The Nation - News from Aug. 9, 1989

A federal judge in Chattanooga, Tenn., ruled that city’s 78-year-old at-large commission form of government is unconstitutional because it violates the voting rights of blacks. “Yes, it does work--the American justice system does work,” Tommie Brown proclaimed after learning of the ruling in the suit she filed along with nine other black leaders in 1987. U.S. District Judge R. Allen Edgar decided that Chattanooga’s at-large system dilutes the voting strength of blacks in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. His 50-page ruling noted that under the system, adopted in 1911, no black ran for a commission post until 1955. Since then, 16 blacks have run for seats on the commission, but only one has been elected, even though blacks make up roughly one-third of the city’s population.