Mrs. Kelly's district was horseshoe shaped, almost as weird a crea- tion as the Massachusetts district drawn by Elbridge Gerry in the nineteenth century. A Boston political cartoonist added claws and eyes to that one and christened it a new mythologi- cal beast, the "Gerrymander." If the word had not existed, it would have been necessary to invent it to describe the con- gressional map designed to disenfranchise minorities, espe- cially blacks, in New York City before the middle nineteen sixties.
