[US midterm election] “My great-grandmother was a slave with steel shoulders”… First black female governor visits family grave

Democratic candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, the first black woman elected governor in U.S. history, expressed gratitude for her black slave ancestors in her victory speech.

On the 4th (local time), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), a local media outlet, reported that President-elect Bottoms' great-grandfather was a black slave named Shepherd Pick. According to an 1860 document, Mr. Pick was owned by William Pick, a white slave owner from Crawfordville, Georgia, and the ransom was listed as $1,400. In another document, there is a record that Mr. Pick, who cannot write, left an X instead of his signature.

Bottoms was elected governor by winning 2,271,388 votes (54%) in the Georgia midterm election on the 3rd, the previous day, beating Republican candidate Rick Jackson. In his victory speech that day, President-elect Bottoms revealed that he visited the family grave of his great-great-grandfather in Crawfordville the day before the election.

He said, "My great-grandmother, Betsy Pick, was born in 1845, 20 years before the emancipation of slaves," and "I don't know what dreams she had for her future descendants as she raised them, but I am now standing on the steel shoulders (created by my ancestors)." “Crawfordville produced the Vice President of the Confederacy (Alexander Stevens), but today it produced the next governor,” he said.

“No matter where you come from, Georgia is not obsessed with your past. Georgia is all of us,” Bottoms added.

Bottoms graduated from Georgia State University Law School, served as a judge and Atlanta city council member, and served as mayor of Atlanta, the capital of Georgia, for four years since 2018. After retiring as mayor, he served as a senior White House advisor in President Joe Biden's administration.

President-elect Bottoms is the first black female governor in U.S. history. In the 250-year history of the United States, there have been only three black governors: L Douglas Wilder (1989, Virginia), Deval Patrick (2007, Massachusetts), and Wes Moore (2022, Maryland), and all of them were men.

AJC said, "The distance from Crawfordville to the Georgia governor's mansion is hundreds of kilometers, but it took a long time for him to become the leader of the state of Georgia that enslaved them (black people)."

Meanwhile, in this Georgia election, following Governor-elect Bottoms, a number of Democratic black female candidates were elected to key high-ranking state government positions, including Attorney General (Tanya Miller) and Secretary of State (Penny Brown Reynolds).

In the Georgia State Legislature, Korean-American candidate Michelle Kang (Democratic Party) was elected to the state House of Representatives for the first time. With this, there are two Korean-American lawmakers in Georgia, following House Democratic Party leader Sam Park.