Scott Colom defeats the senator who blocked his federal judgeship, becoming Mississippi's first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction. In Florida, Byron Donalds makes history 106 years to the day after a Black voting rights advocate was lynched in Orlando.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
Sen.-elect Scott Colom of Mississippi, left, and Gov.-elect Byron Donalds of Florida. (Getty Images/Illustration by EEW Magazine Online)
On June 12, 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi, home shortly after midnight. His wife and three children were inside. The 37-year-old World War II veteran had spent years fighting to secure voting rights for Black Mississippians.
Forty-three years earlier, on Nov. 3, 1920, a white mob lynched July Perry in Orlando, Florida. The Black landowner and voting rights advocate was killed amid racial violence that erupted when Black residents of nearby Ocoee attempted to vote.
This November, both states reached historic political milestones. Mississippi elected Democrat Scott Colom to the U.S. Senate over Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. Florida elected Republican Byron Donalds governor over Democrat David Jolly.
Medgar Evers, left, was assassinated outside his Jackson, Mississippi, home in 1963. July Perry was lynched in Orlando, Florida, in 1920. (Mississippi Department of Archives and History; public domain/Illustration by EEW Magazine Online)
Colom, 43, is Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction and the first elected directly by voters. Donalds, 48, is Florida's first Black governor and the first Black Republican elected governor of any state.
The two men differ in party and agenda. Their victories share a history rooted in generations of struggle for Black political representation.
When the Associated Press called the race on Nov. 11, its count showed Colom leading Hyde-Smith 49.2% to 48.7%. She conceded that evening.
Mississippi sent America's first Black senator to Washington in 1870. Hiram Rhodes Revels, a minister and Republican, served during Reconstruction. Blanche K. Bruce, born into slavery, followed in 1875 and served until 1881. Both were selected by the state Legislature, the method the Constitution then required.
Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi became the first Black U.S. senator in 1870. (Library of Congress)
Following Reconstruction, Mississippi systematically stripped Black residents of political power. Its 1890 constitution imposed poll taxes and literacy tests designed to disenfranchise Black voters. By 1913, when the 17th Amendment established direct Senate elections, few Black Mississippians could vote.
Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, just 6.7% of eligible Black Mississippians were registered.
Colom's victory ended a 145-year absence of Black representation in Mississippi's Senate delegation. He also became the first Democrat the state has elected to the Senate since 1982.
The race had a personal history as well. In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom, then a district attorney, to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. His nomination drew bipartisan support, including from Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and former Republican Govs. Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant.
Hyde-Smith refused to approve it. In April 2023, she withheld her blue slip, a document through which home-state senators register their approval of or opposition to federal judicial nominees. Under Senate Judiciary Committee practice, that decision prevented Colom's nomination from advancing.
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith speaks to supporters in Jackson, Miss., on Nov. 27, 2018, after winning a runoff against Democrat Mike Espy. She blocked Scott Colom’s federal judgeship in 2023 and lost her seat to him this month. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Hyde-Smith cited financial support Colom's 2015 campaign received from a political committee funded by George Soros. She also cited what she characterized as his opposition to legislation protecting female athletes.
Colom responded that he never solicited the money. He said a statement he signed concerning medical treatment for transgender patients said nothing about athletics.
The blue-slip procedure has its own Mississippi history. Segregationist Sen. James Eastland, who chaired the Judiciary Committee from 1956 to 1978, used it to obstruct nominees considered sympathetic to school desegregation, Mississippi Today reported.
Colom maintained throughout his Senate campaign that he had forgiven Hyde-Smith and was running against her political record.
On election night, with ballots still being counted, Hyde-Smith reminded supporters that she had blocked Colom's judgeship and declared that voters had now kept him out of the Senate. Eight days later, the man whose federal judgeship she had blocked was elected to replace her.
Colom closed his campaign with an advertisement filmed at Medgar Evers' former home in Jackson. He recounted Evers' military service, voter registration work and assassination by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, who was finally convicted in 1994.
In Mississippi, Colom said in the ad, "no one is above the law, and no one should be outside its protection."
The Jackson, Mississippi, home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers, now a national monument. (Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument)
On Veterans Day, Colom celebrated at Tougaloo College, a historically Black institution central to Mississippi’s civil rights movement, where he honored Evers, Revels and voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. In Mississippi, he told supporters, “our prayers have often changed the course of history.”
Black women powered much of his victory. They made up 20% of Mississippi’s electorate, compared with 5% nationally, and 99% supported Colom, according to CNN’s Voter Poll. A shift among white voters contributed too, The Hill reported.
Florida’s milestone came on Election Day itself. Donalds, a Republican congressman and ally of President Donald Trump, won with 50.0% of the vote to Jolly’s 48.7%, according to AP’s count.
The only Black Republican governor before him, P.B.S. Pinchback of Louisiana, served briefly in 1872 and was never elected to the office.
Donalds’ victory came exactly 106 years after the lynching of July Perry. On Election Day in 1920, Nov. 2, Mose Norman, a Black resident of Ocoee who had helped register voters, was turned away from the polls twice. A white mob pursued him to Perry’s home, where gunfire left two white men dead and Perry wounded.
Authorities jailed Perry in Orlando. Before dawn on Nov. 3, a mob seized him, beat him and lynched him. White mobs then burned Black homes and churches in Ocoee, and the surviving Black community was driven from the town. Estimates of those killed range from six to more than 30, according to a historical marker unveiled in Orlando in 2019.
Donalds, who campaigned on affordability, insurance costs and school choice, called his election “a matter of pride for Black Americans all through the country.” The NAACP omitted him from its tribute to historic election winners, EEW Magazine Online reported.
Their elections do not erase the racial inequalities that shaped their states, and Black elected officials do not share a single partisan identity. The history behind them connects the two victories.
Medgar Evers was murdered while fighting for voting rights in a state that has now elected its first Black U.S. senator by popular vote. July Perry was lynched following an election in a state that has now chosen its first Black governor on the anniversary of his death.
Both men take office in January.
