A remarkable Senate campaign shows how ‘Mississippi matters’

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Scott Colom’s U.S. Senate victory in Mississippi was both narrow and historic. His slogan reframed the state’s troubled past and focused on hopes for a ...

Scott Colom’s U.S. Senate victory in Mississippi was both narrow and historic. His slogan reframed the state’s troubled past and focused on hopes for a brighter future.

It’s difficult to quantify what Scott Colom’s win for Mississippi means because it’s difficult to quantify all of that joy and all of the hardship behind it. But I will try.

For the first time in nearly a century and a half, since the tail end of Reconstruction, Mississippi has elected a Black U.S. senator. Mr. Colom’s pending Senate seat in the state with the highest Black share of the population was seen as a Republican formality, even in the midst of a blue wave. But political logistics and statistics barely scratch the surface of Mississippians’ imagination – or the senator-elect’s tenacity.

It’s important to acknowledge that in some ways, I don’t know what I don’t know. I’ve never been to Mississippi, only near it or through it. I have listened to and read intently the words of some of the state’s prominent voices – writers such as Kiese Laymon and Black women who asked out loud about the water in Jackson.

Scott Colom won a Senate race that forecasters hadn’t seen as within his reach. He did so with a message that helped followers view him as a senator “for all Mississippians.”

What I do know is what it means to be born of the children of Reconstruction – of reconstructions, really. Talking about reconstructions conjures up the names of Fannie Lou Hamer, of Medgar Evers – the names we know, and don’t know, who gave up their lives for liberation. Talking about reconstructions reminds us of the courage of Freedom Summer, of multicultural collegiate coalitions working to pull apart the wings of Jim Crow through Civil Rights and voter registration efforts in the Mississippi of 1964.

In that regard, this is a moment for all of us. MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) interviewed a white Mississippi mother following Mr. Colom’s victory speech. “I’m overjoyed.

​Mr. Colom’s victory was so narrow, it wasn’t called until a…

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