An “unlikely trip”. This is how Reverend Raphael Warnock defined the long path that took him to the United States Senate this Wednesday.
For Warnock, being elected senator from Georgia, a state with a slave-owning past is a sign of the progress of his community.
Warnock made history by winning the second round of the elections for a Senate seat , beating his Republican rival, Kelly Loeffler, and helping Democrats win a majority in the Upper House.
As an expert on the word, Warnock gave a speech on Wednesday morning in which he spoke of the struggle of the African-American community to have its own voice.
“The other day, the hands of 93 years that used to pick someone else’s cotton went to the polls and elected their youngest son to be a United States senator, ”he said about his mother, Verene.
Kelly Loeffler was a Georgia senator since December 2019. Known for his civil rights activism as well as his ministry of 15 years at Ebenezer Baptist Church – in which Martin Luther King Jr. preached, “Warnock garnered electoral support that a candidate from the black community had never before garnered.
“The improbable trip that took me to this place at this historic moment in the United States could only happen here,” he expressed with emotion in his victory speech.
One of the few Warnock will be only the eleventh senator of African American origin in the history of the United States.
He was born into a family of 12 brothers in Savannah, Georgia. His father, Jonathan Warnock, was a reverend and mechanic who marked the path his adult son would take.
5 Questions to Understand Why Georgia Senate Elections Matter and how they can define the presidency of Biden “I worked with broken down cars all week and then with broken down people on Sunday morning,” Warnock said about his father, who died in 2010 to the 93 years.
His mother, Verene, as a young woman was a cotton and tobacco picker and also a religious minister. “She told us we could do anything we set our minds to,” Warnock said.
As a resident of one of the southern US states that fought to maintain slavery during the War American civilian, graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, an African-descendant community school.
Barack Obama visited Raphael Warnock’s church in 2008, during his first campaign presidential. In the decade of 1990, worked as a youth pastor in New York before moving to Baltimore, one of the poorest cities in the country.
There he promoted education in his congregation, mainly on the risks of HIV / AIDS that reached alarming levels among the black community at that time.
In 2005, Warnock s and became the youngest senior pastor in the history of Ebenezer Baptist Church , which has become synonymous with the history of the struggle of African Americans for civil rights.
Cecilia Baker, a member of her congregation, said that Reverend Warnock has an “unwavering commitment to justice.”
Warnock has been pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. preached. “His messages on Sunday are uplifting and almost always educational about the political landscape and how it impacts the gen black tea. He fights for his community from the pulpit and he will do the same in Washington, ”he told NBC.
His path to the Senate Warnock’s social activism In recent years it was the basis for his political aspirations.
He was arrested in 2010 for participating in a protest against Republicans’ refusal to expand Medicaid health coverage . Three years later, he was again detained in a protest for health rights in Washington DC.
Our senator #The Shepherd @ ReverendWarnock Thank you GA! 🍑 it’s been an honor to be part of this historic moment pic.twitter.com/UwnQ3Xw5Jn
– Luisa F Cardona (@Luisa_fer_car) January 6, 2021
“I was not mad at them (the police) . They were doing their job and I was doing my job, “Warnock said a few days ago when he remembered that latest arrest.
” But in a few days I’m going to meet with those Capitol police officers again and this time they won’t take me to the police station. They can help me find my new office, ”she said with Kamala Harris, the US vice president-elect and the first black woman in that position.
In the campaign, Warnock was also targeted by conservatives in Georgia, who defined him as a radical .
“Warnock is the most radical and dangerous leftist candidate that has ever aspired to this position, and certainly in the state of Georgia, and it does not have its values, “said President Donald Trump in Georgia last Monday.
Reverend Warnock has said that his principles are Fueled by their faith: “I have always tried to harness moral truth to create moral good. My whole life has revolved around service. And that doesn’t end at the church door, it starts there. ”
“ I am honored by the faith that you have shown in me. And I promise you this tonight: I’m going to the Senate to work all over Georgia. ”
Warnock’s fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff also won a spot in the Senate for Georgia. Now you can receive notifications from BBC News Mundo. Download our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content. Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!