I waited until today to post this because I believe democracy was on the ballot in the Georgia Senate runoff races. I wanted Senator-elect Warnock (and Jon Ossoff) to win. Now that he has, I want to share my experience with Senator-elect Warnock from nearly a decade ago.
In 2015, I wrote Remain Free about my friendship with death row inmate Troy Davis. The book covers the events that took place from 2008 – 2012, including Troy’s controversial execution in 2011 despite serious doubts about this guilt. Senator-elect (then, just Reverend Doctor) Raphael Warnock was the eulogist at Troy’s funeral.
Here is the relevant excerpt (for those with the hardcover copy, it’s from pages 269-272 and page 282):
Now it was time for the eulogist, Dr. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church. The whole church stood as he walked to the pulpit. His shaved head glowed as he smiled, and then he began speaking.
“I’ve had to preach after many people, but I have never had to preach after the Reverend Doctor Dick Gregory.” The crowd laughed and cheered, and a few waves of applause rolled through the sanctuary.
“I must acknowledge my mother. I haven’t seen her, but I heard she’s here. Mama, where are you? Where is my mother? Oh, she’s over there! There’s my mother. You come and sit right here.” He motioned to a seat in the front, and a suited man ushered her to the seat. After using his position in the pulpit to secure prime seating for his mother, he began a winding Bible story about the apostles and the death of Jesus. Virginia Davis’s untimely death was because she knew, four months later, her son would be “liberated by death,” and like a good mother she “rushed home to welcome her son.”
[Troy] transformed a prison cell into a pulpit. I don’t have to preach long today, because he’s already preached a sermon, turned death row into a sanctuary, and showed all of us what faith and hope and love look like. And from one of the darkest and murkiest places of human existence, he allowed his light to shine…The difference between us and Troy is that Troy knew it and some of us don’t know it yet. We all live on death row.
Warnock began yelling into the microphone.
We have been dealing with the death of Jesus and the betrayal of Judas. And there are those among us who are the sons and daughters of slaves, who should’ve known better than to turn on Troy! And there are those among us who knew what Billy Holliday meant when she said southern trees bear strange fruit and blood on the leaves, blood on the truth! Betrayed! Sold him out! Those among us who should’ve known better!
My heart beat frantically, the crowd was entranced, and Warnock knew he had us. His bellowing reached a peak as he preached, no, screamed of the Pentacost and how Jesus’ death could have spelled the end of the church.
We are on the brink of a new era…It all could have died right there! But I’m so glad that in those days Peter stood up! That’s what we need! We need in these days for somebody to stand up in this very moment in this very hour in this very city! We need people to stand up for justice! Stand up for truth! Stand up for human dignity! Stand up for human decency! Stand up for our children and for our future! Everybody outta stand up! Peter said loss is but a chapter, it’s not the whole book! Hold on for the whole book!
His yelling blurred and time slowed as if we were in a scene from an Ellison novel. Ras the Exhorter bellowed into the microphone, at this event organized by the Brotherhood, and Troy was the Invisible Man, only he was invisible not because of his race but because his visibility was inconvenient for these ambitious men. Every bellow into the microphone was a destruction of Troy the human and the construction of Troy the saint, Troy the prophet, Troy the ethereal icon who provided the necessary firewood for overzealous pastors and corner speakers.
And whenever I thought it was over, the Exhorter screamed some more, each platitude whipping the crowd into an even greater frenzy. The men and women in the pews, brought in by the Brotherhood, none of whom ever knew Troy, were at a ceremony that brought them no closer to knowing him, and cheered and applauded and screamed as this preacher erased him with words so loud that the mic distorted them.
What Judas did is characteristic of evil! Evil always goes too far! And because it always goes too far, it contains within itself the seed of its own destruction!…What happened last Wednesday night was a classic move of evil to go too far!…It’s just like evil to press pause just long enough to feel the anguish and the torture!…Evil always goes too far! One Friday evening evil went too far! They nailed him on a cross! They pierced him on the side! They hung him high! They stretched him wide! But they didn’t know that he had said, “if I’ll be lifted up, I’ll draw all men onto me!” Evil always goes toooo farrrrrr!
The crowd stood and cheered. The sanctuary echoed with their thunderous applause. Eventually, after more than half an hour on the pulpit, Ras the Exhorter reverted back to the Reverend Doctor Raphael Gamaliel Warnock.
They ended the funeral with a recording of Troy, as if his voice echoing through the sanctuary was enough to redeem this orgy of blustering preachers and clueless celebrities, all of whom, like the crowd assembled, had joined in on a popular cause to obtain the moral righteousness that came along with the activist label. All desperately hoped Troy’s coattails would be long enough to ride all the way to the top.
“One group of people I don’t have any respect for are the ministers and pastors who run these mega-churches,” Troy had once said. “They’re preaching about faith and God, but how can they preach that when they’ve got bodyguards, bulletproof vests, and thousand-dollar suits? They don’t have faith in God. They have faith in money.”
After the closing remarks, pallbearers carried the casket out of the church, and the pews emptied row by row. My small role in the funeral afforded me a front-row seat, so I followed the casket outside before the crowds had assembled. As I walked past Martina, gaunt and wheelchair-bound, I touched her shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry,” knowing amid the din of the crowd that she couldn’t hear me.
Outside, Warnock talked to Martina while a photographer, possibly part of Warnock’s entourage, eagerly snapped away. As the casket was loaded into a hearse and the family into another car, I overheard two of the photographers.
“Man, I’m so sick of being told over and over to take photos of a certain pastor.”
“They asked you that?”
“It’s not his funeral. Why should I take so many pictures of him?”
For most people, that was the end. The crowds dispersed, some of them joining in the protests outside, others going home, and the majority heading to the local longshoremen’s union house for the reception, which promised food for the hungry masses.
How could Martina have agreed to this? Did she agree to this? Why didn’t she, Troy’s closest confidant and fiercest advocate, speak? Why was Larry the only person from Amnesty International who spoke?
In all the flash and opulence, the four speakers who actually knew Troy were overshadowed. They were subdued. Their voices faltered. They spoke of the true Troy Davis. The Troy who spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear him from just a few feet away. The Troy who kept a calendar of his nephew’s tests and friends’ birthdays. The Troy who was more worried about the effect of his impending execution on his family than about dying. The Troy who was more excited about my SAT score than my own family was. The Troy who pulled me aside on death row and told me to be a more supportive brother to my younger sister.
The funeral wasn’t a remembrance of Troy Davis or the mission he hoped would outlive him, but a tool for a slew of opportunists to bask in the spotlight Troy had created for them, scattered with a few memories from those who actually knew him and a seemingly impromptu speech from just one family member to hint at a fragment of legitimacy. The event was loud, flashy, bombastic, and lacking in substance—in every way, the antithesis of Troy himself. They’d made Troy a caricature, and rather than celebrating his life as the glossy two-dozen page program claimed it would, the funeral merely celebrated his celebrity.
Georgia executed Troy Davis, the man. And now I had just witnessed Raphael Warnock and the NAACP execute Troy Davis, the human.
…
After the funeral, I looked up Raphael Warnock. My search took me to the Ebenezer Baptist Church website, where Warnock’s shaved head and smiling face stared down on me on every single webpage. The website has since been updated, replacing the omnipresent Warnock head with a “Warnock Gallery,” featuring the Reverend Doctor in various photos all conveniently available for download along with a Warnock press kit. I also found a Wikipedia user named “revdocta,” created a few days before the 2010 Savannah hearing. The user had no contributions listed, other than creating a glowing biography page for the Reverend Raphael Gamaliel Warnock, Ph.D.
In my eyes, Senator-elect Warnock excised the memory of my friend – my brilliant, thoughtful, soft-spoken, wrongfully executed friend – in a gyre of bluster and bombast. In my eyes, his eulogy that began with him using the bully pulpit to secure better seating for his family represented his own ambition and the devil’s bargain Troy, I, and others had made – to accept the help from those who hoped to ride Troy’s fame to the very top. We needed every signature on those petitions. I knew, as Troy did, that sometimes you take what you can get.
Maybe this glimpse of Senator-elect Warnock isn’t fully representative of him. Maybe he’s changed since then. But I hope when he goes to the Senate and represents my home state of Georgia, he won’t erase the millions who voted for him the way he erased Troy.
