The other candidate was a white ex-congressman from Texas, barreling through South Carolina with an improvisational air of empathetic energy, and acknowledging that his whiteness had given him a leg up in life.
For Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, these recent swings through the South included an overlapping purpose: delivering messages that appeared tailored to black audiences in a region where black women, in particular, will likely be key decision-makers in the Democratic primaries.
But the separate appearances by Harris and O’Rourke also underscored that no single formula exists for winning over black female voters, who received the two candidates with a mix of enthusiasm and caution.
There are others vying for these voters’ attention. Sen. Elizabeth Warren., D-Mass., was in the Mississippi Delta earlier this month talking about affordable housing. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., was in Florida, touting how she had been discussing 2020 strategy with Andrew Gillum, the African-American candidate who narrowly lost the Florida governor’s race in November. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has been a near-constant Southern presence the last couple of years, offering his endorsement and oratorical skills to a range of Democratic candidates.
This activity is a demonstration of the belief among 2020 contenders that the hearts and minds of black female voters are up for grabs in the Democratic primaries. Strong potential suitors are still weighing presidential bids, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams, the popular black Democrat from Georgia. For now, Harris, 54, is one of two major black Democratic candidates — along with Booker — and many southern black and liberal voters are excited by the idea of the first black woman president.
While Harris has drawn enthusiastic audiences, she has also faced some criticism that as a former prosecutor and California attorney general, parts of her criminal justice record were insufficiently progressive. And Harris, whose father is from Jamaica and whose mother is from India, has been the target of offensive online memes about her race that have sparked questions among some voters.
On Sunday, as Harris prepared to introduce herself at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, a former New York state corrections officer named Lamarr Robinson brought up both matters. He criticized Harris’ handling of a highly-publicized case of a black death-row inmate whose case was tainted by racism. And Robinson added, “She’s more east Indian than African-American.”
Amid the swelling voices of church’s choir and congregation, Harris emerged from the wings, joined by Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta’s second black female mayor.
“Let me show you how far we’ve come,” Ebenezer’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, declared from the pulpit. “Atlanta’s got a mayor named Keisha.” The crowd chuckled and cheered.
He added: “We’ve got a presidential candidate named Kamala.”
Warnock argued that Harris’ campaign was “the realization of our ancestors’ wildest dreams.” He spoke of the black trailblazers who had made it possible, from Fannie Lou Hamer, the voting rights activist, to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who ran for president in 1984 and 1988.
Harris spoke briefly, telling the congregation that her parents had been civil rights activists in California. She lamented that babies were being “ripped from their parents” at the border and that black parents must still give “the talk” to their children about the racial bias in policing.
The reception at church was warm, but it was closer to ecstatic in the afternoon at the Morehouse College gym, where school officials estimated Harris drew a crowd of 3,000.
The audience was an energized, multicultural mix. Some, like Deliska Cooley, an elementary schoolteacher from Talladega County, Alabama, and her two teenage daughters, had already decided that Harris was their candidate. Cooley said online memes questioning Harris’ blackness were ludicrous.
“I’m a teacher. I have a rainbow in my classroom,” she said.
Her daughter Skyla Cooley, 17, a high school senior, said that she thought Harris was unfairly taking heat for simply being a tough prosecutor.
“We don’t want people not to be prosecuted — we want it to be fair across the board,” she said.
A few seats away, Naquila Gilchrist-Jalajel, 46, a small-business owner, said she had not made up her mind on a candidate; with so many of them, she said, she still had homework to do.
But Gilchrist-Jalajel, who was worried about health care, education and the shrinking middle class, said that she would definitely get out and canvass once she had chosen a candidate. Abrams’ campaign for governor, she said, had converted her from an observer to a participant.
Harris took the stage, strolling around comfortably as she spoke, more animated than she was in church. “What’s up Atlanta?” she said.
She talked about the goal of repealing the Republican tax cut and replacing it with one for the middle class. She talked about addressing climate change more vigorously, and making what she called “the largest federal investment in closing the teacher pay gap.”
Two days earlier, O’Rourke, 46, was driving himself around South Carolina in a minivan, trying to make the case to black voters that he was a white male politician they could trust.
His first stop Friday was in Rock Hill, where he toured the site of the 1961 sit-in staged by a group of African-American civil rights protesters known as the Friendship Nine.
In the afternoon, he was speaking to a modest-sized crowd at South Carolina State University, a historically black campus in Orangeburg. Standing outside of the student center, clutching a microphone and with sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, O’Rourke railed against an economy “that works too well for too few,” and a “prison industrial complex” that disproportionately affects people of color.
When the mike was passed around for audience questions, the first comment came from a retired nurse, an African-American woman who was worried that the Democrats were presenting too many choices to voters, and thus diluting their power. She wanted to win in 2020.
“As a 63-year-old middle class female, I want to make a note to the Democrats,” she said. “It is getting to be too much. We are getting too divided. Divided we will fall. Together we will stand.”
Later, O’Rourke spoke of the historic injustices perpetrated against black people, from slavery to racist “redlining” that denied them home loans.
“I’m a white man who’s had a privilege in my life; I’m not enduring any one of those things that I’ve just described,” he said. “But I’ve listened to those who have.”
Watching in the back of the crowd were Kadara and Kaywon Nelson, a black couple in their 30s, who had come out to learn more about O’Rourke. They were anti-Trump, but otherwise undecided. The biggest issue for Kadara Nelson, the campus safety compliance officer, was the cost of health care.
“And student loan debt,” said Kaywon Nelson, who works for a pharmaceutical company. “I don’t care about the wall.”
They both said a candidate who could address the country’s issues was more important than finding one who represented their race. Kaywon Nelson made reference to the political themes of the first Obama candidacy.
“I think we’re past that,” he said. “The message has got to be a little stronger, because ‘hope’ hasn’t gotten us much.”
After the presentation, Dr. Tamara J. Jackson, the vice president of student affairs at South Carolina State, said she liked what she heard — particularly O’Rourke’s emphasis on gay rights and ensuring HBCU funding.
She was also impressed, she said, with Booker and Harris.
“I’d like to see a black female as president,” she said, “But I’m not sure America is ready.”
She added: “I pray that I’m wrong about that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.