When Dr. Alice Washington cast her ballot in Louisiana’s District 6 Congressional election in November 2024, she felt excitement and hope in the air. For the first time in far too long, she was voting for a candidate of her choice — one she believed would fight for things her community so desperately needed, like minimum wage increases and better educational opportunities — with some measure of expectation that they might win. By the close of election night, that hope was realized.
Representative Cleo Fields’ victory marked the first time in decades two Black members of Congress would represent Louisiana in Washington, D.C. — a feat only ever achieved in majority-Black districts, where Black voters had an equal opportunity to elect their candidates of choice in the highly polarized state. This milestone was due in no small part to Washington’s advocacy for fair voting maps for Black voters in her home state.
After the Louisiana legislature enacted maps in 2022 that packed Black voters, one-third of the state’s population, into only one majority-Black district out of six total, Washington jumped into action because, she tells LDF, she was “concerned about equity and representation in the state.”
She joined eight other individual voters and two organizations as plaintiffs in an LDF lawsuit that argued the state had violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, the hard-fought, landmark civil rights legislation that prohibits governments from enacting voting practices or district maps that deny any citizen the right to participate equally in the political process on account of their race. Federal courts agreed and, after years of litigation, Louisiana’s legislature was finally compelled to re-draw its map to include a second majority-Black congressional district — transforming the area around Washington’s home in southern Baton Rouge to a majority-Black voting population.
Although the push for fair maps in Louisiana continues — including with a racial gerrymandering challenge brought by “non-African American voters” that reached the U.S. Supreme Court this week — Black voters in Louisiana nonetheless had an unprecedented opportunity to make their voices heard in the last election cycle.
Though Washington is away from the spotlight, preferring to think of herself as one part of broader community efforts that have led to victories like the new 2024 Louisiana congressional map, her work speaks for itself. A quiet force for change, Washington has a doctorate in social work and decades of experience fighting for mental health resources and criminal justice reform for underserved communities in Louisiana and Washington, D.C.
Born in the late 1940s into a large, blended family in Tensas Parish in Louisiana’s Delta region, Washington attended Southern University, a historically Black university in Baton Rouge, where she was a strong student and active in campus life. She graduated with a degree in psychology in 1969 and pursued graduate studies in clinical social work at the University of Oklahoma. The same year, she married her college classmate, a fellow psychology graduate who was attending graduate school at Tulsa University. Washington took her first permanent job as a counselor at a teen pregnancy program before the couple relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1971 with their young daughter. She transferred her graduate studies to The Catholic University School of Social Services in Washington, D.C. and, later, Howard University, where she would complete her master’s degree and doctorate in social work.
In the nation’s capital, Washington fought for mental health resources for people awaiting trial or sentencing, successfully convincing a federal judge that it would be inhumane to deny detained people mental health care. She later worked to support at-risk youth in the underserved Southeast D.C. neighborhood and led efforts to coordinate mental health interventions for unhoused women in the District. Her extensive career encompassed family practice, individual and couple’s therapy, graduate-level teaching, public lecturing, research, and consultation, and her work has been published in numerous journals, newspapers, and magazines.
In the early 2000s, after decades of fighting for marginalized communities, Washington shifted her career track from public social work to the private sector. She joined a Fortune 500 company where she saw success in the marketing field before retiring in 2015 and returning to her home state of Louisiana, where she once again turned her efforts to community advocacy. Working with the Together Baton Rouge branch of Together Louisiana, an interfaith community organizing coalition, she fought for criminal justice reform, tax reform, broadband access, street lighting, better teacher’s pay, Medicare expansion, and more. She lobbied her political representatives as a member of the National Association of Social Workers, established a tech training program for students in her home parish, and joined efforts to combat low voter turnout. To round out her active retirement, Washington is engaged in her church, New Home Ministries Family of Churches of Baton Rouge, and practices karate fitness twice weekly.
Washington’s latest efforts, ensuring the 2024 Louisiana voting maps stay in place, have brought her all the way to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. After years of litigating as a plaintiff in the Voting Rights Act challenge that compelled the Louisiana legislature to pass a new congressional map with two majority-Black districts, Washington once again stepped forward as a litigant to defend that map against a racial gerrymandering challenge in the latest case, Louisiana v. Callais, along with the other original litigants that fought for the new map’s passage. LDF Redistricting Manager Stuart Naifeh argued this case before the Supreme Court on March 24.
Washington reflected on the case’s journey and the weightiness of the moment in an interview with LDF. “This case … is such an important case … Because it is a time when we can establish representation and voter equity, and it [will] inspire all of the residents of the state of Louisiana toward a greater interest in voting, she notes. “It is awe-inspiring to know the Supreme Court is willing to hear our arguments in support of fair maps for the state of Louisiana … It is encouraging to believe we will get a favorable response from the court and that the people of Louisiana will finally be able to become a part of the entire voting process, and feel that they will be heard and their votes will count.”
Naifeh argued before the Court that the 2024 map satisfies both the VRA and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. To Washington, the 2024 map was a lawful attempt to achieve equity in representation among all groups, to right longstanding wrongs, and give citizens hope and belief in the electoral process.
“The newly-drawn District 6 means everything to the voters in the state of Louisiana. It gives us a district where we can count on electing those who represent the views of numbers of people,” she tells LDF.” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act says there should not be discrimination based on race and other factors … These new maps … rid us of that violation … The people of the State of Louisiana need fair representation, and in order to get that representation, we need fair maps.”
Now that oral arguments have concluded, Washington awaits the court’s decision. She’s optimistic and “very hopeful that fair maps will prevail,” she says to LDF. “I believe in our democracy … And I want the Supreme Court to see us, Louisiana. It’s a state I’m proud of, it’s my birth state, and I’m proud to see us moving progressively with this effort, and I want the Supreme Court to be a part of that. I want to be a part of that.”
Whatever the Supreme Court ultimately rules, Washington will continue to be on the front lines of voting rights and voter engagement in Louisiana. Her advice for someone new to voter organizing? Get involved in the first election you can, but don’t stop there – continue the advocacy work year-round. “Just get involved in every aspect of the democratic process,” she says. “Get involved in voting.”
In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court will decide the fate of Louisiana’s congressional map and frame the future of the fight for fair maps nationwide.
The lawsuit argued that by failing to add a second majority-Black district, the maps diluted Black Louisianans voting power, and denied them an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
This piece explores how three states with discriminatory maps have shirked their responsibilities to their constituents, paving the way for the passage of oppressive legislation.
Understanding the role of race in the redistricting process as a means of ensuring equitable representation and political power is critical.
LDF has been fighting for fair maps in key states to ensure that maps are drawn fairly and do not disenfranchise Black voters.
LDF Report
LDF, MALDEF, and AAJC published a guide to the redistricting process, outlining how communities can get involved and advocate for fair maps.
