Doug Jones addresses supporters at his Victory Speech in Alabama last night.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was fighting a tough battle in his 1960 campaign for President against incumbent VP Richard Nixon, when a harbinger of things to come, presented itself with stunning alacrity. Civil-rights leader and future Nobel laureate Martin Luther King, Jr. was sitting in a DeKalb County, Georgia jail, having been arrested that October week for participating in a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee sit in demonstration. With Election Day looming, Kennedy was galvanized to act on King’s behalf. The then-Senator was a supporter of the civil-rights movement, but he was also enough of a political operator to understand that intervening for the iconic pastor, could gain countless Black votes for his Democratic party in very deep-red territory. Mindful of his recent meeting with King (in which King encouraged JFK to demonstrate his diligence on civil-rights issues to Black voters), the candidate called Ernest Vandiver, the governor of still-Jim-Crowed Georgia. In their pre-dawn conversation, Kennedy asked Vandiver, “Governor, is there any way that you think you could get Martin Luther King out of jail? It would be of tremendous benefit to me.” Vandiver secretly maneuvered his levers of power, and King returned home to Atlanta the next morning, a free man.
That phone call (and one to a pregnant Coretta Scott King) changed the course of American history. Black voters in the South (and everywhere else), came out decisively for JFK, in one of the closest elections in our country’s history. In the 57 years that have elapsed since that dramatic campaign season (Nixon was urged to call King, too, but demurred), Black voters have consistently voted Democratic, most notably in the historic 2008 election that sent Barack Obama to the White House. I never in my life waited three hours to vote, as I did on that momentous morning. My Queens polling place was ringed by a line that stretched nearly half a mile around the school’s running track. Black faces were everywhere.
Last night, Black voters once again proved decisive in an historic election. In one of the reddest states in America, African-Americans sent the first Democrat in 25 years to the Senate, a victory that wouldn’t have happened without them. Doug Jones won a narrow victory over alleged sexual predator Roy Moore, despite President Trump’s outspoken support for the GOP candidate. I’m still gagging—literally and figuratively—at the meanness of spirit that prompted many in the Republican Party to prefer a possible pedophile in the Senate over a Democrat, but this is the tenor of our political environment today. Ironically, Jones’ entry into the Senate—giving Democrats another vote there, was made possible by Trump’s appointment of a man named after two major figures of the Confederacy—former Sen. Jefferson Beaureguard Sessions—as his Attorney General. In large numbers—97% of Black women and 93% of Black men, constituents repudiated Moore’s racist, homophobic, misogynist stance, and gave Democrats a reminder of how to obtain the keys to Congress in next year’s midterms.
Black voters went overwhelmingly for Jones in the cities of Alabama, just as Black voters go for Democrats in cities all over America. In 1960, this was crucially, historically important. (Need an example? JFK literally saved the world from nuclear holocaust just two years later, with his adroit handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I cringe to think how the bellicose Nixon would have addressed that pivotal event.) It’s just as important today, with a dangerous man like Trump in the White House. To regain majorities in the House and Senate, the Democrats will need every minority vote they can get, and that means Black votes, in the most urgent way. I think the party of FDR and Obama would be well-served in recognizing this, and doing seriously aggressive Get Out The Vote outreach over the next 11 months. In majority-minority cities, this is of paramount importance. What the voters in Alabama wrought last night, are the keys to legislative ascendancy, delivered to the Democratic Party on a golden keychain. If Trump and his GOP allies in Congress are to be effectively countered, our blue-party leaders must find a way to get those keys in the electoral door. That starts with looking to Black voters, just as JFK did long, long ago. Go tell it!
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