Civil rights leader joins Congressman Bennie Thompson, Southern Democratic Party chairs, and DNC Black Caucus Chair Virgie Rollins in demanding the DNC keep South Carolina first — warning the stakes for Black voters have never been higher.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Rev. Al Sharpton, President of the National Action Network, is adding his voice to a growing coalition of Black leaders warning the Democratic National Committee not to strip South Carolina of its first-in-the-nation presidential primary status. The statement comes as the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee prepares to decide the order of the 2028 primary calendar.
“You don’t forget who showed up for you when nobody else would,” Sharpton said. “Black voters have shown up for the Democratic Party again and again. South Carolina hasn’t just cast votes in the presidential primary, time after time, it decided the nomination, and ultimately the presidency. If South Carolina gets quietly bumped after one cycle of convenient praise, that sends a message louder than any speech at a Democratic dinner: the gratitude was performance, not policy.”
South Carolina didn’t luck into its spot at the front of the calendar; it earned it. The DNC moved the state up in 2024 because a party that depends on minority and working-class voters to win needed a primary process that led with a state like South Carolina, where Black voters make up over half the Democratic primary electorate, and the rest of the electorate reflects the urban, rural, working-class, and suburban mix of the country the party is trying to win. It worked. Sharpton and other Black leaders argue reversing course now, in favor of states with calendar conflicts or political convenience, would be exactly backward.
“To turn around now and push South Carolina to the back of the line would be a slap in the face to the very voters who’ve kept this party alive,” Sharpton said. “This isn’t about one state’s ego. It’s a test of whether the Democratic Party actually means it when it says Black voters are the backbone of this coalition, or whether that’s just something we say during election years and quietly walk back once the votes are counted.”
Sharpton tied the fight directly to this year’s Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and opened the door for state legislatures across the South to redraw maps that dilute Black political power.
“When courts won’t protect fair districts, and state legislatures are racing to draw Black representation out of existence, the primary calendar becomes one of the last remaining levers Black voters have to shape who leads this country,” Sharpton said. “The Democratic Party cannot simultaneously turn around and strip away the one nationally visible platform where Black voters get to go first and set the tone for the entire race. That would be doubling down on disenfranchisement at exactly the moment it needs to be resisted hardest.”
Sharpton’s statement adds to a wall of support building for South Carolina in recent weeks. DNC Black Caucus Chair Virgie M. Rollins wrote directly to Rules and Bylaws Committee Co-Chairs: “African Americans continue to be the backbone of the Democratic Party and can consistently be counted on to support Democratic candidates. South Carolina has a larger African American population than any other state currently under consideration to be the first primary state,” Rollins wrote, adding that by electing Christale Spain to lead the state party twice, “South Carolina Democrats clearly recognize her leadership and that Black women get the job done of organizing and getting Black voters to the polls.” “I support South Carolina being first on our primary calendar,” Rollins said.
That support follows on the heels of a joint push from Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, and Democratic Party chairs from across the Deep South. Thompson wrote to DNC Chair Ken Martin and the Rules and Bylaws Committee that “South Carolina’s first-in-the-nation status is not a procedural privilege; it is a hard-won recognition that the Democratic Party’s coalition must be centered, not assumed.” Southern state party chairs from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and West Virginia echoed that message in their own joint statement: “When South Carolina goes first, we send a message to the nation that the Democratic Party will not retreat from its commitment to multiracial democracy, even as the courts and the Republican Party work in concert to undermine it.”
“Keep South Carolina first,” Sharpton said. “Not because it’s owed as a favor, but because it’s the right thing to do for a party that wants to win.”
