As the No. 2 Democrat in the Georgia Senate, he was arrested at the state Capitol in 2014 alongside other protesters who demanded that then-Gov. Nathan Deal expand the state’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

He posed at a news conference in a gas mask as part of a campaign to shut down a landfill in DeKalb County, and during a mayoral debate he memorably unfurled what he said was an unpaid water bill to accuse a rival of corruption.

Fort was a staunch ally of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described “democratic socialist,” at a time when other Georgia Democrats steered clear of his left-leaning policies.

And he often went toe-to-toe with then-Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, whom he accused of being more interested in “megaprojects and the needs of billionaire sports team owners” than the struggles of voters.

Along the way, Fort carved out a long, liberal record in the Georgia Legislature, where he served from his 1996 election until 2017, when he stepped down to launch an unsuccessful bid for Atlanta mayor and, later, made a failed run in 2022 to unseat U.S. House Rep. David Scott.

Credit: Hyosub Shin

Credit: Hyosub Shin

Fort was a leading advocate for a hate-crimes bill that initially passed in 2000 but was struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court four years later. He worked to revive the protections each legislative session. Gov. Brian Kemp signed a version of the measure into law in 2020.

And Fort orchestrated the effort to pass what was the nation’s strongest predatory lending laws in the early 2000s, when Democrats controlled the governor’s office and the state Legislature.

Boazman, the former city council member, said Fort was single-handedly responsible for preventing many Black Atlantans from losing their homes to foreclosures.

“I will say this without equivocation: This man sitting here, because of his unrelenting effort, has saved more people’s houses than anything I’ve ever seen,” Boazman said at a celebration of Fort’s legacy in December 2024.

‘Committed and sacrificing leadership’

A native of New Britain, Connecticut, an industrial town about 15 miles from Hartford, Fort was the sixth of seven children. His father worked in a factory as a machinist, and his mother was a homemaker.

After earning an undergraduate degree in history at Central Connecticut State College in 1978, he moved to Atlanta to study African American history and wrote a thesis on the sit-in movement at the Atlanta University Center, where he later taught history.

He ran for an open Atlanta-based Senate seat in 1996 at the urging of community activists, and his victory made him a key player in city politics.

Fort quickly made a mark on the Capitol, telling voters that his focus was on “principled, committed and sacrificing leadership.” In his first years in office, he fought to kill anti-affirmative action legislation and worked to stave off location of a landfill in southeast Atlanta.

The Democrat’s crowning legislative achievement might have been tough laws targeting abusive lending practices that took effect in 2002. It banned exorbitant prepayment penalties, balloon payments and broker fees on some types of loans.

After Republicans took control of the Legislature in 2005, Fort became a strident member of the opposition, frequently criticizing the GOP while advocating for expanded health care access, a higher minimum wage and progressive policing policies.

Many of his battles took place far from the halls of the Gold Dome, including his 2015 crusade to pressure the iconic OK Cafe in Buckhead to shelve its carving of Georgia’s 1956 flag, which included its controversial Confederate emblem. (The yearslong campaign succeeded in 2020.)

Fort also wasn’t afraid to castigate fellow Democrats. One of his biggest political splashes came in 2016, when he became the highest-profile Democrat to back Sanders over Hillary Rodham Clinton in the White House race. He flipped his endorsement to Sanders just hours before the Vermont senator spoke at a Morehouse College rally.

It put him at odds with the state’s Democratic establishment, which had overwhelmingly endorsed Clinton. Among the Clinton supporters was Reed, who dismissed Fort’s decision as “nothing but a publicity stunt to help him run for mayor.”

The two had a particularly fierce rivalry. Once, Reed described the fellow Democrat to a group of journalists and business executives as “Wile E. Coyote Fort” because “he never wins.” Fort shot back that then-mayor had “become an example of the coarsening of public debate.”

Fort ran to succeed Reed in Atlanta’s top job in 2017 with a vow to decriminalize marijuana within the city’s limits and a promise that City Hall would pay for two years of community college or technical school tuition on his watch.

He finished in fifth place in that crowded race, and five years later Fort came in fourth place in a long-shot challenge against Scott, a longtime incumbent he accused of complacency.

Even after those defeats, as he struggled with illness, Fort stayed involved in city politics as an adviser to Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens. The pair have been friends and close confidants for more than a decade. The first-term mayor described Fort as having a “passion and fire for justice.”

“He will go down in Atlanta’s history as a hero for civil, housing and human rights for all,” Dickens said on Sunday. “This is a loss for too many who never knew him.”

And none who served with Fort could forget his thunderous speeches from the floor of the Senate, tugging on the consciences of lawmakers.

“You could hear the chamber when he would get in the well, they were shaking in their boots because they knew he was going to tell it and tell it all,” said state Sen. Nan Orrock, a fellow Democrat who served with Fort for more than a decade.

“He was going to speak truth to power,” Orrock added. “He wasn’t going to bite his tongue, he wasn’t going to hold back.”

Fort is survived by his son Zan and daughters Zoe and Clara Faith. Plans for services were not immediately announced.

This story has been updated to provide the names of Fort’s daughters, Zoe and Clara Faith.