Alisha McKinney tweeted four times in all of 2020.
This is why her only tweet so far this year is so meaningful to her.
“As a black, female, democratic voter from DeKalb County, Georgia,” she tweeted on Jan. 6, just hours after Democrat Raphael Warnock had been elected to the U.S. Senate and Jon Ossoff was on the verge of joining him. “Just wanted to say, you’re welcome America.”
“I think in general, Black folks are tired of being overlooked,” McKinney said later. “The power that Black folks exhibited was incredible. It was not just a vote for the rights of Black folks, it was a vote for the rights of all people. Black Lives Matter is not just about Black people.”
In the final election of the 2020 season, an election that will chart the course of the federal government and President Joe Biden’s agenda for at least the next two years, Georgia voters did what would have been unthinkable a generation ago ― elect a Black man and a Jewish man, both firsts for the state, to the U.S. Senate.
Warnock and Ossoff led a ticket that was propelled in large part by Black voters, who also played an outsized role in putting other people of color in elected office for the first time. Some of the wins came in former Republican strongholds that are quickly diversifying such as Cobb and Gwinnett counties, leaving the five core metro Atlanta governments with Black leaders.
The victory caps several challenging years for Black Georgians, which culminated in a summer of civil unrest following the police-related deaths of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks, coupled with slights from national leaders such as President Trump who continued to refuse to condemn the actions of white supremacist hate groups.
The year also saw the passing of three massive civil rights figures in 2020, Joseph Lowery, C.T. Vivian and John Lewis, leaving a void that was quickly filled by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and several other prominent Black women who ran point on voter education, registration and motivation that saw political power in Georgia shift increasingly Democratic.
Gabriel Ware, a South Fulton business owner, said the 2020 election was the result of finally unifying under an organized and centralized theme.
Credit: Courtesy Gabriel Ware
Credit: Courtesy Gabriel Ware
“The South is not as red [Republican-leaning] as people think. The organization of voters, done by people like Stacey Abrams, is what put people in the position to elect Warnock. The votes have always been there. The strategy was just bad,” said Ware. “The mindset is less, ‘we shall overcome’ and more ‘get the hell out of my way.’”
Warnock, the 51-year-old pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, becomes only the 11th Black person to ever have a seat in the upper chamber.
Ossoff, a 33-year-old journalist and former intern of John Lewis, will be the youngest member of the Senate.
“I am happy and proud that Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won, considering the times that we are in today,” said April Lloyd, a 53-year-old real estate consultant in Edgewood. “We needed to send a message. There needed to be a change.”
Black voters made up about 30% of the electorate in the Jan. 5 runoff and the overwhelming majority of Black voters — 94% — supported both Warnock and Ossoff, according to data from AP VoteCast. Voters under 45, voters new to the state and voters with incomes less than $50,000 also helped propel Ossoff and Warnock to victory.
McKinney was 18 years old, the first time she voted. It was a requirement.
Her father, Wilbur Cave, represented Allendale County, in the South Carolina House of Representatives for six years. Her grandmother, Eliza Cave, a retired teacher who died last July at the age of 106, was a longtime poll worker in Allendale.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
“That was the example that I saw,” said McKinney, 40. “There was never a doubt about if you were gonna vote. It was when.”
But in Georgia, Black voters haven’t always had an easy path to the polls.
Black voters are historically more likely to vote on Election Day and more reluctant to vote by mail. When the number of polling locations was reduced along with the number of ballot drop boxes, it disproportionately impacted them, said Nse Ufot, CEO of New Georgia Project, a non-partisan effort to register and engage new voters.
“...In the face of all of that, we saw historic levels of participation of voters in our election,” Ufot said. “In Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Georgia saw an opportunity to send someone to D.C. who not only looks like them and comes from our community and shares our values, but someone who will be accountable to all Georgians. For the first time in a long time, Black voters saw the impact of their vote.”
It is a dream that grassroots organizations across the state have been working for more than a decade to turn into a reality.
“You have organizations that were here and had a strategy that already worked together,” said Deborah Scott, executive director of Stand Up. “We didn’t have to form a coalition of the willing – which is those willing to work together for one issue for one time — this was deep coalition partners that did what they always do.”
Those multiracial, multiethnic and multigenerational bridges between communities ultimately shifted the state despite the often repeated refrain that Republicans had a structural advantage in Georgia and that Black voters and young voters wouldn’t come out in a runoff.
“We didn’t just do this for an election, this is about building power for communities,” Scott said. Black voters in this election were motivated by the pain they have felt in their communities, she said.
Warnock, the 11th child of two Savannah pastors, campaigned on that pain. He joked about how he grew up “po.’” His mother, the first person he called after his win, supported the family by picking cotton.
He made it to Morehouse College, a prestigious all-male Black college in Atlanta, and in 2005 took the helm of Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, solidly placing him among the state’s Black elite. But as a pastor, he remained committed to human and civil rights and issues that in 2020 blew the cover off of systemic differences in race and class.
Credit: screengrab from livestream
Credit: screengrab from livestream
Voters throughout the state said that Warnock and Ossoff, who campaigned on plans to address the COVID-19 crisis by coming up with a treatment plan and getting more stimulus money passed, seemed more focused than their opponents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who campaigned on philosophical issues like defeating socialism and radicalism.
Like other high-profile Black senators, including Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, Lloyd the real estate consultant said Warnock’s appeal, including his light and mostly-positive television ads, resonated not only with Black voters but Hispanic and white ones as well.
About 28% and 27% of white voters supported Warnock and Ossoff respectively in the runoff, based on AP VoteCast findings. Latino voters also leaned toward the Democratic candidates with 57% supporting Warnock and 56% supporting Ossoff.
But it was a coalition of Black voters that overwhelmingly supported the candidates. Between 2010 and 2018, Georgia’s Black population increased by 373,000 people, according to data from the U.S. Census. From the mid-1990s through 2018, the share of Black Georgians who were registered to vote hovered between 58% and 70%.
Ryan Taylor, 44, of Cobb County, grew up in Dublin, where his family would go to the polls on Election Day to vote together. He was surprised that people he knows were not registered. “I know voting (can be) time consuming and inconvenient...but that is the least you can do to start some level of change.
“As a Black male, it is almost like we are always trying to prove ourselves to other people. I wanted to see someone who looks like me or has an experience like I have to get in office and see what they can do,” Taylor said.
Fair Fight, the Georgia-based national voting rights organization founded by Abrams in 2018, capitalized on the changing demographics of the state in part by funneling millions of dollars to advocacy groups that work with communities of color and reportedly drawing more than 800,000 new voters across the state to the polls.
The evolution in Georgia could also be seen in local elections including the election of Craig Owens as the first Black sheriff of Cobb County and Lisa Cupid, the first Black and first woman chair of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners.
In Gwinnett County, the same kind of history was being made when voters made Nicole Love Hendrickson the county’s first Black county commission chair and Keybo Taylor, its first Black sheriff.
Credit: Rebecca Wright
Credit: Rebecca Wright
Sheriff Taylor recognized that a number of voters crossed party lines to get him elected and he seeks to heal the divisions that have taken root over the past four years. He’s already announced the disbanding of a controversial county jail response team and an end to participation in the federal 287(g) program that puts a hold on inmates that are not U.S. citizens and notifies officials for possible deportation.
Promises made on the campaign trail “should not just be empty talking points.” he said. “There is no reason to delay the action. We know it can have an immediate impact on how these families are affected out here in Gwinnett County.”
He sees the result of the Senate races as another signal that people are ready for change. “... That tells you people are not going to buy into divisive behavior and that we want good government. We want equal government. We want to be represented fairly. We want people to go to Washington that don’t put the party first and that put the needs of the people first,” he said.
On Thursday, the day she was sworn in as the Cobb chair, an older Black man pulled Cupid aside and told her how proud he was of her, considering there were times in his life when there were certain parts of Cobb that he couldn’t even drive through.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
“I am so used to being the first or only Black in certain areas, so it has limited nostalgia for me. But when you look at our county, state and country, this election has had meaningful significance,” Cupid told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after her three-hour swearing-in ceremony.
Two days after the runoff election, McKinney was feeling good about the results, but stunned by the violence America had witnessed in Washington, D.C.
“I was voting for my family’s future,” said McKinney, who has two infant daughters. “I want them on an even playing field. I want them to thrive, even after the pandemic. And the only way that is going to happen is with the power of my vote. If I don’t do that, I am taking a gamble with their future.”
