AUSTIN DAVIS, left, was sworn-in as Pennsylvania’s first Black Lieutenant Governor on Jan. 17. By his side is the state’s Second Lady, Blayre Holmes Davis, Austin Davis’ wife.
Lee Street. In McKeesport.
That’s where Austin Davis lived, going to and from McKeesport Area High School as an ambitious teenager.
But when he was 16, the gun violence that had affected parts of McKeesport hit close to home.
“When I was 16, somebody was shot on my block,” Davis told the New Pittsburgh Courier in an exclusive interview, Jan. 24. “That was kind of a jarring moment for my family, the first time gun violence had reached our neighborhood.”
Davis didn’t back down. “I decided that I wanted to do something about it,” he said, something about the crime, the neighborhood, the city that he had come to love.
Davis, a sophomore in high school, went to a McKeesport City Coun cil meeting, and the first thing he noticed…? “There was nobody who looked like me serving in city government.”
Also, “no one talking about the issue of gun violence in my community.”
Davis, with the blessing of the McKeesport mayor at the time, Jim Brewster (now a Pa. senator), started the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Council to help tackle gun violence and other youth violence in the city. It included Davis and about a dozen other students from the town performing a number of community service projects and trying to come up with viable solutions to the violence problems.
“Maybe some of the other kids might have thought it was weird that we decided to get involved,” Davis told the Courier, “but there were a lot of people who encouraged us to get involved and stay involved.”
AUSTIN DAVIS SPEAKS AT HIS INAUGURATION CEREMONY, JAN. 17. HE’S THE FIRST BLACK LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR IN PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY.
Fast forward to Jan. 17, 2023. The now-33-year-old Austin Davis is still involved in getting solutions to the problems. But on a much larger scale. He’s…
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