"We are here!" From a blue dot in a sea of ​​red, one can expect a visit from a politician

FORSYTH, Ga. – He was a Democrat on Republican territory, a citizen of a rural Georgia town that people tended to frequent to get to other places, including politicians running for positions of responsibility. But this election was different for John Howard, so one morning in August, he began writing a letter.

"I'm contacting you all to find out if it's possible that Stacey Abrams is coming to Forsyth," launched her email to the campaign of one of those politicians who, in November, could become the first woman governor from Georgia, the first black governor of Georgia and the first black woman to govern a US state.

He has introduced himself as the former Mayor of Forsyth and the first African-American elected to this post. He explained that he was acting president of the local Democratic Party, which "badly needed to be shown the way".

"We understand that our county of Monroe does not have a strong representation of Democrats," he typed. "But always, we are here!"

In front of his door was a town of 4,000 inhabitants that appeared on the electoral maps in the form of a small blue dot in an immense red sea – the red of rural Georgia, the rural southern red and the red remainder from America who had elected Donald Trump. President.

Now the Georgia campaign for the governor was underway and huge signs for Abrams' opponent, a self-appointed Trump acolyte named Brian Kemp, were beginning to appear in the courts and fields surrounding Forsyth. John assumed that Forsyth had headed Abrams several times south on the I-75 for stops in Macon or Valdosta, or elsewhere in that city where he had spent most of his life. She had probably seen her through her window – the DQ of Exit 187, the Waffle House of 186, the small brown sign indicating the historic square of the courthouse, not far from the church near the Railroad where John envisioned that Abram's address to a crowd. .

"Abrams taking the time to introduce ourselves in our city and to talk to us, I think it would bring the much needed spark to bring about serious hope! And believe me, when I tell you that it's really something we need in Forsyth, in Monroe County, at this very moment. . . "His email continued." It's MY HOPE that this request, I present to you, is highly regarded. "

He read the letter, pressed send, and began to wait for an answer.

***

With the mid-term elections approaching the last few weeks, many campaigns across the country are unfolding in the same way – not only as a choice between Democrats and Republicans, or Liberals and Conservatives, but between mini-versions of Donald Trump and candidates representing a party. opposite vision of America.

In Florida's running for governorship, a candidate is a white Republican who shows him how to teach his kids how to "build a wall" and say "You're fired" while his opponent is a black Democrat who argues that Trump should be dismissed. In the race for the US Senate of Virginia, a candidate is a white Republican who has openly associated with white nationalists and describes himself as "Trump before Trump", and the other is a white Democrat known to have been the former vice president of Hillary Clinton and have sometimes delivered speeches on the sections. in Spanish.

In races in California, Indiana, Mississippi and elsewhere, the choice is between Trump or not-Trump, a polarized dynamic that is particularly apparent in Georgia, where Kemp is courting Trump voters by calling himself "Politically incorrect conservative" in ads featuring explosions, chainsaws, rifles and a pledge to "gather illegal criminals".

Meanwhile, Abrams is courting everyone – not just the Atlanta Democrats, but all the neglected voters of the blue cities of rural Georgia.

"We must reach out to those who do not believe that their voice counts. . . "She said in her victory speech at the primary party. "We will search for those we do not know yet and prove that they are important to us too."

It was a message that had resonated throughout Georgia, in places like Pearson and Moultrie and Sparks and in many other small towns where people were sending daily speech requests to the countryside. And at Forsyth too, where John was not alone in hoping that Abrams would come.

"She should be hitting all those little towns in the area," said one of her friends, James Green, sitting one evening in front of her auto repair shop on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

"They think everything is red," said Green's friend, Kendell Thomas.

Green pulled out an electorate information pack that he had just received from the NAACP and titled "Beat Hate: Vote!". He was starting a chapter in Forsyth before the elections and knew the numbers. Hillary Clinton had won the Forsyth trial with 1,486 votes against 1,044 votes for Trump, between 58% and 41%, which corresponded almost exactly to the racial distribution of the city. Trump won around Monroe County, which is made up of 73% whites and nearly 70% of the vote.

It was the same story throughout the rural south. Blacks were often in the majority in small towns, but whites remained in the majority overall, their power being visible in white family names engraved on buildings and in portraits framed by white faces in town halls, palaces of justice and the governor's office. An unbroken procession of 75 white men held this position for 243 years.

"She could come to the arts center," continued Green.

"It would be big," said Thomas.

"My thing is, if you see a young black woman holding a governorship, a young light-hearted person who might think," I can also be governor, "said Green.

"People would be motivated," said Thomas. "Stacey Abrams could do that."

John felt the same way and a few hours after sending his email, he received a response from the campaign.

"Good afternoon, Mayor Howard – Thank you for reaching out. . . He began by explaining that all requests for Abrams' word had to be submitted to the campaign planner, who received hundreds of them every week. John sent another email.

"We have already approved the place, which is our church of course!", He replied. "We are here!"

***

He was currently reading a book titled "The Magic of Thinking Big" and another titled "The Quotient of Hope," which a friend had recommended to him, telling him that it could help him get better. "Restore energy about things you are about to give up. A 48-year-old life insurance salesman, his formerly natural optimism, required some effort, partly because of everything that had happened when he was elected mayor of Forsyth seven years ago, just when he felt that bad. full of possibility.

Over the years, there had been some African Americans serving on the city council, one of whom had been appointed in 1991 to complete the term of a deceased mayor. But now we were in 2011 and Barack Obama was elected president, and John was struck by the strange that no black person had been elected to the position of senior city official.

"I just thought someone should have been qualified," he said.

His own qualifications at the time were that he had grown up in Forsyth, had served in the air force, graduated with a degree in commerce, and was working as a network administrator for a hospital. . He had never been to the government before. He thought he was too inexperienced, but his friend James Green had encouraged him: "You're a smart young man, you'll defend yourself and that's what we need," he told him – then he decided to try.

He went on to campaign by focusing on infrastructure and job growth. When he knocked on doors, he told people that he wanted Forsyth to become "a known place in Georgia," that he wants everyone to feel included, and that "I I would like your vote if you think I'm worthy. He remembered that many white residents were friendly and others watched through their curtains, and that many black voters were supportive, while others were asking for help. "Was going too fast".

He won by 151 votes, between 549 and 398. He remembered how exhilarating this feeling was and what happened just after: his opponent filed a complaint for election fraud with the newly elected Secretary of State, Brian Kemp. Kemp sent investigators to Forsyth to knock on the doors of black voters who had voted for ballots by mail, which revealed some that were poorly filled but did not change the election result.

John understood that Kemp's job was to investigate such complaints. At the same time, he felt that the episode set the tone for everything that would follow, including what a white woman had told him shortly after taking office.

"She said the city probably was not ready for me yet," he recalls. "I said, I'm sorry you're not ready. I am what you have.

Over the months, he said, there have been meetings on "the future of Forsyth" to which he was not invited. A white Republican congressman went to town and did not show up at his office to shake his hand. He began to feel resistance to all his ideas, he said, returning home from church one day, while remembering everything he perceived as an affront.

He passed in front of the old court square where there was a Confederate statue with shrubs. He passed the wide lawns and old Victorians who pointed to the still-white side of the city, through a more mixed-race, middle-class subdivision made up of little brick hikers, and turned into a neighborhood of hunting rifle houses. Used churches that remained mostly black side of Forsyth. He parked in a cracked parking lot in front of a grass strip with two picnic tables and a playground where once stood a swimming pool.

"This is our version of a park," he said.

It was the park reserved for African-Americans at the time of segregation and it was still pretty much the park where the black kids were playing. John had promised the local constituents to try to bring back a beautiful pool and make it as pleasant as the city's large park, which included a golf course, gazebo, larger playground and landscaped grass. However, municipal officials raised liability issues and a committee decided that John did not know what was going on. One morning, he woke up and his phone buzzed with messages from angry citizens saying the municipal employees were at the pool and filling them up.

"They filled it with dirtHe said looking at him now.

He knew that he had made mistakes as mayor. But it was hard not to believe that his mandate was a kind of miniature version of what he saw as a rash resistance that Obama had to face, or what he was seeing as resistance that every Black person had to face when it violated certain unspoken rules. things have always been like before, especially in small towns like Forsyth.

"I had the impression that the message was that I needed to stay in my place," he said. "It was:" How in the world can we make sure that this guy – and I'll be honest, this not —– – will not be elected again. "

He shook his head. He drove towards the house, still thinking of dirt.

"It pisses me off, people tell me how much I can go," he said. "I have every right to be what I want to be – no man can tell me what I can and can not be."

He turned into Brookwood, the bourgeois part of town where he lived in the same brick house in which he had grown up with his widowed mother, with many of the same neighbors, including older black leaders who have blamed John's inexperience. racism, for what went wrong.

"They want to crucify me, but I feel like, where were you"He said," There was no one in my corner. "It was like a boxing match, and no one in my corner – it was like they were waiting for my failure. .

In the 2015 reelection, he lost by 53 votes to a white city councilor, Eric Wilson, who is the kind of mayor who talks about "synergy for economic development" and his good relationship with the leaders of the city. State, and how he and John, a councilman now, "works well together, albeit in reverse roles."

For John, however, everything seemed to indicate that a great white restoration was in progress. If Obama's victory had opened a brief window of hope for people like him, Wilson's victory resembled closing the window and Trump's closing the window , and the prospect of a Kemp victory in the governor's race gave the impression of sealing the window. and that's why he sent the Abrams campaign via email.

"I would be very inclined to make this request by phone or in person, if it was necessary!" He had written to the planner, and when he heard nothing in return after a few days, he called a friend who had a connection to the campaign and made another step.

***

There were other African-Americans who had held a position at Forsyth and one of them was John's neighbor, Rosemary Walker, who served three terms on the city council until the end of the term. in 2009. She had also watched the Abrams speech at the primaries party, and when she began to see Kemp signs were rising around the county, she called the Abrams campaign and asked herself to render visit to Forsyth.

"We're close to I-75!" She tells them.

She asked for marshalling panels and when they came she placed them in the same place as Obama's. She had gone to both of Obama's inauguration ceremonies and had taken pictures that she had added to a large collection she kept locked in a rusty storage shed by the side of the road. One day, she stopped and opened the door, releasing a moldy air wave.

Inside were hundreds of old frames leaning high up on the walls, each carrying a photo or an old newspaper article about a black person who had somehow left his mark. She began to search them, looking for some specific ones.

"It was Rita Samuels," she said, flipping through a collage of photos of the civil rights activist who grew up in Forsyth and was working for former president Jimmy Carter.

"It's a lady who was a doctor, Luetta Boddie, in 1927. People always ask me if she's white and I say no, black," said Rosemary, who was old enough to remember the rooms of the house. Black and white waiting in front of her. dentist, and how all that had ended in Forsyth quietly and without much conversation.

She went to another pile of pictures stacked on the stained carpet of water. Here was the pastor of Mt. Church of Gilead. There was Harold Moore, an actor who played in plays across the country. Here is an NFL player who graduated from the local high school. There were so many pictures to frame that at one point she started buying thrift stores, because the glass itself, for a new drink, was $ 25. At another time – the year after Obama's appointment – she decided to start showing her collection to the public. .

Once a year, during Black History Month, she took out all the pictures of the hangar and installed them wherever she could find a place, which was recently in a former downtown depot used by the county historical society. first white settlers from the county on the wall. She installed the photos on easels made by her husband. She herself visited the exhibition every day, including Sunday. She had banners hanging all around Forsyth – "Celebrate the Black History!" – and did all this without asking for help from the city.

"You can not wait for people," Rosemary said, and found one of the photos she was looking for.

"It was Paul James," she said, explaining that in the 1930s he had managed to buy a row of buildings on the forecourt of the courthouse, where he had opened a hairdressing salon. , a billiard room, a record store, a coffee shop and a dry cleaner that served the dark side of the city.

"It was little, but he possesses she said, looking at the picture.

She went through another pile, a chronicle of progress from a small southern city to racial equality. The first black factor in 1966. The first black high school director after integration in 1970. And another picture that she was looking for.

"It's me," said Rosemary, waving a front-page photo of the first queen of homecoming, beaming into a belt and crown in November 1972.

She remembered how shocked she was to find out that she had been elected by the newly-integrated high school students and how she had felt standing on the football field, to the applause of the crowd.

"I was stunned," she said. "I did not think it would be me."

People have dubbed her "queen" long after, and some have done so again. She knew that some of her fellow white people had helped her get elected to the city council and that some of them had become people who had voted for Trump, whom Rosemary had called Trunk, not as a joke. but by total indifference. She continued to search through her photos. First black city councilor in 1978. First black police chief in 1980.

"And that's John," she says.

She showed a smiling picture of Forsyth's first elected black mayor, hands clasped and resting on a wooden desk. She looked at her for a moment, then put her back in the pile on the floor. She closed the hangar door and locked it.

***

For a week, John did not hear about the campaign. He then received a call from his contact telling him that Abrams was planning a visit to one of the three cities of central Georgia and that Forsyth was one of the possibilities.

On Sunday, he went to church. He was a deacon at St. James Baptist and, after the choir sang "Come to Jesus", he went to the front to deliver the opening prayer.

"Father, we understand what makes us really free," he began. "We understand that you have provided everything for us – everything, everything you want us to have. . he said. "Father, we need you. The week has been tough, father. . . Something has to happen this week. . . "

Meanwhile, Abrams was two hours away from an event in Augusta. All week she was crisscrossing the state. She was three hours from Donalsonville. She had stayed three hours in Savannah. She was two hours away at a barber shop in Albany called Kut N Edge, where owner, Lerron Lee, had stated that he had a hard time believing it when he had learned that she was coming. One person from his campaign team did a haircut at the hair salon and suggested the place, but Lee never thought it would really happen.

"C & # 39; large – I've never had such an important person who wants to come to this store, "he had said an hour before the arrival of Abrams, when volunteers were mounting rows of chairs and that people filled them.

"She's coming to the base," said a man standing by the door as the store grew busier. Someone mounted a podium. A television crew arrived. A senator of state has arrived.

"Did she arrive here?", Asked someone when a campaign employee came in.

Lee was looking out the window.

"Stand up!" He said as a black SUV parked in the cracked parking lot of the old mall and stopped in front of the barber shop. People hoisted their cell phones. Someone called "next governor!"

Abrams made her way inside, clasping her hands and touching her shoulders, and as she started talking about those who had been "left out and left behind," people nodded and said "d & # 39; agreement."

She talked about growing up in Mississippi. And she told the story she had told many times about her father, a college graduate who could only work in a shipyard because of the racial barriers of the day.

Her family only had one car, she began. Her father was often hitchhiking at night. And one of those nights, she said, the family was waiting for it was getting colder and later, and they finally decided to go out and find it. When they did, Abrams continued, he was half frozen and without his only coat. He told his family that he had given it to a homeless man. When they asked why, said Abrams, her father told them, "Because I knew you were coming for me," and her voice grew high as she delivered the signature of her campaign.

"I'm coming for you, Georgia!" She said, and now people were clapping. They applauded. They were taking pictures and, when they left, they registered to register voters, knock on doors and make phone calls on the evening of the election.

***

At Forsyth, John was still waiting. He had an Abrams board and put it in his garden. He called the campaign again. He contacted a Democratic Party field director, who told him that she would do everything she could. He thought of going to another campaign to present his request face to face.

One day, sitting at the Waffle House, near I-75, he remembered the last time that an inspirational event had happened at Forsyth, a celebration of Paul James, the # 1 39, who had bought the row of buildings in the 1930s and who had opened the barber. the pool hall, the record shop, the coffee shop and the dry cleaner.

Rosemary had asked the city to rename the small block in honor of James. On a sunny afternoon in August, when Obama was still president and John was still mayor, a dedication ceremony was held. There were yellow and black balloons attached to the balustrades in front of all the old shops. Rosemary had brought a red carpet that she had used at Christmas and had it rolled in the middle of the street. Members of the James family, who still owned the buildings, came from Atlanta and others from all over. John stood in front of the crowd and talked about a man whose name was his childhood.

He remembered hearing his mother on the phone one night on the phone, talking calmly to a family member in trouble and telling him that what they had to do, it was call Paul James. He had heard adults pronounce the name all the time while growing up. If anyone needed help, the solution was to call Paul James and, on the day of the dedication, John had explained what it meant to have a powerful person who was paying attention.

He thought about that now, what would it do for the person who might be the first woman governor of Georgia, the first black governor of Georgia and the first black woman to govern a state of America coming to the county of Monroe, in Forsyth. , until here.

"I mean, really see this person?" He said. "To have it really come?"

He checked the messages on his phone. He saw a report that Abrams was now tied with Kemp in the polls. He recalled his contact for the campaign and told him to call as soon as he had heard something.

"Because I want to be able to spread the word and let people know that it's really going to happen," he said as the cars kept going. "She comes."