Georgia Davis Powers

Georgia Davis Powers (Born October 19, 1923) served for 21 years as a distinguished member of the state Senate in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. When elected in 1967, she became the first woman, and the first person of color to be elected to that august body.

Born in the city of Springfield, Kentucky, county seat of Washington County, the first county created in the new Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1793, Powers grew up the only girl in a family of nine children. The family later settled in the state’s largest metropolis, Louisville.

As a young wife and mother of an adopted son, Georgia and her husband Nicky joined the New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Louisville. An unlikely political operative, it was on the suggestion of fellow church member Verna Smith that Powers made her first tentative steps into Democratic Party politics by joining the U.S. Senatorial campaign staff of Wilson Wyatt. This lead to more than six years of managing mayoral, gubernatorial, and congressional campaigns for others. Among those were Governor It was during this period that she began to discover the value of local politics in helping the disadvantaged, and to develop the political skills that would serve her and her constituents so well over the next two decades.

Even before formally entering the world of partisan politics, Powers was an able veteran in the civil rights movement, leading the Allied Organization for Civil Rights in promoting a statewide public accommodations and fair employment law in the early 1960’s. In 1964, she was one of the organizers of a march on the state capitol at Frankfort in support of equity in public accommodations, (and fair housing?) in which Dr. Martin Luther King participated, and joined on that occasion by yet another famous civil rights pioneer, baseball legend Jackie Robinson.

During her 21 years in the Kentucky Senate, Powers sponsored bills prohibiting employment discrimination, sex and age discrimination, in addition to introducing statewide fair housing legislation. She also supported legislation to improve education for the physically and mentally disabled.

In her autobiography, Powers details her personal relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King, and the intimacy they shared as friend, trusted confidante, and lover.

Reference

• I SHARED THE DREAM, The Pride, Passion and Politics of the First Black Woman Senator From Kentucky. By Georgia Davis Powers. Published by New Horizon Press, Far Hills, N.J.