Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has been elected governor of Georgia, making her the first Black woman in the U.S. to hold the position. She also used her victory speech as a platform to highlight just how far the state has come.
In her speech on the night of November 3 in Atlanta, Bottoms opened up about her family’s past, referencing her family members Shephard and Betsy Peek, who were enslaved in Crawfordsville during the mid-1800s.
Bottoms shared how the day prior to the election, she visited the same town that her relatives once called home, with the trip becoming its own revelation for the Democrat.
“I visited the grave of Betsy Peak, my great-great grandmother, who was born in 1845, 30 years before emancipation,” she said. “In a cemetery field filled with unmarked graves, I found hers.”
She added, “I don’t know what dreams Betsy Peak had for her children or for her grandchildren or the generations that she would never meet, but I know I am standing on shoulders made of steel.”
But the same town—home to at least five generations of her family—was also home to a very different chapter of Georgia’s history.
“It was the town that was home to the former governor of Georgia and the vice president of the Confederate States of America, Alexander Stephens,” she said.
“Georgia is not defined by one moment in time”
The emotive speech and Bottoms’s historic win come more than 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the Confederacy, with the governor-elect set to lead the state where her own family members were once enslaved.
She added, “yes, Crawfordsville produced the Confederacy’s vice president, but tonight it also produced your next governor.”
But the irony was not lost on her, turning the story into a lesson.
She added, “tonight should remind as that no matter what community we come from, Georgia is not defined by one moment in time or by one person—it’s been defined by all of us.”
You can watch the full speech on C-SPAN.
