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The Long Wait: 145 Years From Blanche Bruce to Scott Colom
Scott Colom closed his campaign standing on concrete. It was the driveway in Jackson where Medgar Evers, a black military veteran, stepped out of his car on June 12, 1963, holding an armful of T-shirts that read “Jim Crow Must Go,” and took a rifle bullet in the back. Colom didn’t dress the moment up. He looked into the camera and said what happened there: “He was killed for helping Mississippians vote. On Tuesday, use your vote and honor everyone who died for that right,” Mother Jones reported.
Sixty-three years between the rifle shot and that ad. That shot changed lives forever. Scott Colom win shall change many lives and their trajectory. Bystanders at his victory speech attested to that fact, saying they were inspired and motivated to “Dream big.”
On Wednesday, November 11, the Associated Press called Mississippi’s Senate race for Colom, more than a week after the polls closed. He beat Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 4,669 votes out of roughly 962,000 counted, about half a point. Decision Desk HQ had given Hyde-Smith a 91% chance of winning. Colom will be the first Black U.S. senator from Mississippi since Blanche K. Bruce left the chamber in March 1881, and the first Black senator the people of Mississippi ever chose with their own ballots, the Mississippi Free Press reported.
