When we vote, the ground itself shifts. The air feels different the next morning—like the earth took a deep breath it had been holding since Reconstruction.
I’ve seen it happen. Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2025, felt like one of those moments when history stopped pretending to be distant. Mississippi turned its head toward justice again. Georgia rose up, stubborn and radiant. The ghosts of 1867 looked down from on high as Virginia found its reflection once again in the faces of young, determined candidates who refused to wait their turn.
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That’s the power of the Black vote. Not just a number. Not a statistic on some D.C. spreadsheet. But a pulse. A force. A rhythm older than this Republic, born in fields that once tried to silence us. It’s the sound of ancestors humming through ballots. The echo of those who couldn’t vote, who prayed we’d one day stand tall enough to mark our own destinies with ink instead of blood.
And this time — we did.
Victories Born of Faith and Fire
Downstate Mississippi, once written off by the pundits, delivered surprise after surprise. Theresa Gillespie Isom broke barriers in DeSoto County, becoming the first Black woman ever elected to the State Senate there — flipping a seat that had been red since before she was born. In nearby Hattiesburg, Johnny DuPree, the city’s first Black mayor, rose again — winning a Senate seat and helping to break the Republican supermajority that tried to strangle progress at its roots.
And in Georgia, Alicia Johnson made history as the first Black woman elected statewide, winning a Public Service Commission seat on a platform of energy justice and affordability. In Conyers, Connie Alsobrook became the city’s first Black mayor, while Lily Ann Brown did the same in Swainsboro, Georgia — proof that when Black women organize, whole towns shift direction. Their campaigns didn’t come from the consultant class; they came from church basements, barbershops, and beauty salons. They built their own permission slips, signed in faith and filled with fire.
These weren’t accidents. These were seeds planted years ago, watered by resilience and protected by the shield of faith.
Lessons From the 50-State Strategy
Kamala Harris’s run in 2024 did more than inspire — it organized. Her campaign with many of our organizations including #WinWithBlackWomen and The Divine Nine helped register hundreds of thousands of new voters, many of them Black and Brown first-timers. Her presence reminded us that leadership can look like us, sound like us, and dream like us. She reignited something profound—a sense that our vote isn’t just an act of survival but of creation.
And now, the Democratic Party seems to have remembered something, too. Ken Martin said it best last night: “We’re running all fifty states.” The new DNC chair is bringing back the 1990s playbook used by the late DNC chair Ron Brown and political strategist Paul Tully—the old 50-state strategy that treated every county, every block, every porch conversation as sacred ground. Early money, real resources, local staffing — finally, someone’s learning that showing up matters.
Black Voters Are the Architects
Because the truth is, we’ve always shown up. Even when nobody thanked us.
Even when we were blamed for losses that weren’t ours. Even when consultants cashed big checks built on our sweat, while our own strategists were told to “wait their turn.”
That needs to end.
Black voters are not just the backbone of the party — we’re the architects of its victories. The invisible hands shaping the map. The strategists who know how to win in places most folks never even visit. The thinkers and doers who make miracles look methodical.
So yes, we will celebrate these wins. But we will also demand equity in how these victories are built. This means including Black political consultants at the table—not as an afterthought, but as equal partners. It means Black contractors and vendors are paid fairly, rather than being “thanked quietly.” It requires early investment in Black-led voter organizations that have been working long before the cameras arrive.
We can’t keep outsourcing our genius while begging for recognition. We can’t keep saving democracy while starving the very hands that feed it.
Moving Closer to Justice, One Ballot at a Time
When we vote, we don’t just elect candidates — we shift the country’s moral compass. Black folks remind America that progress has a color, that is birthed in power, a cadence that is anchored in elegance, a cost that has been paid in sacrifice. We vote because our ancestors died for the right to do so. Because our children deserve a tomorrow worthy of their laughter. Because even when the system bends toward greed and division, we still find a way to bend it back toward grace.
I think about my grandmother’s hands — wrinkled but steady — marking her ballot in a church basement decades ago. “This is how we fight without guns,” she said. “This is how we rise without permission.”
And she was right.
Every time we show up at the polls, we’re rewriting the story. Every ballot cast by a Black hand is a sermon in motion, a love letter to possibility.
When we vote, we don’t just make history — we make a way. When we vote, we say to the world: We are still here. We are still building. We are still believing.
And this time, the nation finally noticed.
Dr. Mustafa Ali is a poet, thought leader, strategist, policymaker, and activist committed to justice and equity. He is the founder of The Revitalization Strategies, a business focused on moving our most vulnerable communities from “surviving to thriving.” Ali was previously the senior vice president for the Hip Hop Caucus, a national nonprofit and non-partisan organization that connects the hip-hop community to the civic process to build power and create positive change.