This Chicago Teachers Union boss endlessly provokes the right. She's about to expand her power.

Stacy Davis Gates unanimously won election Saturday to be the next president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.

CHICAGO — Shifting in her chair as she sits at a long conference room table inside the Chicago Teachers Union offices, Stacy Davis Gates lets it sink in.

The Chicago Teachers Union president, having just spoken at length about the struggles of Black residents in Chicago neighborhoods, justice as a foundational classroom principle and the triumph of helping a former teacher get elected mayor, finally stops.

“Look at me. Like, both my grandmothers: sharecroppers. Literally, Sunflower County Mississippi. Eudora, Arkansas — and I get to lead the largest union in the Illinois AFL-CIO. They have over 100,000 members,” the 48-year-old Davis Gates told NBC News.

She continued, her voice shaking and eyes welling with tears: “I am a manifestation of that sacrifice, and I work so very hard to make good on it because I knew what it took.”

“They never sugarcoated or hid their struggle from me,” she said. “I honor them with my work and my practice. It is intense because I got to make up — I’ve got to make good on the investment they made on my future.”