The fallout from Louisiana v. Callais has been nothing short of tragic, with terrible echoes of the past. As Reconstruction ended in 1877, states in the South either killed, expelled, or used other means to force out Black legislators. Over the last two weeks, freed from abiding by Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Southern states have rushed to redraw their district lines to ensure that members of Congress elected by Black voters can’t win reelection.
We are in a new era of American democracy, particularly for Black Americans. The Republican Party now views Democratic Party electoral wins and policy success as an existential crisis that it must prevent by any means necessary. Crushing Black political power is therefore essential to the GOP, since African Americans overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. And the current Supreme Court, more than any in decades, has not only removed virtually all constraints on policies that might negatively affect African Americans but actively looks to outlaw any public policy that might benefit Blacks.
This era demands a new framework for Black politics—fresh strategies, tactics, leaders, and goals. We need a “Double Front” approach. And we should be clear-eyed: Even before Callais, the existing models of Black politics were growing stale.
It’s worth explaining when and how Black politics lost its effectiveness. There has never been a singular Black political movement or African American ideology. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois famously quarreled. Du Bois’s own views shifted over the course of his life. The reality of the civil rights activism of the 1950s and ’60s was more complicated and messy than beautiful Martin Luther King speeches and smartly organized boycotts.
But after the civil rights victories of the 1960s, a clear Black politics emerged and predominated for five decades. Aspiring Black leaders, who had earlier led from the pulpit or protests, sought and won political office, most commonly becoming either mayor or member of Congress in heavily Black areas. A network of Black organizations, such as the National Urban League and the NAACP, focused less on the mass protests of the civil rights era and more on behind-the-scenes lobbying and collaborating with those Black officials in office.
Though they varied considerably, these organizations often became synonymous with a single famous leader, such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. And these leaders were often treated by the media and politicians as spokespeople for the entire Black population. These politicians, groups, and leaders aligned tightly with the Democratic Party, viewing it as the only vehicle to advance Black political goals.
The results of this approach have been uneven. On the one hand, African American politicians became increasingly powerful within the Democratic Party, gaining committee chairmanships, the mayor’s office in some of America’s largest cities, Cabinet and judicial appointments, and finally, in Barack Obama, the party’s presidential nomination. These elected officials delivered major policy victories to Black Americans and the country as a whole, from local economic empowerment of Black communities to the Affordable Care Act. On the other hand, African Americans became a “captured minority,” the term invoked by Princeton political scientist Paul Frymer. Democratic Party officials knew that Black voters would back them no matter what, so they had little incentive to push hard for policies and programs that would help African Americans in particular. Electoral pressures led the Democratic Party to set an agenda that would appeal to swing voters in swing states—a very non-Black constituency.
As the Democratic Party became increasingly concerned that advancing Black concerns turned off white voters, Black Democratic politicians and prominent activists faced a choice: advance in the party by downplaying and sidelining Black concerns, or advocate Black interests at the expense of their careers. Many chose the former. Contrary to conservative pundits who claim that he stoked racial conflict, Obama actually spoke far less about racial issues than his Democratic predecessors. Prominent activists shifted from pressuring Democratic politicians to being very defensive of them. Sharpton and others negotiated with mayors, presidents, and corporations, but grew unaccountable to Black America at large—operating more like celebrities than community activists. Over time it became difficult to distinguish the policies of Black and white mayors, as both were beholden to the police and corporations in their cities and thereby unwilling (and often lacking any real power) to advance policies to help rank-and-file Black Americans.
The Congressional Black Caucus for a time earned its self-given moniker, the “Conscience of the Congress,” pushing the U.S. in radical directions, whether on enforcing civil rights or in the fight against apartheid in South Africa. But gradually, members of the CBC became advocates for Democratic donors and big business as much as for Black activists and voters. Above all, they advocated for their own careers. Many CBC members are among the cohort of congressional Democrats in their upper seventies and eighties who insist on running for reelection despite growing concerns of a gerontocracy. To be clear, this calcification of leadership is more structural than personal. Politicians who want to rise inside an institution must serve that institution, and American party politics has nationalized in ways that disrupt the cultivation of new leaders at the local level.
But what about social movements, which have been so central to the past century of Black politics? The Movement for Black Lives that emerged in the 2010s was born out of frustration with the approach described above. These younger activists slammed Black politicians and the leaders and groups allied with them as ineffective and, at times, even complicit in systems and structures that kept African Americans down. The movement called for a different Black politics: bolder in its policy goals, less tied to the Democratic Party, led by people who hadn’t worked inside organizations like the Urban League for decades.
From 2014 to 2020, M4BL forced a national conversation about racial issues and some important substantial changes in government, business, and other parts of American society. It also mobilized votes for Democrats. At the same time, the millions of people who went to the streets in 2020 after George Floyd’s killing weren’t organized into new groups or political communities. And it was never clear who spoke for the movement or what its precise policy goals were.
The Biden presidency illustrated both the decline of the old Black politics and the struggles of the M4BL version. Biden overwhelmingly won the older Black vote during the Democratic primary, in part because the pastors and politicians of the Black Old Guard embraced him. He maintained close relationships with longtime Black officials like Representative James Clyburn. But his poll numbers with African Americans were among the weakest of any recent Democratic president, and eventually the 2024 Democratic ticket did worse among Black voters than recent ones. Being beloved by Sharpton, Clyburn, and that crew simply no longer translated to sky-high levels of Black support. They did not speak for the Black community—particularly its younger cohort.
At the same time, the M4BL struggled to gain footing. With little formal structure or organization, the activists never truly presented their agenda in a legislative form that Democrats in power could consider. And once Biden’s poll numbers dipped, he found it convenient to distance himself from the controversial but relatively powerless M4BL contingent within the party. (“Fund the police, fund them, fund them,” he declared in his 2022 State of the Union address.) Other Democrats followed his lead. By the 2024 election, not only had few of M4BL’s priorities advanced but the movement was being blamed for the party’s electoral troubles.
The Trump era has, of course, been catastrophic for both versions of Black politics. With Democrats out of power, M4BL doesn’t have anyone to pressure, and the Trump administration is cracking down on protest movements. At the same time, many of the small-bore initiatives pushed by the Black Old Guard, such as efforts to increase Black representation in corporate America, have been targeted by this administration’s executive orders. The Callais ruling now threatens to directly remove many of these Black representatives from office.
In the short term, there will almost certainly be fewer Black representatives in Congress, state legislatures, and local governments, particularly from majority-Black communities in the South. But does the ruling ensure a long-term decline in Black politics and political power? Not necessarily. We are hopeful that a new model can revitalize Black politics—and American democracy too. There are ways to constitute a Black politics that are more effective than Black mayors, politicians, and leaders trying to advance themselves in a Democratic Party often terrified of anything connected to Blackness. This is a moment of great political uncertainty that is ripe for experimentation.
What could a new model look like? First, history teaches us the importance of a focused inside-outside model. The “inside” structure during the Civil Rights Movement was Dr. King and formal organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Those organizations had serious policy agendas that they pushed hard.
Today, that’s harder to find. Sharpton’s National Action Network has policy goals listed on its website, but it functions more as an organization uplifting Sharpton’s role within the Democratic Party. When 10 likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidates came to NAN’s annual conference last month, they were not pressed to embrace a coherent set of policy goals that would benefit Black Americans. Instead, they were there to essentially kiss Sharpton’s ring, as if he were a gatekeeper to Black Democratic primary voters.
That is a very different form of “inside” politics, and a much less useful one. Whether it’s existing organizations like NAN, the NAACP, or the Urban League, or new ones are formed, it’s critical that Black-led groups act as representatives of Black people to the Democratic Party, not representatives of the Democratic Party to Black people. The goal must be policy change for African Americans, not a specific Black leader being in the room—whether it’s the Roosevelt Room in the White House or the greenroom of Morning Joe.
The model for outside politics could be the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In its 1960s heyday, it pushed an aggressive agenda with fiery tactics, helping create space for King and other insider figures. M4BL had the protests and energy of SNCC. But not the organization. The M4BL activists say that they are wary of the civil rights era, arguing it was too reliant on individual leaders, who were almost always male.
We agree that the movements of today should not be dominated by one person, and such leadership should certainly not be limited to men or pastors. But it’s essential that there are formal organizations that people interested in Black politics can join and that those organizations have some formal leaders and policy goals. (Remember that John Lewis rose to prominence as chairman of SNCC.) It’s time to concede that the “leaderful” model of the M4BL struggled to embrace clear, radical goals within what might look like a more traditional social movement structure. It’s worth noting that there are many radical Black organizations that practice mutual aid and social movement tactics at the local level in cities like Detroit, New York, and Oakland, but they do not represent the dominant form of national Black politics that we’re contending with.
That’s the Double Front—an inside strategy and an outside one. Both are essential. They reinforce one another.
Second, the role of politicians in Black politics must change. Instead of elevating Black politicians and trusting they will prioritize Black interests, it’s essential for African American groups and activists to develop clear policy goals and then rally around politicians who fight hardest for them. The ranks of such politicians would almost certainly include Representative Ayanna Pressley and Tennessee state Senator Justin Pearson, who are Black, but also Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who are not. Hakeem Jeffries is speaking for the broader Democratic Party. That’s fine. But he is not necessarily a political leader of and for the African American community, and the community should not look to him for leadership on issues that particularly impact Black people.
There was once a time when having Black people in top government roles was, itself, the goal—and to a large extent meant real racial progress. But we’re well past that now. Clarence Thomas is the second-longest-serving Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. Three generations of Black mayors, one starting in the 1970s, a second in the 1990s, and a third in the 2010s, have led cities where today many Black people can’t afford rent or get fair treatment from police. It’s fairly obvious that Zohran Mamdani will be a better mayor for the average Black New Yorker than Eric Adams was. It’s more important than ever to focus on what leaders will do for Black Americans, rather than the leaders’ personas.
Third, African Americans must reconsider our relationship with the Democratic Party. We are indeed captured within the current two-party system. This does not mean that Black interests would be helped by voting Republican, as some have recently argued. Instead, it means taking seriously the fact that Democrats can expect Black votes with little effort because the Republican Party has an overtly anti-Black agenda. Many centrist Democrats in recent years have shifted policy away from Black priorities under the guise of anti-wokeness.
Black Americans have to look for ways out of this box. There is a large movement pushing for proportional representation and other changes that would disrupt the two-party system. A number of Black scholars and activists are heavily involved in this reform movement, but not enough, especially in terms of actual politicians. After the death of the Voting Rights Act, it is nearly impossible to imagine a worse political structure for African Americans than one based on single-member legislative districts.
In a multiparty system, the U.S. would almost certainly have a true left-wing party and a center-right one, in addition to today’s center-left Democratic Party and the MAGA-dominated, hard-right GOP. In our current system, African Americans are forced to vote for either center-left Democratic candidates or MAGA Republicans, and they usually choose the former. But in a multiparty system, while many African Americans would back the center-left, large blocs would also back the left and center-right ones.
What would this mean? Well, imagine a world where parties actually competed for Black voters. (In American history, there have only been rare moments and places, such as the 1970s in the Northeast.) The huge bloc of African Americans who care about education could force the center-left Democrat who currently gives lip service to improving schools but then does little about the issue to strongly support either school integration and increased funding (as the left candidate would) or vouchers and charters (as the center-right one would). Center-left Democratic politicians who won’t really push police reform would face the potential of losing to candidates who do.
Finally, we need a new definition of Black politics. The Trump era has shown that the U.S. is not postracial, whether in culture, politics, or economics. It’s much harder to get hired if your name is Keenesha instead of Kent, and median Black wealth remains well behind median white wealth. But we concede that racism in the U.S. looks much different than in 1962 and that the country is far more ethnically diverse than back then.
The Black politics of today should be more grounded in labor and less in law than before. It should be more focused on economic populism and class conflict, because these days there are Black billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan and also plenty of white, Latino, and Asian Americans who are poised to join Black Americans in the struggle for decent wages. It should call for guarantees of jobs, health care, childcare, retirement security, and other necessities, because Black people today aren’t as much banned from the American dream as unable to afford it. It should embrace the young activists, many of whom are Black, who have led opposition to genocide in Gaza and the war with Iran.
The two of us would not be writing this op-ed without the work of Thurgood Marshall. But today, Maurice Mitchell, the onetime M4BL leader who is now the national director of the Working Families Party, which helped elect Mamdani, is closer to the vanguard of racial justice than most civil rights lawyers. This is not to say Black politics should simply be a colorblind class politics, but instead that Black Americans’ experiences have put them at the front of the fight for social democracy—with emphasis on both the social and the democracy—in the U.S. The point of the right to vote isn’t just to have leaders who look like you. It’s to have leaders who fight for you. We aren’t saying anything new. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was making these arguments at the end of his life six decades ago.
The VRA is gone. So is the infrastructure of Black politics that birthed a generation of Black politicians, including a president. And more fundamentally, the multiracial democracy of post-1960s America is in peril. It’s time for a Third Reconstruction. Like the prior two, that will require courageous, forceful, and creative leadership from African Americans. And that must start now. This battle will be won on two fronts—inside the halls of power and outside on the streets too.
