Cynthia McKinney.

• Author: Nichols, John
• Position: Black member of Congress from Atlanta, GA - The Progressive Interview - Interview

On a hot Saturday in May, several dozen women, many of them poor, some of them welfare recipients, board a bus in South Georgia and travel for several hours until they reach the suburban Atlanta Congressional district where Cynthia McKinney is battling for her political life.

There they spend the day handing out literature, making telephone calls, and doing whatever they can to reelect a remarkable forty-one-year-old single mother who has battled mightily--and suffered dearly--to defend the interests of those beaten down by the Republican revolution.

The women on the bus aren't from McKinney's district, but they still view her as their standard bearer.

"They've never been able to vote for me, but they feel represented by me. These are poor people who are coming from rural South Georgia because they don't want to lose their voice in Congress," says McKinney.

Described by The Almanac of American Politics as "a fiery opponent of her Georgia neighbor, Speaker Newt Gingrich," McKinney once referred in a House debate to the Republican Speaker as a "piglet." Nor has she spared Democrats, criticizing them for viewing African Americans as "spare parts for their political ambitions."

A fierce opponent of NAFTA, the death penalty, punitive welfare reform, and corporate-sponsored "tort reform," McKinney in her four years in the House has battled for deep cuts in military spending, for gun control, and for a host of environmental causes.

One of the few Southern members of the Progressive Caucus, McKinney has earned 100 percent ratings from Americans for Democratic Action, the AFL-CIO, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Consumer Federation of America--a record few Northern Democrats can rival.

That record has earned her the antipathy not merely of Republicans but of Democratic "good old boys" who have never been particularly comfortable with strong African-American women, and who are genuinely troubled by one so progressive and so articulate as McKinney.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that states could eliminate majority-minority districts if they were deemed to constitute "racial gerrymandering," a federal judge ordered Georgia to redraw its district lines.

With strong support from her constituents, as well as African Americans, women, and progressives from across Georgia, McKinney battled to keep her seat, which was 64 percent African American and overwhelmingly Democratic. But, as she told The Washington Post, she lost that battle to "the holdovers from the Civil War days, the relics."

A three-judge panel drew a map that protected the likes of Gingrich but gave McKinney a mostly new district where only 30 percent of the voters are African Americans. Almost immediately, a wealthy white lawyer and a white state senator entered the Democratic primary against McKinney. Already, the campaign for the July 9 primary has taken on a racial tinge, as her opponents have attempted to link her with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

But McKinney is fighting back, as she always has.

Cynthia McKinney grew up in the civil-rights movement, riding as a child on her parents' shoulders in protest marches. Educated as a political scientist, she taught college until 1988, when she was elected to the Georgia House, where she served with her father, Billy McKinney.

In 1992, she was the surprise winner of a Democratic primary for the seat representing Georgia's newly created Eleventh Congressional District. She won handily in November and was reelected with 66 percent of the vote in 1994.

As she prepared for a weekend of campaign stops in her sprawling new district, McKinney took time out to talk with me.

Q: You went to Congress as a single mom, as an activist, and as the first African-American woman ever to represent your state in Congress. Did you go with a sense of mission?

McKinney: Absolutely. There's no way you can put yourself through the ritual and ordeal of a very, very tough campaign where nobody expects you to win, and all of the odds are against you, unless you have a sense of mission.

That sense of mission springs from the voices of my constituents. That sense of mission springs from the hopes and aspirations of my constituents. When I look at my constituents and see etched in their faces the lines of struggle, I have no choice but to carry their fight up to Washington.

Q: That fight has been uphill in the current Congress...