Slave’s Granddaughter Now Governor In US
In 1860, an enslaved man named Sheppard Peek was listed as property in the will of a Georgia plantation owner. His assigned value was $1,400.
On November 3, 2026, his great-great-granddaughter was elected governor of Georgia.
Her name is Keisha Lance Bottoms.
She became the first Black woman ever elected governor of an American state, making history in the very place where her ancestors had once been enslaved.
But the most moving moment came the day before the election.
Bottoms traveled to Crawfordville, a small Georgia town about 90 miles east of Atlanta, where her family history can be traced back at least five generations.
Her great-great-grandparents, Sheppard and Betsy Peek, had lived there under slavery.
Surviving documents from 1860 list Sheppard among the possessions of William Peek. Another record bears an X where Sheppard signed his name, a reminder of the educational barriers imposed on enslaved people.
Betsy, born in 1845, lived through slavery and emancipation. Her descendants would eventually leave rural Georgia for Atlanta, traveling by horse and buggy in search of opportunity.
Generations later, their descendant became a lawyer, judge, Atlanta city councilwoman, and mayor.
Then she ran for governor.
On November 2, Bottoms returned to Crawfordville and visited the cemetery where Betsy is buried among unmarked graves.
She knelt at her great-great-grandmother’s resting place and cried.
The next evening, Georgia voters elected her to the state’s highest office.
In her victory speech, Bottoms remembered Betsy and acknowledged that she could never know what dreams her ancestor had held for the generations who would follow.
But she knew whose sacrifices had made her own life possible.
The contrast is almost impossible to comprehend.
In 1860, Georgia law allowed a white man to assign a monetary value to Sheppard Peek.
In 2026, his descendant was chosen by voters to lead the state.
Betsy never lived to see that day. Neither did the generations who carried the family forward through emancipation, segregation, and the struggle for equal rights.
But their names are now part of the history of Georgia’s first Black woman governor.
