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A telling of Georgia Davis Powers history links her story within the social, political, feminist, and historical context of our world s history. Black women through the centuries have wanted to share their experiences and tell how they labored for common causes. This woman through her modernizing politics has done much to encourage people/citizens to believe public engagement is worth the time. Georgia Davis Powers has a story about the Kentucky Civil Rights Movement and Kentucky politics that should be told. Powers lived most of her life through America s most defining twentieth-century transformation the dismantling of legally- protected racial segregation. Now at ninety, the time is immediate to capture and store her [story]. Powers served as Kentucky s first woman elected state senator from 1967 to 1988, marking her, too, as Kentucky s first elected black state senator. In her twenty-one years she won battles over housing, labor, and discrimination matters. She championed bills for open housing, labor, and against race, class, sex, and education discrimination. Powers sponsored and co-sponsored some 147 bills, 75 of which became law during her tenure.

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Anne B. Onyekwuluje is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Her research interests include oral history, cultural diversity, race relations, parent and student diversity relationships, adolescent development, and qualitative research.

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