by Curtis Bunn
Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s senior advisor, put it this way: “Children today are growing up thinking it’s perfectly normal to have a president who is African American. We’re not afraid to say this is going to help Black people.”
But it couldn’t last forever.
In 2016, Obama ended his last speech as president at the Democratic National Convention the way he started his journey: with hope, fire, and a charge to do more that symbolized Black political clout.
“The America I know is full of courage and optimism and ingenuity. The America I know is decent and generous,” Obama said in the months leading up to the end of his terms. “We’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who hasn’t yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.”
Even though Obama had left the office, his election was a watershed moment for Black Americans. Powell showed a Black person could be an agent of change within the federal government. Shirley Chisholm showed a Black person could run for president. Jesse Jackson showed a Black candidate could garner significant support. David Dinkins showed us how far this nation still had to go. Douglas Wilder showed no job is too big.
Obama’s victories were a cumulative effort of that lineage that spanned decades.
After his presidency, though, the push and pull of American politics came into play, much like it did after Dinkins was mayor of New York.
“What I did for New York,” Giuliani said, “Donald Trump will do for America.”
He was dishearteningly right.
The 2010s
While the 2010s were undoubtedly a dark period in American politics, where Donald Trump was elected despite his incompetence and his inflamed racist rhetoric, there were some incandescent spots during this period, in particular with the rise of Kamala Harris.
In 2011, Kamala Harris became the thirty-second attorney general of California, having previously served as the district attorney of San Francisco. Harris was the first woman district attorney in San Francisco, as well as the first African American woman to serve as attorney general of California. As attorney general, Harris pioneered the “Back on Track” initiative, which had participants fill out a personal responsibility plan regarding their goals, rather than serve jail time. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a step in the right direction.
Harris received sometimes harsh criticism for what was called a “failure to police the police” when there were officer-involved shootings. As a prosecutor in San Francisco, her record on jailing Black defendants drew the ire of many who believed she issued lengthy sentences that did not fit the crimes.
For her part, Harris vehemently defends her record. “There have been those who have questioned my motivations, my beliefs and what I’ve done. But my mother used to say, ‘You don’t let people tell them who you are. You tell them who you are.’ Self-appointed political commentators do not get to define who we are and what we believe.
“I knew prosecutors have not always done the work of justice,” Harris said, to approving murmurs in the audience. “There have been prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row, and looked the other way in the face of police brutality.
“It matters who is in those rooms,” she added. “I knew I had to be in those rooms. We always have to be in those rooms, especially and even when there aren’t many like us there.”
In 2017, Kamala Harris would be elected to the U.S. Senate. Not long after, she would announce her candidacy for president of the United States.
One of Harris’s allies in the Senate was Cory Booker of New Jersey, who was elected in 2013 after serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Booker, who would later run against Harris in the presidential primaries, was the first African American to be elected to the Senate since Barack Obama. As a U.S. senator, Booker wrote, sponsored, and helped pass legislation on affirmative action, advancing women’s rights, same-sex marriage, and single-payer health care.
Like Rangel, Booker considered the racial wealth gap to be a critical issue and has pushed for economic reforms. Reforming the criminal justice system was another area he took to heart. As mayor of Newark, Booker made a name for himself in fighting crime—literally—when he chased down an armed robber in front of city hall. He also saved a woman’s life by rescuing her from a burning building. He also lived for eight years in a high-rise apartment where many low-income tenants relied on federal housing assistance. That was his power: He connected to his constituents.
Substantively, Newark saw restaurants and hotels rise, companies moved their headquarters downtown, and the city earned $1 billion in real estate sales in 2012 and 2013. And after sixty years of decreased population, Newark’s population grew under Booker.
2020
Before Harris left the Senate for the vice presidency, she and Booker teamed to write an article in 2020 for Rolling Stone: “To Save Black Lives, Congress Must Act Boldly.” In it, they wrote a piece that served as a clarion call to their colleagues.
“Across our nation, protesters are again forcing America to confront the ways our country has failed, and continues to fail, Black Americans and fall short of our foundational aspirations, that we are a nation of liberty and justice for all.
“And, critically, these activists are calling on all of us to make this time in our history more than a passing moment, but a movement. To do that, we have to act boldly.
“We cannot settle on an inadequate middle ground that will simply nibble around the edges instead of making real change. If someone’s knee is on your neck, you cannot take it halfway off and call it progress.
“There is no halfway when people’s lives are at stake. We save them or we do not.
“The choice is still up to Congress.”
The responsibility they wrote about was to be assumed, in particular, by Black women politicians, who made history and galvanized a key voting bloc that changed the power structure in Congress.
Black Women Stand Tall
By Curtis Bunn
If there was any doubt about the power and influence of the Black woman or questions about her galvanizing force and burgeoning strength, such notions were eviscerated in 2020.
In a year of so much upheaval, when the nation was desperate for change—socially and politically—Black women seized the opportunity to save America from itself. And they delivered.
So much was on the line: justice, civility, public health, national security—and all of it depended on flipping the White House from an administration that had botched the deadly coronavirus pandemic response, intensified the racial divide, fabricated a culture of contemptible behavior, and weakened the country’s ability to protect itself from foreign adversaries.
Once that was done, the next challenge was the two up-for-grabs Senate seats that Democrats needed to control lawmaking ability in Washington, D.C.
None of it was too daunting for Black women—especially Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia state representative who ascended from a gut-wrenching loss in a gubernatorial race to become perhaps the most celebrated and galvanizing force around the vote.
In 2018, Stacey Abrams lost her bid to become the state’s first Black governor to Brian Kemp by 55,000 votes in a contentious race. She said she spent ten days in mourning, or sitting “shiva. And then I started plotting.”
Abrams was devastated by the voter suppression that became a major rallying cry for Black Lives Matter and others who wanted to protect the right of Black people to vote.
The thing about voter suppression is that the efforts are usually designed to impact Black people. Of all the tactics used over the years to squash the Black vote—gerrymandering, questionable voter identification laws, voter registration restrictions, voter purges, felony disenfranchisement—Trump’s claims may have been t
he most blatant.
As he continually spewed the unfounded idea that an election he lost by 7 million votes was rigged against him, he essentially wanted to cast aside millions of Black votes that he knew were likely for Biden.
Interesting that Trump’s issues were not only in the states he lost that he needed and expected to win—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona—but that the votes he wanted to contest—throw out—were in the cities with high Black population: Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Phoenix, respectively. That was not a coincidence. And because America is America, he believed his attempt to negate the Black vote would be accepted universally. It was not.
But there was damage done by Trump’s tricks. It riled his venomous supporters. And surely in the future, GOP candidates will find his way viable. “Even after Trump’s presidency ends, that message will pave the way for GOP politicians and judges to further one of their party’s and the conservative movement’s most important ongoing projects: restricting voting rights,” attorney Jay Willis affirmed. “Trump lost this election, but he can still help Republicans win in the future.”
And Black voters will lose—but not if Abrams has a say in it. She created Fair Fight, an organization that worked to fight voter suppression and assure fair elections. Abrams and her group covering Georgia worked with an edge, ferocity, and commitment. They registered an astonishing 800,000 new voters in advance of the 2020 general election. Stop right there when looking for reasons Biden took out Trump.
Abrams’s achievement is heightened by the circumstances under which she operated. Many have declared that the governorship was swiped from her. Her opponent, Kemp, was secretary of state and in charge of the election—a red flag. Weeks before voting day, an investigation found the state had improperly purged 340,000 people from voter registration rolls without warning. Additionally, Kemp blocked 53,000 people—80 percent of whom were Black—from being able to register to vote because of minor discrepancies. Probable voter suppression. Clearly, forces were at work to prevent her from making history.
Abrams—another product of a historically Black college, specifically Spelman College—acquiesced to the verdict, but she did not concede defeat.
In what was a nonconcession speech, Abrams made it clear her discontent with not just the outcome, but how it came to be. There was “deliberate and intentional” voter suppression by Kemp, she said.
“Pundits and hyperpartisans will hear my words as a rejection of the normal order,” Abrams said. “You see, I’m supposed to say nice things and accept my fate. They will complain that I should not use this moment to recap what was done wrong or to demand a remedy. You see, as a leader I should be stoic in my outrage and silent in my rebuke.
“But stoicism is a luxury and silence is a weapon for those who would quiet the voices of the people. And I will not concede because the erosion of our democracy is not right.”
The depths of Abrams’s resolve, though, came to the fore in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. Not many would have blamed her if she had receded from public view to mend from the pain of her defeat. But Abrams would not allow the erosion of democracy to erode her spirit.
“I learned long ago that winning doesn’t always mean you get the prize. Sometimes you get progress, and that counts,” she said.
Abrams achieved progress that hardly anyone believed was possible in Georgia. Fair Fight Action—and other ground-game organizations—galvanized the Black vote. The Biden-Harris ticket won, a stunning accomplishment.
More than 1.2 million Blacks voted in Georgia, more than double the number in the 2016 election, according to the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. Of those registered to vote after November 2018, half were people of color and 45 percent were under thirty, demographics that customarily lean Democrat. Biden won by 11,000 votes, making it clear that the Abrams-led voter push took him over the top.
As gracious as she was determined, Abrams often demurred when praised for her work. She refused several interviews and at one point in November sent out an all-encompassing Tweet: “My heart is full. Georgia, let’s shout out those who’ve been in the trenches and deserve the plaudits for change.”
For sure, there was a contingent of other Black women who were instrumental in turning Georgia from red to blue, including Tamieka Atkins, Helen Butler, Nsé Ufot, and Deborah Scott, all from other organizations that were committed to catapulting Biden over Trump. There also was LaTosha Brown’s Black Votes Matter organization, which tapped into counties small and large around Georgia to register voters.
But Abrams’s efforts were particularly noteworthy because of what it took for her to rebound from the loss. “It’s one of those few moments where we have this power to shape the future for ourselves, to insist upon at least attention to our plight, and to demand behavior that meets this notion that we have as a nation that there should be justice for all,” she said.
Abrams’s efforts created a sort of cult following or admiration society among Black women from all walks. Inside and outside of politics, they were inspired by her bounce back from the loss to Kemp and the commitment she showed in galvanizing the vote. Bonita Potter-Brown, principal of Lenna W. Conrow Early Childhood Learning Center in Long Branch, New Jersey, was one of the many Black women Abrams touched. She said Abrams’s efforts inspire her as a leader of young students.
“Stacey Abrams didn’t lose [in 2018],” Potter-Brown said. “She won. The power she brought to the 2020 election was enormous. Many people, no matter who the president is, will be okay. We may not like them, but it may be not so crushing that we couldn’t live. But we care because it’s about the community at large, people who look like me and who need leadership that cares about them.
“That’s why Stacey Abrams is such a big deal. She didn’t let that [2018] election stop her. She worked for a bigger purpose. And think about it: If she had won the Georgia governor position, would she have had the opportunity to raise all that money and get out eight hundred thousand people to vote, flipping Georgia? As an insider, her hands may have been tied.
“And from a spiritual standpoint, you may feel defeated, but God always has something better planned for you on the other side. That’s a lesson for all of us in her. God allowed her to keep her faith and keep her purpose in mind. And it’s working for the better good for all citizens.”
La Detra White, a business owner in Atlanta who is engrossed in politics and women’s causes, was another Black Abrams inspired. “Stacey, they tore her to kibbles and bits,” White said. “And she got stronger. She knew everyone coming after her was emboldened by Trump. Southerners like being racists but they don’t want to be called a racist.
“What Trump did, is he showed people’s slips. He shed a light on the worse of the worse of the worse. And Stacey did her thing in the face of all that.”
Abrams faced defeat, devastating defeat, in the past, but did not let it block her from her path. She was in contention for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, an honor that was unthinkable to her mother raising her daughter in Gulfport, Mississippi. Abrams wanted it badly—but did not get it. And yet, she carried on, not accepting it as a loss, but as an inspiration.
In her impassioned book Lead from the Outside—a title that was prophetic—she wrote:
Concession accepts an act as right or proper. And society’s existence necessitates the act of compromise—of bending our wants to the needs of others. Leadership is a constant search for the distinction between when compromise is an act of power and when concession masks submission—or when the fight is on.
I don’t simply speak for myself. I had the hopes, dreams, and demands of 1.9 million Georgians standing with me. And thousands more who had been unfairly, unlawfully silenced. And whether speaking up is about an unfair election or a flawed system of workplace promotion, the obligation remains the same: once we recognize that wrong exists, we must fight to change it every day.
But this passage by Abrams offers high-definition insight
into who she is and why she has done what she has done:
When we win, we achieve beyond ourselves. We become models for others, known or unknown, who see our victories as proof they can win, too. Even by simply embracing ambition, talking about it, trying and failing, we mentor others to see their potential. And by going beyond our own limits, we change the places we inhabit. We bring a fresh perspective to a company or a cause, a minority lens that expands and shifts how the work gets done. This is not news.
When I work with young people and others seeking leadership positions, they are primed to jump to the third question, to the how of it, without understanding the what or the why. Some pick a place they want to land or a title they like and then expect teleportation. It may sound corny, but so many of us forget that finding and fulfilling ambition is truly a journey, and one that does not come with a map or GPS, especially for those of us on the outside looking to get in. The effort can be sweaty, teary, and messy as much as it can be rewarding and empowering. I call it the hard work of becoming more.
She has personified that ideal. And so did Kamala Harris, the former California senator who was elevated to become the first Black and South Asian woman vice president, alongside Biden.
Her nomination was a watershed moment in American history. Her presence on Biden’s ticket was, in the end, a stroke of political acumen by Biden, although it was questioned in many circles when he locked himself in by committing to a Black woman running mate.
Was America ready for a Black woman as second in command behind a seventy-eight-year-old president? Barack Obama was one thing, but in a vastly chauvinistic and racist society, could the U.S. embrace the fact that a Black woman would be one step away from commander in chief?
The Biden-Harris ticket prevailed because Black women saw to it for more than the fact that Harris, in many ways, represented them—although that surely mattered. She was relatable in that she embraced her Blackness, was a graduate from historically Black Howard University and a member of the oldest Black women’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. She connected with HBCUers, overall, and the Divine Nine—the collection of Black sororities and fraternities, historically rife with competitive instincts—joined forces in supporting “one of their own” in the groundbreaking bid.