McKinney, Cynthia, 1955-

MCKINNEY, Cynthia Ann, a Representative from Georgia; born in Atlanta, Fulton County, Ga., March 17, 1955; graduated St. Joseph High School; B.A., University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Calif., 1978; attended Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford, Mass.; diplomatic fellow, Spellman College, Atlanta, Ga., 1984; faculty member, Clark Atlanta University and Agnes Scott College; member of the Georgia state house of representatives, 1988-1992; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Third and to the four succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1993-January 3, 2003); unsuccessful candidate for nomination to the One Hundred Eighth Congress in 2002; elected as a Democrat to the One Hundred Ninth Congress (January 3, 2005-January 3, 2007); unsuccessful candidate for nomination to the One Hundred Tenth Congress in 2006; unsuccessful Green Party candidate for election for President of the United States in 2008.

<p>Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is an American politician and activist who is an assistant professor at North South University, Bangladesh. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the United States House of Representatives. She was the first black woman elected to represent Georgia in the House. She left the Democratic Party and ran in 2008 as the presidential candidate of the Green Party of the United States.</p>

<p>In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in Georgia's newly re-created 11th District, and was re-elected in 1994. When her district was redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in <i>Miller v. Johnson</i>, McKinney was elected from the new 4th District in the 1996 election. She was re-elected twice more without substantive opposition. McKinney was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary. Her defeat was attributed to some Republican crossover voting in Georgia's open primary election, which permits anyone from any party to vote in any party primary and "usually rewards moderate candidates and penalizes those outside the mainstream."</p>

<p>After her 2002 loss, McKinney traveled and gave speeches, and served as a commissioner in 9/11 Citizens Watch. On October 26, 2004, she was among 100 Americans and 40 family members of those who were killed on 9/11 who signed the 9/11 Truth Movement statement, calling for new investigations into unexplained aspects of the 9/11 events. McKinney was re-elected to the House in November 2004, following her successor's run for Senate. In Congress, she unsuccessfully tried to unseal FBI records on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the murder of Tupac Shakur. She continued to criticize the Bush Administration over the 9/11 attacks. She supported anti-war legislation and introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.</p>

<p>She was defeated by Hank Johnson in the 2006 Democratic primary. In the March 29, 2006, Capitol Hill police incident, she struck a Capitol Hill Police officer for stopping her to ask for identification. She left the Democratic Party in September 2007. Members of the United States Green Party had attempted to recruit McKinney for their ticket in both 2000 and 2004. She eventually ran as the Green Party nominee in the 2008 presidential election receiving 0.12% of the votes cast.</p>

<p>Elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992, Cynthia McKinney was the first African-American woman from Georgia to serve in Congress. With a background in foreign policy, McKinney used her seat on the Armed Services and International Relations Committees to address human rights issues. The outspoken Representative, whose foreign policy views sometimes cut against the grain, lost re-election in 2002. Two years later, voters in her DeKalb County district returned her to the House for a single term, making her one of a handful of Congresswomen who served nonconsecutive terms.</p>

<p>Cynthia Ann McKinney was born on March 17, 1955, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Leola Christion McKinney, a nurse, and James Edward (Billy) McKinney, a police officer, civil rights activist, and longtime legislator in the Georgia state house of representatives. Her father, Billy, joined the Atlanta police department in 1948 as one of its first African- American officers. Cynthia McKinney’s participation in demonstrations with her father inspired her to enter politics.1 While protesting the conviction of Tommy Lee Hines, an intellectually disabled Black man charged with raping a white woman in Alabama, McKinney and other protestors were threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. “That was probably my day of awakening,” McKinney recalled. “That day, I experienced hatred for the first time. I learned that there really are people who hate me without even knowing me . . . . That was when I knew that politics was going to be something I would do.”</p>

<p>McKinney graduated from St. Joseph High School and, in 1978, earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Southern California. She later pursued graduate studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. In 1984 she served as a diplomatic fellow at Spelman College in Atlanta. She then taught political science at Agnes Scott College in Decatur and at Clark Atlanta University. Cynthia McKinney married Coy Grandison, a Jamaican politician. The couple had a son, Coy Jr., before divorcing.</p>