In the winter of 2008, Barack Obama was in no way guaranteed the African-American vote in the Democratic primaries. He had split the opening contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, with Hillary Clinton, and had narrowly won more delegates in Nevada, yet the black voters of South Carolina, particularly the middle-aged and graying churchgoers who come out to the polls in great numbers, were torn. At first, some knew so little about him that they were not sure he was black. Others, following the lead of well-known figures in the old civil-rights establishment, felt warmly toward the Clintons and saw no reason to break with them. There was also a more visceral concern: many African-American voters told Obama’s volunteers in South Carolina that they could not shake the memory of the many black leaders over the decades who had met a violent end. When they looked at Barack Obama, hope and change was not the only future they could imagine.
Anton Gunn, a self-confident young community organizer, told Obama’s campaign chiefs in Chicago that if they wanted to win the state they needed to hire him and follow his advice. The Clintons had already enlisted many black leaders in South Carolina—politicians, pastors, downtown business people—but the Obama campaign could still win, Gunn said, by targetting the “Miss Mary”s, older women who were centers of good will and polite gossip in the black churches, who had a hand in every charity event and Bible-study group. To win the younger black vote, Gunn told the campaign chiefs, they should, in classic hip-hop fashion, distribute free mixtapes of Obama’s best stump performances. Obama, who had to erase any lingering impression that he was a callow newcomer, came to Sumter County and, echoing the language of Malcolm X as portrayed by Denzel Washington, told an enthusiastic crowd, “Don’t let people turn you around, because they’re just making stuff up. That’s what they do. They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you.”
[For more of this story, written by David Remnick, go to http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...28/blood-at-the-root]
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