Black women are the backbone of the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris moved them to the foreground

For years, Black women in the Democratic Party have toiled in silence. But in recent years, Eric Garcia reports, things have changed

In 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer, the head of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, spoke in stark detail about how she was brutally beaten in a police cell for seeking the right to vote.

“All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens,” she said.

Hamer and other Black people in heart of the Deep South had lived under a cruel racial apartheid regime in the United States for years. Her goal was to speak at the convention and offer an alternative to the segregationist delegation of Dixiecrats from her state.

“And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America,” she said. “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”

In the 60 years since Hamer’s speech, the Democratic Party has relied on Black women as the most consistent organizing force and a reliable voting bloc. But at the same time, they would often be relegated to the background, while white politicians and then later Black male politicians ascended to the highest ranks.

On Thursday night in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a very different speech at 2024’s Democratic National Convention. Her speech marks an important moment: Black women have finally reached a point where they are at the forefront of the party.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader of the Freedom Democratic party, spoke before the credentialing committee of the Democratic National Committee. (Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Harris has borrowed the slogan “For the People” from Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black woman to run for president. And she is only one of three Black women to have served as a United States Senator.

“It’s for a long time been stated that Black women were characterized as the backbone of the Democratic Party like that is true, not just in folks who have been volunteering on the ground, volunteering as poll workers,” Senator Laphonza Butler of California told The Independent last month. “What I believe we are seeing is a manifestation of decades of commitment to a party where Black women have been more than happy in the past to work behind the scenes.”

The convention has highlighted two other Black women who won their primaries. On Wednesday, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware delivered a primetime address; and on Tuesday evening, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland did the same. Alsobrooks had beaten a self-funded Democratic congressman named David Trone earlier this year, but had the backing of almost the entire Maryland Democratic political establishment, underscoring how much money and political capital Black women need to get to the top.

Some Black Democratic consultants are putting muscle behind it. A’shanti Gholar, president of Emerge, has promoted fundraisers for Harris such as White Dudes for Harris.

“We know the issues in our community like the back of our hand,” she told The Independent. “So of course, we're going to be putting our name on the ballot, and with so much going on in the world, we know that we need those diverse lived experiences if we really want to have an inclusive democracy, to have a representative democracy.”

No Black woman in the US has ever won a governorship. During the convention, Democrats applauded Stacey Abrams as she roamed around the Hyatt Regency. Her historic campaign for governor of Georgia in 2018 led to a narrow loss to Brian Kemp, during which she refused to concede, attributing her loss to voter disenfranchisement.

Abrams would go on to lay the groundwork for Georgia voting for Biden, but would lose by a larger margin in 2022 in a rematch against Kemp. Similarly, in 2021, two Black women ran for the Democratic nomination for governor, but both lost to Terry McAuliffe, a white former governor, who would go on to lose to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

“It blows my mind [that] we're still having firsts but we have worked very hard to get to this place, and I'm very excited to see it,” Representative Jennifer McClellan told The Independent. McClellan became the first Black woman elected to Congress from Virginia in a special election.

“I think the biggest hurdle that I saw was imagination — people just could not see it,” she said, while discussing her campaign and the hurdles in getting elected.

“We need people to do more than just say yes, they support candidates, but to actually put their money where their mouth is, put their footwork where their mouth is,” she continued. “So if you see a woman who's doing the work, who has the qualifications, who's exciting, then get behind it the same way you would any other candidate.”

And there are signs Harris will need plenty of infrastructure once she leaves Chicago. Earlier this week, former president Donald Trump went on conservative talk host Hugh Hewitt’s show and blasted her membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha, a Black sorority.

“She went actually to a [sorority] party, and you know that,” he said. “And a very unimportant one. They have them numerous times during the year. It’s a shame.”

Considering the organizing strength of Black women now, Trump might be about to find out how supposedly unimportant such parties can be.

Throughout the weekend, Harris and Hamer’s names seemed to rhyme. On Thursday evening, as Harris was about to walk in, Nancy Rotering, the mayor of Highland Park, Illinois, filed in and wore a sticker commemorating Hamer.