We've Got The Power!

- Chandra Thomas Whitfield

FOR YEARS, ALABAMA RESIDENT BETTINA BYRD-GILES has closed out the year with an annual girlfriends’ gathering. But at the end of 2017, instead of the usual lighthearted banter about New Year’s goals, vision boards and the latest updates on each other’s lives, her BFFs and colleagues—all Black, all professionals ranging in age from 49 to nearly 60—chose to talk politics for the first time.

Over trendy salads, gourmet sandwiches and generous glasses of wine and Southern-style sweet tea, their lunch discussion at Oscar’s, the posh cafe located inside the Birmingham Museum of Art, explored what they should be doing to tap into the power of the often-overlooked and arguably perpetually neglected Black woman electorate.

“We wanted to talk about future elections and ways we could be harnessing our collective [political] power as Black women,” explains Byrd-Giles, 50, a consultant who teaches intercultural communication and leads a health equity organization just outside of Birmingham. “Our overall goal was to figure out where the gaps are and discuss ways we could fill them and get organized to begin making a difference.”

Their informal political meeting was inspired in large part by Democrat Doug Jones’ astounding win over Republican Roy Moore in the special election for the Alabama Senate two weeks earlier. Exit polls showed that 98 percent of Black women voters, approximately 17 percent of the die-hard red state’s electorate, supported Jones. (Conversely, 63 percent of White women cast their ballots for the staunchly conservative Moore, even amid a slew of allegations that the former state supreme court chief justice had sexually preyed upon teenage girls while in his 30s).