On Tuesday, January 5, the people of Georgia made history with their defeat of two Trump-supporting Republican Senators in the runoff election. First to be declared a winner was Reverend Raphael Warnock, who is the first African American ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia. He is only the second African American to be elected from the Deep South since Reconstruction after the Civil War. A little later, with a smaller margin, Jon Ossoff clinched the second seat for the Democratic Party, giving them a bare majority in the Senate.

The Democratic sweep of the Senate, along with Biden’s win in the November election, are a break in the Republican hold on the Deep South. It shows the power of the vote by African Americans and other oppressed nationalities, whose voter registrations surged in the wake of the protests following the murder of George Floyd. Georgia and the rest of the former slave south have long suppressed the vote of African Americans, contributing to the defeat of Stacy Abrams when she ran for governor two years ago.

The victories of Warnock and Ossoff also show the rising power of the historic African American Nation in the Black Belt South. The struggle for African American political empowerment has always had a strong electoral aspect, starting with the Reconstruction period, to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and continuing to today.

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