Joan Garner

Joan P. Garner was born in 1951, and she died in 2017. Joan Garner was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and she lived in Atlanta, Georgia, for most of her adult life.  She majored in English at the University of the District of Columbia. She earned a master’s degree in organizational communication from Howard University in Washington, D.C.

From 1993 to 1997, Joan Garner was director of the Fund for Southern Communities, an organization that fosters social change in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Her work in Atlanta politics began in the 1990s when Atlanta, Georgia Mayor Maynard Jackson appointed Garner as one of his liaisons to the gay and lesbian community. She served on the board of Lambda Legal and on the board of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force. She was a codirector from the beginning of Southerners on New Ground (SONG).

Joan Garner got elected county commissioner, from 2010 to 2017, for three successive terms in Georgia’s district 6, the southeast quadrant of Fulton County, Atlanta, which includes Midtown Atlanta. This was a tremendous victory for such a noted activist on behalf of the LGBTQ community. She joined the Board of Commissioners in 2011, representing a district that served primarily the areas of Atlanta, Georgia. She never gave up fighting against health disparities. Cofounder the Fulton County Task Force on HIV/AIDS, she advocated many other health initiatives.

At the time of her death in 2017, Commissioner Joan Garner served as third vice president of Georgia’s County Association. She had chaired the National Association of Counties’ Healthy Counties Initiative Advisory Board. She also served as the chair of the National Association of Counties’ Medicaid and Indigent Care Subcommittee, and as chair of the Health Policy Committee.  

Joan made such a significant impact as a commissioner that in August 2019, they posthumously renamed the Ponce de Leon branch of the public library: The Joan P. Garner Library. “I believe this is a fitting tribute to my mentor, friend, and boss, the late Commissioner Joan P. Garner,” said Fulton County District 4 Commissioner Natalie Hall. “The Joan P. Garner Library will be a public reminder of her lifelong activism and heroic leadership fighting against social injustice and fighting for human, civil, and LGBTQ rights in Fulton County.”

Joan Garner was also active in historic preservation in Atlanta, serving as executive director of the Historic District Development Corporation, a non-profit entity that created the Dr. Martin Luther King Historic District, where she lived. She is survived by many family members, including her spouse, Fulton County State Court Judge Jane Morrison.