Holding the Line: The Work Done, State Retrenchment, and the Creation of New Realities

Southern Black Organizers · Post-Election Series · Closing essay

November 3 was not the end of anything. It was a line that held.

For six years, since the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 sent an estimated 15 to 26 million Americans into the streets, activists have done the slow, unglamorous work of building power. The state answered with a counteroffensive in the courts, the legislatures, the police budgets and the immigration system. On election night, the work of organizers proved stronger than the retrenchment. But holding the line is a defensive act. It stops a retreat. It does not, by itself, build anything new.

This essay rests on a balance that runs through all of Black history. The state is not all-powerful, and activists are not weak. The state commands courts, prisons, police and money. Organized people have repeatedly found its limits, forced it to retreat, and opened room for freedom. Reconstruction, the Montgomery bus boycott and the Voting Rights Act were all won that way. So, in its own measure, was Tuesday.

The Work Done, 2020–2026

The demands of 2020 were broad, and they were never only about policing. Activists called for respect for Black lives; humane treatment by law enforcement and accountability when officers kill; an end to the carceral state; reproductive rights and the right to choose; education that tells the truth about American history; a living wage and a real social safety net; gun reform and an end to mass shootings; and social justice in housing, health and work.

When the cameras left, the work continued. Bail funds and mutual-aid networks fed and housed neighbors. Tenant unions fought eviction. Students organized for Black studies and against book bans. Voter-protection lawyers, poll watchers and neighborhood captains fought purges and new ID rules. Across the South, groups such as Black Voters Matter, the New Georgia Project and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda knocked on the same doors cycle after cycle. This was the tradition Ella Baker taught: strong people, not strong leaders.

The Anatomy of Retrenchment

The state's answer came fast, and it was a sign of how seriously power took the movement. States rarely build higher walls unless the ground is shaking.

• The courts. Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) ended the federal right to abortion. Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) ended race-conscious admissions. The Supreme Court's 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakened the Voting Rights Act protections that created majority-Black districts.
• The war on knowledge. State laws banned "divisive concepts," dismantled diversity offices and pulled books from school shelves, and federal agencies cut DEI programs. Truthful Black history became a political target.
• The carceral counterattack. Pledges to "defund" gave way to larger police budgets, new training compounds such as Atlanta's, and new laws against protest. Police killings did not fall.
• A federal police force. Immigration and Customs Enforcement grew into a domestic enforcement army whose raids and detentions reached Black immigrants and Latino families alike. ICE's own internal reviews, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle in November 2026, found deficient medical care in 23 of 29 deaths in detention from January 2025 to January 2026. Two Haitians, Marie Ange Blaise and Jean Wilson Brutus, and an Eritrean man, Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, were among the dead.
• Attacks on trans people. Legislatures restricted gender-affirming care, sports participation and identity documents, often in the same sessions that restricted abortion. Control of the body was the common thread.
• Militarism. Spending on war, including the confrontation with Iran, crowded out spending at home, the pattern Martin Luther King Jr. named in 1967 when he linked racism, materialism and militarism.

None of this was inevitable, and none of it was total. Every measure met resistance in court, at the ballot box or in the street.

Turning the Tide

The election showed what that resistance had built. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of any state. Aaron Ford won in Nevada and David Crowley in Wisconsin. Annie Andrews unseated Lindsey Graham in South Carolina on a Black Democratic floor of about 950,000 votes. In Texas, a Black and Latino ground game carried Gina Hinojosa and James Talarico. Black women again voted Democratic at about 93 percent. A preliminary Politico analysis found that turnout in House races in counties at least 60 percent Black rose 21 points over 2022, more than double the increase in counties less than 20 percent Black.

These were not gifts from candidates, consultants or national celebrities. They were the return on six years of organizing. That is also why they are fragile. If the winners treat Tuesday as a mandate for a return to "normal," they will waste it. Normal is what people marched against in 2020.

Black lawmakers have begun to press the same point on their own party. “The South rose up this election without the timely resources,” said Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana. “Now imagine with a little bit of investment, not just at election time, but 365 days a year.” Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi called for year-round investment on the ground, and Sen. Raphael Warnock said the party should be in Mississippi “today, registering voters, mobilizing voters, engaged in voter protection, regardless of the outcome.” Year-round money is what organizers have demanded for years. But 2026 also carries a warning: the South rose before the money came. New funding should strengthen the organizers who built the base, not replace them with consultants.

Creating New Realities

New ground is valuable only if it is used. Defense lets the other side set the agenda; the next stage is to set our own. The work ahead includes:

- Public safety without the carceral state. Invest in housing, mental-health response, violence interruption and schools; end qualified immunity; and bring police and immigration enforcement under real civilian control. !A Black Trans Lives Matter vigil in Durham, North Carolina, 2020. Trans organizers carried the demand for bodily freedom into the streets. HistorianSpeaks archive.

• Bodily freedom. Restore abortion rights and protect gender-affirming care. Autonomy is indivisible.
• Truth in education. Treat accurate Black, Latino, Asian American and Native history as a civil right, and fund HBCUs and public universities accordingly.
• Economic security. A living wage, protection for tenants, a stronger safety net and the right to organize.
• Safety from gun violence. Universal background checks and limits on weapons of war.
• Restore the vote to returning citizens. Restore voting rights automatically on release from prison, with no payment test, as Virginia did with Question 3 in 2026, and end lifetime bans like Mississippi's.
• The vote itself. Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and end purges and partisan maps that dilute Black votes.
• Peace. Shift resources from war abroad to communities at home, and support global Black solidarity from the Caribbean to the Sahel.
• Repair. Pass H.R. 40 and study reparations seriously.

None of these will come from Washington because someone won an election. They will come, as every gain in Black history has come, from organized people who keep pressing after the votes are counted. The state is powerful, but it is not invincible. The organizers have already proved they can hold the line. The next task is to move it.

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