Born in Atlanta, Bottoms was elected mayor in 2017, after serving six years as a city councilmember. Her father, Major Lance, was a prominent RB singer in the 1960s.
As mayor, Bottoms, a mother to four kids, has delivered passionate speeches on Black children experiencing racial profiling.
More recently, Bottoms earned national recognition for her critical response to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who she said was rushing the reopening process and endangering the state’s population while the coronavirus continued to spread. Kemp announced reopening plans for the state as early as April 24, despite increasing numbers of confirmed cases in Atlanta at the time.
“I think that there was perhaps a way for us to be very thoughtful about a phased reopening,” Bottoms said in an interview with NPR. “I don’t think that that should have begun with hair salons and barbershops and places that people cannot appropriately socially distance or even have readily available access to the appropriate PPE. So I do think that there could have been a more thoughtful approach.”
It was around this time that Rep. Jim Clyburn, the most powerful Black man in Congress, floated the idea that Bottoms could be seen as a compelling VP pick.
“There is a young lady right there in Georgia who I think would make a tremendous VP candidate, and that’s the mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms,” said Clyburn, the House majority whip who endorsed Biden ahead of the crucial primary in Clyburn’s home state of South Carolina.
Bottoms’ leadership was also tested during the protests against Floyd’s death, where Bottoms made an impassioned speech calling for the end of destructive behavior that sprung out of the demonstrations.
“What I see happening on the streets of Atlanta is not Atlanta. This is not a protest. This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Bottoms said at a news briefing. “This is chaos.”
Protests erupted nationwide after video emerged showing a former Minneapolis police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck on Memorial Day for nearly eight minutes. Floyd, a Black man who was handcuffed and face down on the ground, told officers he couldn’t breathe. His death was ruled a homicide, and the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, was charged with murder.
Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/21/biden-vp-search-atlanta-mayor-keisha-lance-bottoms-rises-amid-protests.html