Biden will speak at Morehouse commencement, an election-year spotlight in front of Black voters

By BILL BARROW and SEUNG MIN KIM
Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden will be the commencement speaker for Georgia’s Morehouse College next month. The role gives Biden a key election-year platform on one of the nation’s preeminent historically Black campuses. The Democratic president won the 2020 election with a racially diverse coalition, and polls in 2024 have suggested he has work to do to rebuild that same support, especially among younger Black voters. Morehouse is the alma mater of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator and serves as pastor of King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Then-President Barack Obama was the Morehouse commencement speaker in 2013.