State’s Black voters challenged to understand, unite their power

​RALEIGH — This was not a pep rally. The 217 people on the call from Black-led organizations across the state understood the assignment.

“This is not about going into a booth or using a piece of paper, checking [a box] and figuring you’ve done your best,” said Joyce Johnson, co-executive director of Beloved Community Center in Greensboro. “You’ve got to work all day, 365 days.”

The work is voting and getting out the vote (GOTV) and doing so responsibly in community, according to speaker after speaker during the July 26 “Countdown to Battleground: Election 2024 GOTV Virtual Kickoff.” It was night school on a Friday evening roughly 100 days from the Nov. 5 election.

Among the teachers was North Carolina Superior Court Judge Shamieka Rhinehart, whose lesson on voter fatigue highlighted how a lot of people will cast ballots for presidential and gubernatorial candidates at the top of the ticket, then sort of get tired and not bother with the races at the bottom that determine who runs courtrooms and shapes their children’s and grandchildren’s classrooms.

That’s good teaching, said Turquoise Lejeune Parker, an educator at Lakewood Elementary School in Durham, chairwoman of the North Carolina Association of Educators Black Caucus and a director with the National Education Association. Not paying attention to what’s happening down ballot with individuals running for roles critical to public education is how communities end up with poorly funded, inadequately staffed, struggling schools that don’t have enough bus drivers, instructional assistants and cafeteria workers.

“It takes a team to deliver even the basic services,” Parker said. “Our educators — there are some of us who have been in the field for years and are still making little to nothing, and a lot of that can change if we just make sure that we vote for pro-public education folks. … We need to make sure that we go down the ballot. We have to make sure that we understand that public education is on the ballot.”

“Right now, at this moment, y’all have got to vote, and you have to vote like your life depended on it,” Emancipate NC Executive Director Dawn Blagrove said.

North Carolina Black Alliance hosted “Countdown to Battleground.” Marcus Bass, the organization’s deputy director, and Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams facilitated the online session. Black elected officials and leaders from Black sororities and fraternities were among power players from across the state who unmuted themselves to punctuate the discussion.

Kay Brown, organizing director for Advance Carolina, touted the need to vote. She didn’t tell anybody who to vote for but was clear about the how.

“What I’m hoping is that all of us can reach across outside of our own self-interest — even in primaries, even in municipals, in every area of our lives — and vote for the self-interest of our neighbors.”

“Pray together. Vote together. Win together,” Bass said.

“Think about what you can do in your community, localize it, personalize it, and organize around it. It is that simple,” Williams said. “If everybody on this call takes one small step, imagine the distance we go together. That is our charge.”

North Carolina State Conference NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell sort of gave a nod to the proverbial blank pages of a forthcoming history book.

“We’re going to go down in history,” she teased, stating the obvious. “But what we do today and henceforth the next 100 days determines which side of history they will write in the books about what African Americans did in North Carolina.”