作者：Nia-Malika Henderson“密西西比很重要。”这是斯科特·科洛姆竞选密西西比州参议员的朗朗上口的口号，他试图成为重建时期以来该州首位黑人参议员，这被视为胜算极低的尝试。这也是对质疑者大军——包括我自己在内——的强硬回击，我们曾嘲笑密西西比州能否摆脱其血腥的过去、重塑自我。现年43岁的科洛姆，如今已是密西西比州当选参议员。
By Nia-Malika Henderson“Mississippi Matters.”This was the alliterative campaign slogan for Scott Colom’s long-shot bid to become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. It was also a defiant rebuke to the legions of naysayers — myself included — who scoffed at Mississippi’s ability to outrun its blood-soaked past and make itself anew. Colom, 43, is now Mississippi’s senator-elect.
这是深南部地区的一次地震式变革。长期以来，在这个地区，主动剥夺黑人公民权利——有时公然诉诸暴力，但往往披着法律的外衣——一直是常态。
This is a seismic shift in the Deep South, a region where actively disenfranchising Black citizens, sometimes through outright violence, but often under the cover of law, has been the status quo for far too long.
但在那段可怕的历史之外，在这个我的曾曾曾曾祖母作为奴隶去世、我的祖母曾是逃离此地数百万人中的一员的州里，一直存在着希望，也一直有人在努力让希望变为现实。
But alongside that terrible history in a state where my once-enslaved great-great-great-great-grandmother died and where my grandmother was among the many millions who fled, there has always been hope and the work to make that hope real.
“[这]不是我一个人的功劳，各位。这是我们共同的成就。我所做的只是拥有勇气，去想象这样一个夜晚。我有勇气相信密西西比，”科洛姆在杰克逊市图加洛学院举行的胜利选举之夜演讲中说道，该学院曾是他之前民权领袖们的聚会场所。“我有勇气明白，我们可以向全国证明，密西西比很重要。”
“[I]t’s not something that I did, y’all. It’s something we did. All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this. I had the courage to believe in Mississippi,” said Colom during his victory speech, which was held at Tougaloo College in Jackson, a convening ground for civil rights leaders before him. “I had the courage to understand that we can show the country that Mississippi matters.”
密西西比州是第一个派遣黑人进入美国参议院的州——1870年的海勒姆·雷韦尔斯和1875年的布兰奇·K·布鲁斯。但正如常有之事，对那段重建时期种族进步的反扑异常残酷，且持续时间远超预期。它夺走了梅德加·埃弗斯等人的生命，这位二战老兵1963年在自家车道上手持“吉姆·克劳法必须滚蛋”T恤时被枪杀，并促使妮娜·西蒙创作了《密西西比，去死吧》。
Mississippi was the first state to send Black people to the US Senate — Hiram Revels in 1870 and Blanche K. Bruce in 1875. But, as so often happens, the backlash to that Reconstruction-era racial progress was brutal and lasted far longer. It claimed the lives of people like Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran who was shot dead in 1963 in his driveway as he held “Jim Crow Must Go” T-shirts, and prompted Nina Simone to write “Mississippi Goddam.”
另一句南方俗语——“谢天谢地有密西西比”——始终缠绕着该州，它折射出区域苦难的等级制度，将密西西比置于大多数指标的底端，让其他南方人庆幸自己身在别处，仅仅高出一档。
Another southern phrase — “ Thank God for Mississippi” — dogged the state, capturing the hierarchy of regional misery that put Mississippi at the bottom of most metrics, and made other southerners glad they were elsewhere and just a notch above.
但现在，密西西比州——全美黑人居民占比最高的州——成了一座灯塔，证明进步是可能的。几个月来，当地活动人士登记了 4 万名新选民，吸引了少数几位全国知名的黑人民主党人前来为科隆助选、筹款。
But now, Mississippi, which has the largest proportion of Black residents of any state, becomes a beacon, proof that progress can happen. Over several months, local activists registered 40,000 new voters, drawing the attention of a handful of Black national Democrats who campaigned for Colom and raised money.
“密西西比州今晚为美国做了一件事。这个深处南方腹地的州——一个字面上带着残暴印记、承载着我们残暴过去与种族另一段传奇的州——让我们离理想又近了一点点，”佐治亚州参议员拉斐尔·沃诺克周三晚间在 MS NOW 上表示。“金博士引用我们的宪章文件时所雄辩阐述的理想，即我们生而平等。我只是感激我们能站在这里。”我们就在这里。
“Mississippi did something for America tonight. This state deep in the heart of the South — a state that literally carries the marks of brutality, our brutal past, with the other saga of race — nudged us a little bit closer to our ideals,” said Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock on MS NOW Wednesday night. “The ideals that Dr. King spoke about so eloquently when he referenced our charter documents, that we’re all created equal. And I’m just grateful that we are here.”
三年前，参议员辛迪·海德-史密斯曾“开玩笑”说要坐在公开绞刑的前排，她在乔·拜登总统提名科隆担任联邦法官后，阻止了他获得席位。周三晚间，那位曾身着邦联装备拍照、并宣称那段历史是密西西比州最好的见证的女性，向科隆致以祝贺和美好祝愿。
Here we are. Three years ago, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, who once “joked” about being in the front row of a public hanging, blocked Colom from taking a seat on the federal judicial bench after he was nominated by President Joe Biden. Wednesday night, the woman who posed in Confederate gear — and claimed that history as the best of Mississippi — congratulated Colom and offered well-wishes.
佛罗里达大学政治学教授莎伦·D·赖特·奥斯汀说：“这里不再是白人农村南方了。这里有大量多样性，有很多移民，有很多移民子女，还有很多住在郊区社区的进步派人士和有色人种。”她著有《……》一书。“现在你开始看到这种动员在那些南方选民群体中产生的影响。”据《纽约时报》报道，黑人选民占选民的33%，高于2024年的30%。
“This is no longer the White rural South anymore. There is a lot of diversity, there are a lot of immigrants, there are a lot of children of immigrants and there are a lot of people in suburban communities who are progressives and who are people of color,” said Sharon D. Wright Austin, a political science professor at the University of Florida who wrote the book“And now you are beginning to see the impact of that mobilization among those segments of southern voters.”Black voters made up 33% of the electorate, up from 30% in 2024, according to the New York Times.
约96%的黑人选民把票投给了科洛姆，白人选民中也有27%投给了她。在整个深南部，针对投票权、多元化和历史遭受的攻击引发了黑人的反击——根据“力量在数字中”组织的数据，黑人选民的投票率约为总统选举年的96%，而白人和其他选民的投票率约为71%。
Some 96% of Black voters cast their ballots for Colom, as did 27% of White voters. And across the Deep South there was a Black backlash to attacks on voting rights, on diversity and on history — Black voters turned out at about 96% of presidential-year levels, compared to about 71% for White and other voters, according to data from Strength in Numbers.
沃诺克加班加点说服全国民主党领导人和捐助者投资这场竞选，得益于密西西比州，未来几个选举周期在整个南方开展这类努力将更加容易。
Warnock worked overtime to convince national Democratic Party leaders and donors to invest in the race, an effort that will be easier across the South in coming cycles, thanks to Mississippi.
“各位，我们为这次选举付出了努力。我们努力了。上帝不想让我们轻易得到它，”科洛姆在胜选演讲中说，这场胜利酝酿了将近150年。“他想让我们以密西西比的方式得到它。”这种方式是艰苦争取来的进步，这套打法将对民主党、南方和整个国家产生影响。
“We worked this election, y’all. We worked. God didn’t want us to get it the easy way,” Colom said in a victory speech that was nearly 150 years in the making. “He wanted us to get it the Mississippi way.”That way is hard-fought progress, a playbook that will matter for the Democratic Party, the South and the country writ large.