Scott Colom's win in Mississippi puts political change to the test
Now, Mississippi faces a new question: Was Scott Colom's victory a once-in-a-generation breakthrough, or the beginning of an era of Black political power?
Key points
- this election has given people hope that maybe I can stay here and be that change." Go deeper: The Mississippi Delta helped carry Scott Colom to Senate history.
- Racism is still very much embedded in everything from our policies to our elections." What we're watching: Mississippi holds elections for governor, other statewide offices and state legislators in November 2027, testing whether Colom's coalition can hold.
- Mississippi was the first state to send Black senators to Congress, before violence and disenfranchisement stripped Black residents of their political power.
In Colom's race, Democrats gained ground in 75 of the state's 82 counties, Marvin King, an associate professor of political science and African American studies at the University of Mississippi, told Axios.
Additional details
- "It was about economic opportunity, but I also think it was about terrorism too," Cassandra Overton Welchlin, executive director of the Mississippi Black Women's Roundtable, told Axios, pointing to the lynchings that drove families away.
- Many Black Mississippians built political power in Northern cities such as Chicago, said Keneshia Grant, a Great Migration expert at Howard University.
- Why it matters: For generations, Black Mississippians left the state to escape Jim Crow and pursue economic and political opportunities elsewhere.
- The bottom line: Welchlin hopes Colom's victory changes how Black Mississippians view their futures: "I believe...
- Mississippi, a state with the largest share of Black residents in the country, has elected its first Black U.S.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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