July 27, 2021 Dr. Tarece Johnson’s recent election to suburban Atlanta’s Gwinnett County School Board is in part a product of a changing Georgia. At age 44, she is the first Black and Jewish woman elected to the board. To put her election in context, the county’s first Black school board member, Everton Blair, was elected as recently as 2018. She’s part of Georgia’s “Blue Wave,” including January’s victory of two Democratic senate candidates in the Georgia runoff election, which not only flipped the balance of power in the Senate, they also delivered two historic “firsts” from that state to Washington: Georgia’s first Black senator, Rev Raphael Warnock and the state’s first Jewish senator, Jon Ossoff. Along with President Biden’s winning Georgia in the presidential election, these Senate victories signaled a sea change in the demographic and political character of the state.