The father of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to testify today. During her time on the stand Thursday, Willis repeatedly mentioned “daddy” and said the court would have a chance to learn more John Clifford Floyd III when he appeared today.
Here is what you need to know about Floyd:
He’s also a lawyer: Floyd is a criminal defense lawyer who raised Willis in both California and Washington, D.C. Willis later followed her father into law after tagging along with him to court on weekend mornings while Floyd defended clients. Floyd encouraged his daughter to join the prosecutor’s office despite his own hostile views toward law enforcement, saying it would further her goals to become a judge.
Former Black Panther: Willis has said they have political differences — he being far more liberal — but that he acts as her sounding board on moral issues. As a younger man, Floyd participated in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in 1965 in Memphis, Tennessee. After a sneering white man spit tobacco juice on top of his head, he decided to take a more confrontational stance. He joined a faction of the Black Panther movement in 1967 in Los Angeles. He renounced violence and enrolled at UCLA to study law after two Panthers, Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, were shot and killed in an altercation at a Black Student Union meeting.
They are close: Floyd remains very close to his daughter and Willis said they speak by phone 10 times a day. She repeatedly called him “daddy” on he witness stand Thursday.
Security conscious: It was Floyd who was worried about Willis’s safety when the two lived together in her south Fulton home. Willis said that after her life was threatened her father urged her to move elsewhere. “He’s my dad, but he is obsessed with security,” Willis told the authors of the book, “Find Me The Votes.” “He wants security with me when I go to the bathroom, he wants them there every second of the day. It’s gonna kill the man because he’s really, really worried that something is gonna happen.”
The question of cash: Willis testified that it was her father that taught her the importance of having cash on hand, rather than relying on a credit card or other means of payment. Floyd had taught her to keep the cash needed for six months in her home, but Willis said she didn’t often follow that rule. Still, Willis said at times, she may keep up to $15,000 at her home and also carried cash when she traveled.
Dating life: He once dated Angela Davis, the academic and activist who ran twice for vice president on the Communist Party ticket, according to “Find Me The Votes.”
