Civil rights icon Andrew Young broke down in tears on Wednesday as he reflected on Keisha Lance Bottoms’ election as governor of Georgia, a victory that makes her the first Black woman ever elected governor of a US state. Young, a former Atlanta mayor and US ambassador to the United Nations who marched alongside Dr Martin Luther King Jr., said the moment honoured generations of women who risked their lives for the right to vote, CBS News Atlanta reported.
“They Share This Victory”
Speaking to CBS Atlanta a day after the election, an emotional Young named the women he believed would have rejoiced at the result. He said he thought Coretta Scott King “is smiling,” and recalled his first wife, Jean Young, and his daughter, both of whom died of cancer, saying they shared in the victory.
Young, now in his 90s, said he had known Bottoms since she was a little girl in public school, when people already spoke about how bright she was. He described her win as a triumph of “love and vision and faith” over anger and bitterness, according to CBS Atlanta. Notably, he had backed another candidate, Michael Thurmond, in the Democratic primary earlier in the year.
A Family Link to the Civil Rights Movement
The connection runs deeper than Atlanta politics. CBS Atlanta noted that Bottoms’ aunt, Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, was a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and one of the women who marched with Young during the movement. Young said she would have considered this result worth risking her life for.
Young’s own record is woven into that history. In the early 1960s he worked in Mississippi teaching Black residents to read and write so they could pass the literacy tests used to block them from voting. He later served in Congress, as President Jimmy Carter’s UN ambassador and as mayor of Atlanta. In 1990 he ran for governor of Georgia himself, losing the Democratic nomination to Zell Miller.
Bottoms’ Historic Victory
Bottoms defeated Republican billionaire Rick Jackson, who poured more than $200 million of his own money into the race, according to CBS News. With nearly all votes counted on Wednesday morning, she led by about 360,000 votes. The Associated Press reported that she is the first Democrat to win a Georgia governor’s race since 1998.
A former judge and Atlanta City Council member, Bottoms served as mayor of Atlanta from 2018 to 2022 and later as a senior adviser in the Biden White House, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. She is the daughter of soul singer Major Lance. On the eve of the election, she visited Crawfordville, about 90 miles east of Atlanta, where her enslaved great-great-grandfather once lived, the AJC said.
What Happens Next
Bottoms will be sworn in in January 2027, succeeding Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who was barred by law from seeking a third term. Her win was one of several historic results in the 2026 US midterm elections, in which Democrats also took control of Congress.
For many Black Americans, and for Africans in the diaspora watching from abroad, the images of a civil rights veteran weeping over the result captured how far the country has come since the days when voting itself was a battle.
Sources: CBS News Atlanta, CBS News, Associated Press, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
