For Black trailblazers in Mississippi, Colom’s Senate win is personal

Mike Espy knows better than anyone what it takes to blaze trails in Mississippi politics. He did it in Congress, then again in a presidential cabinet, and came close to doing it again in the U.S. Senate. 

For Espy and many other Black Mississippians who were among the first to win elected office in the state, Scott Colom’s Wednesday night victory, which will make him the first Black person to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since post-Civil War Reconstruction, is both a personal celebration and the culmination of decades of civil rights organizing.

READ MORE: Colom wins: Mississippi picks another senator

Espy, the first Black person to represent Mississippi in the U.S. House since Reconstruction and the first Black person to become U.S. agriculture secretary, also unsuccessfully ran against Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith twice, in a special election in 2018 and a regular election in 2020. 

Espy served as an adviser to Colom this year, handing over his donor and voter lists in the hope that his losses “paved the road” for the senator-elect, he said in an interview.

“There is a time and place for everything,” Espy said. “This is Scott Colom’s time, and his place is in the U.S. Senate. I’m so pleased with the way he ran his campaign, and I was happy to support him.”

Espy found ways around the old power structure

Espy and Colom share similar stories of how they were initially shut out of power by incumbent politicians but persevered to use that to their advantage.  

Colom was blocked from getting a federal judgeship by Hyde-Smith. Espy was denied support from longtime Mississippi U.S. Rep. Jamie Whitten to gain congressional clout. Yet both would go on to secure other high-ranking positions. 

It’s a pattern that has played out through Mississippi’s political history. Politicians selfishly hold onto power and try to close the door on others seeking to gain it. But scrappy challengers, time and time again, jammed their foot in that door and, occasionally, yanked it open. 

Espy, in 1992, had served three terms on the House Budget Committee, steering money toward many parts of rural Mississippi. But internal rules of the Democratic caucus prevented him from serving another term on the committee. 

Still eager to divert money and projects to his impoverished district in the Mississippi Delta, Espy thought he could win Whitten’s support to secure a spot on the powerful House Appropriations Committee. 

Whitten was retiring from Congress and departing as chairman of the committee. If he had backed his fellow Mississippi Democrat, it would have given Espy a much-needed boost and likely secured him a spot on Appropriations. But the northeastern Mississippi congressman, who was initially elected as a segregationist in 1941 and had later suffered a stroke, ultimately declined to support Espy.

“After that, I began looking for a position in the government where I could have power and influence to provide for rural America,” Espy said. 

Espy asked newly elected President Bill Clinton to appoint him as agriculture secretary, a bold proposal for a young 39-year-old, three-term congressman. Espy pitched his proposal to the former Arkansas governor by scribbling on an envelope 10 reasons the president-elect should nominate him for the post. 

Asked about the historic nature of his win, Colom has said he only wants to ensure he won’t “be the last” Black person elected to the Senate from the Magnolia State. 

“I don’t want anybody to say that I did anything to hurt the next person that has the talent, the work ethic, the ability to be able to reach for their dreams,” Colom said recently. “That’s my focus.” 

Colom is focused on the next person ready to go through the door.

Wright: ‘We struggled, we toiled, we kept moving’

Flonzie Brown Wright said Colom’s win also brings to mind those who never got the chance to walk through it.

Wright was the first Black woman elected to public office in Mississippi. She said Colom’s victory reminds her of how she felt in 1965, when the federal Voting Rights Act passed. 

“The same emotions, the same anticipation,” she said. “It’s a strange dichotomy because we were jubilant but sad in another sense, because there were so many we lost who couldn’t vote.”

Wright said she often thinks about the generations who didn’t live to see this. “Many of our ancestors brought us as far as they could bring us, but they couldn’t cast a vote,” she said.

“We got here not because somebody thought it was a nice idea to treat Blacks as equal,” Wright said. “We got here because we struggled, we toiled, we kept moving, we took the defeats, we cried. But we wiped those tears off and kept on marching.”

Wright’s own march began in the 1960s, when she became an election commissioner in Madison County on Nov. 5, 1968. She served one term before moving to Jackson. She later testified before a congressional subcommittee in support of the Voting Rights Act.

She views the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision that gutted key parts of the act as a major setback. But, Wright said, every journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Every journey has setbacks, but she sees Colom’s win as one more step toward the end of that journey.

“The 1,000 miles was our goal,” Wright said. “But not everyone could walk the 1,000 miles. Some walked 50, and some walked 20. They walked as much as they could and kept stepping. They kept stepping, so we kept stepping.” 

When Colom goes to Washington soon to be sworn into office, he will become the first Black senator from Mississippi in nearly 150 years. He will climb the Capitol steps carrying all those miles with him.