Cynthia McKinney

Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is an American politician.

As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the United States House of Representatives.

She was the first African American woman elected to represent Georgia in the House.

McKinney earned a B.A. in international relations from the University of Southern California in 1978 and an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1979.

In 1984, she served as a diplomatic fellow at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.

She then taught political science at Agnes Scott College in Decatur and at Clark Atlanta University.

She received around 40% of the popular vote, although she then lived in Jamaica with her husband, Coy Grandison (and their son, Coy McKinney, born in 1985).

Her political career began in 1986 when her father, a representative in the Georgia House of Representatives, submitted her name as a write-in candidate for the Georgia state house.

In 1988, McKinney ran for the same seat and won, making the McKinneys the first father and daughter to simultaneously serve in the Georgia state house.

In 1991, she spoke aggressively against the Gulf War; many legislators left the chamber in protest of her remarks.

In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in Georgia's newly re-created 11th district, and was re-elected in 1994.

In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as the member of Congress from the newly created 11th District, a 64% African American majority district reaching from Atlanta to Savannah.

She was the first African American woman to represent Georgia in the House.

She was re-elected in 1994.

When her district was redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Miller v. Johnson, McKinney was elected from the new 4th district in the 1996 election.

She was re-elected twice more without substantive opposition.

Members of the Green Party had attempted to recruit McKinney for their ticket in both 2000 and 2004.

McKinney was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary.

Her defeat was attributed to some Republican crossover voting in Georgia's open primary election, which permits anyone from any party to vote in any party primary and "usually rewards moderate candidates and penalizes those outside the mainstream."

After her 2002 loss, McKinney became a vocal supporter of conspiracy theories about the September 11 terrorist attacks, blaming her loss and the 9/11 attacks on "the Jews."

McKinney was re-elected to the House in November 2004, following her successor's run for Senate.

In Congress, she unsuccessfully tried to unseal FBI records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the murder of Tupac Shakur.

She continued to criticize the Bush administration over the 9/11 attacks.

She supported anti-war legislation and introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

She was defeated by Hank Johnson in the 2006 Democratic primary.

In the March 29, 2006, Capitol Hill police incident, she struck a Capitol Hill Police officer for stopping her to ask for identification.

She left the Democratic Party in September 2007.

She left the Democratic Party and ran in 2008 as the presidential nominee of the Green Party.

She eventually sought and won the Green Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election receiving 161,797 votes (0.12% of the votes cast nationwide).

Cynthia McKinney was born and raised in the affluent middle-class historic Collier Heights area in Atlanta, Georgia, the daughter of Leola McKinney, a retired nurse, and Billy McKinney, a law enforcement officer and former Georgia State Representative.

McKinney was exposed to the Civil Rights movement through her father, an activist who regularly participated in demonstrations across the south.

As a police officer, he challenged the discriminatory policies of the Atlanta Police Department, publicly protesting in front of the station, often carrying young McKinney on his shoulders.

He was elected as a state representative.

McKinney attributes her father's election victory, after several failed attempts, to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which provided for federal oversight and enforcement of voting.

Most blacks in the South had been disenfranchised by state legislative barriers since the turn of the 20th century.

In 2015, McKinney completed her dissertation on the transformational leadership of Hugo Chavez and was awarded a Ph.D.

in Leadership and Change by Antioch University.

Prior to entering politics, McKinney worked as a high school teacher and university professor.

She ran for vice president in 2020 after the Green Party of Alaska formally nominated her and draft-nominated Jesse Ventura for president.

She is an assistant professor at North South University.