webb-Christburg.
She told NPR that she left home on March 7 of 1965 to join a march from Selma to Montgomery — and ended up on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when law enforcement officers chased, beat and gassed hundreds of peaceful protesters, including children.
"As a little girl, I knew that I wanted to do something to strike a chord and make a difference in the lives of other young folks, [especially] with me growing up being poor in Selma," she told NPR.
Webb-Christburg was the youngest person there on Bloody Sunday in Alabama. She would go on to meet the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who she says "really gave [her] the drive to become that disobedient child." Her early passion for voting rights would earn her the nickname of the movement's "Smallest Freedom Fighter." She's 70 now, and this year, she found herself again in a push to help Black voters feel represented.
This year, she rallied at the state house in Montgomery after the Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais cleared the way for Alabama to revert to a previous congressional map for midterms. The change eliminated the state's second majority-Black district – a district that had been created as a result of a different case, Allen v. Milligan, in 2023.
State Republicans say their map is a fair, partisan representation of Alabama's voters.
"We have the same right as any other state to draw our own congressional maps according to our own legitimate districting objectives," state Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement earlier this year.
More than one-quarter of residents are Black in Alabama, where voting is racially polarized. Now, one out of seven of its districts are majority Black.
"Being a little girl back in the '60s, when we were fighting for our right to vote … and here we are again in 2026, dealing with all of those corruptive, racist elements that are trying to rob particularly African Americans and poor people of their right to vote," Webb-Christburg said.
This November, Alabama's 2nd Congressional District race could offer some insight into whether Republicans' redistricting efforts pay off. Democratic incumbent Rep. Shomari Figures will be looking to keep his seat in a fight against his Trump-backed challenger, Rhett Marques.
"I worry that he might lose his seat for sure," said Evan Milligan, one of the lead plaintiffs in the Allen v. Milligan case. He told NPR that he's been overwhelmed by the push to prevent Black voters from feeling disenfranchised for so long, that he feels like a "combat vet."
"My connection to the struggle sometimes is all I feel like I really have," said Milligan.
"It is a lingering sense across congressional districts with Black voters that [Figures] will lose his seat," said Tyler Jerome Adams, a 19-year-old student at Alabama State University, who is also a voting rights activist and political science major. 2026 is the first year he's been old enough to vote.
"My hope for the future of politics here in Alabama is that people start grasping what is going on," Adams told NPR. "The South has been extremely racist for as long as people can remember."
When NPR sat with Milligan, Adams and Webb-Christburg, they had distinct thoughts on how voters might push for change in their state, and shared an optimism that Black and Democratic voters will show up for midterms.
"We already know that they're out to get us," Webb-Christburg said, referring to state Republicans and President Trump. "That's even more reason why all of us have to play a significant role in trying to push this vote every day, without taking anything for granted, in order to protect our democracy."
Click play above to hear more of these voters in conversation with each other and All Things Considered host Juana Summers.
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