Activists target 5 million Black, working-class voters for midterms

The sermon, titled “The Promise of the Vote,” was part of Barber’s national tour supporting “100 Days; 1,000 Marches to the Polls,” an initiative organized by Repairers of the Breach and the Moral Monday Public Pulpit.

While not a part of the March on Washington reenactment, Barber’s campaign aims to mobilize 5 million low-wage and infrequent voters, particularly across the South and in battleground states, ahead of the Nov. 3 election. More than 40 organizations and 200 local groups have joined the effort.

Barber has argued that Black and low-wage voters who do not regularly participate in elections could dramatically alter political outcomes, particularly in the South.

“The hour has already come for you to wake up,” Barber told the congregation. “The word tonight is wake up.”

Throughout the sermon, Barber placed voting within the long history of Black Americans’ struggle for citizenship and political power, invoking slavery, the Constitution, Harriet Tubman, emancipation and the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that found segregation in public education unconstitutional.

Before a packed sanctuary that included former Atlanta mayors Andrew Young and Bill Campbell and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Barber connected voter suppression to a broader denial of citizenship and human dignity.

“When somebody attempts to suppress your vote, they try to take away a person’s humanity,” Barber said. “The right to vote is sacred. We have to understand one thing about voting: The voting didn’t come from the government; the vote came from God.”

Barber’s speech came as political campaigns and outside organizations continue to ramp up voter outreach ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.

Emory University political science professor Andra Gillespie said voters of color have been alarmed by President Donald Trump’s efforts to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship to vote and limiting mail-in voting, as well as a recent Supreme Court decision that led Southern states to redraw maps to make them more favorable to Republicans.

Civil rights groups are now using these examples to set the stakes for this year’s election, she said.

“I think what they’re trying to do is to get people motivated, so that they can at least attempt to mitigate some of the effects of the changes that have happened,” she said.

Barber invoked the 1963 March on Washington, but argued that this political moment calls for a different destination. Rather than focusing the nation’s energy on another mass gathering in Washington, he said people should organize in their own communities and turn that same spirit of protest into votes.

“We don’t need a march on Washington,” Barber said. “We need to march to the polls in the states to change Washington.”

The setting for Barber’s message carried its own history. Big Bethel, founded in 1847 and long known as the “City Hall of Sweet Auburn,” has played a historic role in Atlanta’s Black civic, religious and political life. The church, now led by the Rev. Jonathan Augustine, hosted meetings of the Atlanta Negro Voters League during the Civil Rights Movement and continues to describe its mission as connecting faith with social justice.

Gillespie said the march on Friday can’t be the only outreach if these groups are to ensure that voters show up to the polls in November. Knocking on doors and meeting voters where they are will have greater impact.

“There needs to be some clear-headedness about the balance between the splashy things that get media attention but that don’t necessarily translate into votes,” she said. “And I think people need to be prepared to do the hard work that should be going on now, and if it’s not going on now, it needs to start immediately.”