Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has been elected governor of Georgia, making her the first Black woman in the U.S. to win the position. She used her victory speech as a platform to highlight just how far the state has come.
In her November 3 speech in Atlanta, Bottoms opened up about her family’s past, referencing Shephard and Betsy Peek, who were enslaved in Crawfordville, Georgia, during the mid-1800s.
Bottoms shared how the day prior to the election, she visited the town that her relatives once called home.
“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.”
Crawfordville—home to at least five generations of the governor-elect’s 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,” Bottoms said.
“Georgia is not defined by one moment in time”The emotive speech and Bottoms’s historic win come more than 160 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the American Civil War.
“Yes, Crawfordville produced the Confederacy’s vice president,” she said, “but tonight it also produced your next governor.”
But the irony was not lost on her, as she turned the story into a lesson: “Tonight should remind us 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.
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