‘Almost 70 years to trend.’ After her viral moment, Cozzie Watkins focuses on the mission
A day after her digital star turn, Cozzie Watkins still didn’t know she’d become a viral celebrity.
Watkins is the 68-year-old nurse who delivered North Carolina’s delegate count during Tuesday night’s virtual Democratic convention with passion and purpose.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, so let me just be plain,” she told a national audience. “Black people, especially Black women, are the backbone of this party and if we don’t show up, Democrats don’t get elected.”
The moment was memorialized in social media posts by scores of people including comic Samantha Bee and writer Charlie Pierce.
“She’s become a rock star overnight with all the tweets and posts,” said state Democratic Chairman Wayne Goodwin, who stood behind Watkins Tuesday night.
But Watkins didn’t realize her new-found celebrity.
“Do you know you’re trending?” a friend asked her the next day.
No, she replied. She hadn’t had time to look.
A former critical care nurse, Watkins works in a home health care practice specializing in neuro-muscular disorders. She was on the job all day Wednesday.
Watkins, who lives in east Charlotte, spoke to the nation at the entrance to the Hidden Valley neighborhood, with the neighborhood’s sign prominent behind her. The location was intentional.
The neighborhood, bordered by West Sugar Creek Road, North Tryon Street and Interstate-85, is usually in the headlines for other reasons. It’s a neighborhood troubled by drugs and gang violence. It wasn’t always that way.
Once a white neighborhood, it began desegregating in the 1960s before becoming a mostly Black neighborhood in the 1970s, according to historian Tom Hanchett. Absentee landlords became common. Now, as in many Charlotte neighborhoods, longtime residents face a new threat in gentrification.
Watkins’s decision to speak there was a vote of confidence in Hidden Valley and neighborhoods like it.
“I think it’s time we started looking at our neighborhoods and see how we can be more supportive,” she told the Observer. “We’re all together in this fight.”
Watkins chairs the Democratic Party’s 12th Congressional District organization. Goodwin said she was a natural selection to perform the roll call as a longtime party activist from both the party’s most loyal base and the state’s biggest city.
She looks at the election as a chance to save the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. She said she sees the need for it every day in the eyes of her critically ill patients.
“We lose Obamacare and there’s a chance they might not be able to get their medicine,” she said, “which would affect their quality of life.”
That’s why she’s focused on the next 11 weeks.
“Sometimes we have to appreciate the compliments but we can’t let them distract us from the mission,” she said. “There’s too much work to be done.”
Not that she doesn’t enjoy the attention.
“It took me almost 70 years to trend,” she said. “But this is exciting.”
This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 11:04 AM.
