The Supreme Court ruling came down on a Tuesday. One day later, more than 50 of the most prominent Black leaders in the country gathered at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, with nearly 100 more joining by video for what attendees were already calling, with a dark humor that matched the moment, the “Emergency Black People Meeting.”
The catalyst was Louisiana v. Callais, a Supreme Court decision that effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and, in the view of those assembled, signaled open season on Black political power across the South.
The invitation, obtained by MS NOW, did not mince words: “BLACK VOTING AND POLITICAL POWER IS UNDER ATTACK,” it read.
The coalition inside the room reflected the stakes. Labor leaders. Civil rights executives. Elected officials. Academics. Organizers. Every major civil rights organization was represented, either in person or virtually. Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was there. So was Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who at one point climbed atop a table to make his point.
“He was saying, ‘I’m going to say some things that sound a little bit audacious,’” according to one person who joined the meeting virtually and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “And when you’re going to walk out of here, you’re going to say, ‘Who is this crazy man standing on the table, ringing a sense of urgency?’”
Asked by MS NOW about the moment, an aide to Booker said the senator “gave passionate remarks about the midterms.”
The gathering was equal parts family meeting, intervention and strategy session. What united those in the room, multiple attendees told MS NOW, was the conviction that Callais did not arrive in a vacuum: This was the latest and most visible move in what several attendees described as a sweeping campaign to dismantle Black political power across multiple fronts simultaneously — in the courts, state legislatures, federal law enforcement and the culture.
“You attack the CBC and reduce their numbers across the South with lightning speed,” said a congressional aide who was there. “You attack the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the strongest institutional actors in the South. You’re going to indict them, their funds are not being able to get to them because of Fidelity and Vanguard. You are attempting to cripple Black state legislators. The coordinated attack is literally on every side, and they hit all the buttons almost at the same time. The idea is [if] you take them all out at one time, [Black voters] will have no one to turn to.”
“The weaponization of the federal government against Black people is more organized and aggressive, more deeply funded, more dangerous, and more out loud and intentional than any time in my lifetime,” said Maya Wiley, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She told MS NOW she attended the meeting, saying the major takeaway was not so much that these organizations are working together in concert, but that there’s a realization that the kinds of actions they need to take must change.
“This isn’t just a time of tinkering, this is a time for re-imagining. Because it wasn’t all fixed despite the efforts of the civil rights movement,” Wiley told MS NOW. “We have made progress. But you can’t find a Black person in America who would say, ‘Our democracy worked just great.’”
Many attendees described last week’s meeting as Part One — the beginning of building a new structure. A war room, funded in part by labor unions including the National Education Association, is underway, according to two people who attended the meeting. In response to questions from MS NOW, a spokesperson for the NEA confirmed that the union’s president attended the meeting, but declined to answer further questions about the organization’s role. A new website, BlackPowerWarRoom.com, is already up and running to help serve as an organizing hub; it carries no organizational logos and bears no individual names, a deliberate choice, according to attendees.
“If you just say one organization owns a thing, it’s a target,” the congressional aide said. “You may not even know who to attack.”
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Part Two begins this weekend with a convergence on Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, by many of the meeting’s attendees. Multiple members of Congress, including members of the CBC and allied caucuses, are expected to attend. More days of action are planned in cities across the country, with Mississippi to follow. Another planning meeting is scheduled for next week.
The understood tension, for many in that room, is time. The right has spent decades quietly building power in the court system and state legislatures — and now has the judicial latitude to draw maps that will stand. Those who gathered last Wednesday know they are running uphill against a headstart measured in years.
Some attendees left hungry for more concrete homework. The average age in the room didn’t go unnoticed.
“I’m waiting and I’m hungry to see how they’re going to include the young people on the ground, the working people on the ground,” one person, who joined virtually and was granted anonymity to speak about the meeting, told MS NOW. “The newer generation that’s actually able to reach voters who are kind of disaffected or kind of checked out.”
The older hands in the room tried to calibrate expectations without blunting the fierce urgency of now.
“My caution to everyone is there’s no quick fix here,” one senior civil rights leader told MS NOW. “What they have done is undo 50-plus years of progress. This is not going to be fixed next week.”
They paused.
“But when you looked around the table, the tentacles of our community were broader than I think we even realize,” they said. “Our people are everywhere. There is no space that we can’t touch when we are assembled to touch it. We can reach everywhere. And the best brains in Black America [are] sitting at the table. And you just say: This is gonna be a fight, but in the end, we’re going to win.”
Eugene Daniels is an MS NOW senior Washington correspondent and co-host of "The Weekend."