When Cozzie Watkins was growing up in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, she said for her parents, voting was like going to church: “My parents never gave me a choice.”
That sense of civic duty brings Watkins, 69, to the center of the Democratic Party Tuesday night when she will cast North Carolina’s roll call vote to nominate Joe Biden for president.
“I can’t tell you how excited this little old lady is,” she told Spectrum News 1 in an interview Tuesday.
Watkins, a member of the Charlotte Planning Commission and the chair of the Democratic Party for North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District, said, “I’m not usually short for words.” But when she was asked to cast the vote for Biden at the Democratic National Convention, she said, “I was speechless. This is historic for me.”
The civic duty took Watkins to nursing school in 1975, and she’s still practicing today. She spent time as a registered nurse in several fields, including an intensive care unit, and now she is a home health nurse. But, she recalled, "my true adrenaline rush was in the organ exchange" when she actually held a human heart in her hands.
This year’s DNC, originally set for Milwaukee, is not the usual ritual of pageantry and parties with tens of thousands in the convention hall. Instead, this year’s convention is all online, with Democratic Party members joining from around the country virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The roll call vote Tuesday night will take about 30 minutes as representatives cast their votes from all 57 states and territories, according to the Democratic National Convention Committee.
For Watkins, who will be joining the online celebration from Charlotte, the most important issues are health care, climate change and social justice.
One issue she hopes to highlight is civic education and the strength of black women’s votes.
“We have to tell the story of how we got here,” she said.
“It was not always OK for us to vote. Now that we can vote, we have to take it as a necessity, like air. It needs to be part of our core values.
“We have to teach that. We’ve got to make everyone excited about their vote,” she said. “If you think about it, that is the one time that we have true equality: one vote, one person.”
“Viewers will hear from delegates, parents, teachers, small business owners, essential workers, activists and elected leaders in the Democratic Party as they officially cast votes to nominate Joe Biden to become the next president,” the committee said in a news release.
“And viewers will see these votes cast not on a convention floor, but at businesses, inside living rooms, and in front of iconic landmarks in cities and towns nationwide,” according to the DNCC.
Tuesday night will feature speeches from former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, former Secretary of State John Kerry, Jill Biden, the nominee’s wife, and others. The program is set to run from 9 to 11 p.m.