This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

When Raphael Warnick was elected to the Senate from Georgia, he made history a couple of times

over.

He became the first black Democrat elected to the Senate from a southern state.

My mother who has a teenager growing up in Waycross, Georgia,

used to pick somebody else's cotton.

But the other day, because this is America,

the 82 year old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton

went to the poles and picked her youngest son to be a United States senator.

Warnock's victory in that election alongside the young John Osoff also flipped both of Georgia's Senate seats from the GOP to the Democratic Party, a rare feat.

Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia has now become a swing state, one that

Joe Biden can't afford to lose in November. But from what the polls tell us, Biden faces a very uphill battle in Georgia.

His support among black voters, black men in particular, is suffering.

Warnick's ability to inspire voters in Georgia and beyond may be critical to what happens this November.

Before going into politics, Raphael Warnick spent his life as a minister and he remains the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in

Atlanta the same pulpit from which Martin Luther King Jr once presided.

Know that you have what you have and you are who you are.

What are you going to do, child, with yourself?

Now that everybody knows your name, do you know who you really are?

Do you prefer senator or Reverend?

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