Public service was a value Bottoms learned at home, not just because of her aunt’s example but because, as she puts it, “it was just how my grandmother raised us to be.” It wasn’t until she went to college and pledged Delta Sigma Theta that she learned there was a formal term for providing assistance to those who needed it: activism. This commitment to the collective has won over her city.
Bottoms is still grounded in those inherited values, and family is central to the mayor’s worldview. This is clear in ways that are both symbolic and demonstrated. When she provides remote commentary to news outlets, she arranges herself before an array of photos of relatives and heroes rather than framed diplomas. In a socially distant era, Zoom backgrounds have become as much of a statement as words spoken aloud, and her perspective is clear: “My people are my credentials,” she seems to say.
Among the smiling faces is always her late father, the Grammy-nominated musician Major Lance. Born in Mississippi to a family of sharecroppers and raised in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Lance struggled to support his family while nurturing his artistic aspirations. Against all odds, he opened for The Beatles and even gave an opportunity to a young musician named Elton John to open for him.
Major Lance, photographed around 1970
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“When I am at my best, I am my father’s daughter,” she has said in the past. She is less restrained on the day of her Glamour Women of the Year shoot. When asked about him, she gets emotional. “My dad always believed in the best in me,” she says. “He was the one who always made me think that everything was possible. And he would say, ‘Did you try, did you ask? All they can do is tell you no.’ And he always pushed me in such a loving, comfortable way. He believed that I could do it all. All I had to do was believe I could do it. And he taught me that it was okay to fail. But the real failure is if you didn’t try. My father wasn’t a perfect man, but he loved me in this perfect way.”
Overcome, she doesn’t elaborate, but she has spoken about her father’s struggle with addiction and incarceration before. In 1978, Lance received a 10-year sentence for possessing and selling cocaine. For Bottoms, these societal scourges are not just ideas or campaign issues; they have been her reality.
“We need leaders with a wide range of experiences,” says Chesa Boudin, district attorney of San Francisco and an admirer of the work Bottoms has done in Atlanta. “I speak often and openly about my personal connection to incarceration. I believe my experience growing up with parents who were incarcerated—my father is still in prison—helped shape my perspective and understanding of the harms mass incarceration inflicts.”
Blurring the lines between public and private has been a hallmark of Bottoms’s approach to governance. Her Twitter profile identifies her as “60th Mayor of Atlanta | Wife & Mommie.” Her children are never far from her mind. “It’s difficult for me not to see everything through the lens of my kids, and how they see our city, and how they feel our city. And right now, what I see with my kids is, I see a lot of anxiousness. I see a lot of uncertainty, and they are looking to me as their mother, and their friends are looking to me as mayor, to make it okay. And I think that’s the responsibility and burden that women often carry. That we’re supposed to be the healers, we’re supposed to make everything okay. That is what I wear. I don’t count it as a negative. I count it as a privilege.”
