How a longtime organizer builds community, empowerment in Houston County and beyond

With more than 30 years of community organizing experience, Fenika Miller has seen how not only persistence but advocacy in all sectors of a community can lead to change.

A lifelong Houston County resident, Miller has led efforts related to voting rights, politics, youth mentorship and expanding economic opportunity.

She’s also an entrepreneur, has run for office and represented Georgia as a presidential elector.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Miller reflected on her work as a community organizer, how Houston County has evolved over the years and the work ahead.

Getting involved

Miller first got involved in organizing at age 13 or 14 when her cousin Charlene Thomas was working on former Commission Chair Houston Porter’s re-election campaign. Porter was the first Black man to be elected to a countywide position in Houston County.

“[Thomas] would take me out to put signs out and flyers out and one day, she asked me to cross-check some numbers in a phone book,” Miller said. “And I didn’t want to do it, of course, but she said, ‘This is how we effect change.’ And for a girl growing up in Perry in a community that really hasn’t changed so much now when I look back and drive through it, but this is how we address the issues that are affecting our community. Representation matters.

“So I bought into that, Mr. Porter won and I helped [Thomas] with those calls. And I’ve been serving ever since in various capacities in the community, whether that is running for office myself or starting a nonprofit to help women and girls understand how policy affects their lives, or putting girls into rooms with their elected officials to teach them how to advocate for themselves.”

Black Voters Matter

One of the organizations through which Miller advocates for voting rights is Black Voters Matter, where she serves as the deputy national field director.

“We are a nonpartisan organization who works to build power in rural communities, to connect the dots for Black voters around the everyday issues that affect their lives back to the power of the ballot,” she said. “But we also focus on a holistic approach. So it’s not just electoral, it’s not just voting, it is connecting all of the issues that affect our community back to the ballot and helping folks to understand that they have to lean into their power to affect the change that they want to see in their communities. That’s the lesson that my cousin taught me.

“As the deputy national field director, I oversee the work in Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana, centering the needs of marginalized communities and overseeing the healthcare and environmental justice work.”

On the 2022 midterms

Miller said the past few years of elections brought victories and challenges, and the 2022 midterm elections were no exception, especially in Houston County.

“With the midterms, it was a tough haul. We had just come off of the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 wins. We ran smack dab into the legislative session where we had to fight against SB 202 and voter suppression bills. And then with the 2022 midterm elections, it’s like we’ve been in a perpetual cycle of elections so community members were tired. There was energy, but it wasn’t as palpable as it had been in 2020.

“Getting folks out to vote in this new space of SB 202 restrictions on absentee ballots reduced the ability for folks to lean into the democratic process. It was a lot of work, a lot of effort. We were all exhausted … But we were able to in the run-off, pull it off and send, you know, send Senator Warnock back to Congress.”

Documenting Black women’s history in Middle Georgia

In 2020, Miller and a group of local women started a project to document the oral histories of Black women in Middle Georgia who played a role in the civil rights movement.

“We did this because during that summer of 2020 when we did the march here around George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, there was a student from Fort Valley State University who didn’t know the connection between Dr. [Rutha] Jackson and how she worked to integrate the county as a student and that she was still leading movements,” Miller said. “We thought it was important for the next generation to know the contributions that these women made when they were young.”

The women’s stories were compiled into a book written by Miller’s cousin Lavoris “Gail” Alexander and published by the Houston County Black Heritage Society. The book, “A Tale of Two Citizens/Black Women on the Front Lines,” was published last fall.

Their portraits are also displayed on a wall at Succeed Cowork, the Warner Robins coworking space Miller started which focuses on empowering entrepreneurial women.

Serving as a presidential elector

In 2020, Miller was honored to serve as one of the 16 Democratic presidential electors representing Georgia and cast a vote for President Joe Biden.

“It was an amazing experience, it kind of fell into my lap,” she said. “I was at the Capitol with my mentor program. We were hosting Black Women and Girls Awareness Day talking about the issues that impact girls and women in the state and I got a call from the chair of the state party and she asked if I would consider being an elector … So I did it and I didn’t think anything else of it until we won.

“But it was definitely dampened by the misinformation and mischaracterization of what that meant. We had fake electors at the Capitol that day and we had to have extra security because of that. It gets to where you can’t use your physical address because of what may happen. So you think that you’re doing something amazing for your country, for your state, for democracy, and then there are attacks and the vitriol that came along with that could put my entire family in jeopardy.”

Mentoring and empowering girls

In 2012, Miller founded New Vision MSK, a nonprofit to raise social awareness for girls and help them make change in their community.

“When we begin to introduce our young girls to lifestyle change, to advocacy, to broader issues, then we can really begin to change society. So we put girls in the room with their elected officials and on International Day of the Girl, they traveled to all of the government agencies and they talked to their elected officials to the Capitol. We’ve traveled and studied abroad to connect them to global issues and how those affect women and girls.

“We are extremely proud that our last member of that initial cohort will graduate high school this year. All of our other girls have graduated and have gone on to have successful careers, either in STEM fields, the military, politics or community service.”

Miller also helped create Black Women & Girls Awareness Day in Georgia, which Governor Nathan Deal signed a proclamation to recognize in 2017.

Succeed Cowork and economic opportunity

Miller’s coworking space in Warner Robins, Succeed Cowork, opened its doors in 2021 and serves as a hub for women looking to start or grow their business. While she still works in activism and nonprofits, she said leaning into business and entrepreneurship initiatives was a “natural progression.”

“Realizing that we can’t just nonprofit ourselves out of the conditions that are affecting us, we have to be able to create spaces where women are able to have economic mobility and stability. So at [Succeed Cowork,] we have women who use this space for their business, we have mentoring programs and we create a space where women aren’t priced out. Because real estate is expensive, renting rooms just to have a meeting is expensive.

“It’s a community incubator for networking and collaboration in a space where women can come in, not shrink, and have the ability to succeed in their businesses and their endeavors.”