EMILY KWONG, HOST:
When the reverend Jesse Jackson took the stage, he commanded it. Here he is speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 1984.
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JESSE JACKSON: My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They have voted in record numbers. They have invested the faith, hope and trust that they have in us.
KWONG: His words caught the ear of a young Raphael Warnock, now Democratic senator from Georgia and the first Black senator in the state's history.
RAPHAEL WARNOCK: I witnessed him call America to live up to its ideals as an 11-year-old, 12-year-old, 16-year-old. Watching him do that in real time inspired me. When he said I am somebody, I believed him.
KWONG: I spoke with Senator Warnock about Jackson's legacy and how his words echo in today's times.
When was the first time you heard him speak?
WARNOCK: Oh, wow. Yeah, I think, you know, just as a kid growing up, he actually came to Savannah, Georgia, and I heard him speak in the gymnasium in one of the local high schools where they had literally bused hundreds of students from various schools so we could hear Reverend Jackson. His voice rang with such power and eloquence, and it is part of what has shaped my view of how you make your faith come alive in public service.
KWONG: Reverend Jackson had a practice of standing with people at, quote, "the point of challenge." He wanted to be on the front lines himself, to put his body there. What impact do you think this has had?
WARNOCK: Well, that's the hallmark of the Civil Rights Movement.
KWONG: Yeah.
WARNOCK: It is literally about putting your body in the struggle. That's what Martin Luther King Jr. did. That's what Fannie Lou Hamer did when she stood up to the Democratic Party some 20 years before Jesse Jackson and said, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. That's what John Lewis and Hosea Williams did when they crossed that Edmund Pettus bridge with brute force under the color of law on the other side of that bridge, but they kept walking. And more recently, in my estimation, Renee Good and Alex Pretti of Minneapolis lived out that same spirit, literally putting their bodies in the struggle. They paid the ultimate sacrifice, but they too were trying to push the country towards its ideals.
KWONG: You mentioned Dr. King. He decided not to run for president in 1968, though he did consider it. Why do you think Reverend Jackson's decision to run in 1984 - to go from activism to politics, to be the person to make that transition - why was that such a watershed moment?
WARNOCK: Jesse Jackson is the bridge between civil rights activism of the 1960s and the kind of multiracial coalition politics that we have seen in the modern era that culminated in the presidency of Barack Obama and the work that I try to do every single day in the United States Senate. And there's a whole generation of folks and a couple of generations who are serving not just Black politicians, but women. Native Americans, Latinos, people who come from immigrant communities, members of the LGBTQ community. He was the one in my lifetime to give a clear expression of what he called the rainbow coalition.
KWONG: The idea of the rainbow coalition, all those groups you named - could it work today? You know, his campaigns helped register and energize millions of people to vote. The coalition of Barack Obama did the same. How does the idea of the rainbow coalition work now?
WARNOCK: Here is part of why I know it works, is our adversaries certainly know it. Right now in Congress, they're trying to pass something called the SAVE America Act. It is a tragic misnomer. What they're trying to save is an old vision and version of America, a dark past that Jesse Jackson and others pushed us beyond.
KWONG: And this is the act, of course, to require proof of citizenship in order to vote.
WARNOCK: Yeah, look, and let me be really clear. People should have to demonstrate that they are who they say they are when they vote, and I want to be clear about that because there are those on the right who are trying to mischaracterize what we're saying. They are using this idea of voter ID as a false pretext for voter suppression. I will tell you as a member of the Senate, that legislation is dead on arrival, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that they don't turn our democracy upside down. They're trying to narrow the electorate into something that is the opposite of a diverse and multiracial coalition.
KWONG: What is at stake for American democracy in that way?
WARNOCK: Well, the democracy itself. Here, let me be really clear. Voter fraud by voter ID is virtually nonexistent. In the last decade, for example, in the state of Georgia, there have been less than five instances - less than five - of noncitizens voting, when there have literally been millions, millions of votes cast. And so the question you have to ask yourself as a citizen is, why would we disenfranchise literally hundreds of thousands of Americans in order to solve a problem that doesn't even exist?
KWONG: Lastly, I want to ask, what parts of Reverend Jackson's mantle do you see yourself carrying? And in that vein, will you be running for president in two years?
WARNOCK: (Laughter) No, I think his - look, he worked with Dr. King, but Jesse Jackson never tried to be Dr. King, and I'm not going to try to be Jesse Jackson. I'm Raphael Warnock, and I think we all do better when we stand in our own shoes while recognizing that we stand on the broad shoulders of moral giants like Jesse Jackson.
KWONG: And will you consider a presidential run? Hence - as time moves on.
WARNOCK: I am very much focused on us winning the midterms in 2026 because we've got to put some guardrails on this dangerous Trump-Vance regime. And so I'm engaged and sharply focused on that fight. I'm up for reelection to the Senate in 2028.
KWONG: Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, thank you so much for speaking with us.
WARNOCK: Thank you very much.
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