U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign bus tour in Albany, Ga., on Aug. 29, 2022.
Nicole Buchanan for NPR
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Nicole Buchanan for NPR
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign bus tour in Albany, Ga., on Aug. 29, 2022.
Nicole Buchanan for NPR
ALBANY, Ga. – Johnnie Armstrong says he has voted in Albany since 1955, so he remembers an era when local officials tried to keep Black voters like him from the ballot box.
“They’d give you a bottle, a big thing with a lot of marbles in it,” he says. “You guess how many marbles, then you can vote.”
Armstrong says it felt remarkable that about 65 years later he got to help elect Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator, Democrat Raphael Warnock.
Even better, Armstrong says, is Warnock spending a muggy August morning taking selfies with voters on Albany’s Ray Charles Plaza as he campaigns for a full term in Washington.
Until recently, a statewide candidate spending significant time in this thinly-populated, substantially Black, southwest corner of Georgia was virtually unheard of.
Johnnie Armstrong, sitting in front of the Ray Charles Memorial on Aug. 29, 2022, says he has voted in Albany, Ga., since 1955.
Nicole Buchanan for NPR
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