CHICAGO ‒ The black and gold T-shirt Eli Waldon sported to a recent convention of his historically Black fraternity showcased exactly what's on his mind in 2024. "VOTE" was printed in big bold letters across his chest.
"A bit too obvious, huh," laughed Waldon, 51, a middle school assistant principal in Rio Rancho, New Mexico and former Air Force tech sergeant.
"With everything going on that could affect our civil rights to reproductive rights to certain groups thinking they are better than us, this election is too hard to ignore," he said at the Alpha Phi Alpha constitutional convention earlier this month in Chicago.
With Vice President Kamala Harris taking the reins as the presumptive Democratic nominee, political observers are paying close attention to whether she can energize the Black vote this fall in her race against former president Donald Trump.
The nine historically Black fraternities and sororities often called the Divine Nine, are poised to play a key role in the effort, particularly by mobilizing support from Black suburban and middle class voters.
Harris, an Alpha Kappa Alpha member, spoke Wednesday in Indianapolis at a convention for a different Divine Nine sorority. She had accepted Zeta Phi Beta's invitation to its Grand Boule when the Divine Nine presidents visited President Joe Biden and her in the Oval Office in May. Harris skipped a speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday to deliver the talk.
"Little did we know on Sunday while we're here planning the week that the news wouldhit about President Biden choosing to step aside from the election and pass the baton to the vice president," Zeta Phi Beta International President Stacie NC Grant told USA TODAY. "Everything changed. It was like ‘Wait, wait, wait, what just happened?' This is beyond historic."
During her address to the Zetas, Harris got her biggest cheers when she emphasized the importance of protecting reproductive freedom, an issue she has long supported.
"One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not be telling her what to do," Harris told the 6,000-women crowd.
“When I am President of the United States and when Congress passes a law to restore those freedoms, I will sign it into law," she continued. “We are not playing around."
The Divine Nine
Between 1.5 to 2 million people belong to one of the Divine Nine, according to the National Pan-Hellenic Council, their umbrella organization. The organizations consist of Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma and Iota Phi Theta fraternities and Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, Zeta Phi Beta and Sigma Gamma Rho sororities.
The groups, which advocate for community service, civic engagement and voter registration, are credited with helping Biden and Harris win the White House in 2020.
In May, at the Oval Office meeting with the Greek officials, the vice president recalled that after Biden added her to the ticket in 2020 she thanked the Divine Nine. When some members of the White House press corps asked "What's the Divine Nine?" Harris shot back, "You're about to find out!"
Just a day after Biden announced he was stepping down from the ticket, the respective presidents of the collective organizations, formally known as the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), wasted little time announcing a coordinated campaign during this "critical moment in history" to help get out the vote.
"This campaign will activate the thousands of chapters and members in our respective organizations to ensure strong voter turnout in the communities we serve," the NPHC's Council of Presidents said in a statement Monday.
The Greek organizations "are part of an elite college-educated collective who have a large reach professionally and personally with getting people out to vote, " said Wayne Dawkins, a multimedia journalism professor and historian at Morgan State University in Baltimore, a historically Black institution. "But, even more important, they know how to connect with their fellow alums, their neighbors. and their communities at large.
"They came through for Biden and Harris during the 2020 general election and they are going to be counted on to do it again (for Harris)," Dawkins continued.
Willis Lonzer III, the general president of Alpha Phi Alpha and chair of the NPHC's Council of Presidents, told USA TODAY that when he met with Biden and Harris in May, he told them he thought they needed to "crystalize the narrative" to win re-election.
"We must inform the communities we serve that democracy is on the line as we know it," Lonzer said.
Alpha Kappa Alpha International President Danette Anthony Reed, who also was at the meeting, echoed Lonzer's sentiment.
"We live in an era where you cannot give long-winded messages, especially with young people. You have to make short, succinct, concise points. The administration needs to say what accomplishments they have done and what they plan to do," Reed told USA TODAY. "Society has changed, even in the last four years. Many people want some quick words and takeaways, and if you don’t get those out within a couple of minutes, they are gone."
How Black fraternities and sororities can help Harris
There was a strong Black sorority presence among the more than 44,000 people, mostly women, who jumped on a hastily planned Zoom meeting Sunday night that lasted into the wee hours and collected about $2 million for Harris' campaign, organizers said.
A similar meeting featuring 55,000 mostly Black men, and organized by activists and some Black fraternity members, including broadcast journalist Roland Martin, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, was held on Monday nabbing more than $1.4 million in donations for Harris, Martin told USA TODAY Wednesday.
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This is where the Black fraternities and sororities can wield their influence, said Walter Kimbrough, interim president at Talladega College and author of Black Greek 101: The Culture, Customs, and Challenges of Black Fraternities and Sororities. Kimbrough said the organizations increased their political activism once they saw Harris could be vice president.
"There's a different level of excitement, a level of mobilization leveraged with social media, and 'strolls to the polls,' especially with women," said Kimbrough, an Alpha Phi Alpha member. "People know how to organize really quickly and have these mass conversations," Kimbrough said.
"Both meetings filled twice the size of an arena or a sold-out football stadium in the SEC," he said, referring to the college sports conference.
He said that kind of engagement helped Sen. Raphael Warnock, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, to win a highly contested Senate race in Georgia, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Delta Sigma Theta sorority member, and Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams, an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority member, win her seat, succeeding the late Congressman John Lewis, a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
Although the Divine Nine are officially non-partisan, the groups promised to be active in their get-out-the-vote effort this fall.
When she addressed the pink and green-clad Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority conventionin Dallas two weeks ago, Harris ‒ then still slated to be the vice presidential nominee ‒ asked for her sorority's help doing just that. "In this moment, once again, our nation is counting on the leaders in this room to guide us forward; to energize, organize, and mobilize; to register folks to vote and to get them to the polls in November," she said.
LaNiece Jones, an Alpha Kappa Alpha member from Oakland, California, found that message "empowering and inspiring."
"She spoke from our pillar of social justice," said Jones, the California State Director of BWOPA, Black Women Organized for Political Action, a nonprofit group, who has known Harris since her days as a San Francisco district attorney. "It was a call to action, encouraging us to help people get to the polls and vote. To be present. To be in the moment."
Reed, the president of Alpha Kappa Alpha, said she and the sorority are "extremely proud and ecstatic for Vice President Harris during this historic moment."
Margin of error race
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Harris locked in a tight battle with Trump in the immediate aftermath of Biden's departure from the race. Harris led Trump 44% to 42%, within the poll's 3% margin of error, which means the advantage might have happened by chance.
A new CNN poll found the opposite, with Trump leading Harris by 49% to 46% among registered voters, but again, that lead might have happened by chance.
"I think it’s a margin of error race," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center, which oversees the USA TODAY/Suffolk polls.
A USA TODAY/Suffolkpoll of Black voters taken this spring in key swing states Michigan and Pennsylvania showed Biden was losing momentum, especially among Black men. Harris now carries that burden, Paleologos said.
"She can't go into this election in these two states losing between 16% to 20% of Black men," Paleologos said. "There's not enough votes in those urban counties to offset the suburban and rural red counties in those states."
Among Black voters overall, in Michigan Harris had a 60% favorable rating compared to a 24% unfavorable rating, and in Pennsylvania, Harris had a 55% favorable rating compared to a 30% unfavorable rating, Paleologos said. Those ratings were comparable to Biden's, the pollster added.
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Typically, Biden and Harris draw more support from college-educated Black people, like Divine Nine members, just as they draw more support from college-educated voters of all races and Trump from those with less education, Paleologos said.
"There is room to grow for Harris. The onus is to define herself to those who have yet to form an opinion," Paleologos said. "The unfavorable ratings have to drop into the teens. This doesn’t mean they are going to vote for Trump, they may not (go) for him, or they could not vote at all, or they could vote for (independent candidates) Cornel West, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, or Jill Stein.
"Harris needs Black voters in those states to not only support her but to go out to the polls and vote for her," Paleologos added. "If they vote for a third-party candidate or not at all, that’s a lost opportunity."
Dawkins agreed it's too soon to predict the results of this fall's election ‒ which puts even more pressure on the Divine Nine to turn out voters.
"There’s all this hand-wringing because this election will be decided on the margins," he said. "It’s going to be close."
