Eunice Mixon oral history interview, July 3-5, 2007

Eunice Lastinger Mixon was born in Tifton, Georgia, in 1931 to a family of farmers. She married Albert Mixon in 1948, and beginning in 1956 she attended the University of Georgia, attaining a master’s degree and specialist degree in education. She taught eighth-grade science, and high school biology, chemistry and physics for thirty years in the Tift County School System, and was an instructor at the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. In 1974, gubernatorial candidate George Busbee, acquainted with Mixon through his advocacy for teachers in the legislature, appointed her as his Tift County campaign chairman, and her success at grassroots organizing gained her a reputation as a valuable political ally in South Georgia. Since then she has campaigned for President Bill Clinton, Senator Sam Nunn, Congressmen Charles Hatcher and Roy Rowland, and Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin. She served as a delegate to the 1988 and 1992 National Democratic Conventions, and as a member of the Georgia Democratic Executive Committee. The Georgia House of Representatives named her one of the twenty-five distinguished women for the twenty-first century. She has served on numerous boards and committees, including the Georgia Student Finance Commission, Vocational Education Task Force, Advisory Council on Consolidation of Education Programs, Georgia Civil War Commission, Joint Board Liaison Committee, and the Georgia State Bar Disciplinary Board. She is currently the doorkeeper to the state senate.