Helen Douglas Mankin was photographed just after her 1946 election to the House. Her victory sent shock waves through segregationist Georgia, where her coalition of minority and white liberal voters caused great unease. When Eugene Talmadge came out of political retirement that fall to run for re-election as governor of Georgia, he inveighed against “the spectacle of Atlanta Negroes sending a Congresswoman to Washington.” During his campaign, he mocked Mankin, nicknaming her the “Belle of Ashby Street” after a predominantly African-American neighborhood. Rather than objecting, the Congresswoman adopted the title as a point of pride.
