The grandchild of a man who never had the chance to cast a ballot because he died before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The daughter of parents who felt so strongly about voting that they allowed their Los Angeles home to be used as a polling place.
It’s impossible to listen to Assemblywoman Shirley Weber tell her life story and not be grateful that Gov. Gavin Newsom picked her to be the first Black woman to serve as secretary of state in California.
Unfortunately, it’s also impossible not to see her historic appointment as some sort of a consolation prize for the U.S. Senate seat that Black women lost.