North Carolina's 12th congressional district
| North Carolina's 12th congressional district | |
|---|---|
Map of North Carolina's 12th congressional district as of January 2013
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| Current Representative | Alma Adams (D–Greensboro) |
| Area | 827 sq mi (2,140 km2) |
| Distribution |
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| Population (2000) | 619,178 |
| Median income | 35,775 |
| Ethnicity |
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| Occupation |
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| Cook PVI | D+23 |
North Carolina's 12th congressional district is located in central North Carolina and comprises portions of Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Lexington, Salisbury, Concord, and High Point.
It was one of two minority-majority Congressional districts created in the state in the 1990s. As of the 2000 United States Census, there is a small plurality of White Americans in the district, though African Americans make up comparable proportion of its voting population.
North Carolina had a twelfth seat in the House in the nineteenth century and in the mid-twentieth century (1943–1963).
The district was re-established after the 1990 United States Census, when North Carolina gained a House seat due to an increase in population. It was drawn in 1992 as one of two minority-majority districts, designed to give African-American voters (who comprised 22% of the state's population at the time) the chance to elect a representative of their choice; Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibited the dilution of voting power of minorities by distributing them among districts so that they could never elect candidates of their choice.
In its original configuration, the district had a 64 percent African-American majority in population. The district boundaries, stretching from Gastonia to Durham, were so narrow at some points that it was no wider than a highway lane. It followed Interstate 85 almost exactly. One state legislator famously remarked, after seeing the district map, "if you drove down the interstate with both car doors open, you’d kill most of the people in the district."
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