Alabama congressional candidate Shomari Figures stepped into the national political spotlight tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Numerous celebrities joined a parade of speakers encouraging the crowd of delegates for Vice President Kamala Harris, who will accept her party’s nomination later that evening.
In his three-minute speech, Figures spoke about Alabama’s civil rights heroes – the Tuskegee Airmen, Rosa Parks, attorney Fred Gray and Congressman John Lewis. He concluded with a call to vote for Harris and a round of applause for his home state’s beloved football team.
“America, it’s time for us to get out and vote,” Figures said. “It’s time for us to get out, from California to Alabama and all across America, and show them that we’re not going backwards, we’re going forward. And we’re going forward with Kamala Harris as the next president of the United States of America. Thank you. God bless you. Roll Tide. Let’s win this thing.”
Figures, 39, is a Mobile native and attorney who worked in the Obama administration and in the Justice Department under President Biden before returning to Alabama to run in Alabama’s newly redrawn 2nd District.
Figures is running in the Nov. 5 general election against Republican candidate Caroleene Dobson, a Montgomery attorney. Dobson grew up in the southern part of Monroe County. Both Dobson and Figures are first-time candidates.
Figures’ mother, Senator Vivian Davis Figures, has represented Mobile in the Alabama Senate since 1997. She is one of Alabama’s delegates to this week’s convention.
His father, Michael Figures, served in the same Alabama Senate for 18 years before dying in 1996, when Shomari Figures was 11 years old.
“My path to this stage was paved by a number of fighters,” Figures said. “Fighters that include my mother, Alabama State Senator Vivian Davis Figures, who is here for her 11th Democratic National Convention.”
“And that includes my father, my late father, Michael Figures, who was also a state senator and a civil rights lawyer who sued the Klan into bankruptcy.
“All of America, we all owe a debt to courageous freedom fighters. Known and unknown alike, a debt that can never be repaid. But what we can do is ensure that the work of those fighters who came before us continues. And that our sacred right to vote is always protected.”
“Kamala Harris understands this. She works every day to protect our freedoms.”
A federal court redrawn the Second District after ruling that Alabama’s previous congressional apportionment most likely violated the Voting Rights Act by crowding too many black voters into a single majority-black district, the Seventh District. The new Second District covers all or part of 13 counties from Phenix City to Mobile and is about 50% black, giving Democrats a chance to win the seat and add a second Democrat to the state’s seven-member U.S. House delegation.
The National Republican Congressional Committee also makes the Alabama race a high priority and has named Dobson as one of 26 Republicans on the “Young Gun” list, a program that provides mentoring and support to Republican congressional candidates.
