# Mississippi, Once the Epicenter of Jim Crow, Elects Its First Black Senator Since Reconstruction

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/mississippi-once-the-epicenter-of-jim-crow-elects-its-first-black-senator-since-reconstruction/
- Published: 2026-11-11T23:03:54+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-11T23:20:44+00:00
- Original publisher: Mother Jones (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/11/mississippi-jim-crow-epicenter-elects-scott-colom-first-black-senator-since-reconstruction/
- Topics: Americas, Elections, Government, Politics, World

## Key points

- Scott Colom becomes Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.
- His upset came as Black voters turned out in record numbers.
- Voting rights and redistricting concerns helped shape the election.

## Summary

Democrat Scott Colom has won a US Senate seat in Mississippi, becoming the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction and its first Black winner of statewide office in that period. His upset is striking in a state that Donald Trump carried by 23 points in 2024, and carries particular weight given Mississippi’s record of racial violence and voter suppression.

Colom, a longtime district attorney, urged voters to honour civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in 1963. The article says Black voters turned out in record numbers, amid renewed concern about voting rights after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision and Governor Tate Reeves’s call for a new map that could unseat the state’s only Black member of Congress. Before the Voting Rights Act, just 6.7 per cent of eligible Black Mississippians were registered; the state recorded 581 lynchings during the Jim Crow era.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.