Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Sign up for our newsletter

Menu

  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships
    • From the Collection

      Changing Child Care

      Illustration of a woman feeding a baby a bottle
      • Washington, D.C., offers financial relief to local child care workers

        Orion Rummler · September 20
      • As climate change worsens hurricane season in Louisiana, doulas are ensuring parents can safely feed their babies

        Jessica Kutz · May 5
      • Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito argued abortion isn’t an economic issue. But is that true?

        Chabeli Carrazana · May 4
    • From the Collection

      Next-Gen GOP

      Illustration of a woman riding an elephant
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • A banner year for Republican women

        Amanda Becker · November 11
      • Republican women could double representation in the U.S. House

        Amanda Becker · November 4
    • From the Collection

      On The Rise

      Illustration of three women marching
      • Can Cheri Beasley build a winning coalition in North Carolina?

        Candice Norwood · October 11
      • Los Angeles has never elected a woman mayor. Karen Bass hopes to change that.

        Nadra Nittle · September 8
      • Judge J. Michelle Childs is confirmed to D.C. appeals court

        Candice Norwood · July 20
    • From the Collection

      Pandemic Within a Pandemic

      Illustration of four people marching for Black Lives Matter with coronavirus as the backdrop
      • The 19th Explains: Why the nursing shortage isn’t going away anytime soon

        Mariel Padilla · September 23
      • Some LGBTQ+ people worry that the COVID-19 vaccine will affect HIV medication. It won’t.

        Orion Rummler · November 23
      • Why are more men dying from COVID? It’s a complicated story of nature vs. nurture, researchers say

        Mariel Padilla · September 22
    • From the Collection

      Portraits of a Pandemic

      Illustration of a woman wearing a mask and holding up the coronavirus
      • For family caregivers, COVID is a mental health crisis in the making

        Shefali Luthra · October 8
      • A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender

        Shefali Luthra · September 15
      • Pregnant in a pandemic: The 'perfect storm for a crisis'

        Shefali Luthra · August 25
    • From the Collection

      The 19th Explains

      People walking from many articles to one article where they can get the context they need on an issue.
      • The 19th Explains: What we know about Brittney Griner’s case and what it took to get her home

        Candice Norwood, Katherine Gilyard · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why the Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t codify same-sex marriage rights

        Kate Sosin · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why baby formula is still hard to find months after the shortage

        Mariel Padilla · December 1
    • From the Collection

      The Electability Myth

      Illustration of three women speaking at podiums
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • Stepping in after tragedy: How political wives became widow lawmakers

        Mariel Padilla · May 24
      • Do term limits help women candidates? New York could be a new testing ground

        Barbara Rodriguez · January 11
    • From the Collection

      The Impact of Aging

      A number of older people walking down a path of information.
      • From ballroom dancing to bloodshed, the older AAPI community grapples with gun control

        Nadra Nittle, Mariel Padilla · January 27
      • 'I'm planning on working until the day I die': Older women voters are worried about the future

        Mariel Padilla · June 3
      • Climate change is forcing care workers to act as first responders

        Jessica Kutz · May 31
    • From the Collection

      Voting Rights

      A series of hands reaching for ballots.
      • Election workers believe in our system — and want everyone else to, too

        Barbara Rodriguez, Jennifer Gerson · November 8
      • Voter ID laws stand between transgender people, women and the ballot box

        Barbara Rodriguez · October 14
      • Emily’s List expands focus on diverse candidates and voting rights ahead of midterm elections

        Errin Haines · August 30

    View all collections

  • Explore by Topic

    • 19th Polling
    • Abortion
    • Business & Economy
    • Caregiving
    • Coronavirus
    • Education
    • Election 2020
    • Election 2022
    • Environment & Climate
    • Health
    • Immigration
    • Inside The 19th
    • Justice
    • LGBTQ+
    • Politics
    • Press Release
    • Race
    • Sports
    • Technology

    View All Topics

Home
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th News(letter)

News from reporters who represent you and your communities.

You have been subscribed!

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

Become a member

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Latosha Brown standing behind a desk.
LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, has helped register thousands of voters ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff, an election that will determine which party holds power in the upper chamber. Courtesy of Latosha Brown / AUDRA MELTON, THE NEW YORK TIMES, REDUX

Politics

‘Black Voters Matter’ in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections

How LaTosha Brown helped build a get-out-the-vote powerhouse in the South.

Errin Haines

Editor-at-large

Errin Haines portrait

Published

2021-01-04 16:42
4:42
January 4, 2021
pm

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

In the days after Georgia went blue for the first time in a generation, LaTosha Brown wasn’t taking a victory lap — she was on the ground and in the media, thanking the Black voters who made it happen.

“People take our vote and nobody ever comes back and says thank you or celebrates before jumping to the next thing,” said Brown, co-founder of the national get-out-the-vote organization Black Voters Matter. “We wanted to affirm what we can do when we show up together, and to show that we are not a one-night stand organization. We ain’t going nowhere.”

Alongside her co-founder, Cliff Albright, and an army of grassroots partner organizations, Brown, 50, is now working to turn out Black voters in a pair of consequential Senate runoffs between incumbent Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are facing Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The winners of the contests will determine the balance of power in the upper chamber. 

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Ahead of Tuesday’s election, Black Voters Matter is meeting the reality on the ground. The organization is focused not just on the race — registering and turning out thousands of voters — or even on the candidates themselves, but on feeding nearly 20,000 families, offering free coronavirus testing and continuing to support struggling areas of the state, whether they end up casting a ballot or not.

Historically, runoff elections in the state typically favor Republicans, given that there is usually a severe Democratic dropoff in turnout. But during early voting, more than 3 million Georgians cast ballots, and Black voters — who account for 33 percent of the state’s electorate — made up more than 30 percent of early voters; they are also expected to make up 4 percent more of the electorate than in the general election.

Brown said Black Voters Matter is working with over 60 local partners to target 50 counties. As with the general election, she said they are intentionally focused on Georgia’s Black Belt and areas with a Black population of 30 percent or more, which includes metro Atlanta. 

The organization blends two approaches, using both star power to drive awareness and grassroots community support to foster trust. For example, on New Year’s Eve, Black Voters Matter held the “Collard Green Caucus” in 30 cities, giving out bundles of collard greens and black-eyed peas — a Southern tradition to bring good luck — as part of a final push. On Monday night, Brown held a virtual conversation with Oprah Winfrey to mobilize voters.

In addition to canvassing in cities and towns across the state, Black Voters Matter also launched a massive radio and digital ad campaign. 

More on the Georgia runoff race

  • Kelly Loeffler’s Senate reelection is complicated by Trump
  • Black women voters in Georgia ‘care a good deal’ about the Senate runoff, new poll finds

This messaging works, in part because Brown is a daughter of the South — Selma, Alabama, specifically. She has spent much of her life organizing to empower Black Southerners and learning the secrets to turn out this Democratic key constituency: centering Black voters and their power (versus a particular candidate); expanding the electorate; and helping them to understand not that politics matter, but that they matter. For Black voters, she also is “the woman next door” whose lived experience translates into an instant credibility and currency in communities like the one she came from, said Emory University political scientist Pearl Dowe.

“She’s not a politician … She could be our neighbor and we would listen to her,” Dowe said of Brown. “She brings that to this moment. There’s a sense of trust. One of the things about Black people, even Southern people, we’re very private people. You feel like this person isn’t trying to hurt or manipulate me, people think she genuinely cares what happens to the community.”


With eight days to go before Georgia voters were set to cast their ballots, Brown pulled what she calls “the Blackest bus in America” into Douglasville, Georgia, during one of the Blackest holidays of the year. Black Voters Matter has a pair of buses and 10 vans emblazoned with the organization’s logo, a raised fist and the words “We Got Power!” in the pan-African colors of red, black and green.

It was the third day of Kwanzaa, which observes the principle of Ujima, a Swahili word meaning “collective work and responsibility.” The day’s theme has been a mantra for Black Voters Matter, and one Brown said embodies the organization’s work more than any other.

“This is our quintessential guiding principle, it’s what we do as an organization, what we’re asking our community to do,” Brown said. “And it works. When we come together, we can make change.”

Since 2016, Black Voters Matter has reached more than 7 million voters through grassroots-level outreach, campaigning and organizing. This year, their efforts were tested by the pandemic, which disproportionately hit Black communities across the country and abetted voter suppression in the form of closed precincts, longer lines and purged voting rolls.

It was in this climate that Brown and Albright launched a 12-state campaign to reach 10 million voters in the general election. After working to deliver victory to President-elect Joe Biden in what many Black voters considered an existential election, they have continued to work to again prove the power of the Black vote, particularly in the Deep South.

“Anti-Black sentiment has been such a part of the foundation of the political landscape in this country that to say ‘Black’ in the context of being good is counterintuitive,” she explained. “We own it. When people own who they are, it actually inspires other folks. There are people who have underestimated the value of that.”

Brown and Albright spent the better part of four years crisscrossing first the state, then the region, then battleground states across the country — listening to local organizers, voters and would-be voters and gaining insight into the local issues driving them. For example, residents in southwest Georgia are grappling with a utilities crisis sticking them with staggering monthly bills and the closure of yet another rural hospital. (In addition to the Senate election, a runoff for public service commissioner — one of five statewide elected officials who control the state’s utility regulation — is on Tuesday’s ballot.)

“It’s just a completely different strategy,” said Hillary Holley, organizing director of Fair Fight, the anti-voter suppression group started by Stacey Abrams in 2018. 

“We are being outspent on TV, but we’re outspending Republicans in the ground game,” Holley continued. “[Organizations like Black Voters Matter] take out radio ads on Black gospel radio because that’s where their targeted voters are. It’s not flashy, and they’re not talking about Mitch McConnell because that has nothing to do with what Black voters care about at all. LaTosha is really good at translating how voting can end up impacting and solving a lot of these issues,” Holley said.

It is work that hasn’t always come with the headlines, credit or deep pockets of groups like The Lincoln Project, which launched this year with the sole purpose of ousting President Donald Trump. Brown said her focus is one that is transformational, not transactional.

“We’re literally building a foundation for folks to really think about what it’s going to take to shape a real democracy, that in America is aspirational at best, but certainly has not been achieved,” Brown said. “That’s a distinction, to me, between us and The Lincoln Project. Where were you when they stripped the Voting Rights Act? You found yourself vulnerable because your party has been overtaken by this crazy man. And so, while now we actually have a similar mission, the bottom line is that you have not stood in a space of protecting and fighting for democracy like we have.”

Jennifer Horn, a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, said both efforts are about using the vote to strengthen democracy.

“She’s trying to expand access to  that process to a group of Americans who are underserved by it,” Horn said. “What we were doing was targeting a very narrowly-defined group of Americans to use their access to the voting process for the purpose of trying to preserve democracy. While we were taking different paths, I think our goals are the same: To make sure that all American voices are heard and that the electoral process was used for the good of the whole country.”

Brown cautions against the narrative that victory should be the sole burden of Black Georgians.

“We’re out here in these streets, but White folks have to do their part, too,” she said bluntly. 

Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, Brown said Georgia’s Black electorate has already won, in part because the idea that Black voters matter became a known fact.

“The way that Black voters were talked about before and the way they’re talked about now has shifted,” she explained. 

“For the most part, folks acted like Black folks in the South didn’t exist, that we were just in these red states,” Brown said. “When you talk about Black political leaders right now, you’re talking about the South. [Our organization has] been part of the driver of that narrative.”

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

The 19th News(letter)

News from reporters who represent you and your communities.

You have been subscribed!

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

Become a member

Up Next

Politics

Nancy Pelosi secures House speakership for a fourth term

With her party's slim majority in the House, Nancy Pelosi wins re-election as speaker. Now, eyes turn to the upcoming Senate runoff elections. 

Read the Story

The 19th
The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Search
  • Jobs
  • Fellowships
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Community Guidelines
  • Membership
  • Membership FAQ
  • Major Gifts
  • Sponsorship
  • Privacy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram