The Reverend Becomes a Senator

The Black churches of America have always been important to the Black community. After the Civil War ended in 1865, one of the first things newly emancipated Black people did was to build a church. In these churches, they were free to practice their own religious beliefs, without interference from white people. These churches became centers of their social lives, too. In the 1950s Civil Rights Movement, Black churches became places where they could organize protests and demonstrations.

The young Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had just begun to serve as a pastor in a Black church in Montgomery, Alabama, quickly became a leader of the boycott of the public buses there. Most other leaders were pastors of local churches. Subsequently, Dr. King became the main spokesman for the Civil Right Movement.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., served as the main pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, beginning in 1931. Martin Luther King, Jr., his son, became co-pastor of that church and served there until he was assassinated in 1968. Dr. King’s funeral was held there, as was the funeral of well-respected Congressman John Lewis in July 2020.

Since 2005 Reverend Dr. Raphael Warnock has been the pastor of that famous church. The pastor has just been elected to the U.S. Senate. He has become the first Black senator from Georgia in that state’s history and the first Black Democrat to be elected to the Senate by any former state of the Confederacy. This is a historical moment in America.

(254 words)