![]() And then, on the public policy side, in addition to Fair Fight, I founded two organizations: one called Fair Count, the other called SEAP, Southern Economic Advancement Project. And so it’s about following mask mandates, recommendations, making sure I’m vaccinated, watching out for my family members, and being really careful with one another. Stacey Abrams: I think it’s just following the science and the public health recommendations, which are that this isn’t just about protecting yourself and your family, it’s also about protecting the public. Unlike our brief but more personal airport meeting, we each got down in our respective, professional ways, albeit with one little departure from me at the end, which may or may not have been a serious request, when she confirmed her interest in running for president should “the stars align.”Ĭharlayne Hunter-Gault: I want to begin with something that I think is on a lot of minds, and that is, given the increasing dangers of the current health pandemic, how are you doing? And what are your coping mechanisms that we could probably all benefit from? ![]() Maybe it was the Vernon connection or the Georgia connection or both, but it was a memorable moment, as was our second meeting, for this interview. I am not quite sure how she knew who I was, but before I could say hello, she extended her hand and called out my name, smiling broadly. ![]() We met only once, and briefly, as she deplaned in my summer home of Martha’s Vineyard. I got to know a little more about her from my dear friend Vernon Jordan, who had become a kind of mentor to her, as he was to so many. They were a critical part of the Atlanta Civil Rights Movement, and it was they who created a more equal system in Georgia and paved the way for Stacey Abrams, who, years later, picked up that flickering torch. And I got to know some of them personally, for they had been my high school classmates, who, as college students, took it upon themselves to challenge those who denied our history as well as our present access to equal facilities all over Atlanta. ![]() I had learned about some of them from my Black teachers, who taught us our history when the white people in charge of maintaining “separate but equal” attempted to keep us ignorant of it. And while I was living and working thousands of miles away in Johannesburg, South Africa, Georgia was never far from my mind, since I grew up there in the mid-1940s.īut while I didn’t know Stacey Abrams, I knew Black women who had been blazing trails for as long as they’d lived in Georgia and in this country. Hen I first heard of Stacey Abrams, she was just beginning on her road to embracing what John Lewis called “Good Trouble.” It was 2006, and she had won the primary election for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives with 51% of the vote, avoiding a runoff. ![]()
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