‘If Not Now, When?’: Black Women Seize Political Spotlight

Charisse Davis was recently elected the only Black woman on the Cobb County School Board.

Brynn Anderson / Associated Press

The little girl ran up to her, wide-eyed and giddy.

“Are you Charisse Davis?” the fourth grader asked.

Davis was stunned. A former kindergarten teacher and librarian, she was more accustomed to shuttling her two sons to basketball practice than being seen as a local celebrity. But now she had been elected the only Black woman on the Cobb County School Board, gaining office in a once conservative suburban community where people who look like her rarely held positions of power.