Powerhouse Support: 44,000 Black Women Join Zoom Call, Raise $1.5 Million For Kamala Harris

Hours after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, more than 44,000 Black women logged onto a Zoom call and raised more than $1.5 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential election campaign. It happened in a matter of hours.  

The Zoom call highlights the ways in which Black women plan to rally around Harris, who is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

The call was organized by Win With Black Women founder Jakota Eaddy. The organization aims to elect Black women to various political positions nationwide. Since the 2020 election, Eaddy told The Washington Postthe most people she had attending her weekly Sunday night Zoom calls for Win With Black Women was 1,500, and that she was expecting Sunday night’s call to have a few hundred attendees.

By the end of the call, more than 44,000 people had joined.

The call attendees including prominent Black figures in politics, including Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King Jr., Representative Maxine Waters of California, and two-time acting chair of the Democratic National Committee Donna Brazile, all of whom spoke on the call.

“Anybody that does not think that Black and Brown women are the backbone of this party, they don’t know us,” Star Jones, the lawyer and former talk show host, told The Washington Post. “[Harris] has already been leading by example. We are going to support her, we’re going to raise money for her, and we’re going to get out the vote for her.”

Word of the Zoom call spread far and wide. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio, mentioned she would be joining the call while doing an interview on MSNBC, likely inspiring additional attendance, according to The 19th*.

Just before the call was set to start, it reached capacity, and Eaddy reached out to Zoom for support. Professionals at Zoom were reportedly able to turn the call into a webinar, allowing thousands more people to join all at once.

Eaddy also told the publication that attendees included those who identify as Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and Black men also joined the call to show their support. The majority of the call focused on Black women’s collective power to elect Harris.

“What happened last night was historic,” Eaddy added. “It really is the culmination of so many Black women for years and years and years that have been working, cultivating and creating for this moment. And last night was also a homage, a work to them and their sacrifice.”

Other notable attendees include music industry executive Naima Cochrane, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, and representatives of nine Black sororities and fraternities that exist under the National Pan-Hellenic Council, known as the Divine Nine. Harris is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.

Since Sunday, several high profile Democrats have supported Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee after Biden’s endorsement, including former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.