Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom has flipped Forrest County—a once reliably Republican County that is named for Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest.

With 97% of votes counted in Forrest County, Colom led Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 54%-44% as of Thursday, Nov. 5. That represents a 29-point swing toward Democrats in a county that Donald Trump carried in 2024 by a 58%-40% margin.

Colom, who currently has a narrow lead among votes counted, would be the first Black U.S. senator from Mississippi since 1881 during the Reconstruction era.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader and Confederate general from Tennessee, served as the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction era.

Forrest County includes the majority-Black city of Hattiesburg, the home of the University of Southern Mississippi. In 2020, a county-wide vote to remove a towering Confederate monument next to the Forrest County Courthouse in Hattiesburg failed in 51% to 49% vote. About 85% of voters who live in the college town, though, voted to get rid of it. The United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the monument in 1910 as part of a propaganda campaign to perpetuate the Lost Cause myth.

Ellie Dahmer (front right at the base of the statue) looks up joyfully after pulling the veil off a statue of her husband, Vernon Dahmer, in downtown Hattiesburg on Jan. 6, 2020. Photo by Ashton Pittman

The Confederate monument sits opposite a monument erected in 2020 to honor slain local civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. It features his words, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” In 1966, Dahmer fought the Ku Klux Klan, who had firebombed his home, as his wife and children escaped. He later died from his injuries. His wife, Ellie Dahmer, went on to serve as a Forrest County election commissioner.

Forrest County has a rich civil rights legacy. In Hattiesburg, numerous civil rights groups organized in the 1960s to fight for voting rights, in a county where an ardent Dixiecrat circuit clerk forced Black voters to answer absurd questions before allowing them to vote like, “How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?” During the Freedom Summer of 1964, the “Freedom House” on Hattiesburg’s Mobile street served as a hub of civil rights activity, with seven freedom schools that taught thousands of Black students about petitioning their government and other topics not covered in Black public schools in segregated Mississippi.

Read the latest from Mississippi’s 2026 U.S. Senate election results at our liveblog here.

Award-winning News Editor Ashton Pittman, a native of the South Mississippi Pine Belt, studied journalism and political science at the University of Southern Mississippi. Previously the state reporter at the Jackson Free Press, he drove national headlines and conversations with award-winning reporting about segregation academies. He has won numerous awards, including Outstanding New Journalist in the South, for his work covering immigration raids, abortion battles and even former Gov. Phil Bryant’s unusual work with “The Bad Boys of Brexit" at the Jackson Free Press. In 2021, as a Mississippi Free Press reporter, he was named the Diamond Journalist of the Year for seven southern U.S. states in the Society of Professional Journalists Diamond Awards. A trained photojournalist, Ashton lives in South Mississippi with his husband, William, and their two pit bulls, Dorothy and Dru.