How Black voters swiftly rallied around Kamala Harris this week

Some of the most crucial and largest groups among the Black voter base have cemented their support for Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee this week, mobilizing swiftly through virtual calls and social media to get behind what could be America’s first Black woman president.

On Wednesday, Harris addressed the historically Black Zeta Phi Beta sorority, making her case to thousands of Black women who share an almost 40-year connection with her.

"Our nation needs your leadership once again," Harris, who joined the historically Black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in 1986, said during her speech. "In this moment, we face a choice between two different visions for our nation. One focused on the future, and the other focused on the past. With your support, I am fighting for our nation's future."

Here’s how Harris’s presidential candidacy has revitalized the Black vote for Democrats.

Virtual calls mobilize crucial Black voter blocs

Gabby Cudjoe Wilkes, a New York-based pastor, community organizer and Harris’s sorority sister, told Yahoo News that she learned President Biden was stepping down from the 2024 presidential race minutes before her sermon on Sunday. She said churchgoers at her Brooklyn congregation were shocked and concerned.

But by the time she returned home that afternoon, she noticed the mood suddenly shifted following Biden’s endorsement of Harris into what she called “palpable” enthusiasm.

“Suddenly, people began to awaken to the true possibility that a Black woman could potentially become our president,” Cudjoe Wilkes explained. “By that night, I had text messages from women across the country telling me to join the weekly Win With Black Women call.”

Win With Black Women, a group that describes itself as “intergenerational, intersectional Black women leaders throughout the nation making a difference” by supporting Black women, has held weekly calls for four years, Cudjoe Wilkes said.

The group held a call on Sunday night and expected around 1,000 people to join, Cudjoe Wilkes said. To their surprise, more than 44,000 people joined the call to pledge their support for Harris. They raised over $1.5 million in three hours.

“We thought it would be special,” said Cudjoe Wilkes. “We had no idea 44,000 women would respond to the call. We all felt compelled to give.”

Other groups organized by Black voters have followed suit.

On Monday, over 230,000 people joined Win With Black Men — a group created to provide resources and support Black men — in another call and raised $1.3 million in four hours.

The National Council of Negro Women — an organization made up of over 300 campus and community-based organizations and 33 national women’s groups — also held a call on Tuesday, where about 5,000 people joined.

The Black church, long seen as the foundation of the Black community, has also rallied around Harris. The Black Church PAC — an initiative led by Black pastors across the country to elect progressive leaders — has created a movement and petition to support Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.

The National Pan-Hellenic Council, which is composed of nine of the historically Black fraternities and sororities, including Harris’s sorority, also mobilized this week to “ensure strong voter turnout” in their respective communities.

Harris’s candidacy resets race for Democrats

Biden dropping out of the race reenergized a voter base that has long been crucial in winning the presidency for Democrats. Black women during the 2020 election, for example, were 7% of the electorate, according to a voter survey from the Associated Press, but 93% of them voted for Biden, which helped him clinch crucial swing states including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan.

However, support for Democrats, which is still Black voters’ favored party, has fallen by almost 20% in the last three years, according to a February Gallup poll.

The Pew Research Center released a poll in April that found 49% of Black voters would replace Biden and former President Donald Trump if they could. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that young Black voters were largely unenthused by four more years of Biden. Now Harris’s time has come — and she’s galvanizing Democratic-leaning Black voters.

Although large blocs of the Black voter base have rallied their resources and support around Harris, convincing Black voters who may be undecided about voting for her is still a challenge.

“She’s got to show some strength,” Nathaniel Gaines of Milwaukee told the New York Times. “I don’t want to put my energy into someone who’s going to forget about me after the election.”

The Trump campaign has also tried to woo Black voters as well, holding rallies in cities with large Black populations like Detroit and Bronx, N.Y. However, approximately 7 in 10 Black voters “have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump,” according to a June poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

While some Black voters may be wary of her record as vice president and as a prosecutor in California, the calls for solidarity are reminiscent of those for Barack Obama in 2008, when the prospect of the first Black president in the U.S. conjured up a new sense of possibility.

“We haven’t felt this momentum in a long time,” Cudjoe Wilkes said. “We’re feeling hopeful again.”