NYSUT celebrates Black History Month this February with a new poster honoring Stacey Abrams, an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017. She was the body’s minority leader from 2011 until the end of her term.
As the 2018 Democratic nominee in the Georgia gubernatorial race, Abrams was the first female, Black major-party nominee for governor in the United States. After losing to Republican Brian Kemp in an election marked by accusations of voter suppression, in 2018 Abrams founded Fair Fight Action, an organization committed to ensuring that all votes are counted.
The group has helped register an estimated 800,000 new voters and fought “exact match” rules used to disqualify ballots for typos and minor errors.
In February 2019, Abrams became the first Black woman to deliver a response to a presidential State of the Union address. In 2020, Abrams’ work was crucial in increasing the number of registered voters and getting a record number of voters to the Georgia polls.
NYSUT is proud of its history of working with the Black community to advance the civil rights movement and to promote quality education and health care for all New Yorkers.
For more on the important contributions of Black Americans to the labor movement, or to download a printable copy of the poster, visit nysut.org/publications. Limited quantities are free for NYSUT members and leaders.
