{"id":20473,"date":"2023-07-17T18:37:39","date_gmt":"2023-07-17T18:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=20473"},"modified":"2026-01-18T19:06:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T19:06:48","slug":"community-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/07\/community-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Laura Billings Coleman \/ Photo by David J. Turner<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

North Minneapolis and ÈÕº«¾«Æ· are about ten miles apart, but when Bobby Joe Champion \u201987 was a student, the distance felt much greater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fifth of six kids, and the first in his family to go to college, Champion spent his first year at Macalester rising at dawn to board three different buses on his way to campus, setting himself up at the old student union\u2019s piano as classmates streamed out of the cafeteria after breakfast. \u201cI did not have enough money to live on campus and I didn\u2019t want other students to know,\u201d Champion remembers. \u201cComing to this elite kind of school, with white folks who\u2019d traveled all over the world, there were times when I wondered, \u2018What am I doing here?\u2019 But the silver lining was that that ride gave me time to read the books I heard people talking about in class, and to get mentally prepared to make that transition between North Minneapolis and Macalester. I knew I had to figure out a way to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Champion has been reflecting on that journey since becoming president of the Minnesota Senate, one of the most visible leadership positions at the state Capitol. When he first won elected office in 2008, he was one of only two Black lawmakers in the House of Representatives. Today, as a senator serving the 59th district, which includes North Minneapolis, Champion has become one of the body\u2019s elder statesmen, presiding over the most diverse cohort of lawmakers Minnesota voters have ever elected. \u201cI\u2019m very excited about the diversity in both the House and the Senate,\u201d Champion says. Gaveling the most important debates in the state, and leading fellow lawmakers in the Pledge of Allegiance \u201cis really surreal. Not only because there\u2019s never been a person of color who has presided over a legislative body in this state, but also because I\u2019m someone who never, ever thought I would run for office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, when he enrolled at Mac at the urging of Mahmoud El-Kati, a legendary Macalester history professor and activist, Champion was leaning toward working in the music industry. The leader of an award-winning gospel choir he co-founded at the age of thirteen, and a serious Perry Mason fan, Champion grew up \u201chearing those horrendous stories about Black artists who were in the music industry but poor because they didn\u2019t understand the business, so I thought I would combine those two things that I loved\u2014law and music.\u201d After graduating from Mitchell Hamline School of Law, Champion served as a staff lawyer at Flyte Tyme, the recording studio run by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. A talented musician with a church-trained tenor voice, he even earned a Grammy nomination in 2003 as the director of the Excelsior Ensemble Choir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after starting a family with his wife, Angela, a pharmacist; serving in the attorney general\u2019s office; and helping his friend Keith Ellison get elected to Congress in 2006, Champion decided it was time to be part of solving Minnesota\u2019s growing racial disparities. In 2008, the first-time candidate lined up the delegates he needed to unseat an incumbent by hosting \u201cBreakfast with Bobby\u201d events where he served up eggs, bacon, and grits and developed one of his signature talking points: \u201cIf you\u2019re not at the table, then you\u2019re on the menu.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMinnesota is really a progressive place, but it\u2019s like a tale of two states based on your socioeconomic background as well as your race,\u201d Champion says. He thinks the problem stems from having too few people of color in public service, which leads to policies that are well-intentioned but often wrong-headed. \u201cYou can\u2019t tell me you care about me, and you want to make decisions for me, but you don\u2019t include me in the decision-making,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the state\u2019s Democrats holding power in the House, Senate, and the Governor\u2019s office, Champion began the session as the chief author on a bill to make Juneteenth a state holiday. He took the lead on allowing undocumented residents to apply for driver\u2019s licenses, restoring voting rights for the roughly 50,000 Minnesotans on parole or probation, and passing the CROWN Act, which prohibits discrimination based on hairstyle and texture. He also earned high marks from both sides of the aisle for managing a respectful fourteen-hour floor debate on abortion access. \u201cI\u2019m motivated by the Scripture that says, \u2018I don\u2019t do things in order to get the rewards of men\u2014I must do what is pleasing to God,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI see that as my ability to see other people\u2019s humanity, so when I\u2019m presiding, I\u2019m always looking for ways to create space for you to speak on behalf of your constituents with a sound and respectful argument.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still an early riser, Champion gets up every day at 3:30 a.m. to fit in a workout, manage his own part-time law practice as a contract public defender for Ramsey County, and take on new assignments, like his post on the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Advisory Board. The board helps guide the economic growth of northeastern Minnesota, and Champion is its first Black member. \u201cI know about our workforce, and I look at it as an opportunity to listen and to learn and grow,\u201d he says, before adding that he expects to bring his own ideas to the table. \u201cWhen you\u2019ve been dealing with the same issues for a long time, it helps to have a set of fresh eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Paul writer Laura Billings Coleman is a frequent contributor to <\/em>Macalester Today.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first Black president of the Minnesota Senate, Bobby Joe Champion \u201987, wants people of color to see themselves in politics.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":20565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20473"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30083,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20473\/revisions\/30083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}