Souls to the Polls: Harris urges Black churchgoers in Georgia to head out to vote
Kamala Harris visits New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, where Pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant, an ardent supporter of the vice president, attempted to rally congregants behind her. (Credit: Getty)
JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Kamala Harris on Sunday summoned Black churchgoers to turn out at the polls and got a big assist from music legend Stevie Wonder, who rallied congregants with a rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”
Harris visited two Atlanta area churches as part of a nationwide push known as “souls to the polls.” It’s a mobilization effort led by the National Advisory Board of Black Faith Leaders, which is sending representatives across battleground states to encourage early voting.
After services, buses took congregants straight to early polling places.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, and Stevie Wonder attend a church service and early vote event at Divine Faith Ministries International, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, in Jonesboro, Ga. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
At both churches, Harris, who is struggling in the polls among Black men, delivered a message about kindness and lifting people up rather than insulting them, trying to set up an implicit contrast with Republican Donald Trump’s brash style. With just 16 days left until Election Day, Harris is running out of time to get across her message to a public still getting to know her after a truncated campaign.
Black men are a core constituency of the Democratic Party, and USA Today notes, “even a small erosion among Black men could be enough to shift the outcome in key battlegrounds, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.”
“There is so much at stake right now,” she said at the Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro. “We understand for us to do good works, it means to do it in the spirit of understanding that our strength is not based on who we beat down, as some would try to suggest. Our strength is based on who we lift up. And that spirit is very much at stake in these next 16 days.”
“Souls to the Polls” as an idea traces back to the Civil Rights Movement. The Rev. George Lee, a Black entrepreneur from Mississippi, was killed by white supremacists in 1955 after he helped nearly 100 Black residents register to vote in the town of Belzoni. The cemetery where Lee is buried has served as a polling place.
Black church congregations across the country have undertaken get-out-the-vote campaigns for years. In part to counteract voter suppression tactics that date back to the Jim Crow era, early voting in the Black community is stressed from pulpits nearly as much as it is by candidates.
In Georgia, early voting began on Tuesday, and more than 310,000 people voted on that day, more than doubling the first-day total in 2020. A record 5 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Earlier Sunday, the Democratic presidential nominee attended New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Jamal Bryant leads the congregation. During her visit, he called the vice president “an American hero, the voice of the future” and “our fearless leader.” He also used his sermon to welcome the idea of America electing its first woman president, saying, “It takes a real man to support a real woman.”
Harris is a Baptist. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish. She has said she’s inspired by the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and influenced by the religious traditions of her mother’s native India as well as the Black Church. Harris sang in the choir as a child at Twenty-Third Avenue Church of God in Oakland.
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, attended church in Saginaw, Michigan, and his wife, Gwen, headed to a service in Las Vegas.
