Embry and I spent the summer of 1966 working in the Civil Rights Movement in Southwest Georgia. We and several of my Union Seminary classmates had been recruited by Charles Sherrod, a classmate at Union and a civil rights leader, to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). We lived with a courageous, African American, subsistence farming family in Baker County, about 30 miles south of Albany. We registered voters, assisted in the local Head Start Program, attended “mass meetings” and strategy sessions, and hung out in the neighborhood. It was an experience of a lifetime and one that we will always be grateful for and proud of.

Today the topic of the New York Times Dailey podcast happened to focus on Albany, not far from the town where we had lived. The issue on the Daily was whether some African Americans now appear to be leaving the Democratic Party and are becoming Republicans or Independents. Albany! Good heavens, we knew the people who were on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement there. We saw how much was accomplished, albeit with great difficulty. The people we worked with were heroes, and many went on to achieve great things. Charlie Sherrod became a city council member. His wife, Shirley, became a high level government official in the Department of Agriculture during the Obama Administration. Schools became integrated. Good jobs opened up for African Americans.  A majority of the city’s elected officials have been Black for many years. My thinking was that the movement had accomplished a great deal in Albany and rural Southwest Georgia. And certainly, this was true for the family we lived with. The oldest son—the first African American to graduate from a formerly segregated high school in Baker County– got a college degree from a HBCU college in Texas and then a master’s degree in finance from Stanford. He went on to become the President and COO of the largest railroad in California. His wife, whom he met in college, got an MBA from Stanford and became the CFO of The Bay Area Blue Cross and Blue Shield. If this is not success, I do not know what is.

There were two principal people interviewed for the Daily podcast, an elderly African American mother and her middle aged son. The mother, now retired, was active in the early 1970s in the Civil Rights Movement, a few years after we lived there. She later became a civil rights lawyer and a member of the Albany City Council. The contrast between the attitudes of the two people could not have been stronger. The mother was positive and proud of the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, is a dedicated, lifelong Democrat and huge fan of Obama. She said she will enthusiastically vote for Harris. The son—whose job was not revealed– described himself as leaning Republican or Independent and admitted he had a somewhat positive view of Trump. He does not want to vote for Harris but confessed that he will probably not decide until he is in the voting booth.

He explained why he has abandoned the Democratic Party. The times, he said, have changed from the years immediately following the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1970s and 1980s factories were moving to Albany, providing new jobs with better pay for African Americans. Schools were integrated and professional careers were opening for people of color. He was just a child then but realized that was an era of optimism and hope. In the late 1990s when NAFTA had become law, many of those factories began to leave for Mexico, unemployment began to rise, and the crack cocaine epidemic ravaged the neighborhoods where many African Americans lived. Entire neighborhoods deteriorated. Then came the increased arrival of immigrants competing for jobs, the housing collapse of 2008, and the covid pandemic of 2019-2022. The optimism felt by African Americans in the late 20^th Century morphed into pessimism, disillusionment and despair in the early 21^st Century.

Four things about the interview stood out for me. The first was that he blamed NAFTA for the loss of good paying jobs beginning in the late 1990s. And this law was championed by Bill Clinton. It was on the Democrat’s watch. The second was the crime bill of 1994, also on Clinton’s watch, which resulted in massive, mandatory incarcerations—especially of people of color– and remains a big problem. The third was his disillusionment with Barack Obama. He talked about how hopeful he was when Obama was elected, expecting great changes, but saw little progress on the ground for Black people and angrily rated Obama’s presidency a failure for people of color. The fourth was his ambivalence about Harris not really counting as an African American due to her mixed racial and family heritage. He did not mention the pushback from the right on DEI and Black Lives Matter, but I suspect that might also be a factor. He also pointed out that Black women seem to have benefitted more than Black men from civil rights initiatives, which is a sticking point for him and many men in his generation and younger. He predicted that Harris would  probably lose enough votes from African American men like him to tip the election to Trump in Georgia.

Who knows how prevalent his attitude is? But in an election as tight as this one is supposed to be, it surely could affect Georgia and perhaps other battleground states. It also suggests to me that the class issue is now just as important as the racial issue and that class disparities now include African Americans—especially African American men. When I was listening last week to the Daily podcast about the disgruntled, white working class, caused by immigration, it occurred to me that the same dynamic must also be affecting the Black working class. This podcast about Black voters suggests that that this is true and means that Democrats can no longer assume African Americans will overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

I get this. But I also pray that while his attitude is understandable, that for this election, he and other men like him will realize how high the stakes are; and when in the voting booth, they will take a deep breath and cast a ballot for Harris-Walz. The election may depend on it. The future of our country may depend on it. It also means that there is unfinished work that must be done to correct the class and racial inequities and grievances in the United States.