By Kenneth Miller, NNPA Region 5 President
You know who top model Tyra Banks is! I am sure you have heard of women’s basketball legend Lisa Leslie and multiple NBA champion player and former coach Byron Scott?
Perhaps you have heard the name of NBA Hall of Famer Paul Pierce, but if you don’t know who Fani Willis is by now you have probably been sleeping under a Flintstone size rock.
The woman who is at the center of the massive criminal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump is from right here in the renaissance City of Inglewood.
That’s right, the city that was infamously coined in a rap song as a place always up to no good.
Now, thanks in a large part to the vision, boldness and business acumen of Mayor James T. Butts, Jr., Inglewood boast of a bustling Forum, billion dollar football stadium that hosts two NFL teams in the Rams and Chargers and very soon a futuristic Intuit Dome arena that will play host to the NBA Clippers.
However, before all of that, there was a little girl growing up here with big dreams to make a difference in the world.
“My name is actually Fani (fah-nee), Taifa is my middle name, and my last name is Willis. So, my father was a Black Panther, so he was very Afrocentric… my name is Swahili. Fani actually means ‘prosperous,’ and Taifa means ‘people’.”
Willis was born in Inglewood to a father who was a member of the Black Panthers and also a criminal defense attorney.
By the time she was in the first grade her parents moved to Washington, D.C., but divorced and while her mother came back to California, she stayed mostly with her father.
It was his influence that led her to studying political science at HBCU Howard in Washington D.C. where she graduated cum laude in 1993. Willis moved to Atlanta, attended Emory University of Law and earned her Juris Doctor in 1996.
Willis left civic duty in 2018 and went into private practice.
She lost out on a seat for Fulton County Superior Court, but became chief municipal judge for South Fulton, Georgia in 2019.
It wasn’t her goal to run against a sitting district attorney, but she did and defeated Paul Howard Fulton County in Atlanta, Georgia. She took the challenge of running against the sitting 6-term Fulton DA, when she ultimately took the fundamental seat in service to her constituents.
For 16 years she toiled in as a prosecutor in the Fulton County DA’s office where she garnered a reputation as a no frills lawyer, penchant on bringing down the bad guys.
Among her most famous cases was as lead prosecutor in the 2014 to 2015 when she brought to justice twelve educators accused of correcting answers entered by students to inflate the scores of state administered standardized tests. Eleven of the twelve were convicted of racketeering under Georgia’s RICO statute in April 2015.
That is the same RICO statute that she convinced a grand jury to indict Trump and 18 others in an alleged scheme to defraud voters and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Willis, a Democrat was quoted as saying, “What I could envision is that we actually live in a society where Lady Justice is blind, and that it doesn’t matter if you’re rich poor, Black, White, Democrat or Republican. If you violated the law, you’re going to be charged.”
She has demonstrated that whether you are the former president or a famous rapper if you violate the law in her jurisdiction, she will bring you to justice.
Willis has also brought anti-corruption indictments against Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug and his associates.
RICO – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is infamously used to bring down the mobsters, has also been used in unorthodox ways by Willis to success.
“So proud of Fani Willis. Born and raised in Inglewood while I was a police officer here. Sher will go down in history,” Mayor Butts said.
