Black women activists grieve Harris' loss, but vow to rest, reflect and remain resilient

ATLANTA ? By midnight, after a long day of helping voters, Tamieka Atkins decided to shut off the television as results for the presidential election rolled in.

“I've done the staying up late and biting my nails,’’ said Atkins, executive director of ProGeorgia, a nonpartisan coalition of civic engagement groups. “It’s taking me a while to learn, and this is what I tell other people, and I'm telling it to myself: ‘Any one election is not a magic bullet to make everything better.'”

She said Black women have long fought battles over issues, including women’s rights, and winning elections.

“The work isn't done and I'm accountable and responsible to my people. So I get up. I eat breakfast. I watch the news,’’ Atkins said. “I begin to strategize. I think about 2025.’’

For months, groups led mostly by Black women have ramped up get-out-the-vote campaigns across the country, raising millions of dollars, rallying thousands of volunteers and urging people of color young and old to cast their ballots.

Most, like Atkins, didn’t tell people who to vote for. That was up to voters. But many were excited about the historic bid of Kamala Harris, the first Black and Southeast Asian woman to run for president.

In the weeks leading up to Election Day, many of those leaders converged on Georgia to join grassroots groups that had been doing the work for days, months, years. A Harris win in this key battleground could have signaled a new day in a state that has been in the spotlight for breaking its track record of backing Republican presidential candidates and Republican candidates to the U.S. Senate.

In a region rich with the history of civil rights and voting rights that changed the country, Black women are credited with recently helping two Democrats pull off an upset in Georgia and win seats in the U.S. Senate. A few years earlier, they helped turn out voters and helped Joe Biden narrowly win the state in 2020.

So Harris' loss Tuesday to former President Donald Trump in Georgia was particularly stinging, said Wendy Smooth, a professor of women’s gender and sexuality studies in the Department of Political Science at the Ohio State University John Glenn School of Public Policy.

The Harris bid had energized activists and others in Georgia. Their get-out-the-vote ground game was aggressive. Huge buses took canvassers to often-overlooked rural communities and busy urban centers. There were block parties, prayer breakfasts and events featuring national and local celebrities.

There is “this moment of collective grief and disappointment of having put in very long hours into organizing, into energizing, into explaining and educating and helping people to believe in possibility,’’ Smooth said.

Black women in the national spotlight

Though not a monolith, Black women – as a voting bloc – have historically supported Democratic candidates. Early exit poll data shows that was no different this election, Smooth said.

“The consistency and the reliability of African American women support and their ability to show up and show up in massive numbers in support of Democratic Party politics, in support of democracy, is indelible,’’ Smooth said. “Black women do what they say they are going to do, and when they say they're going to show up, they show up.’’

Throughout the year, the organizations canvassed in their communities, including at historically Black colleges across the South.

“Regardless of political ideology, this was a hard year,’’ Atkins said. “We were in the spotlight. It’s never fun being in the spotlight and being dissected.

“There's always unrealistic expectations placed on Black women and women of color,'' she said. "We are  counted on to bring out not just ourselves, but our family members and our community out, and that in and of itself is labor that is often, I think, unrecognized.”

Atkins noted that Black women led efforts to help their communities, whether from the COVID-19 pandemic or fighting against what they call restrictive election laws, particularly in states like Georgia. Despite those laws, Atkins said, a record number of people voted early.

More than 4 million votes were cast, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.

“I have to see that as a victory,’’ Atkins said. “We’re here about participation.’’

Some, however, were surprised by the Democrats' loss in Georgia.

“I was really quite convinced that Georgia would tell a different story because of the mobilization that I knew was happening on the ground, largely led by Black women and women of color,’’ Smooth said.

She pointed to the infrastructure put in place in the past midterm election and the 2020 presidential election. “They have built an incredible infrastructure. … I do not question the energy. I do not question the strategies that were put into states like Georgia in particular,’’ she said. “They have been battleground-tested.’’

Read more: Three generations, one mission: Inside three women's quest to protect the vote

'The world is watching'

It wasn’t until 3 a.m. Wednesday that Deborah Scott woke up to the news that Harris had lost not only Georgia but also her national bid.

As an activist, she’s grieving the loss of time, the loss of resources, what she believes is the loss of democracy. She cried all morning.

“I've cried for my daughter. I've cried for my granddaughter that I don't have yet,’’ said Scott, executive director of Georgia STAND-UP, a civic engagement organization. “I've cried for the children that are yet to understand what happened here … because we don't know how far back they're going to turn the clock. But we also know that we've survived before, and we'll continue to survive.’’

On Election Day, the day before, Scott’s group hosted a giant block party across the street from a polling site. It was the last of several events to mobilize voters. For hours, hundreds gathered in a parking lot where food trucks offered free wings and ice cream. Participants danced to a DJ's music and held up signs as cars honked while whizzing by.

“This was a pivotal moment in history, and it could have turned out in a different way,’’ Scott said. “We were hoping that this was a moment that this country would really reckon with its own racism and would find a better way towards democracy. We know that the world was watching.”

More: Black women lean into leadership program to build power and sisterhood

Other Black women make history

Despite Harris’ loss, several Black female activists said they’re excited about news of other Black women's successes.  Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, both Democrats, won their races Tuesday, making it the first time that two Black women will serve in the Senate at the same time.

“I'm excited that (even) in the middle of losing … we actually made history, that Black women have something to look forward to,’’ Scott said.

Holli Holliday, president of Sisters Lead Sisters Vote, pointed to other races in which Black women claimed victories, including Melesa Johnson, who won her bid to become the Jackson County prosecutor in Missouri and the first Black woman in that post.

“This is something to think about. This is something to build on,” said Holliday, whose organization, among other things, conducts research on Black women running for local and national offices.

More than 1,200 Black women across the country ran for offices this year from local and national races, according to Holliday. Of those, nearly 700 were on the general ballot Tuesday. It’s not clear yet how many won because all the results are not in, she said.

“The first thing we do is we make sure to protect these women who won and recognize that their job just got a lot harder because they're running now in a more adverse environment,’’ said Holliday, noting other Republican victories in the House and Senate.

She said the wins set the stage for women to continue to build political strength.

“Black women are cementing their spots in political leadership by winning these offices,’’ Holliday said. “What is good about that is we leave out of here with a much stronger infrastructure than where we were two years ago. We have a stronger infrastructure than we had even 30 days ago.’’

Black women mourning not only in Georgia

Harris' loss in Georgia was a shock for Black women in other places, too.

"That was the Great Black Hope for Biden four years ago," said Alicia Coulter, of Los Angeles. “The respect we have for Georgia because it’s the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement … I just don’t get it.''

Trump won Georgia 50.7% to Harris' 48.5%. “I thought Kamala could pull it out,” she said.

Coulter, a mother of three college-age daughters, was optimistic that Harris, her fellow Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority sister, could win the “blue wall” states, but she saw those expectations fade quickly.

“I received a text message from one of my sorority sisters who just couldn’t believe what we were seeing. She told me: ‘We stay trying to tell them. We stay trying to save them and they still don’t listen,’” Coulter said.

In Las Vegas, Carolina Evans, a Harris supporter, said she had a sinking feeling after watching the Electoral College map turn red on television.

“I said ‘Oh my God, the whole country actually voted for him,” said Evans, a mother of two adult sons and two grandchildren. “It’s unbelievable to me how quickly they forget how bad he was, what he said, or they don’t care and they are not ready for a woman, a Black woman, to be in charge. I don’t know how I’m going to get over this.”

Evans, a former nursing assistant, said she’s also worried about reproductive rights. She voted for Harris, who vowed to protect them.

“I just feel bad for all of these women in their childbearing years. What are they going to do?” Evans said. “I voted for Kamala to look out for my 12-year-old granddaughter. What is the future going to look like for her as she grows into a young woman?”

'We're still here'

Atkins and others plan to convene virtually Friday to discuss their efforts and what's next. Meanwhile, she planned to spend Wednesday texting partners and staff to thank them for their efforts.

“In terms of the work that people did I have absolutely no regrets,’’ she said. “People worked like, damn hard. ... I have no regrets, but I want to figure out a way, a different way, of doing this work, where it's a bit more sustainable.’’

Smooth said she expects that in the wake of the loss there will autopsies, including of their get-out-the-vote efforts.

But “these groups aren't going anywhere,’’ she said, “In true form, Black women's organizations will do something because that's what they have always done.”

More: Black women are in charge at this year's DNC. Expect a different kind of convention.

Scott was scheduled to talk Wednesday with other activists in Georgia. She told her staff to take the day off to rest and reflect so they can regroup.

“It's deeper than probably what we see, so we're going to have to take some time to analyze what this means for this country and what this means for our future,’’ she said. “But we’re still here. We're resilient.”

Follow Deborah Berry on X/formerly Twitter: @dberrygannett

(This story was updated to change the video.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'A hard year': Kamala Harris loss won't stop Black women from fighting