Black Voters in the South Want Leaders Who Fight but Also Deliver

Farmer Jeremy Peaches spends his days thinking about food: not only how to grow it and where to send it — but also whether people can afford it. The owner of the Fresh Life Organic Produce Co., he manages 25 acres of vegetables for restaurants, food banks, and residents in the largely Black community of Sunnyside, south of downtown Houston. But lately, a different issue has been weighing on him. This one also has to do with survival.

A friend, Peaches recalled, was badly injured while working with machinery. As he struggled to heal, he lost his healthcare. The consequences were immense: “He was probably paying about $30 before — now his medications are about $600,” Peaches told Capital B. “He needs his medications so that he can work and feed himself and his family.”

That’s one reason that Peaches, 33, pays attention to figures such as U.S. Rep. Al Green of Texas. He’s known for advocating for expanded healthcare: Last year, Green was ejected from President Donald Trump’s address to Congress for protesting proposed Medicaid cuts. (The same thing happened to Green this year during Trump’s State of the Union address.) That willingness to speak up matters, said Peaches, praising as purposeful and necessary Green’s support for agriculture, healthcare, and other initiatives.

Green will face U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee of Texas in a May 26 runoff, as both seek to win the seat for the 18th Congressional District. The election comes at a moment when Republican lawmakers across the South are racing to dismantle majority-Black districts: Some one-third of the Congressional Black Caucus are at risk of losing their seats.

Peaches’ perspective isn’t unique among Black voters.

In states where Republican lawmakers control the levers of power and most Black lawmakers are Democrats in the minority, outspoken leadership often becomes both a political strategy and a sign of representation. Lawmakers who challenge policies and force national conversations become symbols of resistance

At the same time, constituents also want meaningful change. As Peaches said, “After the rhetoric, then what?”

A voice in hostile territory

During that same 2025 address that Green was removed from, U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams of Georgia, among other Democratic lawmakers, walked out. Williams — whose district includes about three-quarters of Atlanta — said that she left because she refused to endure “yet another one of Donald Trump’s lie-filled speeches as he plays in the faces of the American people.”

For some of Williams’ Black constituents, that visibility carries special meaning in a state where Republican lawmakers dominate. Davida Huntley, a 42-year-old fourth-generation Atlantan, said that seeing a Black woman from Georgia in Congress use her voice so muscularly is vital.

“For such a long time — prior to my birth and probably prior to Williams’ birth — few Black women’s voices were part of anything in politics,” Huntley told Capital B. “So to have a voice, a seat at the table, and to have that voice belong to a Black woman from Georgia, that’s just beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

In a political environment where Democratic lawmakers lack the numbers to fully realize their ambitions, Huntley argued, there’s value in lawmakers publicly advocating for policies for communities that are overlooked in debates. 

“Even if her voice doesn’t bring about the change we want to see but it cracks the surface, that’s important,” Huntley said.

Williams frequently leans into a public-facing role. In addition to walking out of Trump’s address, she has held town halls focused on issues such as Medicaid, Social Security, and the overhaul of federal agencies. At a 2025 town hall at Jackson Memorial Baptist Church, Williams and Atlanta City Councilmember Andrea Boone zoomed in on entitlement programs, allowing some 300 Atlantans to ask questions about what Trump’s “big beautiful bill” might mean for their futures.

The House Democratic Committee on the Budget estimated that, because of this legislation, 651,540 Georgians could be stripped of their healthcare, 154,000 could miss out on food assistance, and 180,913 students could be denied their Pell grants.

The town hall was also a time for Williams to face scrutiny from some of her constituents. When she referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as a conflict instead of as a genocide, several in attendance heckled her. To Huntley, though, this tension wasn’t a bad thing, because, as she sees it, what matters is that lawmakers show up not just in Washington but also at home.

“A big issue that we’ve had historically with elected officials is that they’re not visible after we vote for them,” Huntley said. “The fact that she continues to get on a plane from Washington, come to events, be present — all of that means a lot to me.”

That emphasis on visibility came up in conversations with other Black voters in Texas, too.

Tevin King, a 12th grade English teacher in El Paso, pointed both to congressional figures such as Green and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas and to local leaders such as El Paso Mayor Renard Johnson, the city’s first Black mayor.

“I think that, particularly on that local level, having a leader who’s willing to speak up and be a part of the community really is instrumental,” King told Capital B. “We as Americans, and especially as El Pasoans, we’re very used to seeing leaders who don’t look like us.”

King described Crockett and Green as embodying different but nonetheless complementary political styles. Green, he said, embraces a more direct advocacy-focused approach. Meanwhile, Crockett, who in March lost her bid to become Texas’s Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat and has thrown her weight behind Menefee in the May 26 runoff, exemplifies a younger, more media-savvy, more confrontational generation of Black political leadership.

“I love how they have different approaches,” King said, arguing that, especially in red states across the South, Black leaders often operate under more intense pressure. “I think that being Black definitely makes you plan out your political strategy, and you have to be very intentional about what you do.”

“One wall at a time”

Yet, even as voters praised outspoken Black leadership, some also expressed frustration with what they see as the limits of that visibility when lawmakers are still constrained by white Republican power.

Peaches, the Houston farmer, said that, in a state such as Texas, public confrontation and disruption can be useful for training political focus on certain issues: “If you’re really trying to bring attention to a matter, yeah, there probably has to be some sort of controversy,” he said.

“But we’re not new to marching, we’re not new to speaking up,” he added. “You’ve got two types of fighters: the people who fight verbally, and the people who fight with the sword. Black people, we’re good at the first one, but we’ve got to be better at the second one.”

To Peaches, this includes backing legislation that can be voted on, even if, because of the political realities of the South, that legislation is likely to fail.

That dynamic has long shaped voting-rights debates in the South. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — legislation that’s meant to restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has steadily eroded since 2013 — has repeatedly been introduced in Congress only to stall due to Republican opposition.

Green and Williams have supported versions of the bill, despite the slim likelihood that it would pass Congress. For Peaches, these sorts of efforts still have value, because they demonstrate that lawmakers are willing to put concrete proposals on paper and that they’re in tune with their constituents’ wants.

In recent weeks, Black voters have looked on in fear and anger as Republican lawmakers in former slaveholding states — in Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia — have ramped up their efforts to dismantle majority-Black congressional districts. They have been emboldened by a recent Supreme Court decision that was “the death knell” of “our nation’s most singularly important federal civil rights law,” Kristen Clarke, general counsel of the NAACP, recently told Capital B.

This tension between symbolism and governance — or visibility and material change — sits at the heart of how many Black voters describe political leadership in red states. Outspokenness can be a salve, helping to push conversations into public view, but constituents also want evidence that these confrontations can produce policy or resources.

For Huntley, though, even incremental gains matter in places where Black political power remains relatively recent. Atlanta, she said, is often romanticized as a center of Black influence, without recognition of how contested that power still is: A judge this month allowed the U.S. Department of Justice to keep the 2020 ballots it seized from a warehouse in majority-Black Fulton County. Trump has repeatedly claimed, without any evidence, that voter fraud in the county contributed to his election loss.

“We’re still figuring it out,” she said. “You have to break down one wall at a time.”

Back in Houston, Peaches framed the issue in similarly pragmatic terms. Whatever happens in Washington or state capitols, he said, ordinary people must be able to afford their medicine, keep their businesses open, and feed their families.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “partisan fights shouldn’t be destructive to the people.”

Read More:

• From Crockett to Willis: 8 Black Officials Who Have Clashed With Trump
• After Being Forced Out by Trump, Black Federal Officials Are Taking Him to Court

The post Black Voters in the South Want Leaders Who Fight but Also Deliver appeared first on Capital B News.