California Secretary of State Shirley Weber knows all too well how the race for voting rights is an intergenerational marathon.
She’s the proud daughter of sharecroppers and is the first Black person to hold the position in California after Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated her at the end of 2020.
She told NBC BLK that descending from a family who couldn’t vote and becoming the state’s chief elections officer is a full circle experience for her family. She said her grandparents were essentially barred from voting. Her parents never registered to vote in Arkansas out of fear for their lives during the Jim Crow-era. They moved to California and her mother made their house a polling place to increase accessibility to voting for the local Black community.
