I’d met Atlanta’s mayor, Shirley Franklin, two times, and both instances, she showed that she didn’t mind getting dirty. The first encounter was several years ago when she braved a below-freezing Saturday morning to help put the finishing touches on a Habitat for Humanity house being built in the inner city. The second time I met Franklin, she patiently held my infant while my husband took a photograph. My then-three-month-old son swiftly spit up on the mayor’s suit. But in the face of dust, paint, and recycled milk, Franklin remained good-humored.
In Atlanta, it seems there’s nothing more popular than Mayor Shirley Franklin—not grits, not college football, not even 70 degree weather in February. When Franklin ran for reelection in 2005, more than 90 percent of the voters case their ballots for the 5'1'' straight-talking lady.
Maybe it’s her knack for pulling off the impossible. Her incessant talk about sewers and clean water convinced voters to pass a $3.2 billion tax to overhaul Atlanta’s aging water and sewerage system. Franklin somehow made sewers a sexy subject.
And as she cleans the city’s infrastructure, Franklin is cleaning city hall, too. Franklin’s predecessor, Bill Campbell, currently resides at a prison in Miami. He was mired in scandal and last spring, he was convicted by a federal grand jury on three counts of tax evasion.
Franklin’s accolades range from a “Profile in Courage” award to being dubbed one of the “Five Best Big-City Mayors” by Time Magazine. She is the first woman mayor of Atlanta, and the first African American woman of any major southern city.
The blonde-haired powerhouse was relaxed and chatty when I interviewed her; despite the fact that she had fifteen-minute appointments stacked up all day and was running an hour late.
Q: You always wear a flower on your suit jacket. Does it have symbolic meaning?
A: Well I love flowers, and when I started running for office, I used to wear a pin with pearls and rhinestones. And after two years of wearing them, I was really tired of them. I noticed a young woman who was making flowers as a hobby in the office, and I started wearing flowers. Now everyone expects to see me in a flower. But I’ve also become accustomed to wearing a flower to demonstrate, in some ways, that I’m feminine. That I can be tough and feminine. But I also just like flowers. I had a small flower garden before I ran for office. I don’t have much time for it now.
Q: Almost a year ago, you took a trip to South Africa and Lesotho with CARE USA. What was the most surprising thing you encountered?
A: My trip with CARE USA was designed around the I Am Powerful Campaign to advocate for and to advocate with women taking control of their lives. Specifically, around certain choices they have with AIDS and HIV. … I could not imagine their resolve. Their resolve was so clear that even though terrible things had happened in their family or their village, they resolved that they could make their lives better. ... If all of us would take the resources that we have and dedicate them to making the community better the way I saw small communities organize themselves and act in Lesotho, this would be a much different world.
Q: Atlanta has one of the largest populations of middle and upper-class African Americans in the country, yet there is still a large population of impoverished African Americans whose lot has not improved. Why?A: There’s no question that there have been improvements. There’s no question that in the last forty years, after the Civil Rights Act, the middle class has grown and strengthened. It is troubling, however, that there is still over 20 percent of the Atlanta city population that lives at or below the poverty level. Some of that is related to wage rates, education levels, lack of access to health care. I mean, if one person gets sick in the family, and you’re living on the edge economically with your budget, someone has to sacrifice their career to take care of you because of the absence of affordable healthcare. I would hope that Atlanta and Georgia would have universal healthcare. I mean, I wish that for the nation, but I’d like to start right here.
