At the Congressional Black Caucus 's annual legislative conference on Friday, members of Congress and their allies stressed the importance of increasing turnout among black voters as Vice President Kamala Harris seeks the White House.
In Washington, multiple speakers on different panels discussed the ability of black voters to decide the November election, just 53 days from now, pointing to their efforts to boost Harris's successful campaign to replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
More than 44,000 black women and 55,000 black men raised $2.8 million on two Zoom meetings to support Harris's presidential campaign, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) said at a Friday morning panel at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, where the conference is being hosted.
Those two Zoom meetings held in the first two days after Biden announced he was suspending his campaign in July would launch countless other Zoom calls from white women and white men to Italian and Latino voters to raise money for Harris.
"It's black women really leaning into the notion of what we always done," said Jotaka Eaddy, the founder of Win With Black Women , the group that launched the first Zoom meeting for the vice president, who could become the second black person and first woman elected president. "It's that if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready."
Eaddy's group has been hosting Sunday Zoom calls of black women since 2020, when Harris first ran for president and then joined Biden's campaign as vice president. The regular Sunday meetings made the organization ready to pounce and raise money for Harris on the very same day Biden dropped out.
Other black women leaders at a different panel on Friday stressed that this cycle was a culmination of the organizing they have been conducting since at least 2014.
"We were built for this moment. So, when there was an abrupt change in this election cycle, and for someone to be able to step into that, and then for black women to galvanize around that, is because we've been built for this moment," said Glynda Carr, founder of Higher Heights, an organization that helps black female candidates run for office.
One day after Win With Black Women launched its Zoom meeting, Win With Black Men organized its own call to raise money for Harris.
Roland Martin, one of the leaders of the call and a panelist at the Friday conference, stressed that some of the money raised needed to support on-the-ground efforts to boost black voters.
"I said if I'm participating, if we're going to raise money, all the money cannot go to the campaigns," Martin said. "We must split that money. What we did was $450,000 of the $1.5 million raised, specifically said that money will go to funding black male organizations."
Before she was vice president, Harris was the junior senator from California and a member of the Black Caucus. That connection to a powerful voting bloc in Congress would help boost Harris as Biden faced heavy pressure to pick a woman as his vice president during his 2020 run. Four years later, their quick mobilization and support helped beat back any challengers to Harris's campaign.
"We sealed the deal," Sewell said of black women's efforts to help Harris replace Biden.
Martin also stressed that grassroots movement helped lead the campaign's appeal to black male voters. "We knew better how to message [to] black men better than even [the] vice president because we are brothers," he said.
An August poll from the Pew Research Center showed 77% of black voters said they would vote for Harris over former President Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent candidate who suspended his campaign to back Trump. Trump received 13% support from black voters, while Kennedy received 7%.
Of those black voters polled, 79% of black women said they would back Harris, while 73% of black men said they would back Harris.
The vice president has her highest support from black voters from those who are 50 years old and above. They are backing her at 86%, while those aged 18-49 are backing her at the lowest level of support among black voters at 68%.
The former president's campaign has actively worked to peel off enough black male voters away from Democrats to help boost his chances of winning the White House. The Pew survey showed 16% of black men supported Trump compared to 10% of black women backing Trump. Among those aged 18-49, 19% support Trump, his highest level of support among black voters.
Key black Republicans such as Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) crisscrossed the nation, holding events targeting black men in cities in battleground states that will decide the election.
But veteran CBC member Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) said during a live interview with the Black Information Network at the conference that he did not think black men would actually vote for Trump in high numbers in November.
"I just have enough faith in the integrity of black men not to honor with your vote a person who denigrated the first African American president of these United States with his birther lies," Clyburn said, referencing Trump's false claims that former President Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, was not born in the U.S.
However, Joe Paul, a board member of Black Men Vote, stressed that Harris must speak directly to black men's issues during an afternoon panel focused on black male voters. "We need to hear directly from the candidate," he cautioned Harris's campaign.
At last month's Democratic National Convention in Chicago, several black Congress members spoke onstage and at delegate breakfasts, touting Harris's skills and ability to lead the nation as president.
It's a difference from former congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's historic run as the first black presidential candidate to run for a major party's nomination after becoming the first black woman elected to Congress.
Dr. Zinga Fraser, a historian and director of the Shirley Chisholm Project at Brooklyn College, called Chisholm a "political foremother" for Harris because her run for president in 1972 pushed the boundaries of possibilities for black politicians.
"When Chisholm decides to run, unlike Kamala, this is a unique situation. Chisholm is doing it without coming to the Congressional Black Caucus and asking, as you will, permission to do so," said Fraser, the author of the upcoming book Shirley Chisholm in her Own Words: Speeches and Writings.
But more than four decades later: "It was not only black women, but it was the Congressional Black Caucus that refused to have Kamala be overlooked," Fraser said.
In addition to forcing Democrats to take Harris's presidential campaign seriously, many panelists at the conference championed attendees creating a plan for how they and their community members would vote.
"In my community, I do voter education, mobilization, and registration. Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day . What's your plan?" asked Towanda Mullins, chairwoman of the Sojourner Truth Statue Project in Akron, Ohio. "I know what I'm going to be doing."
On the same day as the Friday panels, the Biden-Harris administration released a fact sheet detailing the various ways it has delivered for black people, including lifting 400,000 black children out of poverty through increased SNAP benefits, awarding $10 billion in federal contracts to black-owned small businesses, and investing $16 billion in historically black colleges and universities.
Hours later, Biden celebrated "the first-ever White House brunch to celebrate black excellence."
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But Ambrose Lane Jr., chairman of the Health Alliance Network, stressed at a panel happening at the same time as the brunch that more work was needed to get black men voters educated about what Biden and Harris have been doing for them.
"We have to do a stronger, better job of getting the messaging out with the good information," he said.
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