Black women activists grieve Harris' loss, but vow to rest, reflect and remain resilient
ATLANTA ‒ By midnight, after a long day of helping voters, Tamieka Atkins decided to shut off the television, as results for the presidential rolled in.
"I've done the staying up late and biting my nails,'' said Atkins, executive director of ProGeorgia, a nonpartisan coalition of civic engagement groups. "It's taking me a while to learn and this is what I tell other people and I'm telling it to myself, 'Any one election is not a magic bullet to make everything better.'"
She said Black women have long fought ongoing battles over issues, including women's rights, and winning elections.
"The work isn't done and I'm accountable and responsible to my people. So I get up. I eat breakfast. I watch the news,'' said Atkins. "I begin to strategize. I think about 2025.''
For months, groups led mostly by Black women have ramped up get-out-the-vote campaigns across the country raising millions of dollars, rallying thousands of volunteers and urging people of color young and old to cast their ballots.
Most, like Atkins, didn't tell people who to vote for. That was up to voters. But many were excited about the historic bid of Kamala Harris , the first Black and Southeast Asian woman to run for president.
In the weeks leading up to Election Day, many of those leaders converged on Georgia joining grassroots groups that had been doing the work for days, months, years. A Harris win in this key battleground could have signaled a new day in a state that has been in the spotlight breaking its track record of backing Republican presidential candidates and GOP candidates to the U.S. Senate.
In a region rich with the history of civil rights and voting rights that changed the country, Black women are credited with recently helping two Democrats pull off an upset in Georgia and win seats in the U.S. Senate. A few years earlier, they helped turn out voters and help Joe Biden narrowly win the state in 2020.
So Harris' loss Tuesday to former Republican President Donald Trump in Georgia was particularly stinging, said Wendy Smooth, a professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, Political Science and the John Glenn School of Public Policy at The Ohio State University.
The Harris bid had energized activists and others in Georgia. Their get-out-the-vote ground game was aggressive. There were huge buses that took canvassers to often overlooked rural communities and busy urban centers. There were block parties, prayer breakfasts and events featuring national and local celebrities.
There is "this moment of collective grief and disappointment of having put in very long hours into organizing, into energizing, into explaining and educating and helping people to believe in possibility,'' Smooth said.
Black women in the national spotlightWhile not a monolith Black women – as a voting bloc – have historically supported Democratic candidates. Early exit poll data shows that was no different this election, Smooth said.
"The consistency and the reliability of African American women support and their ability to show up and show up in massive numbers in support of Democratic Party politics, in support of democracy is indelible,'' said Smooth. "Black women do what they say they are going to do and they say they're going to show up, they show up.''
Throughout the year, the organizations canvassed at historically Black colleges across the South.
"Regardless of political ideology this was a hard year,'' said Atkins. "We were in the spotlight. It's never fun being in the spotlight and being dissected."
"There's always unrealistic expectations placed on Black women and women of color,'' she continued. "We are counted on to bring out not just ourselves, but our family members and our community out and that in and of itself is labor that is often, I think unrecognized."
Atkins noted that Black women led efforts to help their communities from the pandemic to fighting against the adoption of what they called restrictive election laws, particularly in states like Georgia. Despite those laws, Atkins said, a record number of people voted during the early voting period.
More than 4 million votes were cast, according to the Georgia Secretary of State's office.
"I have to see that as a victory,'' said Atkins. "We're here about participation.''
Some, however, were surprised by the Democratic loss in Georgia.
"I was really quite convinced that Georgia would tell a different story because of the mobilization that I knew was happening on the ground, largely led by Black women and women of color,'' said Smooth.
She pointed to the infrastructure put in place during the last midterm election and the last presidential election. "They have built an incredible infrastructure ... I do not question the energy. I do not question the strategies that were put into states like Georgia in particular,'' she said. "They have been battleground tested.''
Read more: Three generations, one mission: Inside three women's quest to protect the vote 'The world is watching'It wasn't until 3 a.m. Wednesday that Deborah Scott woke up to the news that Harris had lost not only Georgia, but her national bid.
As an activist she's grieving the loss of time, the loss of resources, the loss of democracy. She cried all morning.
"I've cried for my daughter. I've cried for my granddaughter that I don't have yet,'' said Scott, executive director of Georgia STAND-UP, a civic engagement organization. "I've cried for the children that are yet to understand what happened here ... because we don't know how far back they're going to turn the clock. But we also know that we've survived before, and we'll continue to survive.''
On Election Day, the day before, Scott's group hosted a giant block party across the street from a polling site. It was the last of several events to mobilize voters. For hours, hundreds gathered in a parking lot where food trucks offer free wings and ice cream. Participants danced to a DJ's music and held up signs as cars whizzing by honked.
"This was a pivotal moment in history and it could have turned out in a different way,'' Scott said. "We were hoping that this was a moment that this country would really reckon with its own racism and would find a better way towards democracy. We know that the world was watching."
More: Black women lean into leadership program to build power and sisterhood Other Black women make historyDespite Harris' loss, several Black women activists said they're excited about news of other Black women's successes. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, both Democrats, won their races Tuesday, making it the first time that two Black women will serve in the Senate at the same time.
"I'm excited that in the middle of losing ... we actually made history, that Black women have something to look forward to,'' Scott said.
Holli Holliday, president of Sisters Lead Sisters Vote, pointed to other races where Black women claimed victories, including Melesa Johnson, who won her bid to become the Jackson County prosecutor in Missouri and the first Black woman in that spot.
"This is something to think about. This is something to build on," said Holliday, whose organization among other things conducts research on Black women running for local and national offices.
More than 1,200 Black women across the country ran for offices this year from local and national races, according to Holliday . Of those, nearly 700 were on the general ballot Tuesday. It's not clear yet how many won because all the results are not in, she said.
"The first thing we do is we make sure to protect these women who won and recognize that their job just got a lot harder because they're running now in a more adverse environment,'' said Holliday, noting other Republican victories in the House and Senate.
She said the wins set the stage for women to continue to build political strength .
"Black women are cementing their spots in political leadership by winning these offices,'' Holliday said. "What is good about that is we leave out of here with a much stronger infrastructure than where we were two years ago. We have a stronger infrastructure than we had hell even 30 days ago.''
Black women mourning not only in GeorgiaHarris' loss in Georgia was a shock for Black women in other places, too.
"That was the Great Black Hope for Biden four years ago," said Alicia Coulter of Los Angeles. "The respect we have for Georgia because it's the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement ... I just don't get it.''
Trump won Georgia by 50.7% to Harris' 48.5%. "I thought Kamala could pull it out," she said.
Coulter, a mother of three college-aged daughters, was optimistic that Harris, her fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority sister, could win the "Blue Wall" states, but saw those expectations fade quickly.
"I received a text message from one of my sorority sisters who just couldn't believe what we were seeing. She told me, 'We stay trying to tell them. We stay trying to save them and they still don't listen,'" Coulter said.
In Las Vegas, Carolina Evans, a Harris supporter, said she had a sinking feeling after watching the Electoral College map turn red on television.
"I said 'Oh my God, the whole country actually voted for him," said Evans, a mother of two adult sons and two grandchildren. "It's unbelievable to me how quickly they forget how bad he was, what he said, or they don't care and they are not ready for a woman, a Black woman, to be in charge. I don't know how I'm going to get over this."
Evans, a former nursing assistant, said she's also worried about reproductive rights. She voted for Harris who vowed to protect them.
"I just feel bad for all of these women in their childbearing years. What are they going to do?" Evans said. "I voted for Kamala to look out for my 12-year-old granddaughter. What is the future going to look like for her as she grows into a young woman?"
'We're still here'Atkins and others plan to convene virtually Friday to discuss their efforts and what's next. Meanwhile, she plans to spend Wednesday texting partners and staff to thank them for their efforts.
"In terms of the work that people did I have absolutely no regrets,'' she said. "People worked like, damn hard...I have no regrets, but I want to figure out a way, a different way, of doing this work, where it's a bit more sustainable.''
Smooth said she expects in the wake of the loss there will autopsies, including of their get-out-the-vote efforts.
But "these groups aren't going anywhere,'' she said, "In true form, Black women's organizations will do something because that's what they have always done."
More: Black women are in charge at this year's DNC. Expect a different kind of convention.Scott was scheduled to meet Wednesday with other activists in Georgia. She told her staff to take the day off to rest and reflect so they can regroup.
"It's deeper than probably what we see, so we're going to have to take some time to analyze what this means for this country and what this means for our future,'' she said. "But we're still here. We're resilient."
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