Mississippi elects Scott Colom, the state’s first Black senator in 150 years

Colom wins close Senate race

Colom’s victory will remove Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith from the Senate. By Wednesday night, unofficial Associated Press results showed Colom ahead by more than 5,000 votes, with 99 percent of ballots counted.

The remaining ballots were concentrated in Hinds County, which includes Jackson and is a Democratic stronghold. Many were affidavit ballots, cast by voters who lacked identification at the polls or whose registrations were listed as inactive. Colom’s campaign and election analysts said the outstanding votes would not erase his lead.

A historic return to the Senate

Colom’s election makes him Mississippi’s first Black senator in 150 years. Blanche Bruce, born into slavery in 1841, served one term as a U.S. senator from Mississippi and was the second Black senator from the state.

In 1870, the Mississippi legislature selected Hiram Revels to fill a Senate seat left vacant after the Civil War. The account also describes Revels as the country’s first Black senator, while identifying Bruce as the state’s second and last Black senator before Colom. Mississippi had not elected another Black senator in the years after Reconstruction and through the Civil Rights movement.

Voting rules draw attention

Mississippi is one of three states without early in-person voting and one of a dozen without universal mail-in voting. Republicans challenged ballots postmarked before Election Day but delivered later; the Supreme Court rejected that challenge earlier this year.

The state also keeps a Jim Crow-era law imposing a lifetime voting ban on people convicted of certain felonies. The law disenfranchises nearly 70,000 residents, disproportionately Black, or about 3 percent of eligible voters. The Movement Advancement Project ranks Mississippi last for voter access.

A legacy of political change

The state’s last Democratic senator before Hyde-Smith, John C. Stennis, served for 41 years, retiring in 1988. He opposed school integration, voted against the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, and sought to block Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday.