Mississippi elects first black senator in 145 years

A historic moment arrives

Scott Colom's Senate victory was announced at the NAACP's Mississippi headquarters in the historic Masonic Lodge Hall in Jackson on Wednesday. The room erupted with emotion as supporters celebrated the result.

First black senator since 1881

Colom is the first black politician to hold Mississippi's US Senate seat since eighteen eighty-one. Mississippi's population is almost forty percent black, a larger share of the electorate than any other state.

Democrats' first win in 40 years

Colom's victory ends a forty-year drought for Democrats in the seat. The last Democrat to win was elected in nineteen eighty-two and supported segregation.

Voting rights backdrop

Republicans have made moves to reduce majority-black districts following a US Supreme Court ruling overturning parts of the Voting Rights Act. Many experts say this weakens black voting power in the state.

What the victory means

Cedric Haynes said his father's stories of hardship and unjust treatment in Jackson made this moment profound. He never thought he would see a black Democrat elected to the Senate for Mississippi.

“All the stories that my father used to tell me about him growing up here in Jackson, and all the hardships and unjust treatment that he faced.”

Medgar Evers' legacy

Charles Taylor, executive director of the NAACP's Mississippi branch, now sits in the same office once occupied by Medgar Evers.

Defying political gravity

Mississippi has long been a Republican stronghold. Donald Trump won re-election to the presidency here by over twenty-two points just two years ago. Democrats had largely given up on the state.

“Most of the time Democrats have conceded the state.”

Massive grassroots effort

The NAACP knocked on more than one hundred fifty thousand doors across the state and made stops at over two thousand five hundred churches.

Young voters made the difference

Over six hundred students from Jackson State University, a historically black college, voted in this midterm election. This trumped the figure of roughly one hundred Jackson State students who voted during the last midterm.

Your vote matters, drum major says

Jared Thompson, a drum major from Jackson State's Sonic Boom of the South marching band, said Colom's win proved that votes matter. He voted for the first time as a young adult in this election.

“Tonight was proof, without a shadow of a doubt, that your vote matters.”

The beef ad that went viral

Hyde-Smith made very few public appearances while Colom visited all eighty-two Mississippi counties. After she suggested picking another protein if beef was too high, Colom released an attack ad encouraging voters to pick another senator.

Colom's message of unity

At his victory speech at Tougaloo College, Colom cited Medgar Evers and said the win was not his alone.

“All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this.”