With lifted spirits, Black Michiganders took their souls to the polls

BY MATT VASILOGAMBROS, MICHIGAN ADVANCE

SAGINAW—Ann and Kenneth Patrick were in high spirits.

The couple had just gotten out of a two-hour Sunday service earlier this month at Prince of Peace Baptist Church and had taken a 10-minute drive to vote early with fellow parishioners and members of their tight-knit community in central Michigan.

Gospel music rang out from speakers sitting in the grass across the street from Saginaw County’s early voting center, in a two-story concrete building that normally serves as a probation office. Local social justice activists offered free water and voter registration materials under the shade of trees, while a close-by soul food truck dished out fried catfish and turkey legs.

Black worshippers from many of the city’s churches laughed, hugged and caught up with friends. It was the final day of early voting for Michigan’s Aug. 6 primary, and voters were choosing congressional and state legislative candidates.

Thanks to changes in state law, this is the first year that Black activists in Michigan have been able to organize the get-out-the-vote event Souls to the Polls, in which the faithful travel from pew to poll right after the benediction.

“Hey, you out—you can go vote,” said Ann Patrick, 59, still in her Sunday finest, a matching black jacket and skirt, under the blazing summer sun.

“You already out,” her husband, 71, agreed, nodding.

“You motivated, and it is fresh on your mind,” she added. “This affects our way of life. If you want to have an impact, you got to vote.”

The Patricks were among roughly 150 voters who braved the high humidity to participate in Souls to the Polls in Saginaw that Sunday. As part of the event, Black pastors throughout the state encouraged their congregations to vote early after services that day. Many churches also organized rides for worshippers.

‘Providing multiple avenues’

This was the first year Michiganders could participate in the nationwide Souls to the Polls effort.

In 2022, voters approved a constitutional amendment that introduced early voting to the state. Then, last year, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill overturning an 1891 law that made it illegal to transport voters to the polls unless they had a physical disability.

“We are providing multiple avenues for people to vote,” said Democratic state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who swung by the Saginaw early voting site after visiting a nearby congregation.

“We know that work can get in the way,” she said. “Kids can get in the way, all kinds of things. And now we just have a place for people’s voices to be heard.”

The primary election didn’t include the race for the White House. But in November, Souls to the Polls and similar mobilization efforts could tip the balance in Michigan, a closely contested presidential battleground state.

It is illegal under federal tax law for pastors to endorse political candidates. But by mobilizing Black voters—83% of whom are Democrats or lean Democratic, according to the Pew Research Center—Souls to the Polls has drawn the ire of some Republicans.

While GOP-controlled Georgia and Texas have unsuccessfully tried to limit Sunday voting over the past four years, Democratic-led Michigan has embraced Souls to the Polls.

“It’s just another avenue to get people back into the process,” said Jeff Bulls, president of Community Alliance for the People, a Saginaw-based social justice grassroots organization that helped organize the early voting event. “I think a lot of people have been jaded with the political process.”

Since it launched in 2021, the group, known locally as CAP, has tried to reengage and educate residents of Saginaw, a city that is more than 45% Black, with a positive attitude, saying it’s OK if residents aren’t yet registered to vote or don’t yet know what’s on the ballot.

‘You must vote’

Along with new early voting opportunities, the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket for president has ignited an enthusiasm about the voting process, Bulls said. Indeed, many voters told Stateline they felt renewed energy after Harris became the presumptive nominee.

“I’ve never seen a political season like this,” said Chuckie Lawrence, a local organizer who puts together a kickball league in the community. “These are the most critical times in my 56 years I’ve ever seen.”

Polling backs up that excitement. The percentage of registered Black voters nationally who said they will vote in November shot up 16 points to 74% after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a recent CBS News/YouGov survey.

In 2020, President Joe Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes, in large part due to his support among Black voters. A few days after the Saginaw Souls to the Polls event, Harris told a rapturous crowd in Detroit that her path to the White House “runs right through” Michigan.

“No one can afford to sit this one out,” said Terry Pruitt, president of NAACP Saginaw Branch, who held a Facebook livestream across the street from the early voting center that Sunday to encourage viewers to rush over before polls closed. “You have to be all in this time.”

The event attracted not only churchgoers, but also first-time voters such as Lionel Baldwin II and Ka’Varion Purifoy, both 19.

“I just know it’s right,” Purifoy said.

Fateya Miller, 35, had just gotten off work when her mother, Tammy Johnson, 62, picked her up to go vote. She said it was either go Sunday afternoon or go early before work on Tuesday, primary day.

“She was going to make me wake up at 6 to go vote,” Miller said.

“Amen,” Johnson said. “It’s my civic duty to vote. I’m going to do that every time I get a chance.”

An hour before Souls to the Polls began, Chris Pryor, lead pastor of Victorious Believers Ministries, stood before nearly 200 of his congregants as a pianist played softly to his right, and reminded worshippers that it was the last Sunday to vote.

If anyone had any questions about any of the contests, he said, the church’s political action team was in the back with sample ballots and could help explain what was on it.

“I don’t want you to go as an uneducated voter,” Pryor told his congregation, holding a mic in his left hand and standing behind a wood-and-glass lectern. “I want you to know the people that you’re voting for. Amen?”

“Amen,” many responded.

His sermon focused on how congregants could only improve the world if they first improved themselves, not just through prayer but also through the vote. Along the wall behind him were the church’s five pillars of faith, one being “community development.”

“I can never tell you how to vote, but I can tell you that you must vote,” Pryor preached. “Don’t complain about things in life if you don’t vote.”

READ MORE: Slotkin breaks it down: How Michiganders would feel a Trump victory

This coverage was republished from Michigan Advance pursuant to a Creative Commons license.