As the entire world nervously continued to watch America’s election results, a black woman from the deep south emerged as the hero of hour.
Stacey Abrams is the force of nature behind the Democratic Party’s strong showing in the state of Georgia.
Here the presidential challenger Joe Biden squeaked into a narrow lead against Donald Trump in the early hours of Friday morning.
Georgia is one of the states in the deep south with a history of slavery and American style apartheid.
Taken on its own Georgia would be enough to give Biden the electoral votes he needs to win the election and become president.
But with his lead at less than a thousand out of five million votes in the state, and thousands of votes still to count, the state remains too early to call.
Abrams narrowly lost the race for governor of the state in 2018 because the powers that be were able to prevent hundreds of thousands of black people from voting.
Since then she has worked relentlessly to register over 800,000 new mainly black voters.
If Biden holds on it will be the first time the Democrats have won Georgia in 28 years.
Georgia is also the home state of civil rights icon John Lewis, who died in June, and the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King who was assassinated in 1968.
Georgia will continue to be in the spotlight after the presidential election is over.
Because of complicated election rules, both Senate seats in the state will go to a run-off in January.
If the Democrats win them it would give them control over the upper house, the Senate, in Washington as well as the White House and the House of Representatives.
Social media on Friday morning was buzzing with praise for Abrams, a future star of American politics.
One Twitter fan wrote: “In awe of women everywhere all the time, but at this moment most in awe of Stacey Abrams. What a woman.”
And John Legend delighted fans with an early morning rendition of “Georgia is on my mind”.
