Donald Trump’s rise to power outraged Alabama resident Suzanna Coleman. When the Republican businessman and former reality television star won the November 2016 presidential elections, Coleman decided to take action. Like many other African American women in the historically conservative state, Coleman, a lawyer and social worker, arrived at an epiphany: Why not run for office?
With Alabama’s political representatives overwhelmingly white and male, the barriers were plenty. Women hold a mere 15 percent of the seats in the state House of Representatives, and African American women hold around half of those seats.
“For some reason, we don’t feel we should hold positions of power,” Coleman told Al Jazeera. “A lot of that changed. We had the same epiphany: Well, why not?”
Joining the ranks of African American women building momentum increasing their activism across Alabama for the last two years, Coleman became the Democratic candidate for the state’s district 15 in the upcoming midterm
elections. “We put ourselves out there, it was not an easy thing to do,” she said. “We just want to be looked at as citizens. We want a fair representation.”
Within days of Trump’s victory, nine African American women won judicial seats in Jefferson County, the southern state’s most populous county and home to Birmingham. Still, Coleman expected to be one of the few black women vying for office.
But outraged by Trump and inspired by the newly elected judges, more than 70 women of colour, most of them African American, launched their bids for local and federal office this year in Alabama. That number is far higher than in other states.
“We didn’t know back then what we were going to be facing,” Coleman said. “But this set the ground for other people that other women can do it as well.”
Nationally, more than 400 African American women ran in the primaries this year, according to an online crowdsourcing database.
For many of those still in their respective races, the election is as much about preserving the legacy of the civil rights movement as it is about securing a seat at the table.
And in the age of Trump, Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement and a rightward shifting Supreme Court, African American women are also playing a crucial role in getting out to vote.
