Scott Colom addressed supporters at Tougaloo College on Wednesday night as Mississippi's first Black senator-elect since Reconstruction. Zev Shalev carried the address live.
Colom opened with Hiram Revels, the Natchez minister Mississippi sent to Washington in 1870 as the first Black U.S. senator. On Veterans Day, he invoked Medgar Evers, who served his country and came home to a state that would not let him vote, and Fannie Lou Hamer. "Faith without works is dead," he said, quoting his mother. "And we worked this election, y'all."
Rep. Bennie Thompson introduced him and described a campaign with "a rich message, but a poor treasury." Colom said Thompson and his advisers told him last December that the cavalry was not coming, and that he had to campaign his way to the seat.
He closed with a promise to every Mississippian, including those who voted against him: "I'm going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated."
The Blue Slip
In 2022, President Biden nominated Colom, then a district attorney, to a federal judgeship. In 2023, Hyde-Smith refused to return her blue slip, the home-state senator's sign-off, and the nomination died. On Wednesday, Colom handed her the pink slip.
145 Years
Blanche K. Bruce left the Senate in 1881. Reconstruction had ended four years earlier, when federal troops left the South. In 1890, Mississippi wrote a poll tax and a literacy test into its constitution to keep Black citizens from voting.
Colom becomes the 55th Democrat in the new Senate. The test for that majority starts in January.
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