At DNC, a Powerful Force of Black Women Fuel Harris’ Historic Campaign

Paulette Roby learned the meaning of civil disobedience when she was 13 years old.

As a budding teenager in Birmingham, Alabama, Roby wanted to take part in civil rights demonstrations organized in her hometown by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963, but her mother refused to let her leave school. Young Paulette followed her conscience, took part in demonstrations and marches, and she’s never regretted it. Her mother eventually forgave her.

More than 60 years later, Roby and a friend who joined her in protest all those years ago, Judy Stickney, journeyed from Birmingham to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention to see first hand the ascent of Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket in her historic bid for the White House. The pair wore matching T-shirts declaring Birmingham to be “Home of the O.G. Soldiers.”

“I have the same feeling today as I had back then. I’m excited about what’s going on. Hopefully it will continue to make change for the future and make a legacy for all of us,” Roby told Variety as she and Stickney walked the corridors of the United Center, where the DNC will take place Aug. 19-22.

“I just didn’t know which way we were going to turn [in 2024], and I just said, ‘I’m going to just keep my faith.’ So I kept my faith. Even with the civil rights movement back in the ’60s, it was a spiritual movement, and I feel that spirit here today,” she said.

Roby is but one example of thousands of Black female activists, advocates, legislators, public servants and other professionals who came to Chicago to watch Harris start the final push to achieve a level of gender parity that for so long has seemed out of reach for any woman. The racist and sexist insults that President Donald Trump has hurled at Harris in recent days is only deepening the resolve to help Harris punch through that final ceiling.

Today, Roby runs Birmingham’s Civil Rights Activists Committee and its Foot soldiers Headquarters facility. She left her home state in 1969 for more than 25 years in San Diego, Calif. She returned home in Birmingham in 1986 and was surprised by the changes she found.

“When I left Birmingham in ’69, we didn’t have Black police officers. [By 1986] we were beginning to have Black police officers, Black firemen and Black people working for the gas company or the power company. I saw a difference,” she said.

FULL COVERAGE: Election 2024 — Democratic National Convention in Chicago

She got involved in local Democratic politics, and then Roby wound up landing a job that she never saw coming. It marked a full-circle moment for the teenage civil rights activist, given the importance of bus boycotts by Black residents in the history of the civil rights movement.

“I went back and I landed a job at the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority, and I ended up driving the bus myself. So that was really a big experience for me. I loved it,” she said.

Today, Roby stays busy with the Civil Rights Activists Committee. Her go-to sources for news are MSNBC and CNN. “I really feel they’re doing their jobs,” she said when pressed for her thoughts about mainstream media coverage of Harris’ candidacy. “They’re putting out information that people need to know.”

In recent years, Alabama has been a study in political contrasts between Black and white voters. Roby sees Harris’ candidacy a sign that compromise is still possible and that the bitter division and partisanship will ease again.

“I do feel that way. And at first I did not feel that way, but I feel that way now because I kept my faith, I kept my hope that one day that it’s going to get better,” she said. “I had to keep telling that to myself, because I had gotten into a deep downer. I couldn’t get up out of the bed. I was just depressed until Kamala came along, and I have been excited ever since. Look how I got goosebumps going all over me.”

Of all her admirable qualities, Roby singled out one aspect of Harris’ life and work that has impressed her the most.

“The courage that she has. The stand-up that she has in her,” Roby said. “She has that wisdom, she has the knowledge and we should all back her. Because one thing about it that I believe in — she wouldn’t be there if God didn’t put her there.”