In N.C., some Black voters are uneasy with Harris’s abortion rights focus

Democrats worry that socially conservative Black voters in the South are wary of Harris’s outspoken support for reproductive freedom.


Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C., in July. (Cornell Watson for The Washington Post)

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
August 31, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

CHARLOTTE — Vice President Kamala Harris spent the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in this Southern city, comparing the people fighting for abortion rights today to the civil rights activists who refused to leave whites-only lunch counters six decades ago.

“We — all of us — are now called upon to advance the promise of freedom, including the freedom of every woman to make decisions about her own body, not the government telling her what to do,” Harris said in June.

But once Air Force Two had flown back to Washington and Democrats here began urging their family, friends and neighbors to vote for her and other Democratic candidates, their cold calls to strangers and polite post-church conversations rarely touched on abortion, Democratic volunteers say.

“We know that’s not a winner down here,” said Rosemary Lawrence, a longtime Democratic activist who is on the social justice ministry at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte. While she personally supports both Harris and reproductive freedom, she said, very little of her phone banking focuses on abortion.

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Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
Cleve R. Wootson Jr. is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. Twitter