Spotlight
Joan P. Garner: Fostering Social Change
Joan Garner
Joan Garner, a Black, lesbian-feminist, social justice activist who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, was the first African American woman to be elected county commissioner for Fulton County, Georgia. She was also the first commissioner who was openly gay. She held that office for three successive terms. She served on the Lambda Legal national board from 1996 to 1998. A longtime member of Liberty Circle, Joan was a founding member of SONG (Southerners On New Ground), a multiracial group of lesbians focusing on the interconnections of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.
Joan grew up in Washington D.C., at the height of the civil rights movement. When she was in eleventh grade, while attending a high school sorority conference, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. This event had a profound effect on Joan, resulting in her lifelong commitment to work for her people and for social justice.
She came out as a lesbian in the early 1980s; and by the end of that decade, she became involved with the lesbian and gay movement as a social justice activist. During the AIDS epidemic, she worked with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in Atlanta. When the HRC planned the first fund-raising dinner, Joan became comfortable with her identity as an out, proud, African American lesbian. Later, she worked on Maynard Jackson’s campaign. Jackson became Atlanta's first Black mayor, and he appointed her to a number of boards and commissions.
Working with the Fund for Southern Communities, Joan met lesbians who taught her about feminist theory. While she considered herself feminist, she never identified with the white feminist movement.
Joan Garner died of breast cancer in 2017, gone way too soon.
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