Leid Stories—What Was Blacks’ Voting Strategy in Alabama’s Senate Race?; Kwame Turé Warned About the Perils of Undirected Political Action—12.14.17

Roy Moore, who lost the U.S. Senate race in Alabama to Democrat Doug Jones in a special election Tuesday, says he’s not conceding until the vote is fully tallied to include military and write-in ballots. With 99 percent of the votes counted, those votes (an estimated 20,000) won’t be enough to put Moore over the top, even if they all went to him, officials said. Besides, under Alabama law, the difference between the final votes in an election must be smaller than 0.5 percent to trigger an automatic recount.

African Americans delivered victory for Jones. But as Leid Stories asked yesterday: Of what benefit will that be to them?

The late Kwame Turé, presciently addressing University of Chicago students in 1989, stresses that strategy and purpose should inform political action. If not, we will only be enabling our own oppression.