Atlanta Dream team captain Elizabeth Williams’ face glowed like soft dinner candles as she watched Sen. Raphael Warnock hoist his special jersey before the crowd inside the Gateway Center Arena in College Park, Georgia, on Saturday, Aug. 21, 2021.
Williams and Dream co-owner and vice president Renee Montgomery both wore proud expressions when they commemorated Warnock’s historic win in the hotly-contested U.S. Senate race in January 2021 during halftime of their game against the Phoenix Mercury. The two presented Warnock with a red team jersey with his name emblazoned underneath the No. 21.
The Dream players were invaluable in helping Warnock become the first Black senator from the state of Georgia. Williams and her compatriots became the talk of the sports world and in the political spectrum in 2020 when they donned “Vote Warnock” T-shirts in bold defiance of former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, their boss who owned the team at that time. Loeffler had openly lambasted the players for publicly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.
The team’s unequivocal support for their boss’s opponent helped create a critical mass that blasted open the floodgates of support for Warnock. Moreover, Warnock’s accomplishment reverberated throughout the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., as he (along with the election of Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia) tipped the balance of power in the Senate to the Democratic Party.
Warnock, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, heaped effusive praise on the players for taking such a bold stance.
“I’m so proud of these ladies standing up. They weren’t trying to bring any attention to themselves. They were just trying to use their platform to create a country that is more inclusive, more just (and) more equal,” Warnock said during a press conference following the halftime presentation.
