Building Rural Black Political Power: A Conversation with Kristin Powell

Black Futures Lab is an organization that seeks to build Black political power by intentionally engaging those that political campaigns often ignore. Through deep canvassing and working in the community year-round—not just during election season—the organization has a deeper understanding of the needs and concerns of rural Black people.

To learn more about this work, NPQ recently spoke with Kristin Powell, the principal of Black Futures Lab (BFL). Powell shared what the groups’ voter engagement looks like, how it relates to Black voters around its Black Economic Agenda, and what it needs from philanthropy to continue this work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Rebekah Barber: What led you to Black Futures Lab?

Kristin Powell: My window into social justice came from Hurricane Katrina. I was in high school when Hurricane Katrina happened. I grew up in a household where my parents talked a lot about race relations in the country. I lived in a predominantly Black neighborhood and went to a Black church.

Seeing Black people in their own country being laid out to dry, called refugees, all that occurred [in the aftermath of the hurricane], really got me fired up about thinking about how to create cities that actually work for people. When I got to college, I did a service program in New Orleans to help rebuild. At the same time that me and a group of volunteers were helping to rebuild houses, the city was passing ordinances that would bulldoze houses that didn’t have their lawns mowed, which was essentially a land grab.

That got me into justice work. I’ve been an organizer, mostly in Florida, for most of my career. I’ve worked on criminal justice and education reform in multiracial settings. I just felt really called in 2020. Yes, all the things were going on—COVID, the killing of George Floyd—but for me, that was the year I became a mother to a little Black boy.

That year got me thinking about wanting to focus my energy on the liberation of Black people, which is how I then left the organization that I worked for in Florida and moved on to Black Futures Lab.

RB: Historically, Black rural voters have been ignored in electoral organizing spaces. Could you talk more about why Black Futures Lab decided to focus on organizing Black rural communities?

KP: Because no one else was. I’ve been reading this book that’s resurfacing again called How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, and he talks a lot about how fascism comes on the rise because fascists are really good at the “us and them” dichotomy.

They build that up in rural America, and they target White factory workers, White farmers—men mostly—in rural communities and convince them. And we play on their own vulnerabilities about these evils that are happening in major cities or these evils that are happening with people of color or people that have a different sexual orientation.

The message is that rural America is White. At Black Futures Lab, we know that that’s not true. In the South, rural America is very Black, and rural America has the capacity—in sheer numbers—to change the balance of power across the entire South—Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.

If we focus on smaller cities and rural communities in the South, and I’d also argue smaller cities in the Midwest that operate very similar to a rural community in the South, we can change the balance of power. But what we do instead, as a progressive movement, is focus on the big cities, on the educated Black population. But that’s not enough to change those levers, so we [Black Futures Lab] really dig in the rural communities because there’s a lot of opportunity to win there.

RB: How would you say that rural Black voters showed up specifically in the 2024 election? 

KP: I can speak to the places that we are in. We’re in Valdosta, Georgia, and the surrounding areas; Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and the surrounding areas; and Monroe, Louisiana. I can speak to those three communities.

“In the South, rural America is very Black, and rural America has the capacity—in sheer numbers—to change the balance of power across the entire South.”

By and large, those communities don’t show up if they’re not engaged. We saw that, prior to 2022, when we got into those communities, a large majority of the population was registered but not voting.

We showed up in 2022, stayed focused, and organized year-round. We’re not the type of organization that pops in for 12 weeks, just for an election, and pops out. We’ve been in these communities since 2022 all year round. When we do this, we see big jumps.

We saw an 18-point hike in Valdosta because of our long-term work in that community. In North Carolina, we saw big increases in the Rocky Mount area. Even in this past election in Louisiana, Monroe had its largest turnout of Black voters in years. We saw these big jumps because we’re in those communities. I don’t think that’s the case across the entire rural South because it’s harder to organize. It takes more investment; it’s hard to get to. Unfortunately, a lot of our rural communities weren’t engaged in 2024.

RB: What were some of the conversations you were having and the lessons you learned about the concerns in these communities?

KP: The economy is a huge concern. That’s a concern for everyone.

Black Futures Lab is best known for the Black Census Project, the largest survey of Black people in American history. What rural voters said is not much different than the rest of Black America.

The economy doesn’t work for us. Specifically, housing is too expensive. Wages aren’t high enough to support my family, including to pay for childcare, and healthcare costs are crippling me.

Those were the major things Black folks said in rural communities, but not uncommon nationally. I think what’s specific about rural communities, because there’s not a lot of organizing happening, those voices get unheard.

With the national messaging that rural America is White, Black voices in those communities are being drowned out, if not stamped out. Policies have to be focused on getting folks access to healthcare in Black rural areas. You have a state like Georgia with one of the highest Black populations in the country, and you have a governor who refuses to expand Medicaid.

That means that Governor [Brian] Kemp doesn’t really care whether Black people live or die in that state. That’s the message he is sending when Black people are more likely to die in hospitals or because of preventable diseases and illnesses.

RB: Can you also talk about your Black Economic Agenda?

KP: To take a step back, the purpose of the Black Census is a few things. Black Futures Lab aims to be a leader in data collection on Black communities. The average poll you hear on CNN or MSNBC is having talked to 500, a thousand, maybe 2,000 black people or people in general.

We surveyed 211,000 Black people across all 50 states and focused on making sure that hard-to-reach communities, like rural communities, people who are incarcerated, and trans folks got reached.

That’s even more important today when data is being ripped from public platforms that the government used to provide to us to understand what Black people want because we’ve been the conscience of this country, and what we want for America is typically in line with what America wants for itself.

The second big thing this census does is tell us what policies are the most popular and what policies need to be enacted to motivate Black voters to engage civically. That’s where the Black agenda comes in. It’s a roadmap of the policies that need to be enacted for Black people to thrive, and when we thrive, the country does as well.

Our [economic] agenda is broken into three parts. One is about taxes and budget reform and making sure that the tax code works for our communities and not for the billionaires. Also in budgeting, making sure that there is participatory budgeting, and the people have an opportunity to say where their tax dollars are going. There was a big win recently in Wisconsin. One of our partner organizations, AART [African American Roundtable], just won participatory budgeting for Milwaukee, which is pretty cool.

The second part is about wages and worker protections and making sure that we have the right to unionize and that we’re paid a living wage.

“With the national messaging that rural America is White, Black voices in those communities are being drowned out if not stamped out.”

The third part is about the cost of living. Yes, we care about the grocery prices, but we overwhelmingly talked about the cost of healthcare, childcare, and housing. What policies need to be put in place?

What we’re doing now is going back to the people who took the census, going back to the communities that we work in, and asking for community members to endorse the agenda so we can start winning some of these policies in cities and states. We already have over 20,000 endorsements of the Black Agenda, and we’re continuing to do that.

RB: How have you leveraged your 501c4 side to uplift the concerns of rural Black communities?

KP: The c4 side is an integral part of our strategy. Transparently, it is woefully underfunded because much of philanthropy is afraid of investing in c4s. So many of our organizations that do civic engagement get all this money for [501c3s] and not as much for c4s.

The problem with that is two things. One: I had lots of conversations at the door this past election, and when you’re at the door with someone who’s not been talked to in years about voting and is skeptical about voting and all you can tell them is to vote—but not who to vote for and why they should vote for that person—you’re leaving that voter hanging, and it’s a disservice to them.

The second is our ability to win policy and lobby to do that. With our c4, we’re also getting endorsements from elected officials to push them to include the Black [Economic] Agenda in their agenda. Across our states, we’ve just launched that strategy. We’re starting to test some policy campaigns in communities like Valdosta so that we can begin to show what it takes to win them at the local level and then eventually at the state level.

RB: What would you like to see from philanthropy in terms of really investing in Black rural communities?

KP: A real partnership around it. As a people—I’ll speak for Black people—but this country, in general, has been oppressing Black people for 400-plus years.

There is no possibility that true liberation for all people, not just Black people, will happen in a few election cycles. Yet philanthropy gets very nervous every four or five years and backs out from partnerships with the organizations that are on the ground doing the work to follow the next thing.

We’re already seeing this: All this money and support was coming into Black communities in 2020, and now that we’re in 2025, some of that support is starting to wane.

People aren’t sure if it makes sense to be still investing in Black communities. Now we need to invest in Latinx communities or Muslim communities. All of that investment is important, but if we’re hopping around all the time, we’ll never win.

One thing is to stick with your partners long term. The second would be to value rural communities. Philanthropy loves big numbers. They love to hear that you’ve knocked and talked to a million people. But that’s a strategy around metropolitan areas.

If you’re serious about talking to rural voters, those numbers are going to be smaller, but you actually have to be deep with those communities—talking to the same people multiple times. You’re not going to have millions of Black voters in South Georgia that someone has spoken to. You’re going to have tens of thousands.

“There is no possibility that true liberation for all people, not just Black people, will happen in a few election cycles.”

It’s important not to contribute to the transactional culture of “we want big numbers so we can tell our board we’ve reached a lot of people.” Those numbers often become inflated to chase the cash that comes from elections.

Then the last thing I would say is we need for philanthropy to want to have a real learning partnership with us. At BFL, we’re not interested in philanthropic partners who give us money and walk away, but we want to learn from each other. We want to be engaging with philanthropy as partners—learning, sharing what we’re learning, but also sharing what they’re learning from other partnerships that they’re in, from other philanthropic spaces that they are in—because we’re stronger if we’re in a true relationship.

RB: You mentioned the deep conversations needed to engage voters. Some organizers also say that infrequent voters need to be contacted between seven and eight times before they actually decide to go vote.

KP: Interestingly, our organization has a much higher success rate than that. We specifically target low-propensity voters, so these are people that voted in two out of four of the last major elections, and we’ve tended to have about a 50 percent success rate of people that we’re talking to agreeing to vote.

You typically don’t see that high of a success rate. I think that is because we stay in the community all year round. They’re used to seeing us around and hearing what we’re talking about. We’re not strangers who have parachuted in.

I think you’re right—it takes eight times. But I would say to get someone civically engaged permanently, it probably takes about 50 times—because even though we got them to vote this time, now the real work begins of getting them to stay engaged.

Some scary stuff just happened in this last election. Even people who we got to the table to vote could back down and start to say, “Well, this doesn’t matter. I did vote. I came out when I never come out. Now look what’s happened. Am I going to lose my Medicaid, or is my mother going to lose her Social Security? This country never cared about us anyway; why am I even trying?”

We’ll still have to do a lot of work to keep people at the table.