Alabama’s newly elected Black member of Congress stands on shoulders of family
Shomari Figures has lived his entire life in the shadow of public service. His uncle was an assistant U.S. attorney. His father, Michael Figures, was a civil rights lawyer who served in the Alabama Senate for 18 years. When his father died in 1996, his mother won his seat and took up the fight for justice, protection of children, women’s rights and education for the people of the Mobile area in the state Senate, work she continues to this day.
State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures said her son, even with his pedigree, was not initially interested in law school. Following his father’s death, he was one of three boys for whom she was responsible as she figured out how to carry on.
“Shomari and his two brothers were raised by a single mom from the age of 11,” she said. “It says volumes about single moms — and the people tearing down single moms who say that they can’t raise successful young men.”
Now Shomari Figures is poised to reach a political office higher than anyone in his family before him. Next month, at 39, he will be sworn in as the U.S. representative for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District.
The fact that Figures will be representing the capital city of Montgomery and a swath of counties across South Alabama is another milestone in the long struggle for equal representation in a state where the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act.
But it’s not only because Figures is Black — or because he is the scion of a family so deeply intertwined with civil rights history in Alabama.
The majority-Black district that he will represent was created after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 ruled that Alabama lawmakers had adopted a voting map that violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it discriminated against Black citizens, who would have had a majority in only one of seven congressional districts even though they comprise 26% of the state’s population.
“The election of Shomari Figures in Congressional District 2 shows that when we create fairer voting maps, legislatures will actually start to reflect the diversity of their electorate,” said Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang. “For far too long, gerrymandering has deliberately attempted to silence Black voters in Alabama.
“This victory is not only an important win for Black political representation in the state. It also sends a leader to Congress who will be responsive to the needs and values of communities of color in Alabama, who need strong champions.”
If a strong champion could be minted, it’s hard to imagine one with a more powerful background than the one Figures brings to the table.
Following the path
Sen. Figures said she told her son while he was an undergraduate at the University of Alabama that he should follow in his father’s footsteps and become a lawyer.
“I saw him as being able to be a great lawyer very early,” she said. “He wasn’t excited about law school, so I started praying. Not long after that, he told me he wanted to go.
“Shomari was a very intelligent and inquisitive child who always asked questions, watched the news and read the newspaper. He was also a prolific writer. As a child he also loved to entertain and play with his younger cousins and other children. He was always willing to help anyone he could. Anything he couldn’t do he sought help to take care of it. He made it his business to make people feel welcome and comfortable wherever he was.”
After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Law in 2010, Shomari worked as a law clerk for a federal judge in Missouri. Then he got a taste of politics as a field organizer for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, and later joined the Obama White House as the domestic director of presidential personnel.
His career in public service was just beginning as he gained valuable experience in the ways of Washington, D.C. He went on to work for U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch as her liaison to the Obama White House, as legislative counsel to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and as deputy chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Figures told the SPLC that he always knew he had an obligation to use the talent and knowledge he gained to serve others.
“I grew up in a house of public servants,” he said. “My parents have been in an elected position every day of my life. It was always sort of a question that was presented to me: How do you take what God is giving you — whether that’s financially or resources, or education or skills, talents, networks, or whatever it is — how do you take that and put it to use for the benefit of the community, the people and places that are responsible for you being you? For me, that place has always been Alabama.”
Family’s role in shutting down the Klan
In the late 1970s — more than a decade after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act brought down the scaffolding of Jim Crow segregation — racism and resentment continued to burn in the hearts of many white people in the Deep South. In Alabama, the Ku Klux Klan began to reemerge from the shadows.
This time, the landscape was different.
Both Shomari’s uncle and father would play key roles in a groundbreaking SPLC case that destroyed the United Klans of America (UKA) — an Alabama-based faction that had been responsible for a reign of terror and murder during the Civil Rights Movement.
On the night of March 20, 1981, two UKA members abducted a 19-year-old Black man at random in Mobile. They drove him into the woods, where they beat and killed him, then hung his body from a tree in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The city police investigated the murder of Michael Donald as a drug deal gone bad.
But Thomas Figures, Shomari’s uncle, who three years earlier had become the city’s first Black assistant U.S. attorney, persuaded the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a federal investigation — one that led to the conviction of the killers.
From his office in Montgomery, civil rights lawyer and SPLC co-founder Morris Dees followed the case closely and suspected a deeper conspiracy. Subsequently, Dees developed a plan. On behalf of Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, he and the SPLC filed a groundbreaking civil suit against the UKA, alleging that its members conspired to kill Donald.
Sen. Figures said she had introduced her husband to Beulah Mae Donald, who was a volunteer for a program she directed that paired low-income senior citizens with special needs children. That relationship helped convince her that she should work with the SPLC.
A key breakthrough came when Michael Figures, who was lead counsel in the SPLC case, helped persuade one of the killers to work with the SPLC and to testify in state court.
In 1987, an all-white jury in Mobile returned a historic $7 million verdict against the UKA, bankrupting the group. Former SPLC President Richard Cohen worked on the case and recalled Michael Figures’ delivery of the final argument.
“Michael was the one who handled that, and I think it was very, very dramatic,” Cohen said. “Michael was a fine lawyer. His questions were very good, and his closing argument was quite moving.”
Not only did the verdict result in the UKA giving up its property, including its headquarters, the SPLC uncovered new evidence leading to the indictment of the UKA’s “grand titan,” who later collapsed during his trial and died before he could be retried.
‘Sacrifices that were made’
The Klan prosecution and litigation was just one facet of the Figures family legacy. When he began his service as a state senator in 1978, Michael Figures was one of three Black senators in Alabama. As a freshman senator, he took part in a filibuster against Alabama’s death penalty. He also served as the state chairman for Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
Thomas Figures resigned from his position in 1985 in protest after then-U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions prosecuted community activists in Perry County for alleged voter fraud. The defendants, who were acquitted, said they were helping illiterate voters mark their ballots, and only made changes when the voters asked them to do so.
Michael Figures delivered the closing argument on behalf the defendants in that case, on Sept. 3, 1985, a date his wife remembers very well.
“Michael missed the birth of his son Shomari because he was making closing arguments at that trial,” Sen. Figures said.
The next year, when Sessions was nominated to a federal judgeship, Thomas Figures testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which eventually rejected Sessions’ appointment. And, two decades after her brother-in-law spoke out against him, Sen. Figures became the first Black female nominee for the U.S. Senate from a major party in Alabama, receiving 37% of the 2008 vote against Jeff Sessions.
“I think when you grow up in Alabama, regardless of who your parents are, you learn very early on the sacrifices that were made on behalf of you as a person of color in the state,” Shomari Figures said. “Sacrifices that were made … on behalf of all Americans, from the inception of the Civil Rights Movement to its execution in the form of the bus boycott … and some of the Montgomery marches getting us to where we got in terms of the civil rights accomplishments that we now pride ourselves on as a nation.
“Knowing that you come from that place where so many people have done so many things, literally sacrificed life and limb for you to have those opportunities, that inspires you.”
In a twist, it would be a U.S. Supreme Court redistricting case, Allen v. Milligan, that would redraw the district that Shomari Figures won.
“My father was involved in a lot of those cases, everything from the voting rights space to land rights of minorities, to even being a named plaintiff in the case that created the 1st Congressional District that Terri Sewell now represents,” he said. “So I think that enhances that obligation for me.”
His mother was equally active on the voter rights front. Sen. Figures was a sponsor of the bill to redraw the latest congressional district map, creating the new 2nd District.
Challenges ahead
After winning his seat on Nov. 5, the challenges he faced became immediately apparent. Not only would Shomari Figures be serving as a blue dot in a delegation that glows red, he would be part of the House minority while Republicans also control the U.S. Senate and the White House.
As part of the steadfastly conservative Alabama congressional delegation, Figures said that he believes there is common ground to be explored and issues that can be solved — most notably the disappearance of rural hospitals and health care options in underserved communities.
“Alabama has the lowest life expectancy in the United States of America, for all intents and purposes, along with Mississippi and West Virginia,” he said. “That’s not a Democrat or Republican issue, because there’s not a significant racial disparity in the life expectancy in the state. Issues like that literally are about access. They transcend political lines, they transcend socioeconomic lines, they transcend racial lines.”
Sen. Figures says her son is highly capable of thriving even in a hostile House.
“I have no doubt that Shomari will meet the challenge and will show everyone who he is and how he can work with anyone,” she said. “With his leadership skills, he will find common ground and work with others to find solutions for his district, Alabama and our country.”
Picture at top: Shomari Figures, the U.S. representative for Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. The new district encompasses the capital city and a swath of counties across South Alabama.
