“I think that white voters in the South are more nuanced than people think. I know that Black voters are more nuanced than folks think. And we have to begin to engage with the electorate in a different way because folks don’t want to engage with the South, but the South engages with you.”
Courland Cox, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s, facilitated an April 7, 2023 conversation online with Nsé Ufot, former executive director of the New Georgia Project, and Charles V. Taylor Jr., executive director of the Mississippi State NAACP. Part of the “Our Stories, Our Terms” grant project, sponsored by the Movement History Initiative and funded by the Mellon Foundation, this intergenerational conversation explores key issues in today’s national politics, especially the role of southern Black and Brown voters and strategists.
During his work with SNCC, Cox participated in sit-ins, supported freedom rides, and worked on voter registration in Mississippi and Alabama. He played a key role in SNCC’s political organizing work in Lowndes County, Alabama, which led to the establishment of the Lowndes County Freedom Party and the national call for Black Power. After SNCC, he was a founding member of Drum and Spear Bookstore and Publishing Company, helped organize the Sixth Pan-African Congress, worked on minority business issues for the District of Columbia, and was the director of the Minority Development Business Agency at the Department of Commerce. He is presently serving as Chair of the SNCC Legacy Project.
Nsé Ufot was born in Nigeria and raised across the street from a housing project in Atlanta, where she became a naturalized citizen in high school. The daughter of immigrants, she excelled in school and became a corporate attorney before meeting Stacey Abrams and following her passion into politics. She played a central role in helping Georgia elect its first African American and first Jewish senators, while giving the Democrats a key victory in the 2020 presidential race. Charles V. Taylor Jr. has a passion for politics, justice, data analysis, and Mississippi. He was the field director and campaign coordinator for the 2015 Better Schools, Better Jobs Ballot Initiative 42, a heroic effort to amend the state Constitution to require equitable educational funding for all of Mississippi’s young people. Though it fell just short, there is still much we can learn from the effort. Taylor was a founding member of Freedom Side, and he has worked closely with the Mississippi NAACP, while learning many political lessons from his daughter.
Cox brought together Ufot and Taylor, whom he considers two of the “brightest minds around,” to share their insights about the significance of southern voting and politics at the local and national stage. This intergenerational conversation explores the connections between the past work of SNCC and present-day political activism, highlighting the ongoing need for effective organizing, even as technologies evolve. Cox and the younger political analysts make a compelling call for a New Southern Strategy, one that builds Black political power and assumes the centrality of southern Black voters and leadership in the Democratic Party’s hopes for national success.
