April 2023 - “Good Trouble in Tennessee"
The horror that befell Nashville’s Covenant School this past March 27th weighed heavily on Tennessee’s Republican governor Bill Lee. He lost a friend in the shooting, and promptly called for some sensible restrictions on access to guns. When two young Black state representatives, Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, joined the call for action - admittedly with a bullhorn - they were expelled from the legislature. When a white co-activist, Rep. Gloria Johnson was not expelled, many thought about Tennessee’s legacy of racism.
Just three weeks prior to the Covenant shooting, the specter of lynching rose when Tennessee State Rep. Paul Sherell suggested executing criminals by hanging them from a tree. The ugly comment occurred in the state where, in 1892, a mob burned down the office of journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett because she campaigned against lynching. It occurred in a state where the KKK was born and where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by gun violence. The Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was murdered, is located in Rep. Pearson’s Legislative District 86. When he was reinstated in the legislature, Pearson reminded the Republicans who expelled him for “a violation of decorum” that Dr. King often built justice with similar non-violent direct actions.
It's the same message Rep. Jones emphasized when he returned to his seat. Jones represents the 52nd House District in Nashville, less than a 15 minute drive from the Covenant School. He is also a Policy and Activism Fellow at the John Lewis Center for Social Justice at Fisk University. Jones frequently cites John Lewis’s advocacy for “good trouble,” something these young legislators demonstrated over the past few weeks.
Back in 2017, after the most deadly mass shooting in U. S. history left 60 dead and over 400 wounded in Las Vegas, John Lewis bemoaned the intransigence of Congress, saying on the steps of the Capitol that “there’s no amount of blood or pain or death or suffering that would move this Congress to act.” Instead, nothing is done because of “greed, money and fear.” “We can no longer be patient,” he concluded. It was again time for the “good trouble” that got him arrested forty-five times.
As a Black man representing the deep southern state of Georgia, Lewis knew he risked being expelled for “violating decorum.” A century and a half before he took office, powerful white leaders in Georgia drove out 33 lawmakers from the General Assembly without cause, other than the color of their skin. In 1868, representative Henry McNeal Turner insisted defiantly that he was a member of the legislature: “…I shall neither fawn nor cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. You may expel us, gentlemen, but I firmly believe that you will some day repent it.”
Unfortunately, racism made “some day” a long way off. The last remaining Black U.S. Congressman from that era, North Carolina’s George H. White, gave a farewell address on January 29, 1901. He said, “This is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress, but let me say, Phoenixlike he will rise up some day and come again.” Congress would not have another Black member until 1929. White southerners closed ranks to block “uppity blacks” from holding office, with particular effectiveness in Tennessee. After Samuel Allen McElwee, representing Haywood County, Tennessee, stepped down in 1889, no other Black person served in the Tennessee legislature until 1964. Without the good trouble caused by the civil rights movement, it would have taken even longer.
So, it’s no surprise that “the Justins,” as they’ve been called, did not fawn or cringe or stoop to beg for their rights. They had the courage to cause good trouble. Do they represent the rebirth of the civil rights movement? Rep. Pearson preached on the theme of rebirth this past Easter, emphatically promising that “resurrection is on the way.” Returning to the Tennessee House in triumph he told his colleagues, “They tried to kill democracy. They tried to expel the people’s choice and the people’s vote. And they awakened a sleeping giant.” May it be so.
FURTHER ACTION
1) Like many in the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, both “Justins” link their activism to their faith. Rep. Jones is a divinity student at Vanderbilt University and Rep. Pearson is the son of a pastor.
2) Appreciate that Jones and Pearson are not anomalies. Sekou Franklin, a politics professor at Middle Tennessee State University, wrote about “a tradition of resistance in Tennessee Black lawmakers.” He cited legislators such as the former Representative Johnnie Turner, who supported the removal of Confederate statues from Memphis parks despite the ire it drew from colleagues. Franklin calls this “a different kind of resistance” which, nevertheless, connects to the past.
3) Read Prof. David A. Love’s article “Removing Black lawmakers from office has a long, sordid history.” Love, a faculty member in journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, explains how often history repeats. Do not forget other attempts to deny duly elected Black representatives their seats. For example, Julian Bond was denied his seat in 1966 due to his anti-war activism. In protest, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. organized a demonstration on the steps of the state Capitol in Atlanta.
4) Share this recent NPR story about the legacy of racist and anti-democratic actions:
5) Point out the hypocrisy of those legislators shocked at the “violation of decorum.” There’s a long history of slaps on the wrists of legislators for similar or worse disruptions and ethical violations. One GOP member rang a cowbell every day the legislature was in session as “a raucous, attention-grabbing substitute for applause.” A couple of years ago, the Republican House speaker’s text messages included “discussions of pole-dancing women and his chief of staff’s sexual encounters in the bathroom of a hot chicken restaurant.” One Republican lawmaker, accused of sexually assaulting 15- and 16-year-old girls, was made chairman of the House education committee. Read more about this in Natalie Allison’s Politico article.
6) Note elements of "white rage” in Tennessee over the last month. You can hear it in the scolding that Rep. Andrew Farmer gave Justin Pearson: "Just because you don't get your way, you can't come to the well, bring your friends, and throw a temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn. It doesn't give you the right to enrage folks that are here. That's why you are standing there, because of that temper tantrum that day, that yearning to have attention, well you're getting it now." In the wake of the shooting at Covenant School a short drive from the state capitol, Farmer’s reaction, given as his hands trembled, according to witnesses, seems more like a tantrum. Carol Anderson, author of White Rage, said that this “is all about putting you back in your place.” Listen to her discussion with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.