Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms turned focus to giants of the civil rights movement in an inspirational speech encouraging continued progress on race relations and social justice.
“People often think they can’t make a difference like our civil rights icons, but every person in the movement mattered — those who made the sandwiches, swept the church floors, stuffed the envelopes. They, too, changed America,” Bottoms said Thursday during the virtual Democratic National Convention.
Bottoms gained national attention amid the June protests and riots sparked by the police-involved death of George Floyd, a black man from Minneapolis. In one of her biggest moments, she gave an impassioned speech during a press conference following live coverage of protesters vandalizing CNN headquarters. “You are disgracing our city,” she scolded while also stressing her agreement about the need for reform in policing and improvement of race relations.
She referenced the modern protests in her speech on Thursday while taking inspiration from the late Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who led one of the most famous civil rights marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, that resulted in a brutal confrontation with state troopers. The event was dubbed “Bloody Sunday.”
“We have cried out for justice, we have gathered in our streets to demand change, and now, we must pass on the gift John Lewis sacrificed to give us, we must register, and we must vote,” Bottoms said.
The 50-year-old Democratic rising star was also among the dozen or so women that Joe Biden was seriously considering in his vice presidential nominee search before he decided on California Sen. Kamala Harris, further raising Bottoms’s profile.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, credited with helping to seal the South Carolina primary for Biden with his endorsement and leading to Biden sweeping primaries to seal the nomination, was one of the most vocal Biden loyalists pushing for a black woman to be his running mate and had mentioned Bottoms as a possible pick.
“We know how important it is that we elect real leaders like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, people of honor and integrity,who hold justice close to their hearts and believe that the lives of my four black children matter,” she said of the party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.
“Congressman Lewis would not be silenced, and neither can we. We cannot wait for some other time, some other place, some other heroes. We must be the heroes of our generation, because we, too, are America. Our votes can be our voice,” she concluded.
Georgia, long an Electoral College stronghold for Republicans, is on the Democrats’ list of reach states that they hope to flip in favor of Biden as changing demographics slowly nudge the state to the left politically.
The theme of the last night of the convention was “America’s Promise,” which focused on leaders’ guiding principles and character in an overarching argument to tear down President Trump and prop up Biden.
