Stacey Abrams may be mostly known for her unsuccessful Democratic bid to become governor of Georgia in 2018. She was narrowly defeated, almost becoming the first black to be elected governor of Georgia, and the first black woman anywhere in the United States.
Her controversial defeat was not well received by democrats, and most of Blacks around the US. Georgia, although a Southern state, has a major metropol of Atlanta surrounded by sprawling suburbs, with a growing, affluent blacks and other minorities. While the voters in the cities are mostly liberal, Georgia's countryside is mostly conservative and leaning republican. Atlanta has played a major role in American civil rights movement.
And that is where Stacey Abrams comes in.
Leader From An Early Age
Stacey Yvonne Abrams was born on December 9, 1973, to Robert and Carolyn Abrams in Madison, Wisconsin and raised in Mississippi.[3] The family moved to Atlanta, where her parents pursued graduate school and later became Methodist ministers. She graduated in 1995, from Spelman College, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (Political Science, Economics and Sociology). As a Harry S. Truman Scholar, Abrams studied public policy at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs and earned a Master of Public Affairs degree in 1998. In 1999, she earned a law degree from Yale Law School.
In college, Stacey Abrams was already a civil rights activist. As a freshman, she took part in a protest on the steps of the Georgia Capitol in 1992 in which she joined in the burning of the state flag, which at the time incorporated the Confederate battle flag, which had been added to the state flag in 1956 as an anti-civil rights movement gesture.
Stacey Abrams was also close to politics, from the young age. She worked in the youth services department in the office of Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson and interned at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Search for Common Ground and Empowerment.
Her career includes being a politician, a lawyer and novelist. She served as Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017. She worked for, founded and managed several businesses including law firms, a financial services firm, and a beverage company with a focus on infants and toddlers.
Her political engagement and agenda focused on Healthcare, public education, and criminal justice reform, all the issues dear to her as a civil rights activist.
The dream of getting people from all backgrounds together to live in harmony in search of a common good may summarize Stacey Abrams' commitment to her community and Georgia. As she said after the elections, “More than 200 years into Georgia’s democratic experiment, the state failed its voters, eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired effect on the electoral process in Georgia."
Stacey Abrams has vowed to continue her fight.
