Kecia Cunningham
In 1999, Kecia Cunningham became the South’s first openly lesbian, African American elected to public office when she won a seat on the Decatur, Georgia, City Commission. At that time, she was one of two African American lesbians in elected office in the whole country. She served on that commission for sixteen years. The city commission voted her to mayor pro tem of Decatur in 2013.
She said, “Somebody got elected in 1999 in a small southern town!” Her lesbian partner, Lenny Lasater, called herself the “First Butch of Decatur.” The year after she got elected, Kecia was the Atlanta Pride Grand Marshall.
Kecia Cunningham grew up primarily in Summerville, South Carolina. Her family transferred there to Charleston Naval Base as a Navy family when she was in the fourth grade. She attended Circle High School, in Summerville, South Carolina.
She went to Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for her first two years. There she joined WOLF (Wellesley’s Organization of Lesbians and Friends). This helped her gain more self-confidence. Her experience at Wellesley as a whole made her feel “full of vim and vigor.” She finished her studies at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, which is how she got to the Atlanta, Georgia area.
Along with her immersion into life at Wellesley, Kecia said that going to Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia (surrounded by Atlanta), was a very important part of her life. She remarked how different people acted, how lesbians acted, at this small liberal arts college in the South. It made her realize that she was not going to be in the closet. She looks back and says, “Oh, that’s why I was the way that I was, ” because she had been exposed to a different way of life on campus. Kecia was the 1999 Outstanding Young Alumna for Agnes Scott College.
Kecia Cunningham has served as vice chair of the Decatur Development Authority, and she served on the Finance Committee for the City Schools of Decatur. She is a graduate of Leadership DeKalb 1998, and she went on to become the program chair on that organization’s board of directors. She also served on boards for several other community organizations.
Kecia Cunningham is a role model for the smart African American woman who is not backing down from what it means to be African American, female, queer, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, all those things. What she embraces is that our existence alone makes a difference; sitting at the table makes a difference. That is how it started. Now, it’s all about “each one, teach one.”