With two Black men running for Senate in Georgia, race takes center stage
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Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) (left) and Republican nominee Hershel Walker (right) are the major party nominees in the Georgia Senate raceAP -
Republican Senate nominee in Georgia Herschel Walker rose to fame as a high school, college and then professional football playerJack Thornell / AP -
An undated photo of young Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) outside the public housing complex where he grew upWarnock campaign -
Republican Senate nominee in Georgia Hershel Walker in an archival photo speaking to the press as a student at the University of GeorgiaAP
The leading candidates for U.S. Senate from Georgia were born just 115 miles and seven years apart, both the children of poor Black families who had lived in the state for generations.
As Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican football star Herschel Walker compete in one of the most closely-watched Senate contests in the country, each carry their own experiences as Black men growing up in south Georgia during the twilight of the civil rights movement. That history has informed both their lives – and their opposing views on race and racism echoing on the campaign trail now and likely, when they face off on the debate stage in Savannah Friday night.
"23andMe has screwed us all up," Walker said at a recent rally outside Atlanta, referring to the brand of home genetic tests often used to determine a person's country or region of origin. "It don't matter about your color. A house divided cannot stand, so I want us to come together."
Walker has recently come under scrutiny for allegations of domestic abuse and violence as well as reports that he paid for an ex-girlfriend's abortion even though, as a candidate he supports a total ban on the procedure with no exceptions.
Walker is no stranger to controversy in this election and he has also made headlines for how he talks about race, saying Democrats like his opponent use it to divide.
As a senator, candidate and senior pastor at Dr. Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Warnock has spoken often about dismantling systemic racism. During his first floor speech in the Senate, Warnock slammed new restrictive voting laws around the country.
"This is Jim Crow in new clothes," he said.
Conflicting approaches to grappling with race have come into sharp relief in the first Senate race in Georgia history to nominate two Black men. Walker and Warnock's worldview began to diverge decades ago – as Walker shined on the field and Warnock rose to the pulpit.
"These are two of the most important institutions for questions of democracy and equality," explained Leah Wright Rigueur, a political historian at Johns Hopkins University.
"The institution of the church is, for many Black communities, a lifeline. It's an organizing and mobilizing space. Certainly sports becomes a site of resistance, in terms of African Americans desegregating teams, African Americans using sports to grasp some measure of social mobility."
When Walker played football and track at Johnson County High School, it had only been integrated a few years.
"I was just coming out to be a great athlete," he told rapper Killer Mike in an interview on WABE. "And I think my high school was probably 50-50 white-Black."
In Walker's memoir, he wrote about being overcome with fear of the Ku Klux Klan. He recalled their members stalking Black kids as they walked home from school, yanking them into the woods for mock lynchings.
"There is a broad misconception about what life is like in the 1980s in the South," Riguer says. "There still remains a very segregated economically unequal society for African Americans."
For Warnock, that society was Savannah, Georgia and the public housing complex where he grew up. As a teen, Warnock spent hours at a nearby library listening to archival recordings from the civil rights movement – especially speeches by King.
"There are men who stand up in the pulpit and preach every Sunday, and yet they can look at racial injustice and never open their mouths against it," King bellowed in a particularly influential sermon for Warnock – "A Knock at Midnight."
"He preached a different kind of gospel from what I typically heard in most churches," Warnock wrote in his memoir. "He used the lens of the scriptures to examine and speak out against racial injustice and oppression."
Warnock continued to be influenced by King as he selected his university: Morehouse College, the historically Black school in Atlanta attended by King four decades earlier. Warnock signed up to serve as an assistant at the King Memorial Chapel on campus. The dean, Lawrence Carter, became Warnock's mentor.
"Supremely confident, mature beyond his years," Carter remembered Warnock in an interview. "He seemed to be in a zone all by himself. He frequently would come into the chapel library, no one else there, and study and write."
It was at the chapel where Warnock's ideas about racial justice and faith coalesced.
"When our chapel is packed and our 6,000 pipe organ is sounding in their ears, surrounded by people doing bold things, that pours iron into your spine," Carter says. "And when you see injustice, you want to do something about it."
At around the same age, Herschel Walker would soon be called on to raise his own voice in Wrightsville.
Walker had just led Johnson County High School to the 1980 state football championship. It was national news when Walker accepted a full-ride to play for the University of Georgia. Days later, Wrightsville attracted the country's attention again.
Protests against racial injustice had broken out, directed at the county's white sheriff. As marchers gathered, they were met with violence. The Klan mobilized and the governor called in state troopers, while schools and factories closed. Local residents and out-of-town civil rights leaders pleaded for Wrightsville's most famous resident to speak out.
"It was like, 'Oh Herschel, you've got to do this, you've got to do that," Walker said.
"White people called him the N word and he had Black people calling him Uncle Tom," Tom Jordan, Walker's track coach and an early mentor, said in an interview. "And he was just searching for his spot."
Walker faced pressure as he weighed his own decision about whether to do something about racial injustices in Wrightsville.
"I called a team meeting," remembered track coach Tom Jordan. "I said, 'Look, guys, you can't get in shape for a track meet marching. You've got to run. Practice is at three and you know I don't tolerate missing."
More than a dozen of Walker's teammates quit the track team. Walker did not.
"My parents taught me to do what's right," Walker said later. "There's no color in right and wrong."
He did not say anything publicly about the protests.
"What would have happened if I had went the other way?" Walker told Killer Mike. "Where would I be today? Because now I have an opportunity, where I can get a seat at the table."
That seat at the table may be in the U.S. Senate.
"His political viewpoints and rejection of race as a consideration does not represent African American audiences," explained historian Leah Wright Rigeuer. "It is, however, the perspective of the majority of working class white voters in the state of Georgia."
Rigueur, who wrote a book titled The Loneliness of the Black Republican, says these views are not an anomaly – citing for example, Georgia-born Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative members on the bench. Rigueur says these perspectives should not be ignored or treated as a fringe viewpoint, particularly when coming from people with immense influence to shape American life.
"We should want to understand that because of what it tells us about the very nature of Black politics, but also questions of American democracy," Rigueur says.
During this campaign the two men have laid out conflicting descriptions of the country's current divisions, as they compete in an election most polls show is a tossup and could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
"We're not a racist country," Walker said at a recent rally. "The United States is the greatest country in the world today and it's time we get leaders that know that."
"Within 24 hours, we elected Georgia's first African American and Jewish senators," Warnock said last year on the Senate floor. "Hours later, the Capitol was assaulted. We see in just a few precious hours the tension very much alive in the soul of America. And the question before all of us at every moment is what will we do to push us in the right direction?"
Warnock and Walker's lives took them in two different directions, and Georgia voters will choose which candidate they want to follow.
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Transcript
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For the first time, the top nominees for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia are both Black men. Republican Herschel Walker, a former football star, is challenging Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. When they debate each other on Friday, both will carry their experiences as Black men born and raised in Georgia. WABE's Sam Gringlas explains how that history informs their campaigns and their opposing views on race.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: It's easy to find contrasts between Georgia's top two candidates for U.S. Senate. Senator Raphael Warnock supports abortion rights. Herschel Walker has called for a total ban.
HERSCHEL WALKER: There is no - there's no exception in my mind. I can say I believe in life.
GRINGLAS: So no exceptions.
WALKER: No exceptions. I believe in life.
GRINGLAS: Recently, Walker has come under scrutiny for allegations he paid for an ex-girlfriend's abortion despite his hardline stance as a candidate. Those accounts are now overshadowing pretty much everything else.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: They'll do whatever it takes, say whatever they have to say because they want this seat right here. But I don't think they know that they woke up a bear.
GRINGLAS: Walker is a beloved football star. But his campaign has sparked controversy from the start, including for how he talks about race.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: 23andMe has screwed us all up. So it don't matter about your color. A house divided cannot stand. So I want us to come together.
GRINGLAS: Walker says Democrats, like his opponent, use race to divide. Raphael Warnock is senior pastor at Martin Luther King Jr.'s Church, Ebenezer Baptist. He talks about dismantling systemic racism, like in this Senate floor speech about voting rights.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RAPHAEL WARNOCK: We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights. This is Jim Crow in new clothes.
GRINGLAS: The now-political rivals were born just 115 miles and seven years apart, both the children of poor Black families who have lived in Georgia for generations. But as young adults in the '70s and '80s, they developed diverging views on race and racism that shaped their Senate campaigns today - Walker on the football field and Warnock in the church.
LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR: The institution of the church is, for many Black communities, a lifeline. It's an organizing and mobilizing space.
GRINGLAS: Leah Wright Rigueur is a political historian at Johns Hopkins University.
RIGUEUR: Certainly, sports becomes a site of resistance in terms of African Americans desegregating teams, African Americans using sports to grasp some measure of social mobility.
GRINGLAS: When Walker played football and track at Johnson County High School, it had only been integrated for a few years.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Wrightsville, Ga., home of Johnson County High School football star Herschel Walker, the most recruited player in the nation this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: I was just now coming out to be a great athlete. I think my high school is probably almost 50/50 white, Black.
GRINGLAS: That's Walker in an interview with rapper Killer Mike on WABE. In Walker's memoir, he writes about being overcome by fear of the Ku Klux Klan and remembers them stalking Black kids as they walked home from school, pulling them into the woods for mock lynchings.
RIGUEUR: There is a broad misconception of what life is like in the 1980s in the South. There still remains a very segregated, economically unequal society for African Americans.
GRINGLAS: For Raphael Warnock, that society was Savannah, Ga. As a teen, Warnock spent hours at a nearby library listening to recordings from the civil rights movement. He wrote about that time in his memoir.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WARNOCK: I repeatedly played one of Dr. King's key sermons, "A Knock At Midnight." He preached a different kind of gospel from what I typically heard in most churches.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: There are men who stand up in the pulpit and preach every Sunday, and yet they can look at racial injustice and never open their mouths against it.
GRINGLAS: Meanwhile, in Wrightsville, Herschel Walker would soon be called on to raise his voice.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Last night, there were state troopers everywhere. They were ordered into the area by Governor Busbee.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: There was the Klan's coming down to Wrightsville, Ga. They was like, oh, Herschel, you got to do this. You got to do that.
GRINGLAS: Walker had just led Johnson County High to the 1980 state football championship. It was national news when Walker accepted a full ride to play for the University of Georgia. Days later, Wrightsville attracted the country's attention again.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Singing) Keep on talking, marching on till freedom ring (ph).
GRINGLAS: Protests against racial injustice had broken out, directed at the county's white sheriff. As marchers gathered, they were met with violence. The Klan mobilized. Locals and out-of-town civil rights leaders pleaded for Wrightsville's most famous resident to speak out.
TOM JORDAN: Well, he had white people calling him the n-word and he had Black people calling him Uncle Tom.
GRINGLAS: Walker's track coach, Tom Jordan, was one of his early mentors.
JORDAN: And he was just searching for his spot.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Morehouse.
GRINGLAS: Raphael Warnock, however, was finding his spot at Morehouse College, the historically Black school in Atlanta attended by Dr. King four decades earlier. Warnock signed up to serve as an assistant at the King Memorial Chapel on campus. The chapel's dean, Lawrence Carter, became Warnock's mentor.
LAWRENCE CARTER: Supremely confident, mature beyond his years. He frequently would come into the chapel library and sit down with no one else there, and he would study.
GRINGLAS: It was at the chapel where Warnock's ideas about racial justice and faith coalesced.
CARTER: And when our chapel is packed and our 6,000-pipe organ is sounding in their ears, surrounded by people who are doing bold things, that pours iron into your spine. And when you see injustice, you want to do something about it.
GRINGLAS: Herschel Walker faced a decision about whether to do something about the racial injustices in Wrightsville. Here's track coach Tom Jordan.
JORDAN: I called a team meeting. I said, look, guys - I said, you can't get in shape for a track meet marching. You've got to run. Practice is at 3 o'clock, and you know I don't tolerate missing.
GRINGLAS: More than a dozen of Walker's teammates quit the track team. Walker did not.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: And my parents taught me to do what's right. There's no color in right or wrong.
GRINGLAS: Walker didn't say anything publicly about the protests, reflecting on his decision years later, again, in an interview with Killer Mike.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: What would have happened if I went the other side? If I went that side, where will I be at today? Because right now, I got an opportunity. I can get a seat at the table.
GRINGLAS: Now, that seat at the table may be in the U.S. Senate.
RIGUEUR: His political viewpoints and his rejection of race as a consideration does not represent African American audiences. It is, however, the perspective of the majority of working-class white voters in the state of Georgia.
GRINGLAS: Historian Leah Wright Rigueur says these views aren't an anomaly, so they shouldn't be ignored, especially when they're coming from a candidate on the cusp of immense influence. These two candidates have laid out conflicting descriptions of the country's current divisions. Here's Herschel Walker.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALKER: We're not a racist country. The United States of America is the greatest country in the world today, and it is time that we get leaders in Washington that know that.
GRINGLAS: This is Raphael Warnock.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WARNOCK: We elected Georgia's first African American Jewish senator. And hours later, the Capitol was assaulted. We see in just a few precious hours the tension very much alive in the soul of America. And the question before all of us at every moment is, what will we do to push us in the right direction?
GRINGLAS: Warnock and Walker's lives took them in two different directions. Georgia voters will soon choose which candidate they want to follow.
For NPR News, I'm Sam Gringlas in Atlanta. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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