FROM CHILDHOOD TO COMMUNITY ADVOCATE…

Dr. Carnita Atwater’s life has always been about serving the community, even as a child of humble beginning. She does not have to hide behind her parent’s legacy, she has made her own footprints in the hearts and lives of the people…

Taking ownership of her ability to lead even as a child, her childhood legacy layout the building blocks of the tenacity she can use to be the Governor that the State of Tennessee deserves as the architect of democracy for all Tennesseans.

In her early childhood years, she grew up living in poverty in a little shotgun home in Clarksdale Mississippi and staying on her family seven-generation farm with her grandparents. This is where she learned valuable work ethics, perseverance and taking care of the community. On the farm, she collected water from the pumping well, chopped wood for the potbelly stove, fed the chickens, horses and cows, washed clothes in the number three tub, made lye soap, drove the John Deere tractor plowing the fields… yes, she knows hard work.

She started my first business at the age of 12 which was a lawn & landscaping service. She has always been a little country girl with an agape love for nature and animals.

Even as a poor child growing up in the turbulent times of segregation, she always looked out for the elders in the community by running errands, going to the grocery store and assisting them with their gardening. These humble attributes were also learned as she served as a Brownie, Girl Scout and a candy stripper at the local hospital.

Both of her parents were Civil Rights advocates. Her mother was the first African American Mid-wife in Mount Bayou, Mississippi. In the 80s, her mom was the leader of the boycott against Memphis Furniture Company where she took Carnita on the picket line which inspired her to also become a community advocate. Carnita’s parents taught her that hard work and a good education would be her passport to success which was partially true, but they never told her about systemic racism probably to protect her.

Moving to Memphis as an adolescent, she soon adapted to the slums of Memphis. As a teenager, she grew up on the North Side of Memphis in a community struggling with poverty, substance abuse, and gun violence because of political neglect and policy failure. What was customary and the norm was seeing a dead body on the streets, running away from bullets flying, prostitutes being beaten to near death, drug dealers controlling the streets of the neighborhood, girls and women getting raped at any given time in daylight, crack users suffering and dying on every corners, and trying to stay out the way of danger to survive. This black child has seen more than her share of trauma…

While working her first part-time job at USDA Cotton Division at 17 years of age, she took her first check and fed the whole North Memphis community hot dogs, potato chips, big wheel cookies and grape Kool-Aid to bring a sense of normalcy to the community. She used we second pay check to purchased toys for all the children in North Memphis during Christmas time.

Dr. Carnita Atwater has served the State of Tennessee for over 30 years taking care of children, senior citizens, single parents, domestic violence victims, homeless individuals, and displaced veterans. Sprinkling the water of love, from feeding and clothing Tennesseans living in rural and poverty-stricken urban communities, she has truly been a crusader for equality and justice for all.

In North Memphis, she was the first to identify that senior citizens were living in deplorable rat-infested housing and eating cat food due to limited funds. She quickly erected a survival plan to assist the elders with repairing their homes by painting, performing minor home repairs and mowing their grass herself. She started an elder food program to make sure these senior citizens had food to eat and funds to purchase their medication. She even saved 50 citizen seniors from losing their homes by paying their back property taxes.

Through many trials and tribulations, she survived being hit in the head during a Civil Rights Movement as a child which required 14 stitches in her head, molested by a cousin at age seven, she survived a brutal rape attack at 16 years of age living in North Memphis and she survived three brutal attacks at gunpoint in one year on the streets of Memphis. She is a survivor of domestic violence thus being knocked unconscious in a marital relationship… and still she rises to run for the Governor of the State of Tennessee to be the voice of the people!

She has never had any biological children but she has been instrumental in raising over 92 foster and displaced children which most of these beautiful souls are very successful in life today. At present, she is the community mother to over 125 children in the North Memphis and across the City of Memphis. I have an agape love for children especially the ones living in poverty and distressed neighborhoods. In my opinion, no child should be living in poverty or on the streets in the State of Tennessee.

In 2018, she founded the first Afri-Hip Hop Ballerina Program for underserved children in the City of Memphis without receiving funding from local, state or federal. She started a summer food program that fed over 500 children daily, donated 5,000 coats, gloves and hats to underserved children each year, donated over 5,000 bicycles and toys to marginalized children each year. These are the attributes of the making of a “People’s Governor”.

With her tender heart, for the last several years she has paid for the funeral expenses of children killed by violence and assisted in burying several prominent individuals to ease the financial burden on the family members.

She has been an educator, mentor and advocate to copious college students, homeless youth, drug addicted youth, and LGBTQ + youth across the State of Tennessee and across the United States. She has been at the right time and the right place when a LGBTQ+ youth tried to suicide herself and Dr. Atwater held the victim in her arms soaked in blood and the victim did not die.

As a community advocate, she has hid out over 100 domestic violence victims in private places to save their lives. Indeed, she knows the importance of an underground safety-net being a domestic victim herself.

She has emphasized many times that together we can make the impossible possible in the State of Tennessee. She hopes that she can count on your support, vote, financial contributions and volunteer hours to may this political endeavor come to a reality.

The Primary Election is August 4, 2022 and General Election is November 8, 2022. She can foot the bill of being the next “PEOPLE GOVERNOR”.

As the next Governor of the State of Tennessee, she will bring this same tenacity to the people of this great state. She has already proven that she can served the VOLUNTER STATE by her community actions and no just words…

Much blessings,

Carnita

Tennessee’s Servant Leader