5 days. 55 years. And the best brunch at CBC.

Ohio River South has wrapped another Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference. This was ALC 55, and in our view it remains the best conference in politics.

The Congressional Black Caucus was founded in 1971 by 13 members of Congress who understood that a bloc voting together carries more weight than 13 votes cast alone. Today the caucus has 62 members, a record, with chairs and ranking members on committees that touch nearly every dollar the federal government spends. That kind of reach took 55 years to build.

ALC’s receptions are sometimes dismissed as the lighter side of the week. Our experience says otherwise. We have watched partnerships that began over a drink turn up later in state legislation. Policy gets written in committee rooms, but the trust that moves it is built in rooms like ours.

A room built for the South

The South comes to ALC in large numbers, but its people are spread across a hundred different guest lists. Five years ago we set out to give the region one room of its own, and that room became the Southern Hospitality Brunch. This year nearly 600 guests joined us at La Vie on the Wharf: members of Congress, mayors, legislators, agency heads and the operatives who keep it all running, from Savannah to Shreveport to Selma.

A short program, by design

No panels, no breakouts, no head table. Our speaking program runs about ten minutes. The rest of the afternoon belongs to the guests, the people who will pick up the phone for one another the rest of the year.

After five years of generous feedback from the people in that room, we are comfortable saying it plainly: we think it is the best event at CBC.

Photos from the day are below.

The party and the substance

Every guest left with a copy of Accelerating South, our annual political-risk report on the nine Southern states most of the room calls home. Many turned straight to their own state’s chapter, drink still in hand. A mayor checking our numbers over brunch means more to us than a thousand downloads.

Thank you

The brunch is the work of the Ohio River South team and the partners who have made it a family reunion for five years running. Our thanks to our co-host, the African American Mayors Association; our title sponsor, Gilead Sciences; and our sponsors Southern Company, Bryson Gillette, Pittman Law Group, RenderATL and Salesforce.

Ohio River South is a bipartisan government relations and public affairs firm working across the South from offices in Atlanta and Washington, DC.