Biden, Trump Allies Race to Court Black Vote in Atlanta Ahead of Debate

Before President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump take the stage in Atlanta on Thursday, their battle to engage Black voters has reached a fever pitch.

Surrogates, officials and organizers from both parties held a flurry of events in Atlanta barbershops, community centers and labor halls this week, using the backdrop of the early matchup between the two presidential candidates to encourage a crucial voting bloc in the heart of a key battleground state to turn back out in November.

Their efforts come as Black voters, long considered Democrats’ most loyal constituency, have voiced increasing frustrations with Mr. Biden and his party over the last several months. Some Black voters have suggested that they would support Mr. Trump in November or not vote at all.

But even as the Trump campaign aims to take advantage of the bloc’s softening support for Mr. Biden, it faces challenges in growing its grass-roots Black support and embracing policy positions that are popular with a broad enough swath of Black voters, particularly those who have supported Democrats in the past. Some of the challenges that the G.O.P. faces in fracturing Mr. Biden’s coalition were on display at these events.

A Republican-led discussion at a Black-owned barbershop on Wednesday in Atlanta quickly devolved as panelists vacillated among obscure policy suggestions, cultural grievances and at times ahistoric conjectures about Black Americans. One panelist referred to the trans-Atlantic slave trade as an “experience” and said that older generations of Black voters have generated “narratives that were divisive.”