President Biden will launch a coalition to shore up support with Black voters at Girard College on Wednesday

The warning signs surrounding President Joe Biden’s support with Black voters have been flashing for months.

On Wednesday, Biden will stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the most influential Black Democrats in the country and debut a coalition that the campaign hopes will help shore up support with the key Democratic constituency.

Biden is slated to speak at Girard College, the historic boarding school in Fairmount, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and several local and national high-profile Black Democrats, sources familiar with the planning told The Inquirer.

It will be Biden’s third trip to Philadelphia — and seventh to Pennsylvania — this year, continuing a deep focus on the swing state where polling shows he narrowly trails former President Donald Trump.

The campaign did not provide details of Biden’s plans for Wednesday, but the president is expected to visit in the afternoon.

Biden won Black voters overwhelmingly in 2020, as the pandemic disproportionately impacted Black Americans, many of whom blamed Trump for his response.

Four years later, it’s the economy at the forefront of voters’ minds, and polling shows an erosion of support for Biden among nonwhite voters, traditionally a Democratic stronghold.

In a string of events last week both Biden and Harris sought to demonstrate how Biden’s policies have helped Black Americans while aiming to reinvigorate memories of what life was like under Trump’s presidency.

Harris spoke to members of SEIU at the group’s Philadelphia convention. SEIU is among the most diverse unions in the country and elected its first Black president this year.

Biden marked the 70th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education case with a speech reiterating his commitment to promoting and advancing historic gains by the Black community.

He has highlighted how his administration has lowered prescription drug prices, invested in historically Black colleges and universities, and was working to close the racial wealth gap and reduce the disparity in employment for Black Americans.

The campaign also tried to contrast Biden with Trump, who has a history of making racist comments. The campaign launched a television ad last week that highlighted a decades-old clip of Trump calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers ultimately exonerated of convictions related to the assault and rape of a white woman.

A Biden campaign account shared the video on X, saying, “let’s remember: Trump is a lifelong racist.”

The Trump campaign countered by noting that Biden was a driving force behind the 1994 crime bill, which led to a sharp uptick in sentences and incarceration rates of Black people.

Trump’s campaign and Republican groups backing him have also gone on the offensive, holding a rally in the Bronx last week, a heavily Black and Latino borough, and running text-message campaigns and ads on Black radio stations in big cities like Philadelphia.

“I got a text already today,” Philadelphia City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, a Democrat who backs Biden, said earlier this month of anti-Biden messages circulating around the city. “There are so many ads targeting Black men, telling us how bad Biden is, and … people are regurgitating it. We have to give Trump’s team credit for the amount they’re doing, reminding people on a daily basis information that’s not true but that’s starting to resonate.”

Thomas, who is a coleader of an initiative to register 2,024 Black men to vote in Philadelphia, said he doesn’t discount people’s economic frustrations. “Is the economy good? I’m not saying it’s good. Is inflation real? Of course it is. But nobody’s reminding folks who Trump was when he was president.”

April Verrett, SEIU president, said last week that she thinks the Biden administration needs to speak directly about economic issues and rising costs. But ultimately she believes workers of color will not support Trump.

“I’m not a pollster, I don’t have a magic wand or a Magic 8 Ball,” Verrett said. “But I am a Black woman in America, and I challenge anybody to convince me that Black people and brown people are gonna get up and vote en masse for a known racist, sexist, misogynist. Our problem is making sure those voters actually make it to cast their ballots.”

When Biden visits, he’ll be at one of the city’s most historic preparatory schools. Girard College serves about 300 students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds in first through 12th grades. It was founded by French immigrant and merchant Stephen Girard as a school for poor, white orphans when it opened in 1848. The private school was integrated in 1968 after round-the-clock protests, a Philadelphia speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and years of court fights to open the gates to children of color.

Girls were admitted beginning in 1984.

The school is the annual gathering location for the city’s MLK Day of Service, an event Biden attended as vice president in 2012. He spoke at a roundtable about gun control at the school in 2013.

Biden has selected the Philadelphia area for several big moments of his campaign, often leaning into the history of the city as a narrative to fuel his pitch to voters here and nationally.

Staff writer Katie Bernard contributed to this article.