571/18/2018
by Vanessa Williams via the Washington Post
A supporter of Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Doug Jones reacts during an election-night watch party in Birmingham, Ala. Black women were key to Jones’s victory. (John Bazemore/AP)
Organizers of a black women’s summit are hoping to gather more than 1,000 participants in Atlanta next month to map out a strategy for getting more political and economic returns for a group that has one of the highest voting rates.
Power Rising, the event planned for Feb. 22-25, was in the works before last month’s special Senate election in Alabama, where black women led the Democratic Party to an upset victory in the deep-red state. The idea came out of a retreat held by female members of the Congressional Black Caucus after the 2016 presidential election. Black women had proven to be the Democratic Party’s most loyal group of voters in the general election, with 94 percent of them casting their ballots for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
Leah Daughtry, a D.C. pastor who chaired the Democratic National Committee’s 2016 convention, spoke at the retreat and said she was asked by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) about what black women should do next...