In light of Joe Biden’s reported lead in Georgia in the presidential race, Abrams is earning praise for protecting voting rights. Here, we look back on her years-long history of fighting injustice.
Just two years ago, Stacey Abrams lost Georgia’s gubernatorial race to Republican governor Brian Kemp by a margin of less than two percentage points. Her campaign was notable for several reasons—not least of which was its conclusion, during which Abrams suggested that Kemp, who at the time was Georgia’s Secretary of State, had used his position to suppress voting.
“More than 200 years into Georgia’s democratic experiment, the state failed its voters,” Abrams said at an event following the election, per The New York Times. “Let’s be clear—this is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper.”
As former vice president Joe Biden continues to make gains in Georgia, a traditionally red state that is now a toss-up in the presidential election, praise for Abrams and fellow organizers on the ground in the state who’ve been actively fighting against the country’s legacy of voter suppression has grown. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 17 million voters between 2016 and 2018 were disenfranchised.
Though Abrams’s work since her loss has further exposed how voter suppression precludes millions of Americans from exercising their democratic rights, her investment in the issue and her political organizing began long before that race. As a student at Spelman College, she confronted then Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson for “not doing enough for young people,” according to The Washington Post, and fought for economic justice for her constituents as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives for the good part of a decade.
*Laura Morgan Roberts, Anthony J. Mayo, Robin J. Ely, and David A. Thomas for Harvard Business Review
