How Scott Colom’s historic Mississippi Senate win signals a new era in America

There Scott Colom and his two young daughters stood in Jackson, Mississippi — the same place where the Ku Klux Klan had terrorized African Americans from the Reconstruction Era in the late 19th century throughout the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

The former district attorney was just announced as the winner of the Senate seat in Mississippi, beating out incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. He is the first African American senator to represent the state in the Senate since the Reconstruction Era.

Many remember the film Mississippi Burning, based on the gruesome true story of the 1964 abduction and murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Some might even remember the lynchings before the Second World War or the assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers back in 1963.

All those heinous crimes against African Americans are an important part of American history that many, including the current Trump administration, would rather forget.

But now the senator-elect has reclaimed this spot as his own, promising a brighter future for every person in the Magnolia State. This is also an indictment on the last 10 on-and-off years of Donald Trump and his presidencies.

What it really means for Mississippi and America

Just read this quote and then watch the video where a local woman and mom from Mississippi showed up to celebrate this monumental win.

“I’m overjoyed. I think that Scott and Nadia Colom (Scott’s wife) represent the very best of Mississippi. I’ve been saying for a long time that Mississippi is so much better than the garbage that comes out of the halls of power that come out around here.”

For many people, this win means that a brighter future for Mississippians also involves people equating a “brighter future” to actually staying within the state and rebuilding it. The mother interviewed by MS NOW also argues that.

“This is a new day for Mississippi and for mothers. So many of us have great dreams and hopes for our children. And for a lot of us that means that maybe you hope sort of that your kids leave, and that they find a better place to be where there isn’t hatred, the animosity, and lawmakers trying to convince us that life will get better for some when we make it harder for others. That’s changing for me.”

How hard is it to vote in Mississippi?

In the state where the young Emmett Till was brutally murdered and whose death was essential in jump starting the Civil Rights revolution after his mom chose to hold his funeral in an open casket, this win is nothing short of remarkable, especially considering how misrepresented African Americans still are in Mississippi.

The state still has a lot of rules in place that are much more disadvantageous to African Americans when it comes to voting.

For example, Mississippi does not have early in-person voting and requires a photo ID to vote — the same law that Trump was trying to push through before the midterms in order to disenfranchise minorities.

Furthermore, there is a law in place that permanently strips voting rights from individuals convicted of state-level crimes. More specifically, this bars nearly 70,000 people from voting in the state, many of them African Americans.

Just how remarkable is Scott Colom’s win?

The digital news platform Democracy Docket has reported that Mississippi ranked last by a large margin when it came to voter turnout during the last midterm election.

It also states that voters this year had to overcome “a system that perhaps makes it more difficult to vote than anywhere in the country.”

That is poignant when you consider that African Americans make up approximately 38% of Mississippi’s population, the highest proportion of Black residents in the United States.

That makes Scott Colom’s win one of the greatest political underdog stories of all time.

Colom was not just a good candidate; he also made sure that the African American population voted even through all of the aforementioned hurdles. MS NOW reports that 88% of African Americans in majority-Black counties went out to the ballot box.

It shows that people were tired of Donald Trump and the GOP and were high on a candidate who ran an earnest campaign with the interests of the people of Mississippi in mind.

It also shows that Americans in general are ready for drastic changes and a brand-new dawn of American democracy.

This article is made and published by Daniel Wolfram, who may have used AI in the preparation