“I had always told myself people like me don’t run for office.”

Twenty-six-year-old Mariah Parker went viral this week after being sworn in as an Athens-Clarke county commissioner in Georgia on Tuesday, June 5. The new commissioner is black, openly queer, a PhD candidate in linguistics, a rapper, and dedicated to transformative politics for communities of color. She’s also a viral star thanks to an unconventional choice she made during her swearing-in.

Images of the new District 2 commissioner being sworn in on the steps of Athens City Hall using a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X instead of the Bible were quickly disseminated via social media. They’re stunning, showing a millennial black woman with an Afro that might make Angela Davis proud taking the oath of office with her right fist raised high. Her mother stands next to her, holding the radical book and beaming as her daughter is sworn in to represent District 2, a district described by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as “an economically struggling swath of east Athens that lacks some of the same amenities that other parts of town enjoyed.”

“I honestly did not expect there to be such a clamoring of public response,” Parker tells Teen Vogue when asked about the social media responses. “It just seemed to me to be the sensible thing to do given my politics and who I am.”

Parker told the Journal-Constitution that she hopes to embody some of Malcolm X’s qualities, including his “willingness to uneditedly speak about black people at large.”

In many ways, Parker had always felt like she was unfit to run for public office. A rural Kentucky transplant who has battled depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, she had resigned herself to making a difference behind the scenes. Before running for county commissioner, she worked on the campaign of District 9 candidate Tommy Valentine, according to BuzzFeed News, and worked to integrate predominantly white spaces in downtown Athens as a hip-hop artist under the stage name Linqua Franqa.

“You can’t wait for a hero to show up. If you see injustice and you see a need for someone to take action, it has to be you,” she says. “Some of [those past struggles] are important for the styles of governance I strive to have.”

Parker credits Valentine for encouraging her to run for county commissioner. She replaces Harry Simms, who vacated his seat to run for mayor, according to Online Athens.