Fani Willis
*The birth of Fani Willis is celebrated on March 1, 1971. She is a Black attorney, judge, and prosecutor.
Fani Taifa Willis was born in Inglewood, California. Her father was a member of the Black Panthers and a criminal defense attorney. When Willis was in the first grade, her family moved to Washington, D.C. Her parents divorced, and her mother eventually moved back to California.
Willis mostly stayed with her father. Willis studied political science at Howard University, graduating cum laude in 1993, then moved to Atlanta to attend Emory University School of Law, graduating in 1996 with a Juris Doctor. On the day she took the Georgia bar exam, Willis met Fred Willis, working an extra job as a videographer. They married in 1996 and have two daughters together. The couple divorced in 2005.
She spent 16 years as a prosecutor in the Fulton County district attorney's office. Her most prominent case was her prosecution of the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal. In 2018, she went into private practice. That year, she ran for a seat on the Fulton County Superior Court and lost. She is the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, which contains most of Atlanta. She is the first woman to hold the office.
In 2019, Willis became chief municipal judge for South Fulton, Georgia. On February 10, 2021, Willis launched a criminal investigation into Donald Trump's attempts to influence Georgia election officials—including the governor, the attorney general, and the Secretary of State via a telephone call—to "find" enough votes to override Joe Biden's win in that state and thus undo Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election.
In May 2022, Willis' office indicted Young Thug for 56 gang-related crimes under Georgia's RICO statute and felony charges for possessing illicit firearms and drugs allegedly discovered after a search warrant was executed. The rapper has been held in Cobb County jail since his arrest.
