His son Ali Shakur, 27, said his guiding principle was simple: He wanted to support the candidate “most committed to fundamental change.”
Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren tried to flex that young support after the debate. Mr. Sanders held a rally at Morehouse College on Thursday, the historically black all-men’s college in Atlanta, where speakers introduced him as the heir to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of racial and economic justice. A group of black students was positioned behind Mr. Sanders as he spoke, and he walked out to “Pick Up the Phone,” a rap song by Young Thug and Travis Scott.
At Ms. Warren’s event that day, an evening speech at Clark Atlanta University, another historically black school, that celebrated the political power of black women, supporters voiced similar sentiments. They said her message of “big, structural change” was authentic, and they praised her for infusing her policies with corrective measures for racial inequities.
Several students said they had no qualms about supporting a white candidate in a primary field that included Mr. Booker, Ms. Harris, and former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, the first black governor in the state’s history and one of the newest entrants to the primary field.
“Of course black people want to be pro-black, but I feel like their records are anti-black,” said Jesiah Osbourne, a 19-year-old political science student at Morehouse College.
Angela Peoples, an activist and leader of “Black Womxn For,” a collective of activists and influencers who have recently endorsed Ms. Warren, led the crowd at Ms. Warren’s event in a chant of “Flip The Table!”
“Black voters are being asked, again, to roll along so we can get along,” Ms. Peoples said, “but those days are over.”