President Biden is courting Black voters this weekend in a flurry of high-profile events, in a bid to reclaim support among a once-reliable voting bloc now showing a lack of enthusiasm.
The marquee event is delivering the commencement address at Morehouse College, the prestigious, all-male historically Black college and the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Sunday. After his speech at Morehouse, the president is flying to Detroit to speak at a large NAACP chapter dinner there.
Before leaving Washington, Biden will give remarks Friday at a dinner marking the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. The decision banned segregation in public schools. He and Vice President Kamala Harris will also meet with the leaders of the “Divine Nine,” historically Black sororities and fraternities, of which Harris is also a member.
Recent polling shows a lack of enthusiasm among Black people—especially men—for Biden in battleground states that Biden won in 2020 to help put him in office. The campaign now is launching a full-court press to reach Black voters in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and beyond.
“It’s not insurmountable yet, but if not addressed it could turn into a problem,” said Andra Gillespie, a political-science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. She said the Biden team must put a lot of effort toward get-out-the-vote efforts in the Black community, not just in metro Atlanta, but in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
A poll of swing states by The Wall Street Journal in March showed that 55% of Black voters supported Biden in a ballot against Trump, who received 15%, and potential third-party candidates, who combined received 18%. In 2020, 91% of Black voters nationwide supported Biden, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large poll of the electorate that year.
African-American voters are crucial for Democrats to win Georgia, where Black people make up about 33% of the population, far more than any other battleground state, and the election results were one of the narrowest. Biden won Georgia by about 12,000 votes out of five million cast. CNN’s Atlanta studios will hold the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump on June 27.
Biden’s Morehouse speech would be the second by a sitting president. Barack Obama gave the commencement address in 2013.
But news of the president’s visit has stirred tensions on campus and in the wider Black community. Some Morehouse faculty and students oppose U.S. support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Some have discussed protesting at the graduation ceremony.
Steve Benjamin, a White House senior adviser and director of public engagement, told reporters Thursday that he met with a small group of Morehouse students, faculty and administrators last week in Atlanta. He said he “really wanted to lean in with these young leaders to hear what they wanted to hear on their very special commencement day.”
Asked about the likelihood of protests, Benjamin said Biden believed in free speech, “and that right to free speech extends to even those who wish to protest and he respects that, and he makes it a point to lean in when there are protesters in the same space.”
Benjamin, a former mayor of Columbia, S.C., said Biden would receive an honorary degree from the college as part of the ceremony.
Biden’s Urgent Push to Win Black Voters Starts Now© Provided by The Wall Street Journal
Graduating senior Gregory Hunt, 24 years old, said he considered Biden “the lesser of two evils” against presumptive Republican nominee former President Donald Trump, but many Morehouse students met the announcement of Biden’s visit with mixed feelings.
“I don’t think either candidate is an optimal choice for the presidency,” he said.
In late April, the vice president briefly stopped near Atlanta’s airport to launch what the White House called a nationwide “Economic Opportunity Tour.” Harris’s talk with Black podcasters, delivered before an audience of Black entrepreneurs and other business people, stressed funding secured by the Biden administration for minorities and cities with large minority populations. She later delivered a similar speech in Detroit.
People invited to the Atlanta meeting applauded politely, but outside the event, many said that the campaign needed to work harder to convince disillusioned Black voters.
Gregory Hannah-Jones, 38 years old, a Black tech consultant in Atlanta, said his African-American friends “across the board” told him they feel Biden hasn’t paid enough attention to poor U.S. communities, even as the administration has sent large aid packages to Ukraine and Israel.
“What are we doing at home?” Hannah-Jones said. “Student loans and housing costs are going up. Why aren’t we taking care of things at home before sending billions abroad?”
Some Black people are “leaning toward the Republican vote a bit or perhaps not voting at all,” he said.
The Biden campaign said that it has been focusing intensely on minority voters—especially Black voters—for months in battleground states and beyond, and it will continue to do so after this weekend.
Earlier this month, the campaign announced a $14 million ad buy, including “seven-figure investments” to be spent in minority-focused media.
From January through March, the president did at least 10 interviews with Black media personalities. More are planned, as well as Biden visits to events this summer, according to Jasmine Harris, Black media director for the Biden-Harris campaign.
“This campaign has been strategic, creative and dedicated in our outreach efforts to Black voters,” the director said in a statement. “This week is a continuation of that work.”
Trump campaign senior adviser Lynne Patton wrote a statement to the Journal that the Biden campaign’s ads have been “gaslighting Black and Hispanic voters” and his polices are “crushing minority communities.” Patton stated that the Trump camp is pushing for a strong economy and less crime, which is drawing growing support from minority communities.
Derrick Murray, a Black financial adviser in Atlanta, said that despite his dislike of Trump, he finds himself unmotivated to back Biden.
“I’m against Trump, but I’m not pro anyone, so that’s just the position I’m in right now,” he said. “There definitely should be some urgency about increasing that engagement.”
The lack of excitement among Black voters for Biden’s re-election extends beyond Georgia.
Many Black people in Michigan feel Biden has taken their vote for granted, said Ken Whittaker, a Black man and the executive director of Michigan United, a social-welfare organization working on immigration, prison reform, the environment and other issues. He said there isn’t much enthusiasm in the Black community for Biden’s re-election campaign.
“Visiting Morehouse and visits to Michigan help,” Whittaker said. “It helps to be not ignored, but the community is aware this is happening ahead of an election.”
