In 2020, 95% of Black women and 87% of Black men voted for Biden, but recent polling suggests that his numbers among Black men have been sagging.

“He’s losing in the polls. He’s not winning a lot of our voter support and I think Black families and Black men are where he can improve drastically,” said Aylon Gipson, a graduating Morehouse senior from Montgomery. “As a person who does not like Donald Trump, I want to see Joe Biden win. I kind of understand why his team has decided to come to our campus.”

The Trump campaign released a statement Tuesday saying “Biden’s team is panicking because Joe Biden no longer has a base, and African Americans are supporting President Trump by a historic margin.”

Biden has some familiarity with the campus. In 2022, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Atlanta University Center, which includes Morehouse, to promote voting rights legislation. He visited Morehouse in 2015 to raise awareness of a federal effort to address sexual assaults on college campuses.

In 2013, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to speak at a Morehouse graduation.

Plenty were enthusiastic about Biden’s decision.

Among them was U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, an Atlanta Democrat and a Morehouse Man who posted on social media that he was proud Biden was the commencement speaker at his alma mater.

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(Staff writer Jillian Price contributed to this report.)

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