Biden and Harris will launch an outreach program to black voters in an effort to boost their support.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will kick off their national Black voter outreach program with a rally in Philadelphia on Wednesday, as they seek to shore up support in the critical constituency of Pennsylvania, a key battleground state of 2024, the campaign said.

Biden and Harris plan to speak at Girard College, a predominantly Black boarding school for students in grades 1 through 12 from financially constrained households. They will be joined by the school’s students and their families, as well as Black leaders, including Maryland Governor Wes Moore, members of Congress, mayors, HBCU presidents, and union and group leaders defense, says the campaign.

The outreach program, which they call Black Voters for Biden-Harris, will come with an eight-figure investment, but the campaign did not provide ABC News with a specific amount.

The campaign said it “believes that Black voters deserve to hear from the Biden-Harris team, and that they deserve to have their vote earned, not assumed.”

A recent ABC News/Ipsos poll found that support for Biden among Black voters was down double digits from his vote share in 2020, with 74% saying they currently support the president, compared to 87% who said they voted for him in the last election.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, attempted to court black voters directly. He held a rally in New York’s South Bronx, which has a large black and brown population, last week, planned photo ops at fast food restaurants and suggested his criminal indictment would help him stand up. connect to Black voters — something Biden’s team called “blatantly racist” earlier this year.

“While we are busy working to win the support of Black America, Donald Trump continues to show how ignorant he is,” Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said in a statement. “Hosting crazy rap concerts to hide the fact that he doesn’t have the resources and skills to truly engage our community.”

In recent days, the Biden campaign has aired a television and radio ad in major cities in battleground states, accusing Trump of “disrespecting black people” in order to counter the former president’s efforts to win black voters.

Biden and Harris will be introduced by Lina Mayen, a first-generation Sudanese American and out-of-state student at Temple University crushed by the cost of higher education, and Robert NC Nix III, a small business owner whose the family owns airport concessions. a business that has struggled during the pandemic, according to the campaign.

After the Philadelphia rally, Biden will visit a local Black-owned business for an organizing event with the Black Chamber of Commerce, the campaign says. There will also be a phone banking event later today with Rep. Barbara Lee, he added.

The Black awareness campaign will continue through the weekend, they said, with events in battleground states including black church engagement in Arizona, events at barbershops and hairdressing in Michigan, and a block party-style celebration in Nevada. And over the summer, the campaign announced it would partner with civic organizations to hold voter education and registration drives,

This follows a multi-day effort by Biden last week to raise awareness among black voters, attending an NAACP dinner in Detroit, announcing grants to further desegregate magnet schools on the historic anniversary of the he Brown v. Board case, taking formal initial steps to reschedule marijuana and delivering the commencement address at Morehouse College.