Stacey Abrams

It had been added to the state flag in 1956 as an anti-civil rights movement action.

Stacey Yvonne Abrams (born December 9, 1973) is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, serving as minority leader from 2011 to 2017.

In 1989, the family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where her parents pursued graduate divinity degrees at Emory University.

They became Methodist ministers and later returned to Mississippi with their three youngest children while Abrams and two other siblings remained in Atlanta.

In 1990, she was selected for the Telluride Association Summer Program.

At 17, while still in high school, she was hired as a typist for a congressional campaign and then as a speechwriter based on the improvements she made to a campaign speech.

She attended Avondale High School, graduating as valedictorian in 1991.

As a freshman in 1992, Abrams took part in a protest on the steps of the Georgia Capitol, during which she joined in burning the Georgia state flag which, at the time, incorporated the Confederate battle flag.

In 1995, Abrams earned a Bachelor of Arts in interdisciplinary studies (political science, economics, and sociology) from Spelman College, magna cum laude.

While in college, she worked in the youth services department in the office of Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson.

She later interned at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As a Harry S. Truman Scholar, Abrams studied public policy at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs, where she earned a Master of Public Affairs degree in 1998.

Afterward, she earned a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.

After graduating from law school, Abrams worked as a tax attorney at the Sutherland Asbill & Brennan law firm in Atlanta, with a focus on tax-exempt organizations, health care, and public finance.

In 2002, at age 29, Abrams was appointed a deputy city attorney for the City of Atlanta.

In 2006, Abrams ran for the 84th District for the Georgia House of Representatives, following JoAnn McClinton's announcement that she would not seek reelection.

Abrams ran in the Democratic Party primary election against former state legislator George Maddox and political operative Dexter Porter.

She outraised her two opponents and won the primary election with 51% of the vote, avoiding a runoff election.

Abrams represented House District 84 beginning in the 2007 session, and beginning in the 2013 session (following reapportionment), District 89.

Both districts covered portions of the City of Atlanta and unincorporated DeKalb County, covering the communities of Candler Park, Cedar Grove, Columbia, Druid Hills, Edgewood, Highland Park, Kelley Lake, Kirkwood, Lake Claire, South DeKalb, Toney Valley, and Tilson.

She served on the Appropriations, Ethics, Judiciary Non-Civil, Rules, and Ways & Means committees.

In 2010, while a member of the Georgia General Assembly, Abrams co-founded and served as the senior vice president of NOW Corp. (formerly NOWaccount Network Corporation), a financial services firm.

Abrams is CEO of Sage Works, a legal consulting firm that has represented clients including the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association.

Abrams co-founded Nourish, Inc. in 2010.

Originally conceived as a beverage company with a focus on infants and toddlers, it was later rebranded as Now and pivoted its business model to an invoicing solution for small businesses.

Now raised a $9.5 million Series A in 2021.

In mid-March 2023, community electrification advocacy nonprofit group Rewiring America announced it had hired Abrams as senior counsel.

In November 2010, the Democratic caucus elected Abrams to succeed DuBose Porter as minority leader over Virgil Fludd.

Abrams's first major action as minority leader was to cooperate with Republican governor Nathan Deal's administration to reform the HOPE Scholarship program.

A member of the Democratic Party, Abrams founded Fair Fight Action, an organization to address voter suppression, in 2018.

Abrams was the Democratic nominee in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, becoming the first African-American female major-party gubernatorial nominee in the United States.

She narrowly lost the election to Republican candidate Brian Kemp, but refused to concede, accusing Kemp of engaging in voter suppression as Georgia Secretary of State.

Multiple sources state that Abrams did not concede:

Abrams is an author of both fiction and nonfiction.

Her nonfiction books, Our Time Is Now and Lead from the Outside, were New York Times best sellers.

Abrams wrote eight fiction books under the pen name Selena Montgomery before 2021.

While Justice Sleeps was released on May 11, 2021, under her real name.

Abrams also wrote a children's book, Stacey's Extraordinary Words, released in December 2021.

The second of six siblings, Abrams was born to Robert and Carolyn Abrams in Madison, Wisconsin, and raised in Gulfport, Mississippi where her father was employed in a shipyard and her mother was a librarian.

Her efforts have been widely credited with boosting voter turnout in Georgia, including in the 2020 presidential election, when Joe Biden narrowly won the state, and in Georgia's 2020–21 regularly scheduled and special U.S. Senate elections, which gave Democrats control of the Senate.