1/7/2021
'Another Milestone in the Long, Long Road.' Rev. Raphael Warnock's Georgia Senate Victory Made History in Multiple Ways
Historians in the News
by Olivia B. Waxman
Rev. Raphael Warnock’s victory on Wednesday over incumbent Republican Georgia U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler in a runoff election made history in more than one way. He became the first Black U.S. Senator elected from Georgia, the first Black Democratic U.S. Senator elected in the South and, when he’s sworn in, he’ll become only the 11th Black senator elected in U.S. history.
Warnock is one of 12 children, who grew up in a Savannah housing project. He went on to get a PhD and follow in Martin Luther King’s footsteps as a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In a speech shortly after midnight on Wednesday, he discussed the historic moment his election represented by talking about what it meant for his mother to vote for him on Tuesday. He noted, “the 82-year-old hands that used to pick somebody else’s cotton went to the polls and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator.” In fact, historian and author of