Raphael Warnock and the Solitude of the Black Senator (Published 2021)
Theodore R. Johnson's New York Times essay marks Raphael Warnock's runoff victory as Georgia's first Black senator and only the 11th in history, then traces the lineage from Hiram Rhodes Revels, sworn in in 1870 after a three-day debate over his citizenship, through Blanche Bruce and Edward Brooke to a body that seated two Black members simultaneously only in 2013. Johnson argues that challenges to Revels, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris share a pattern of white backlash treating Black participation in leadership as a threat to democracy's legitimacy, a troubled atmosphere he writes Warnock must now navigate.
