WaPo:

Two weeks before Election Day, Black Americans have voted in striking numbers, helping drive historic levels of early voting as mail ballots have flooded election offices and people have endured huge lines to cast ballots in person across the country.

In interviews in 10 states where early voting is underway, Black voters said this year’s presidential election is the most important of their lifetime — some calling it more consequential even than 2008, when those who were old enough went to the polls in record numbers to make Barack Obama the country’s first Black president.

They spoke of a sense of urgency to protect the nation’s democracy, and their role in it, which they believe a second Trump term would erode beyond repair. Many said they view the president as a racist who cannot bring himself to disavow white supremacists or the year’s spate of police killings of unarmed Black Americans, and they believe the country is less safe for themselves and their families.

Over and over again, Black Americans described their vote this year as much more than a choice between two presidential candidates, but as an urgent stand in the long fight against racial injustice in America, which the year’s events have made clear is not yet over.