On EP154 of America in Black and White, I said something I need to say again, louder, for the people in the back.
I opened tonight’s episode with four words: They used to kill us for this.
Not as a rhetorical device. As a fact. In 1946 in Taylor County, Georgia, a Black World War II veteran named Maceo Snipes walked into a courthouse and voted. He was the only Black man in the county to do so. The next day, he was shot on his front porch. He died. His killers were never charged. The system decided his vote and his life, were not worth protecting.
Eighty years later, we are 23 days from one of the most important elections in Georgia’s history. And I believe, with everything I know after years of studying this state and this moment, that what happens on November 3rd will determine the shape of Black life in Georgia for the next decade.
Keisha Lance Bottoms Is Running for History and History Is Running Out of Time
The Georgia governor’s race is a statistical dead heat. The polling average has Republican Rick Jackson at 47.7 percent and Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms at 47.6 percent. That is a margin of 0.1 points. If Bottoms wins, she will be the first Black governor in Georgia’s history and the first Black woman elected governor anywhere in the United States. If she loses, it will be by a margin that Black voter turnout, specifically, early voting in Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton counties, could have closed.
The math is clear. The organizing infrastructure is in place. The New Georgia Project, Fair Fight, faith-based voter mobilization networks, these organizations have been doing the work. What they need now is the people. Is you. Is your family. Is your cousin who says their vote doesn’t matter.
It matters by 0.1 percent. It matters exactly that much.
The Voting Rights Crisis Is Not Coming, It’s Here
While we watch the polls and debate debate moments, 430-plus voter restriction bills have been introduced across the country since January 2025. Ninety-four have been signed into law. The Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ is purging voter rolls in 17 states. This is not paranoia. This is the documented output of a coordinated campaign to shrink the electorate and specifically to shrink the Black electorate in competitive states.
Check your registration. Tonight. Not the morning of November 3rd.
On Mass Incarceration and Healthcare: The Governor Makes These Decisions
The governor of Georgia appoints members of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles. The governor’s posture on criminal justice determines the conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, where Black men are incarcerated at rates that bear no relationship to justice. The governor’s Medicaid position determines whether hundreds of thousands of uninsured Black Georgians have healthcare access or are left in a coverage gap that costs them their lives.
Black Americans die younger than white Americans, across heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke, kidney disease, and maternal mortality, not because of biology, but because of systems. The hospital that was built across town. The insurance that was priced out of reach. The physician who undertreated the pain because of a bias embedded in the curriculum. Every one of those systems can be reformed. Every one of those reforms requires political will. And political will requires accountability. And accountability requires your vote.
What We Owe Each Other
I closed tonight’s show by asking what we owe each other, not what the government owes us, not what corporations owe us, but what we owe one another as a community. I believe the answer includes this: we owe each other our votes. We owe each other the truth about what is at stake. We owe each other the grace of bringing our people, the ones who are tired, the ones who are discouraged, the ones who say their vote doesn’t count, into the process anyway.
Watch Episode 154 now on all AMIBW platforms. Share it. Talk about it. And then go vote.
Charles Zackary King is the host and solo anchor of America in Black and White (AMIBW). New episodes every Monday Wednesday and Friday.
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