Four hours, 44,000 Black women, and one Zoom call

Originally published by The 19th

It was Sunday at 5:24 p.m. when Rep. Joyce Beatty predicted history on national television.

Discussing the news that President Joe Biden was ending his campaign and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the 2024 Democratic nominee for president, the Ohio Democrat dropped a casual mention on MSNBC that there would be a call later.

“As a Black woman, I’m going to join later tonight with so many Black women,” Beatty said. “It will probably be some 20,000 or 30,000 women trying to get on this call because it’s personal for us and we stand with Vice President Harris.”

The host was incredulous. “Twenty or 30,000 you think will be on that phone call?”

Every Sunday at 8:30 p.m. ET for the past four years, Black women have been virtually gathering, strategizing, encouraging and supporting one another through the collective Win With Black Women. The first call, with about 90 women — from college students to grandmothers — on August 2, 2020, was born out of frustration over the treatment of the Black women being considered as running mates for then-candidate Biden.

On Sunday, Black women surpassed Beatty’s prediction: They were at least 44,000 strong on Zoom by the end of the more than four-hour convening that was a mass meeting, prayer circle and pep rally — all with the goal of working to elect Harris the first woman president in 105 days. In further proof of the night’s excitement, the group’s goal to raise $1 million in 100 days was exceeded in just three hours, with more than $1.6 million raised.

The moment exists on a continuum of Black women’s leadership, stretching back generations.

It was in the spirit of the work of mentors like veteran Democratic strategists Donna Brazile, the Rev. Leah Daughtry, Minyon Moore and Yolanda Caraway — the pioneering force of Black women known as “The Colored Girls” who have worked more than three decades in national politics — who encouraged a new generation of Black women leaders to take the baton and build the pipeline.

Four years ago, Jotaka Eaddy was in her childhood home in South Carolina, fuming at the racist and misogynist treatment of women like Harris, Stacey Abrams, Karen Bass, Val Demings and others on the list of 2020 potential vice presidential picks. After watching a Facebook video from Daughtry railing about the discourse, she called Moore and asked, “What are you gonna do, The Colored Girls?”

But Moore challenged Eaddy and her peers right back: “No, what are YOU gonna do?”

Eaddy waited 20 minutes before picking up the phone again, this time typing in the email addresses of about 50 Black women from her various networks in politics, entertainment, Silicon Valley and activism. She sent a message with the subject line: “Black Women - this VP narrative - Not on Our Watch.”

“We know that we carry elections on our backs — we have always done so and still are doing it today,” Eaddy wrote. “Now that we are demanding our rightful place at the table, this narrative that ‘we are too much,’ ‘too ambitious,’ ‘rub people the wrong way’ is BS … We all know what is happening here and I am compelled to do whatever I can to speak out, organize and help stop it … If not us, then who. If not now, then when.”

There was an idea for a call the following day. Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the group gathered on Zoom. Women on the first call invited other women to join.

It was decided that they would write an open letter. Eaddy stayed up all night with other Black women writing. Eaddy sent the letter to the same email chain and within 48 hours, 3,000 women signed on.

They got their marching orders: to speak out against racism and sexism, to work to elect Black women, and to lift up the image and power of Black women and Black women-led organizations. They mobilized around Harris, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and WNBA player Brittney Griner. The group has included activists, elected officials and celebrities — Oprah Winfrey; Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex; and the late Cicely Tyson have joined calls.

“I have always called this a collective love letter, from Black women to ourselves. And it belongs to all of us,” Eaddy said.

The generational and geographic diversity was on display this week, along with a range of skills, talents and resources.

Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown Brown was at her family reunion on Sunday afternoon when she learned that Biden had endorsed Harris.

“I felt like when [Barack] Obama got the nomination all over again,” Brown said. “I actually felt more excited, to be honest. My first response was, ‘OK, he’s out; now we’ve got to fight for this sister.’”

Brown, who was on Sunday’s call and sang a rousing rendition of the gospel staple “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired,” described it as “the quintessential example of how Black women are fully supporting, organizing and investing” in Harris’ campaign in a show of what she summarized as strategy, strength and spirit.

“What you saw last night was clarity,” Brown said. “Black women are all in.”

Brown said her goal is to educate voters on Harris’ record and promises and to prepare Black communities “for the attacks that we know are coming.”

“Our goal at this stage is to educate and motivate,” Brown said. “We got wind under our wings right now. We’ve got to fly. We’ve got to tap in.”

Harris’ candidacy has energized Black men, too: On Monday night, they had their own six-hour convening, Win With Black Men, with more than 53,000 people on the call and raised $1.3 million, according to organizers.

“I got lots of texts [on Sunday night] and was seeing online a lot of Black men saying, ‘I want to click this link, but I want to respect your space,’” said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an independent, Black-led grassroots organization that works to engage Black voters. “We’re heard this entire time that Black men won’t support her, and we know that is just misogyny, to be clear. And it is misogyny not coming from Black men, but being directed at them.”

Jara Butler, the chief impact officer of Supermajority, a progressive grassroots organization focused on building up the voting bloc of multiracial 18- to 35-year-old women, has been a part of the Win With Black Women group since its earliest days, when in 2020 a friend sent her the link and said, “You probably want to be on this call.” Being a part of this group has been “transformative” for her, she said, as she has gotten to hear regularly from Black women whom she had long admired.

Butler was laser focused on work after the news dropped Sunday, but when she got the notification for the call, she knew she had to join, and bring along others. Even with the intensity of the day and what it meant for her work, she thought, “I’ve got to be with my sisters right now.” She wanted that experience for others, too. “I lead a staff that is made up predominantly of Black women, and I just encouraged them all to make sure they could be there.”

She joined the call at 8:30 and shortly thereafter got an email notifying her that the call may not be able to continue because of technical difficulties occurring because too many people were trying to join. Then word spread that the call was going to be able to expand. And messages kept going out about just how significant that expansion was.

“It was like, ‘This thing is getting bigger.’ ‘It’s getting bigger.’ ‘It’s getting bigger. ‘It’s getting bigger again.’ ‘We’re going to have to change the format so everyone can be here.’”

No one got frustrated by technical hiccups, Butler said.

“Everybody wanted to be there. We all needed an exhale from this moment and we needed to collectively feel hugged together. As I said on my own socials last night, if you felt the earth shift, it was because Black women were moving,” She said. “It wasn’t just the 44,000 of us on that call who were there, but it was the spirit of our ancestors who were on there too.”

Butler said the way she personally feels about Harris was very much reflected in the energy of the call, as well. “As a Black woman, I have always looked up to Vice President Harris. In my first big corporate job, I had a picture of her in my cubicle.”

Shropshire of BlackPAC said Biden stepping down brought “a shift in energy.”

“There was this sense of, ‘OK, we can actually do this, and not just stumble across the finish line, which I think is what people were feeling before, but that we can do this and win — and win big.’”

The Win With Black Women call on Sunday night encapsulated this energetic change.

“I had folks texting me, friends who aren’t political people, saying, ‘Do you know anything about this call and do you have the link? I want to be there,’” Shropshire said.

And what attendees heard, she stressed, was “sheer inspiration from Black women who have been a part of the Democratic Party process when the Democratic Party process didn’t seem to care about Black people, and certainly didn’t seem to care about Black women. We had folks like Donna Brazile on the call, sort of like our pastors, being very impassioned about what this means, what it can mean, what it has the potential to mean.”

Shropshire said that the magnitude and energy of Sunday night’s call reflects an infrastructure that exists among Black women that isn’t just election-related, but reflects the reality of the reach and power of their networks.

“The women who were on that call represent professional networks. They represent sororities and fraternities. They represent churches,” she said. “It is the organic networks within Black communities that have always gotten things done, including massive social change efforts. These are the structures already in place upon which that call happened last night. And now these networks are going to be activated on steroids because we find ourselves in another historic moment.”

She noted that fundamentally, the work of groups like BlackPAC is not set to change with Biden exiting the race and endorsing Harris in his stead. What is at play now, though, is replacing any ambivalence with hope.

“Now people feel like they have something to vote for, and not just against. We will have the opportunity over the next few days and weeks to begin to lift up the vice president and her story and her vision for America. We have an opportunity to lean into the historic nature of her race.”

It also means mobilizing to be proactive against the inevitable misogyny and racism to come. Butler said she feels how Black women are ready to rally not just to get Harris elected, but to combat the misogynoir that is already coming her way.

“We’ve always been the workhorses but never been able to be the show horse. And now we’re going to see how people feel about that, because there are people who are going to be uncomfortable with that,” she said.

Even still, Butler said, for now she only has “contagious joy.”

“My godsister called me and said, ‘I’ve been on my prayer line since he made that announcement.’ My 75-year old mama hasn’t stopped wearing her Kamala shirt. My friends are excited. There is something palpable happening,” she said.