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The stagnant numbers raise interesting questions: Does Sanderss revolution simply need more time? Did voters not know enough about what his policies could do for them? Or, more plainly, did they simply prefer Biden? If the Sanders movementNot me. Usis going to win, either now or in the future, it needs to figure out a way to sway southern black voters to its cause.

Some black people in the South are already on board for radical change, though, and they are trying to bring others with them.

Read: A warning to the Democratic Party about black voters.

Lumumba, whose beard is just beginning to show flecks of gray at its ends, is a rising star of progressive politics. And hes seen the limitations of politics as practiced.

No matter whos been president, no matter whether weve been told that the economy is thriving or were in a recession, weve still been at the bottom, Lumumba told me during his layover in Atlanta on Friday. He was headed to Detroit to join Sanders for a rally before the Michigan primary. People may participate in the pageantry because they dont believe that its really going to affect their lives in a grand way.

Voting becomes pageantry when those who do so arent able to actively engage with the candidates, their staffs, and, most important, their ideas, he said. A contender shouldnt become the candidate through an exercise less participatory than procedural, he argued. He hoped that the people of his citywhich is more than 80 percent blackwould be able to experience the political process more deeply this time around.

In mid-February, Arekia Bennett, an organizer with Mississippi Votes and the Movement for Black Lives, staged a peoples caucus, which involved more than 100 residents of Jackson. The event gave voters a chance to hear directly from staff members representing several candidates, including Biden, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg. Sanders won the caucuss mock vote overwhelmingly, and Lumumba based his endorsement on that result.

It was an intimate experience, the kind of thing Lumumba had imagined when he and three other southern black mayors wrote an open letter to candidates last September. The letter outlined the roadmap for 2020 Democrats to win not only their support, but the support of their communities. We didnt want it to be a perfunctory experience, he told me. It needed to be substantive.

But a little over 100 people is hardly representative of all of Jackson, a city of roughly 170,000. My fear in Jackson, just like my fear around the nation, is that not enough people get a chance to experience that, Lumumba confessed. That was a small sample size of the city in an atypical situation not only for Jackson to get to experience, but that most other southern states dont get to experience.

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Bernie Sanders Reached Out to Black Voters. Why Didnt It Work? - The Atlantic