Crossing paths.
In early spring 2018, Jillian responded to a post on fb by Stacey, the mother of a Cobb County 1st-grader, asking if anyone out there knew anything about implicit bias. She included in her post that her seven year old was experiencing racist aggression at school.
In the last 10 minutes of their overlapping volunteer shift at Stacey Abrams’ table at the 2018 Annual NAACP-sponsored Marietta Square Juneteenth Celebration, Audrey and Jillian began chatting and quickly realized their shared inclination to participate civically. At the time, Audrey was a rising 11-grade students at Harrison High School in Cobb County. As one of a small number of Black students at the predominantly White school, Audrey described several instances of racism she had experienced during her time in Cobb County Schools. They agreed that it would be good to bring together Black students from around Cobb County with the potential aim of creating a county-wide Black Student network.
That same month, Stacey, Audrey and Jillian - two Black women and a Black girl - met for the first time as the group that would become Stronger Together. They were joined by Audrey’s friends Shay and Karrington, sister Taylor, future Cobb County Board of Education member Charisse, and Cobb County school counselor Jennifer.