‘Jim Crow 2.0’: South Carolina’s Republicans move to oust state’s only Black congressman since 1897 | South Carolina | The Guardian

‘Jim Crow 2.0’: South Carolina’s Republicans move to oust state’s only Black congressman since 1897

"James Clyburn could now find his district dismantled after supreme court effectively gutted Voting Rights Act

George Chidi

James Clyburn at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 53rd annual Phoenix awards dinner in Washington DC on 14 September 2024. Photograph: Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Congressional Black Caucus Foundation

South Carolina has had exactly one Black representative in Congress since 1897: James Clyburn. A proposal to redraw the state’s political map would dismantle the district he represents.

The state’s sixth congressional district starts on its southern border with Georgia, in the suburbs of Savannah, moving a hundred miles north to wind around the heart of Charleston, before cutting through Black belt farmland to the state capital of Columbia, another 115 miles away.

It contains Charleston’s high-end shopping district on King Street and the state’s ornate antebellum capitol building. It also contains the Gullah Geechee coastal homeland, two of the state’s historically Black colleges and some of the poorest people in the US, in Barnwell and Allendale counties.

The district is a product of a 36-year-old peace pact between civil rights leaders and South Carolina’s white conservative political apparatus.

James Clyburn, activist Andrew Young and educator Dr. M Maceo Nance at South Carolina State University in 1977. Photograph: Claflin University/Getty Images

Now Trump has urged the state’s Republican lawmakers to effectively tear up that deal, after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act that prevented racial discrimination – prompting a Republican scramble to redraw key districts.

While an early effort stalled in South Carolina on Tuesday, the threat remains. The state’s governor, Henry McMaster, called a special congressional session to consider the proposal, which started on Friday.

Back in 1990, Democrats remained in control of South Carolina’s legislature, but had been bleeding white political support for 25 years following the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

“The Black caucus went to the Republican caucus after the 1990 census and said, ‘We’ve been voting for Democrats for 100 years and we’re no better off,’” Eaddy Roe Willard, a Republican activist in South Carolina, recalled of a redistricting debate that year. “We will vote with your map on the condition that you draw one congressional district where an African American can be elected.”

With a census showing a Black population of about a third of the state, and lawsuits looming, legislators crafted a congressional district with a Black majority, but also began breaking up the multiracial coalition that kept Democrats in power at the state level. Many Democratic lawmakers left, or switched parties.

Clyburn took office in 1993, and set out to make a mark on the district, state and country.

A veteran of the civil rights movement, he quickly climbed the Democratic party’s leadership ranks in Washington, serving as majority whip between 2007 and 2011, and 2019 and 2022. He also became a rainmaker for the state, directing spending to improve its famously dysfunctional highway system, pushing money toward rural broadband and backing efforts to alleviate poverty.

Nationally, he has played the role of kingmaker for Democratic presidential aspirants, many of whom flock to his fish fry every four years in hopes of wooing Black voters. In 2020, he was credited with reviving Joe Biden’s flailing presidential campaign with an endorsement that helped Biden win the state’s Democratic primary, and put him on course for the White House.

In Congress, Clyburn advanced a 10-20-30 federal funding formula – that a minimum of 10% of federal investments should go to communities where at least 20% of the population had lived below the federal poverty line for the last 30 years – as a standard for federal spending. Black communities are overrepresented by this framework, but rural white communities across the country also benefit.

“This place has such a rich, deep history of organizing, of social change, of slavery, of harm. And none of it has really been reckoned with,” said Jessica Thomas, an activist in South Carolina. “It sits at the surface, constantly ready to bubble up and it exposes itself in issues like this.

“There are great people here. There are also people who want to keep things the old white boys’ way and control everything.”

All except one of South Carolina’s seven US congressional districts are held by Republicans. Trump’s demands on Republican state leaders to redistrict and pull apart the one seat currently held by a Democrat ignores longstanding political conventions.

Trump’s supporters call it draining the swamp. His detractors describe it as transparently racist.

“I mean, it’s like we’re never, ever going to outlive the accusation, you know?” said Terra Ciurro of Simpsonville, South Carolina, who was visiting the state capitol earlier this week with her husband, a retired soldier. “We’re never going to outrun it. It’s always going to be there because of things like this.”

Clyburn himself suggested the plan was “a comprehensive approach to creating Jim Crow 2.0”, throwing the state back to an era racial segregation and repression. “I’m gonna run no matter what,” he told reporters this week.

But the relative comfort with the current map – and its protection of Clyburn’s electoral prospects – has been criticized by some Black leaders for conceding potentially competitive territory and facilitating a wipeout of Democratic legislative power in the state for decades.

Clyburn has defended gerrymandering for partisan advantage. “Aggressive redistricting efforts, that’s one thing,” he told Ohio News Network Radio in 2022. “To be suppressive of Black voter strength, that’s another thing.”

James Clyburn speaks during the 2022 NAACP National Convention. Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images

The congressman has often criticized Republican-drawn South Carolina congressional maps, and aligned himself with the NAACP to challenge the 2020 redistricting on the grounds of a racial gerrymander. He has also been critical of the legislature’s current drive, and dared those behind it to test him, and the state’s voters.

Shane Massey, the state senate’s majority leader, acknowledged as much in a forceful address to his chamber on Tuesday as he rejected a call for redistricting. Pulling Democrats out of the sixth district might imperil the odds of electing neighboring Republicans in a tight year, he suggested.

The district does not have a Black majority today, though it’s close: US Census estimates suggest about 46% of the district’s residents are Black. About a quarter of South Carolina is Black, and about a quarter of those Black people live in Clyburn’s district.

But the state’s booming manufacturing industry has drawn a multiracial influx of skilled labor, while the warm climate and low taxes have attracted relatively conservative retirees from other states. And in time, that might change the political calculus.

“How are we going to be a state that welcomes people from everywhere else?” said Damien Barber, a recent political science graduate from the University of South Carolina. He stood outside the legislative offices in protest on Tuesday as state lawmakers weighed the redistricting plan.

James Clyburn at the CBCI Gospel Brunch and Martin Luther King Jr Community Celebration in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 2008. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Barber grew up in Richland County in South Carolina’s midlands, which contains the Congaree national park: South Carolina’s only national park, the product of legislation advanced by Clyburn in 2003.

“None of the congressional representatives are, honestly, pretty effective,” Barber said. “He’s the one that everyone talks about. Some people don’t even know who their representative is, but everyone knows Jim Clyburn.”

‘Jim Crow 2.0’: South Carolina’s Republicans move to oust state’s only Black congressman since 1897 | South Carolina | The Guardian

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Trump Was Flattering, Xi Was Resolute. The Difference Spoke Volumes.

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“President Trump’s visit to Beijing highlighted the contrasting approaches of the two leaders. While Trump adopted a conciliatory tone, praising Xi Jinping and emphasizing the importance of their personal relationship, Xi focused on setting boundaries, particularly regarding Taiwan. Xi’s approach reflected China’s growing confidence and authority, contrasting with Trump’s more transactional style.

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In contrast to his rhetoric about China at home, President Trump spoke in conciliatory terms with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.

Published May 14, 2026Updated May 15, 2026, 1:02 a.m. ET

President Trump with President Xi Jinping of China in Beijing on Thursday.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents and their encounters with China, a subject of his latest book. He reported from Beijing.

For President Trump, the first day of his visit to Beijing was all about the personal relationship between him and Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.

“You’re a great leader,” he told his host, whom he has often said he admires for his “powerful” control over a nation of 1.4 billion people. “I say it to everybody.”

Mr. Xi, unsurprisingly, spent little time Thursday on flattery. Once the 21-gun salute and precision-marching by units of the People’s Liberation Army were finished, the disciplined Chinese leader plunged right away into setting boundaries for the two countries’ relations. The red line was Taiwan, he said, making it abundantly clear that Mr. Trump’s effort at rapprochement could crash on takeoff if he interferes with China’s long-term effort to take control of the self-governing island.

“The U.S. must handle the Taiwan issue with utmost caution,” he said according to a readout from Xinhua, China’s official news agency. The warning came just minutes into his public remarks in the Great Hall of the People, the center of power for the People’s Republic starting just a decade into Mao’s revolution. For Mr. Xi, it was all about setting boundaries, from the start.

The moment seemed to capture the new equilibrium between the two adversaries. Mr. Xi arrived highly scripted, leaving no doubt that for all of China’s problems — deflation, depopulation, the bursting of the real estate bubble — the moment when China acts as a peer superpower had arrived.

At every turn, at least as he began his two-day trip to China, Mr. Trump sounded conciliatory, the exact opposite of his portrayals of China in public appearances back home, where during his presidential campaigns he has talked about the country as a job-stealer and national security threat. Mr. Xi, while smiling and welcoming to Mr. Trump, was quietly more confrontational — especially on Taiwan, where he delivered an unequivocal warning.

The gap spoke directly to the new level of confidence and authority Mr. Xi has adopted in his public speech, despite his challenges with the domestic economy, as he watches the United States plunge into conflict with Iran, another Middle East confrontation with no easy exit.

The Chinese president designed the day meticulously, down to a visit to the Temple of Heaven, the Ming dynasty complex not far from the Forbidden City. As Mr. Trump sat in the 13th-century wonder, he got a history lesson from the Chinese leader, tailored to echo the modern era.

At his toast at a televised State Banquet on Thursday night, Mr. Trump came with a lesson of his own, describing links between China and the United States that went back to the Empress of China, the ship that took a 14-month journey in 1783 to open trade and bring the first American diplomats to what was then known as Canton, now called Guangzhou.

“We’ve gotten along when there were difficulties, we worked it out,” Mr. Trump said. But even then he cast relations in personal terms, making clear that the huge divisions between the two countries had to be solved by two strong leaders.

“I would call you, and you would call me whenever we had a problem, people don’t know, whenever we had a problem,” he said. “We worked that out very quickly, and we’re going to have a fantastic future together.”

For his part, Mr. Xi returned to his mantra: to keep from turning competition into conflict, the two nations must keep from falling into the “Thucydides Trap.”

(The trap, popularized by the Harvard professor Graham Allison in his book “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” comes when a rising power challenges a status-quo power, often leading to war. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that rise engendered in Sparta,” the ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote, “that made war inevitable”.)

Mr. Xi proposed a familiar solution: ban talk of competition between the No. 1 and No. 2 economic superpowers — a regular staple of the Biden White House — and focus on “stability,’’ a governing characteristic rarely associated with Mr. Trump.

“The common interests between China and the United States outweigh our differences,” Mr. Xi said, according to state media. “Stability in China-U.S. relations is a boon to the world.”

But unlike Mr. Trump, he explored the alternative scenario.

“If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation,” he said, a clear reference to Taiwan, according to the readout.

If much of this sounds familiar, it was. Mr. Xi has go-to homilies, part of his philosopher-king approach to ruling over China. And in this summit he invented one new one: He said he agreed with Mr. Trump on “a new vision of building a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability.”

As Rush Doshi, a China scholar at Georgetown University noted, that sounded like an effort “to lock in a ‘truce’ favorable to them, and they want to do so beyond Trump, with this post-trade war détente setting the base line.”

Future disputes over China’s excess manufacturing capacity or rebuilding American military capability in the Indo-Pacific could be declared “a violation of this frame,” he wrote on X.

The contrast with Mr. Trump’s style — where summits are first and foremost for instant “deals,” usually ones he can boast will provide jobs or sales — is often jarring. Mr. Trump, for example, brought a group of business executives, whose presence he said was intended to show “respect” for China while seeking market access.

It had a familiar ring to it, the days when Bill Clinton and George W. Bush brought business leaders to explore the promise of the Chinese market, often for the first time. But Mr. Trump’s delegation came with decades of experience, much of it bitter. Some of them were survivors of the battles over intellectual property theft and sharp restrictions intended to favor local Chinese industry.

Mr. Xi did not bring an equivalent group. There were no executives from BYD, the huge Chinese carmaker trying to figure out how to do business in the United States, or DeepSeek, the innovative artificial intelligence firm at the heart of the battle with A.I. firms in the United States.

There were other discordant notes, heard just beneath the noise of the clinking glasses and optimistic toasts. In contrast to the Chinese readout, the American account, released by the White House, talked about cracking down on fentanyl precursors, a long-running issue with China, and buying American agricultural goods. It did not mention Taiwan, or China’s restrictions on rare earths, or its rapid nuclear weapons buildup.

The White House also described the United States and China as aligned on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and keep it free of Iranian tolls. All that was true, but ignored the deeper complication: despite American entreaties, China is unlikely to deploy whatever influence it has with the Iranians for free. What the price might be is unclear.

The real test of how these two men debate their differences might come on Friday morning, when Mr. Trump is scheduled for much smaller meetings with Mr. Xi. It is the kind of session he likes best: leader to leader. And once he leaves Chinese airspace, he seems likely to present his preferred version of those talks.

The Chinese government will likely be more circumspect.

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.“

Trump’s ‘Learning Curve’ on China Ends With Conciliation at Summit

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“President Trump’s recent summit with President Xi Jinping in Beijing marked a significant shift in U.S.-China relations. Trump, who previously adopted a hawkish stance towards China, now appears to be pursuing a more conciliatory approach, downplaying concerns about Taiwan and emphasizing economic cooperation. While the summit produced few concrete agreements, it signaled a potential thaw in tensions and a move away from the adversarial policies of the past.

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The president has shifted the foundations of American policy toward China, throwing aside the adversarial approach of recent years.

May 15, 2026Updated 1:36 p.m. ET

President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China arriving for the state banquet in Beijing on Thursday.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

In 2024, Donald J. Trump said China was “killing us as a country.” Last year, he complained that President Xi Jinping of China was “very tough, and extremely hard to make a deal with.” His tariffs on China reached 145 percent at one point.

The whiplash that followed culminated in the pageantry in Beijing this week.

As Air Force One took off from the Chinese capital on Friday, it remained unclear what deals, if any, President Trump had clinched with Mr. Xi. But the two-day summit in Beijing underscored how far he has shifted the foundations of American policy toward China in the wake of his humbling retreat from last year’s trade war. He has thrown aside the adversarial approach of his first years in office, the Biden administration and the beginning of his own second term.

What’s more, he has largely waved aside the warnings outlined in the Pentagon’s annual, unclassified accounting of China’s capabilities and intentions, which lays out a plan to push the United States out of the Western Pacific, engulf Taiwan, claim more territory in the South China Sea and escalate cyberattacks on the United States. He acknowledges that these threats are real. He has just reversed his view of how to deal with them.

In Beijing, Mr. Trump clapped for Chinese children waving American flags, toasted the “special relationship” between the American and Chinese people, called Mr. Xi a “great leader” and exclaimed that the garden where he walked with Mr. Xi held “the most beautiful roses anyone’s ever seen.” When Mr. Trump introduced the Chinese leader to the 17 or so American executives who came to Beijing, he said they had joined him “to pay respects to you, China.”

Mr. Trump said nothing in public in Beijing about Taiwan, even as Mr. Xi sharply warned that disagreement over the self-governing democracy could lead to a “clash.” Mr. Trump boasted of big Chinese purchases of Boeing airplanes and soybeans, though details were slim — just his own accounting of his wins, conveyed to reporters on Air Force One soon after liftoff from Beijing. Mr. Xi’s government did not confirm the purchases. 

And Mr. Trump insisted that Beijing and Washington were on the same page on Iran, even as the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday reiterated its position that his war “should not have happened in the first place.”

Taken together, the picture of a deferential American president and a confident Chinese leader reflected Mr. Xi’s success, despite his country’s bleak economic picture, in derailing the hawkish approach to China that Mr. Trump adopted at the start of his second term. 

The tone the two men set, in what could be the first of four meetings this year, was one in which they would work to defuse years of built-up tension — some of which Mr. Trump built up himself — even as the Iran war has created a new potential flashpoint.

John Delury, a historian of East Asia, said that even though the summit had produced few tangible outcomes in terms of economic deals or political agreements, it had the potential to affect the geopolitical mood, both in China and the United States. Mr. Trump’s friendly statements toward Mr. Xi and the Chinese people were being amplified in China’s state-controlled media, sending the message that “we’re getting along better with the Americans,” said Mr. Delury.

And in the United States, Mr. Trump was telling voters who previously heard him describe China as a sinister, destructive force that it was a country America should do business with. The Washington narrative about “decoupling” — the idea that the United States should unwind its economic ties to China — seemed part of a bygone era.

“You don’t pack Air Force One with your biggest business leaders when you’re decoupling,” said Mr. Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society. “Trump is sending that message to his people — to some extent the whole country — that we can get along with China even though we’re still going to compete.”

But there are dangers in that approach, in the view of some former American officials who have served in Beijing.  R. Nicholas Burns, the ambassador to China during the Biden administration, said it was understandable that Mr. Trump wanted to be polite to Mr. Xi, but that the American president’s gushing approach “weakens Trump and the U.S.”

“Xi did not hesitate to warn Trump over Taiwan,” Mr. Xi said. “Trump should not hesitate to be frank about our concerns, too.”

The summit produced little clarity about the policy details of the new relationship that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi were shaping. Da Wei, the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the United States did not appear to have “put enough energy” into the visit.

“The U.S. side looked a little passive,” Mr. Da said, asserting that Mr. Trump had said little of substance on the trip. “The Chinese side prepared very well.” 

The United States went into the summit hoping to convince China to do more to get Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stabilize global energy markets, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on the flight to Beijing this week. And China had hopes that Mr. Trump might nudge American policy on Taiwan in Beijing’s favor.

There was no evidence that China had changed its position on Iran, even though Mr. Trump asserted that he and Mr. Xi “feel very similar” about it. On Air Force One, Mr. Trump did not name a single way in which Mr. Xi had agreed to change the situation on the ground — or whether it had agreed to stop giving Iran access to satellite imagery that helps it target U.S. forces and Gulf states. 

China’s foreign ministry said that Middle East “shipping channels should be reopened as soon as possible,” but it did not indicate it would put more pressure on Iran, which relies on China as the main buyer of its oil.

Mr. Trump did not comment on Taiwan until reporters asked him about it on the flight from Beijing, at which point he offered little reassurance to those hoping for a robust American defense of Taiwan’s democracy.

He suggested that he might reconsider a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan that has been awaiting his final approval. When a reporter noted that President Ronald Reagan had assured Taiwan, more than 40 years ago, that no president would consult Chinese leaders on the size or nature of such arms packages, he dismissed the whole notion, saying that was a long time ago. 

“I’ll be making a decision” about arms sales, Mr. Trump said, suggesting he would announce something soon. 

He said Mr. Xi had asked whether the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked it, and that he had not given the Chinese leader a response. “I said, ‘I don’t talk about those things,’” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Xi accompanied Mr. Trump at all his public events across Beijing on Thursday and Friday. It was an extraordinary time commitment by the Chinese leader, according to Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. Mr. Trump told reporters on his plane that the secretive residential compound Mr. Xi showed him on Friday was “amazing” and marveled that he had gotten to see it.

Chinese officials “realize that this current moment of positivity is a very Trump-specific phenomenon that may not be sustainable,” Ms. Sun said. 

Analysts in Beijing said they recognized that U.S. policy could turn on a dime, and Mr. Xi signaled that he was tailoring his foreign policy to Mr. Trump specifically. 

Mr. Xi presented Mr. Trump with a new concept for the U.S.-Chinese relationship called “constructive strategic stability,” according to Chinese state media, but specified a time frame that coincided with the end of Mr. Trump’s term: “the next three years and beyond.” And as he met with Mr. Trump on Friday at the residential compound, Zhongnanhai, Mr. Xi compared his “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” to Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, according to a Chinese government statement. 

A question looming over all the camaraderie was how long the upbeat tone would last. Early in Mr. Trump’s first term, a similarly convivial Beijing summit in 2017 was followed by a hawkish turn against China. 

But analysts in both China and the United States said Mr. Trump’s attitude to Beijing was different now. For one thing, he has seen China’s ability to retaliate against the United States, as it did by throttling rare earth exports last year, forcing Mr. Trump to back down in his trade war. 

“Everyone has a learning curve,” said Sun Chenghao, a specialist in U.S.-China relations at Tsinghua University. Now, he said, “Mr. Trump knows how to deal with China.”

Anton Troianovski writes about American foreign policy and national security for The Times from Washington. He was previously a foreign correspondent based in Moscow and Berlin.

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.“ 

 

They Were Promised New Septic Tanks. Trump Called It ‘Illegal DEI.’

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“The Trump administration ended a settlement with Alabama that provided funding for septic tanks in the Black Belt region, a predominantly Black area with a long history of sewage issues. The settlement, which was part of the Biden administration’s first environmental justice investigation, aimed to address the sanitation crisis disproportionately affecting Black residents. Without federal aid, local nonprofits are struggling to install septic systems, leaving many homeowners without a solution.

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The Justice Department ended a deal that had helped fund a solution to the sewage crisis in rural Alabama. “Almost like we are starting all over again,” one activist said.

Published May 11, 2026Updated May 14, 2026

By Bernard Mokam

Bernard Mokam spoke to more than a dozen residents in Alabama’s Black Belt region.

Behind Dana Anderson’s home in central Alabama, a plastic pipe carries waste from her toilet through her backyard, discarding it outdoors. Three or four times a year, a spell of heavy rain forces the excrement back up into the house.

It is a plight that has long plagued residents across Alabama’s Black Belt, a stretch of largely rural counties so named for its dark soil and history of slavery. Cotton flourished in the region for the same reasons that conventional septic tanks fail there: The soil is dense and holds onto water. Today there are more than 50,000 people in the region who pipe raw sewage into open trenches and pits.

Now, a seeming solution to the public health problem has been stymied by an unlikely force: the Trump administration’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

Three years ago, the Biden administration concluded in its first-ever environmental justice investigation that Alabama officials had failed to adequately address the sanitation crisis disproportionately affecting the Black residents of Lowndes County. The state agreed to an interim agreement that unlocked millions of dollars in federal funding to provide homeowners with septic tanks that could handle the difficult soil.

Behind Dana Anderson’s home in central Alabama, a plastic pipe carries waste from her toilet into open ground.Nicole Craine for The New York Times

But soon after President Trump returned to office last year, the Justice Department ended the settlement, calling it “illegal DEI.”

The administration also scuttled a separate $14 million E.P.A. grant that had been earmarked to install new systems and provide work force training across Lowndes, Hale and Wilcox Counties.

Community activists fear the region may be doomed to enduring wastewater challenges forever.

“We thought we had a solution,” said Catherine Coleman Flowers, the founder of the Alabama-based Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, who has helped put a spotlight on the crisis. “It is almost like we are starting all over again.”

The funds have been filtering through the Alabama Department of Public Health to local nonprofit groups, which have taken on the responsibility of installing the systems.

Now, though, the money that flowed from the settlement will expire in October. So the groups are turning to whatever other funds they have and telling some homeowners that they may have to keep waiting for relief.

In interviews, many Black Belt residents said they had never heard of D.E.I. One woman even wondered whether the term originated with the president.

Some questioned what role race had actually played in their wastewater challenges. “I don’t think it’s a race issue,” said Ms. Anderson, noting that the leadership of Wilcox County was predominantly Black. She was one of the homeowners who would have gotten a new septic tank and is now out of luck.

But others tied the sanitation struggles to the legacies of slavery and segregation, linking the persistent poverty in the Black Belt to systemic racism.

The agreement that Alabama had reached with the Biden administration stopped the state from leveling fines and other penalties against Lowndes County residents who violated sanitation laws. It also ensured that the state would be an active participant in the solution — requiring it to track the number of residents without reliable sanitation, disseminate information about the health risks from raw sewage exposure, and seek funding sources to comply with the agreement.

In a statement, the Alabama Department of Health denied that it had discriminated against Black residents and said that it would continue “to expend grant funds associated with the installation of wastewater systems until funds expire.”

Some leaders fear the Supreme Court’s recent blow to the Voting Rights Actmay further diminish political support for the majority-Black region.

“We cannot return to a time when the basic needs of these communities were ignored,” said Representative Terri Sewell, who represents the region in Congress and had championed the 2023 federal agreement.

Across the Black Belt, circumstances vary. Some homeowners have straight pipes snaking behind their homes, where the untreated waste creeps over their property line onto their neighbor’s land. Others purchased conventional septic tanks decades ago, which have since failed and deteriorated into cesspools and lagoons.

The flies and odor can prevent homeowners from spending time in their backyards. One day in March, a property owner had a swarm of gnats perched on the walls of his bathtub that appeared to be waiting for waste to rise through the drain.

State researchers estimate that up to four million gallons of raw sewage enter the region’s water system per day.

The burden of installing septic systems falls on property owners if they live outside the limits of a municipal sewer system, as many in the Black Belt do. But many residents cannot afford the costly, engineered systems that are needed to withstand the impermeable clay soil. And local counties do not generate enough tax revenue to help.

In Lowndes County, for example, the poverty rate hovers around 30 percent, almost three times the national average.

Several nonprofit groups have taken on the work of installing septic tanks in the county. But two of them do not regularly share information, and one has implied that the other has committed fraud.

Still, the groups admit that the system would benefit from more collaboration. Some activists have faulted state officials for making local nonprofits play such a vital role.

“There needs to be an overseeing body,” said Carmelita Arnold, president of the Lowndes County Unincorporated Wastewater Program.

And the groups agree that without federal aid, the issue will persist.

“If the current administration doesn’t change their mind about funding, it won’t be solved,” said Sherry Bradley, the executive director of the Black Belt Unicorporated Wastewater Program. We have a solution, she added, “but it takes funding.”

Ms. Bradley worked at the state health department for four decades and oversaw the wastewater issue as the agency’s bureau of environmental services director.

She said she knew back then that there had been raw sewage on the ground, and had even issued violations in Lowndes County. But she said that she was not aware of the full extent of the crisis until 2017, when a United Nations report compared the conditions in the county to those in the developing world.

For many Black Belt residents, land has been passed down through generations.

Andrew Rives, 83, still raises horses and goats on the 40 acres that his grandfather purchased many years ago near Tyler, Ala., in Lowndes County.

He was proud of owning the land. After the Civil War, the government reneged on its promise to give emancipated people 40 acres and a mule, but Mr. Rives said his grandfather was determined to buy the 40 acres.

Waste flows from his mobile home through a 50-foot pipe into a trench near a creek. When it rains, he said, the waste ends up in the watershed.

Mr. Rives signed up for a new septic tank two years ago, but it is unclear if he will get one before the funding expires. The Lowndes County Unincorporated Wastewater Program has installed around 35 septic tanks since 2024. The group still has around 140 homeowners on its list and Ms. Arnold, the president, hopes to install 30 more systems by October. But slow permit approval could get in the way, as could bad weather.

The organization has also been hampered by a lack of cash reserves to be able to pay for the work upfront. Last May, it took out a $1 million loan from a local bank in order to make progress.

Murline Wilson, 67, has been promised a new septic tank at her home in Wilcox County. She’s eager for her grandchildren to be able to play in the backyard, but she feels terrible for the dozens of homeowners who won’t get one now.

Community outreach officials in the county have whittled a list of 100 homeowners hoping for septic tanks down to 20 by drawing 13 names from a hat, and then giving seven others priority because they signed up first.

“It is really sad. This is one of the poorest counties in Alabama, and we need them,” said Ms. Wilson, referring to the septic tanks. “I was just blessed to get funding.”