How a black conservative activist orchestrated Donald Trump’s stop at an Atlanta Chick-fil-A

Through her organization Conserve the Culture, Michaelah Montgomery focuses on HBCU students who’re open to conservative ideas

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scenes of a black audience warmly greeting Donald Trump at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta have electrified conservative political media at a moment when Republicans are hoping to make inroads into Democrats’ most committed voting bloc.

These universally shared moments were just within the making – an alliance between the Trump campaign, local activists and students at among the most iconic historically black colleges within the country.

Trump and his allies argue he can gain more black support together with his messages on the economy and immigration, an argument that President Joe Biden’s campaign rejects. Some of his actions aimed at African Americans drew on racial stereotypes — promoting $399 designer sneakers or suggesting that Black people would empathize together with his dozens of criminal charges — and offended longtime critics and a few potential allies.

However, the campaign included a Wednesday photo opportunity at Chick-fil-A, a stop he made on his option to a fundraiser in Atlanta; the victory resulted in viral videos shared by his allies and widely discussed by supporters and opponents alike.

“It’s so hard for people to believe that there are young Black people who would love to meet Trump,” said Michaelah Montgomery, a conservative activist and founding father of Conserve the Culture, an organization that recruits and educates students and young graduates of Atlanta’s historically black colleges and universities.

Montgomery, a former Georgia Republican Party staffer who recurrently coordinates events for HBCU students open to conservative ideas to fulfill with politicians and activists, said she was notified earlier this week that Trump would visit Atlanta’s Vine City neighborhood during his trip to host a high dollar fundraiser in town. She alerted a private student group chat she uses to coordinate events and job opportunities concerning the president’s visit. More than a dozen students were immediately all for appearing alongside him.

“Everybody got together around 9:30 a.m. and went to Chick-fil-A, and then we sat there and waited for the president to show up,” said Montgomery, who may be seen hugging the previous president in multiple viral videos. “It’s really depressing when the media portrays it as if we just stumbled upon Chick-fil-A and it bought us milkshakes.”

Morehouse and Spelman Colleges are amongst a very powerful historically black colleges within the country, boasting a long history of influential black graduates within the fields of politics, business, religion and medicine. Martin Luther King Jr. and Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s the pastor at King’s former church, are Morehouse graduates. Stacey Abrams, an influential Democrat from Georgia, attended Spelman. Along with neighboring universities Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown College, the school collective on Atlanta’s west side served as a stronghold of African American politics and culture even before the civil rights movement.

Trump’s overture to students at iconic black institutions each underscored his desire to showcase any potential connections with black voters and the campaign’s strategy of working with local conservative groups to construct crowds in communities outside the GOP base, a common political tactic with a slight turn.

“The location was beautifully chosen and I thought it made an incredible impression,” said Bill White, a businessman and longtime friend of the previous president who hosted an expensive luncheon for the Trump campaign in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood that very same day. “I thought the day was a huge success for him and for the people in Georgia who loved him and wanted to come out and show their support.”

White added that Donald Trump “is actually very relatable to anyone. The people of Atlanta had a chance to see it and love back,” and predicts that Trump will make significant gains in black voters in Atlanta and across the country with events like his visit Wednesday.

Biden campaign spokeswoman Jasmine Harris criticized the visit.

“To think that black voters identify with Donald Trump because he spent twenty minutes handing out freebies at a fast food restaurant is yet another insult to our intelligence and a perfect example of how disingenuous Trump’s approach to black voters continues to be,” Harris said in a statement. statement. statement.

In March, 55 percent of Black Americans said they approved of the way in which Biden was handling his role as president, while 45 percent disapproved, in line with a poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Research. But a February poll showed only 25 percent approval for Trump amongst black Americans.

The visit was not met with enthusiasm from a part of the campus or the area people. Montgomery condemned the criticism that some students who appeared in viral videos alongside Trump have faced each on campus and online.

“They claim that students made fun of their institution and that they were disrespectful to their ancestors. It’s really, really bad,” Montgomery said.

!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||(),g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){ g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“film-recommended-film”,”true”)})}();

Featured Stories

The post How a Black Conservative Activist Arranged Donald Trump’s Stop at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta appeared first on TheGrio.