The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., says its 31,000 congregations and 7.5 million members will watch what Democrats do with the Congress Black voters just handed them. It has put its demands in writing.
Rev. Boise Kimber, the convention’s president, has sent the new majority a four-page “Working-Class Black Agenda” after the Nov. 3 midterms. His message, as quoted by Word In Black: “Blacks will no longer be taken for granted.” Democrats, he said, “have to work as hard for our vote as they do for any other constituency.”
The convention is one of the oldest and largest Black denominations in the country, and it is not asking for a gesture. The agenda calls for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote, a ban on deliberately splitting Black neighborhoods across voting districts, and a return to federal review of proposed election changes in certain jurisdictions. That last item is the preclearance system the Supreme Court gutted in 2013, and the districting item answers the maps Republicans redrew this cycle.
It also reaches into household finances. The convention wants stronger enforcement against discriminatory home appraisals, so Black families get fair prices when they sell, and access to low-interest capital for Black entrepreneurs. It asks for legal protection for the federal program that helps disadvantaged business owners win contracts, student debt relief, a stronger Affordable Care Act, legislation to improve Black maternal health and full funding for Title I, the federal money for schools serving low-income children.
The most contested item is the Supreme Court. The agenda calls for expanding it from nine justices to 13. The convention is asking for it plainly, and the reason is on its own list: the voting protections it wants are the ones this Court has already struck down.
Then there is the enforcement clause. “The NBCUSA will not rely on the good faith of politicians,” Kimber said. The convention will organize its congregations to press lawmakers and track what they do after Election Day, and calls its role “an aggressive, permanent political watchdog.”
That is the right posture. Black voters have delivered for the Democratic Party for decades and have too often been told to wait. A party that wins on their turnout and then spends its first months on other business owes them an explanation, and a convention that reaches 7.5 million people in the pews can demand one.
The new Congress is seated in January. The first test is whether a voting rights bill gets a floor vote before the party starts counting what it can afford.
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