In 1980, whenCity of Mobile v. Bolden came before the Supreme Court, the city of Mobile, Alabama, had been governed since 1911 by a City Commission consisting of three members, all elected by the voters at large. Slightly more than one-third of those voters were African American. Yet in the sixty-nine years between 1911 and 1980, not a single African American had ever won election to the City Commission. Two factors handicapped African American candidates. First, white voters tended to vote for whites and against blacks. Indeed, the pattern appears to have been one of “racially polarized voting” in which white voters tended to vote against African Americans' candidates of choice even when most African Americans supported a white candidate. Second, the city's at-large voting structure permitted white votes to dominate black votes for every seat on the Commission. If the city had been divided into three separate voting districts, each electing its own city commissioner, it would have been easy to create a predominantly African American district. The city's African American minority then would have had a chance at electoral representation.