Former Georgia House Democratic Leader Stacey Abrams discusses voter suppression and politics.
Stacey Abrams is a New York Times bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO and political leader. After serving for eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, and seven as Minority Leader, Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia. She won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history and was the first black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in the United States. After the 2018 election, Abrams launched Fair Fight to promote fair elections across the country, encourage voter participation and educate voters about elections and their voting rights.
Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award. She has also written many romantic suspense novels under the pen name Salena Montgomery, in addition to “Lead from the Outside,” a guidebook on making real change.
Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni talks about her long career, writing process and reflects on the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007.
Nikki Giovanni is a poet, writer, activist and educator. Her works cover everything from race and social issues to children’s literature. She has received the Langston Hughes Medal, the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, the NAACP Image Award, more than 20 honorary degrees from national colleges and universities and a Grammy nomination. In 2005, Oprah Winfrey named her one of the top 25 Living Legends. Her 2017 collection of poems is titled “A Good Cry.”
Journalist Yamiche Alcindor talks about covering the 2016 election, writing for The New York Times and reporting for “PBS NewsHour.”
Yamiche Alcindor is the former White House correspondent for the “PBS NewsHour” and is currently the Washington correspondent for NBC News. Before joining “NewsHour,” she worked as a national political reporter for The New York Times where she covered Congress and wrote about the impact of President Donald Trump’s policies on working-class people and people of color. She earned a master’s degree in broadcast news and documentary filmmaking from New York University and a bachelor’s in English, government and African American studies from Georgetown University.
Taylor Branch is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, historian and public speaker, best known for his Civil Rights era trilogy, “America in the King Years.” His other titles include, “The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President” and “The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA.”
Julian Bond was an activist, academic, author and true icon of the civil rights movement. He helped found the SNCC and led both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NACCP. Bond also served 10 terms in Georgia’s legislature.