"I'm very proud to be able to represent Mississippi and therefore many black people," says 43-year-old district attorney Scott Colom. After the midterm elections, there was a day-long deadlock in the counting process, with a few thousand votes at stake. After almost all the votes were counted, Republican Senator Hyde-Smith admitted her defeat. The Democrats have now won 55 seats in the Senate and another state that was considered a Republican stronghold.
"I just had the courage to imagine a night like this," Colom told hundreds of people gathered at Tougaloo College for his victory celebration. “I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to realize that we can show the entire country that Mississippi matters."
Colom's family is a seventh-generation Mississippi resident. His parents were already involved in the civil rights movement for the rights of blacks. “Because of the sacrifices of my ancestors, I knew I had no excuses to keep fighting,” Colom says.
His last campaign video showed him in front of the home of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Jackson. After the Second World War, he campaigned to ensure that black Americans could vote. In 1963 he was murdered in front of his home. Colom therefore called on voters to use their right to honor champions like Evers.
The strategy: go, listen, learn
More than a third of Mississippi's population is black. To win, Colom also had to win over white voters. He also deliberately sought out conversations with Donald Trump's voters and talked about his father, who, unlike him, was a Republican and had worked in Ronald Reagan's transition team.
Go, listen, learn - that's how he describes his strategy. Colom's recipe for success: He repeatedly mentioned the high food and gasoline prices, the expensive health insurance and the hospitals in the countryside that were threatened with closure. The prosecutor promises to fight for higher wages. He repeatedly accused his Republican opponent of not defending Mississippi's interests in Washington.
Elaborate persuasion work
He also hired a social media team that repeatedly showcased him and his family in a humorous way. That was received.
But years of organizational work are also behind the success. Local civil rights groups helped young people register to vote and mobilize black voters. The organizers approached people who had not voted for a long time.
Community organizer Natt Offiah from the People's Advocacy Institute explains how much persuasion was sometimes necessary: "Some have said, we've had hope so many times and nothing has ever changed. Our vote doesn't count anyway." With Scott Colom, having the chance to have a senator with whom many black people can identify convinced many people.
A long stage ends
The struggle for black democratic participation in Mississippi dates back to the end of the Civil War in 1865. After slavery was abolished, black men could no longer be denied the right to vote and could also hold political office.
Mississippi, of all places, even sent the first two black senators in US history to Washington. But white racists soon fought the new freedoms with terror. In hardly any other state have armed groups like the Ku Klux Klan attacked and intimidated black voters as massively as they did in Mississippi.
Mississippi then tightened its voting rights in 1890: poll taxes as well as reading and constitutional tests prevented blacks from voting. As recently as 1964, just under seven percent of the black population of voting age were registered to vote. Only the civil rights movement and the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 gradually changed this.
Mississippi has not had a black representative in the U.S. Congress since 1881. This long stage now ends with Scott Colom. He has made history, says Maati Jone Primm proudly in Jackson, whose ancestors were taken to Mississippi as slaves: "Mississippi has been overlooked, ignored and underestimated for far too long. With Scott Colom, we finally have a voice in Washington that has an eye on us and knows what we need."
