Democracy at the grassroots

This essay is the fourth in our CAROLINADAZE series, a joint project with Common Cause North Carolina featuring the voices of young North Carolinians and their visions for a better future for NC and the South.

Like the story of the South, my own history is complex. I grew up in rural eastern North Carolina. My relationship with the region is filled with contradictions. This is the place where policies of discrimination systematically marginalized my foreparents. But this is also a place with a deep, yet often forgotten, history of grassroots organizing and activism. It is here where I learned of my own familial roots and connection to the region. It is my home, my place of belonging, and my own special piece of history.

Some of my most important experiences learning about my community come from traveling with my father, Reverend William Barber II, across the state of North Carolina to unite with people impacted by poverty and systemic discrimination and to deepen the cross-racial, cross-religious, cross-generation “fusion coalitions” needed to confront this systemic violence. Navigating these spaces and witnessing the power of coalition-building as a teenager taught me the vital role of grassroots organizing in cultivating new expressions of democracy.

Small rural communities like my hometown of Goldsboro, North Carolina have served as powerful engines for democratic engagement and political activism. In the summer of 2014, I volunteered alongside dozens of my community members to register and educate voters as part of the Moral Freedom Summer campaign ahead of that year’s midterm elections. This initiative was inspired by the Black-led grassroots organizing efforts of the 1960s, like Freedom Summer.

Learning this history as a 17-year-old taught me the significant role that young people play in social change efforts to fight for democracy and reshape the South. By connecting history, policy, and grassroots organizing to large ideas about justice, community, and solidarity, we inspire and fuel local organizing efforts.

That 15-week nonpartisan voter empowerment initiative served as an extension of the Moral Monday Movement, the broad grassroots campaign launched to protest the regressive policies of the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly and then-Governor Pat McCrory. We worked on issues including voting rights, economic justice, criminal justice, education, and human rights. Weekly nonviolent protests at the legislature began on April 29, 2013. Seventeen people were arrested that day for engaging in civil disobedience inside the building. Eventually, more than 1,000 people were arrested that year for taking part in the protests, which scholars consider one of the most sustained direct-action statehouse campaigns in the South's history.

The summer campaign was largely motivated by the implementation of North Carolina’s 2013 "monster" voter suppression law, which included a strict photo ID requirement that did not accept student ID cards from state universities, reducing the period for early voting, eliminated youth preregistration and out-of-precinct voting, and loosened rules on political spending, among other measures. Judges later found that elements of the law discriminated against Black voters with "surgical precision."

The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP hired and trained 34 young community organizers for voter registration and canvassing in preparation for a crucial U.S. Senate race between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and GOP leader Thom Tillis. As a member of the NAACP Youth & College Division, I participated in efforts to educate and register 50,000 new voters in local communities across the state while also supporting grassroots initiatives in those areas.

We organizers were all under 35 years old, and most of us were North Carolina natives. We received extensive voter empowerment training before being sent to local and mostly rural communities in North Carolina. “When we come together, our voices become more easily heard,” said Jessica Injejikian, a Watauga County Moral Freedom Summer Organizer and a native of Grover, NC. “It is imperative that we exercise our right to vote, to honor those before us who sacrificed their lives and welfare to secure the vote for all our citizens.”

We focused on long-term voter registration by building political power and infrastructure. We registered voters door-to-door and strengthened ties among faith-based, labor, LGBT, environmental, immigrant, and youth organizations. Utilizing grassroots fusion organizing, summer organizers engaged local communities to enhance anti-racist and anti-poverty efforts ahead of the 2014 elections.

Although the 2014 effort did not succeed in reaching its goal of registering 50,000 new voters, organizers of Moral Freedom Summer conducted more than 2,000 door-to-door and phone bank contacts, reaching 15,000 people in North Carolina and registering 5,000 new voters.

The North Carolina campaign fell on the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, which mobilized 1,000 student volunteers from the North to support civil rights. Led by organizations like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the original Freedom Summer worked to dismantle barriers to voting rights through collaboration with local leaders.

Like the 1964 effort, the 2014 organizing served as an introduction to grassroots activism and organizing work for many. It was able to boost awareness about the regressive legislative agenda of the GOP-led state legislature and allowed us to build relationships with communities and local residents that would later contribute to a broader movement for social change. The effort also established intergenerational relationships, connecting younger organizers with movement elders like SNCC veteran Bob Zellner. This connection allowed us younger activists to draw on his experiences and wisdom as we navigated our own activism, particularly his insights from coordinating volunteers and the Freedom Schools in Greenwood, Mississippi.

For decades, tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests suppressed Black voters in the South, underscoring the need for initiatives like Freedom Summer to address low African American voter registration. The project established 41 Freedom Schools, educating over 3,000 young Black individuals in literacy and organizing. Volunteers registered nearly 17,000 Black voters, although only 1,600 were accepted by white registrars.

Freedom Summer extended past electoral politics. A key part of the work from the beginning was abolishing voting barriers and consolidating Black political power. Mississippi was selected largely because, in 1962, less than seven percent of the state's Black voters were registered. Freedom Summer built on already-existing voter registration efforts in the rural communities organizers traveled to. Initiatives like Freedom Schools and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the state's segregated educational and political systems, and Freedom Summer helped make way for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Many local activists and national volunteers found that Freedom Summer not only shaped their moral and political perspectives but also improved their organizing skills to help their own communities. “It opened up the gate for all other movements, opened up freedom for lots of people,” said historian Taylor Branch at a 50th anniversary commemoration of Freedom Summer.

Similarly, it was through my own experience that I learned that democracy is not just a political system, but is deeply rooted in the power of people. As I witnessed in the summer of 2014 and have continued to learn in my own life, social change has not come from the top down; it has come from the bottom up.

My experiences have led me to my current role with the Democracy Program at the Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of Facing South — an organization founded by civil rights veterans, including those who participated in the original Freedom Summer. Through my work as both a researcher and advocate, I have deepened my commitment to studying and empowering the rural South. At the Institute, where I started as an intern in 2018 and now help lead our efforts to expose threats to democracy, we explore how these challenges are rooted in Southern history and amplify the voices of those tirelessly working to expand access to voting and decision-making at all levels. 

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the 1964 effort and the 10th anniversary of the 2014 campaign. And once again young people have the opportunity to significantly shape the future of North Carolina and the South for years to come. The state has emerged as a key battleground state that has the potential to determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Young people have expressed deep anxieties about the direction of the country, including concerns about the economy, abortion rights, student loan debt, foreign policy, democracy, and climate change. This crucial bloc of North Carolina voters are paying attention to issues that impact their communities, and are mobilizing to make their voices heard at the ballot box this election cycle. This November, I will be casting a ballot with the recognition that the work of democracy requires a long-term commitment to communities that often go unheard in the country's political discourse. The renewed energy and engagement of young people protesting and organizing continue to give me hope for the future of both the state and the South.