For 22,581 days, the United States claimed equality through the Voting Rights Act. The vote of a Black person and the vote of a white person were supposed to carry the same value, like the quarter slipped into a jukebox for the chance to hear a song.
But the feel of a Black quarter and a white quarter were never truly the same.
The Black quarter carried scratches that looked like scars. Its silver was stained with blood and felt heavier, as though it carried the weight of every hand that touched it. Yet when it entered the jukebox, the Blues poured from the speakers — rhythms rooted in histories that predate 1619. The beat of the djembe, the twang of the akonting, the voices of descendants of faraway kings. That quarter represented resilience, survival, and power.
The Black vote gave us the chance to hear our song. It allowed voices once silenced to echo through halls built by our ancestors’ labor. Ballots became prayers slipped through narrow slots, carrying the fingerprints of generations who endured slavery, lynching, segregation, and disenfranchisement. Every vote crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge carrying the sound of freedom songs behind it. Those ballots were proof that we were here; fully human, fully American, and holders of democracy itself.
Then came April 29, 2026.
For many Black Americans, it felt like the sting of old wounds reopening. The right to vote is sacred in a democracy, and when those entrusted to protect it undermine it, the betrayal cuts deeply. Black Americans recognized the pattern immediately because history has taught us to. Oppression does not disappear; it adapts.
Connecticut is not exempt from that history. Black communities remain underfunded, underrepresented, and too often ignored in this state. Connecticut was the last New England state to abolish slavery and the first to require literacy tests for voting. Until recently, our access to the ballot was one of the most restrictive in the nation (i.e. early voting and no-excuse absentee voting) and we still haven’t quite figured it out. Though often hidden beneath northern liberalism, many of the same oppressive systems associated with the South have existed here for generations.
Yet surrender is not an option.
More than 250,000 Black residents of voting age live in Connecticut, including over 150,000 Black women. Black women have long stood at the intersection of attacks on voting rights, reproductive rights, and race equality. Their existence has continually been scrutinized and diminished, yet they remain among democracy’s strongest defenders.
Black women understand something essential: as long as the jukebox still recognizes the quarter, the song can still be played.
The voices and brilliance of Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Pauli Murray and Shirley Chisholm still guide the work ahead; organizing, educating, and speaking truth to power. Black women have always understood that this day could come, which is why they never let go of their quarters.
That is one of the reasons Black Catalyst PAC was created. Our mission is to build and sustain the political power of Black women in Connecticut by investing in leadership, educating voters, and supporting organizations and activists already driving change.
The time is NOW! We must continue to organize, invest and act. Black women prioritize Democracy and now it’s time for Democracy to prioritize us.
Adrienne Billings-Smith of West Hartford is Chair of the Black Catalysts PAC .
