After Trump’s win, Black women are rethinking their role as America’s reliable political organizers
ATLANTA — As she checked into a recent flight to Mexico for vacation, Teja Smith chuckled at the idea of joining another Women’s March on Washington.
A Black woman, she just couldn’t see herself helping to replicate the largest act of resistance against then-President Trump’s first term in January 2017.
Even in an election this year during which Trump questioned his opponent’s race, held rallies featuring racist insults and falsely claimed Black migrants in Ohio were eating residents’ pets, he didn’t just win a second term. He also became the first Republican in two decades to clinch the popular vote, although by a small margin and with slightly less than half the votes.
“It’s like the people have spoken and this is what America looks like,†said Smith, the Los Angeles-based founder of the advocacy social media agency Get Social. “And there’s not too much more fighting that you’re going to be able to do without losing your own sanity.â€
After Trump was declared the winner over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, many politically engaged Black women said they were so dismayed by the outcome that they were reassessing — but not quite abandoning — their enthusiasm for electoral politics and movement organizing.
The mood at Howard University, where Harris supporters gathered hoping to witness history, went from hopeful to despondent as election returns came in.
Black women often carry much of the work of getting out the vote in their communities. They had vigorously supported the historic candidacy of Harris, who would have been the first woman — and the first person of Black and South Asian descent — to win the presidency.
Harris’ loss spurred a wave of Black women resolving across social media to prioritize themselves before giving so much to a country that, they believe, over and over has shown its indifference to their concerns.
AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, found that 6 in 10 Black women said the future of democracy in the United States was the single most important factor for their vote this year, a higher share than for other demographic groups. But now, with Trump preparing to return to office in two months, some Black women are renewing calls to emphasize rest, focus on mental health and be more selective about where they use their organizing power.
“America is going to have to save herself,†said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the national voting rights group Black Voters Matter.
She likened Black women’s presence in social justice movements as “core strategists and core organizers†to the North Star, a dependably fixed point in the sky. People can rely on Black women to lead change, Brown said, but the next four years will look different.
Speaking at a convention of Black sorority sisters as the likely Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris ramps up her call to mobilize voters.
“That’s not a herculean task that’s for us. We don’t want that title. … I have no goals to be a martyr for a nation that cares nothing about me,†she said.
AP VoteCast paints a clear picture of Black women’s concerns.
Black female voters were most likely to say that democracy was the single most important factor for their vote, over other motivators such as high prices or abortion rights. More than 7 in 10 Black female voters polled said they were “very concerned†that electing Trump would lead the nation toward authoritarianism, while only about 2 in 10 said this about Harris.
About 9 in 10 Black female voters supported Harris in this election, according to AP VoteCast, similar to the share that backed Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Trump received support from more than half of white voters, who made up the vast majority of his coalition in both years.
Like voters overall, Black women were most likely to say the economy and jobs were the most important issues facing the country, with about one-third saying that.
But they were more likely than many other groups to say that abortion and racism were the top issues, and much less likely than other groups to say immigration was the top issue.
While the prospect of Harris as president has inspired many Black professionals, activists and sorority sisters, the mood is more tepid among some blue-collar workers.
Despite those concerns, which were voiced by Black women throughout the campaign, increased support from young men of color and white women helped expand Trump’s lead and secured his victory.
Politically engaged Black women said they don’t plan to continue positioning themselves as the vertebrae in the backbone of America’s democracy. The growing withdrawal of Black women is a shift from history, where they are often present and at the forefront of political and social change.
One of the earliest examples is the women’s suffrage movement that led to ratification in 1920 of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote. Black women, however, were prevented from voting for decades afterward by Jim Crow-era literacy tests, poll taxes and laws that blocked the grandchildren of slaves from voting. Most Black women couldn’t vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Black women were among the organizers of the Alabama march in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery that preceded the federal legislation — and were among the marchers brutalized on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Decades later, Black women were prominent organizers of the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police and vigilantes.
A growing number of identity-based groups are holding snap virtual calls to raise money and recruit volunteers for Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump called for leveraging federal money to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs in government programs and discussions of race, gender or sexual orientation in schools. His rhetoric on immigration, including false claims that Black Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs, drove support for his plan to deport millions of people in the country illegally — although the Haitian migrants are predominantly legal U.S. residents.
Tenita Taylor, a Black resident of Atlanta who supported Trump this year, said she was initially excited about Harris’ candidacy. But after thinking about how high her grocery bills had been, she thought that voting for Trump in hopes of getting lower prices was a form of self-prioritization.
“People say, ‘Well, that’s selfish; [Harris] was gonna be better for the greater good,’†she said, adding: “I’m a mother of five kids.â€
Some of Trump’s plans affect people in Olivia Gordon’s immediate community, which is why she struggled to get behind the “Black women rest†movement.
Gordon, a New York-based lawyer who supported the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s presidential nominee, Claudia de la Cruz, worries about who might be left behind if the 92% of Black female voters who backed Harris simply stop advocating.
Look who’s leading the group Black Men for Trump, and you’ll see the former president’s real values. (He doesn’t have any.)
“We’re talking millions of Black women here. If millions of Black women take a step back, it absolutely leaves holes, but for other Black women,†she said. “I think we sometimes are in the bubble of ‘if it’s not in your immediate circle, maybe it doesn’t apply to you.’ And I truly implore people to understand that it does.â€
Nicole Lewis, an Alabama therapist who specializes in treating Black women’s stress, said she’s aware that Black women withdrawing from movements for social change could have a fallout. But she also hopes that it forces a reckoning for the nation to understand the consequences of not standing in solidarity with Black women.
“It could impact things negatively, because there isn’t that voice from the most empathetic group,†she said. “I also think it’s going to give other groups an opportunity to step up. … My hope is that they do show up for themselves and everyone else.â€
Brown, of Black Voters Matter, said a reckoning might be exactly what the country needs, but it’s a reckoning for everyone else. Black women, she said, did their job when they supported Harris in droves, so she feels no guilt.
“This ain’t our reckoning,†she said.
Hunter writes for the Associated Press. AP polling editor Amelia Thomson DeVeaux and writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
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