Scott Colom's win in Mississippi puts political change to the test
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Mississippi, a state with the largest share of Black residents in the country, has elected its first Black U.S. senator in nearly 150 years.
Why it matters: For generations, Black Mississippians left the state to escape Jim Crow and pursue economic and political opportunities elsewhere.
- 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?
Driving the news: Colom's defeat of incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith broke a barrier that had stood since Reconstruction.
- 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.
- "It wasn't just a fluke of super high turnout in one particular region," he said. "Scott Colom's victory can signal that maybe Mississippi is ready to govern differently."
The big picture: During the Great Migration, roughly 6 million Black Americans left the South to escape discrimination and seek better opportunities.
- Many Black Mississippians built political power in Northern cities such as Chicago, said Keneshia Grant, a Great Migration expert at Howard University. For many, the question became, "should we go and try for a better life in these other places ... or should we stay and fight where we are?" Grant said.
- "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.
Welchlin left Mississippi for graduate school and considered staying away.
- "I did not want to come back to Mississippi because it is hard here," she told Axios.
- Mentors encouraged her to return. She did, eventually becoming a voting rights organizer.
Zoom in: "What Colom did is he really jazzed up his base. He didn't run from them," King said. "His campaign style and that strategy can certainly serve as a model" for future campaigns.
- Welchlin pointed to years of "nickeling and diming, doing organizing work to make sure that people had what they need to turn out the vote."
Between the lines: Colom rode a Democratic wave and discontent with the Trump administration's economic policies, but those conditions may be difficult to recreate, said Andra Gillespie, who studies Black voter behavior at Emory University.
- Black residents make up roughly 37% of Mississippi's population, while most white voters favor Republicans. Unlike Georgia, Mississippi lacks the same diverse potential Democratic coalition.
- "[T]he conditions that we see this year are probably not going to be the new normal," Gillespie says. "It'd be way too early to diagnose that there's a realignment happening."
Welchlin also cautioned that one historic victory doesn't mean Mississippi's racial barriers have disappeared.
- "We understand here in Mississippi that racism ain't over, ... 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.
- "For the first time in forever, Mississippi Democrats will go into an election with momentum," King said.
The bottom line: Welchlin hopes Colom's victory changes how Black Mississippians view their futures: "I believe ... 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
