Scott Colom made history yesterday, becoming the first black American to be elected to the Senate from Mississippi. He's also the first Democrat elected in the deep-red state since 1982. He's now the 55th Democrat in the Senate of the 120th Congress.
It was a victory of historic moment for Mississippi, the South, and America:
About a thousand people gathered on the Woodworth Chapel Lawn at Tougaloo College, a historic black college in Jackson. A DJ played classic southern line dance tunes and much of the crowd obliged, dancing while they waited for Scott Colom, Mississippi’s new senate-elect, to arrive.
All of the Divine 9, a nickname for the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), an umbrella organization of nine historically Black Greek-letter fraternities and sororities, were represented, their members proudly wearing paraphernalia bearing their organization’s letters. Others were decked out in gear from some of the state’s colleges and universities – Tougaloo College, of course, but also Alcorn State University, Millsaps College, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University and others.
Babies and toddlers were there, in strollers or on their parents shoulders. They mingled with elders who had participated in the civil rights movement and who remembered just how hard the fight to secure the Voting Rights Act was.
But for the fact that it was after 8pm and the sun long gone, one might think it was a family reunion or a cookout.
Instead, this wide-ranging group of people, in many ways representative of the diversity of Mississippi itself, had gathered to celebrate the win they had hoped and worked for.
After more than a week of affidavit ballot curing and vote counting, it was official: Scott Colom is Mississippi’s senator-elect. [snip]
Prior to Colom’s election, Mississippi had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. It was not since 1875 that the state sent a Black senator to Washington.
In 1881, Blanche K Bruce, who was born into slavery, ended his single term in office. His tenure followed that of Hiram Revels, the first Black man to serve in the US Senate, also from Mississippi.
More than a century later, the last Democrat to win election to the US Senate from Mississippi was John C Stennis, a staunch segregationist, who won a seventh term in 1982...
Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, and now Mississippi -- states of the Confederacy that shifted to Republican control after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960's -- increasingly electing black, Hispanic, and progressive Americans over the past 20 years. They are there thanks to the blood and sweat of countless civil rights activists who fought the Jim Crow system, separate-but-"equal," voter suppression, racial gerrymandering, violence and intimidation. And they came promising a better life, just as Sen.-elect Colom did last night:
“My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that first I’m going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated. I’m going to treat your parents the way I want my parents to be treated. I’m gonna treat your future the way I want my future to be” and “work to make every Mississippian’s life better”.
There's nothing that can't be imagined now.
(Photo: Sen.-elect Scott Colom (D-MS) with his family / Scott Colom)
