The training in northwest Mississippi that Cassandra Welchlin led was focused on mobilizing Black women voters amidst voter suppression, but the longtime community organizer wanted to make space to sing.

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around …

“Come on, y’all!” Welchlin told the crowd of nearly 100, who joined in on the next verse. Turn me around …

Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around. I’m gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up to freedom lane …

“I am so happy to have y’all in the house,” she said at one point. “If y’all could see what I see.”

What Welchlin saw that August morning were the faces of Black women — and a lot of them. Their interests, varied and historically overlooked, are at the center of a new kind of intentional voter engagement training aimed at mobilizing Black women voters and their communities.

“Black women mobilize their communities,” she told The 19th. “They are the catalyst.”

Welchlin is executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, a civic engagement and policy advocacy organization whose members, all of them Black women, have traveled the state for months to host trainings called the “Power of the Sister Vote Boot Camp,” mobilizing Black women voters.

On paper, their goal with the boot camps is to mobilize Black women voters in the Mississippi counties where they visit, increasing voter turnout. They also want to create a years-in-the-making pipeline to better mobilize Black women voters, whom Welchin views as the glue holding together democracy, especially in a state and region that continues to be impacted by policies that have historically suppressed Black voters.

“I was raised in a house of Black women — my aunties, my grandma, and then the neighborhood of elders,” she said. “I know the power of Black women taking care of Black women, and taking care of the community.”

At the trainings, Welchlin and her staff dress in military fatigues — a “boot camp” theme that has manifested into the advertisement the group uses to promote the events and the T-shirts they distribute to attendees. But there is a deeper significance.

Read the full article about mobilizing Black women voters by Barbara Rodriguez at The 19th.