BY: Rev. Peter Johnson
When I was growing up in Plaquemine, Louisiana, I learned that a public office could have the word “public” on the door and still feel like it belonged to somebody else. Segregation taught that lesson so often that a child could learn it without anybody having to say a word.
So when I think about this election, I think about a Black grandmother in Georgia showing her granddaughter a picture of Keisha Lance Bottoms. She can tell the girl that Georgia elected this woman governor. Then she can tell her that no state had ever elected a Black woman governor before.
I wonder which part the girl will find harder to believe.
The grandmother may remember a time when she would have been discouraged from registering to vote. The girl may look at the picture and wonder why it took so long. I hope she does. That question tells me something about how much the generations between them have managed to change.
In New Mexico, voters elected Deb Haaland, a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna, as the nation’s first Native American woman governor. In Michigan, voters elected Abdul El-Sayed, who will be the first Muslim to serve in the United States Senate. Indiana elected J.D. Ford, the first openly gay person the state will send to Congress. Here in Texas, we elected Gina Hinojosa, who will be our first Latina governor.
Those are different lives and different histories. I would not ask any of them to stand in for everybody who shares a part of their story. But I am glad that more children will see somebody in public office whose life is familiar to them. And I am glad that other children will see a person they might never have met and learn to expect leadership from them.
There is a difference between being told that anyone can serve and seeing who gets to do it.
The numbers give us some idea of what changed. The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers projects that at least 159 women will serve in the next Congress, a record. At least 17 women will serve as governors in 2027. Five Black governors are set to serve together, something this country has never seen.
I am grateful to have lived to see those numbers. I also know that 159 women amount to about three in ten members of Congress. We can celebrate how far we have come and notice the empty chairs.
I have spent more than 60 years in the civil rights movement. Much of the work was done by people whose pictures never made the paper. They gave up evenings to register voters, opened their churches for meetings and went back to doors that had been shut in their faces. Many were Black women. When I see the photograph of Georgia’s next governor, I think of them.
I also think of the people who will walk into a government office next year needing help. Will the woman who cannot get anyone to explain a benefits letter find somebody who will sit with her and read it? Will a young person who has something to say about their school be taken seriously? Will a family that did not vote for the person in office get the same care as one that did?
That is how the face of America in public office can begin to show its heart. A wider range of people at the table should mean a wider range of people get heard.
If you have a child in your life, show them a picture. Tell them what you remember about who had a chance to lead when you were their age. Then ask them what they see. They may surprise you.
And when the photographs come down and the people in them get to work, keep the conversation going. Take that child to a public meeting. Show them how to ask a question and expect an answer. Someday, I hope they will find these pictures in a drawer and wonder why we made such a fuss. I hope by then they will be used to seeing the country they know in the people who serve it.
Rev. Peter Jerome Johnson, was the youngest staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An alum of Southern University, he founded the Peter Johnson Institute on Nonviolence.
