The reasons behind expelling the Black members of the Tennessee Three were explained in the opinion

Why the Tennessee House of Representatives is so Hard to Expel a Black Legislator: A Demonstration of the Fundamental Right to Exercise and to Protect Democracy

Tennessee Republicans used their supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers and exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics.

The GOP action after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting showed how two halves of the nation are being pulled apart.

A day of soaring tensions inside the state House chamber and outside brought the Volunteer State into the national spotlight for a mass shooting that killed six people.

The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members – and when it has, it’s for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions – so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.

Gloria Johnson, who also joined the gun control protest but was spared from expulsion, was a democrat and a White woman. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.

Republicans argued that the Democrats had disrupted the people’s business because they refused to obey the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.

“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.

Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. This is not a surprise in a deep red state. The fury of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the fact that there are hundreds of protesters at the capitol reflects growing anger among Americans who want stricter gun control but are unable to get it in Republican-controlled legislatures.

He called on the Tennessee Legislature to take action to stop school shootings. There is no reason for citizens in the public to have access to assault rifles. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.

The Donald Trump Era Revisited: What Happened to the Black Lives in the House of Representatives During a Game of Gun Control?

There were harsh penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction which did not involve violence or insinuation, another sign of the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. The GOP is abusing power by threatening the democratic rights of millions of Americans.

The GOP’s expulsions looked like a party that didn’t agree with anything and that wouldn’t listen to questions or answer them.

Jones accused the House of acting arrogantly, and that’s what led the Republican lawmaker to call for his removal from the chamber.

“He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

This looked like an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. The behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers was irregular, but it was not new in a chaotic political environment. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

The vote was fraught with racial symbolism after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN that she thought race played a role in the differing outcomes.

I think it’s clear. Johnson said that the Republicans questioned the two young men in a degrading way because they were black.

Cohen told CNN that she wasn’t saying race wasn’t the reason but that she didn’t look at the numbers to see if women had a role in it.

Pearson and Jones were arguing that the voices of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.

“I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself,” Jones said. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation.”

Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speaks to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the genteel but hardball power plays favored by some of their Republican colleagues in the legislature.

The speeches of both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement, which might lead to a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens, like the group of protesters that greeted Pearson and Jones after they left the chamber.

The topic of the confrontation over decorum in the state House evoked uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied that the young Black Americans did not know how to behave in public life.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/07/politics/political-showdown-tennessee/index.html

The End of Reconstruction and the Beginning of Jim Crow: A Conversation with John DeSantis, an African American Past, and a Democrat/Black Majority Leader

“It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s happening here. I would think this was 1963, instead of 2000, if I didn’t know it was happening to me.

This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.

In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.

“You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

“We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.

Biden called the expulsions shocking, undemocratic and without precedent and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.

The author of two books is a professor at Simmons College of Kentucky. He’s frequently at JemarTisby. Substack.com. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.

I teach African American history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college. This week, we’ve been studying the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow period of US history.

The so-called Redeemers took over state legislatures with the primary goals of disenfranchising Black voters, barring Black people from holding political office, and establishing a politics that would render the White power structure impervious to disruption.

One of the men expelled from their position by the Georgia politicians was Henry McNeal Turner, an African Methodist Episcopal leader.

In remarks during the proceedings, he stated, “[White legislators] question my right to a seat in this body, to represent the people whose legal votes elected me. Sir, this is an unheard of monopoly of power. It’s not an analogy for a man who should go into my house, take possession of my family and then tell me to leave.

The actions of the White lawmakers in Georgia were just a preview of what was to come despite the reinstatement of the Black lawmakers.

In 1890, the state of Mississippi called for a new convention to rewrite the state’s constitution. After the Civil War, the state had adopted a new constitution but White lawmakers were able to take control of the state government and destroy the rights Black people had just recently gained.

So they used policies such as the poll tax, which most Black people could not afford to pay. They instituted the understanding clause, which required potential voters to interpret a passage from the state constitution in order to be considered a White voter.

The grandfather clause required that a person’s grandfather be eligible to vote in order for them to exercise their franchise. Black people whose grandparents were enslaved and therefore ineligible to vote were excluded.

The Tennessee Three Expulsion Repeaters Tieby: Why We Are All Too Discriminating to Live in the Shadow of Donald Trump

In class, my students listened with stunned incredulity as they learned about the cruel and ruthless politics of the Redeemers. Unfortunately, the historical parallels to present-day events are too obvious to ignore.

These new Redeemers are using their power as a tool of intimidation. What other conclusion can be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?

Expulsion is the most severe consequence the legislature can enact against another member of that body. Since the Civil War, only three other members of the Tennessee state legislature have been expelled — and for much more serious offenses.

In Jackson, where 80% of the population is black, attempts are underway to strip local officials of their authority to watch the city’s water system, police force and courts.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Stop WOKE Act” into law, which was intended to prevent teachings or mandatory workplace activities that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed based necessarily on their race, color, sex or national origin. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for discrimination in Florida.

On January 6, 2021, the supporters of former President Donald Trump attempted to stage an insurrection in order to subvert the political process.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/08/opinions/tennessee-three-expulsion-redeemers-tisby/index.html

The Second Lutheran Era: Ten Years of Action for Jim Crow in Tennessee and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Jesus

Jim Crow segregation lasted over decades thanks to the era of Redemption. More than 4,000 “racial terror” lynchings occurred throughout that period, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented.

The Civil Rights movement gave rise to substantial change. After several years of direct action protest, lobbying and the martyrdom of activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr., segregation and White supremacy were finally interrupted.

When all the standard means of change — namely the democratic process itself — have been co-opted and subverted by authoritarians, then the people are only left with protest.

If the goal of the Tennessee GOP was to intimidate people into acquiescence with their expulsion of Pearson and Jones, their tactic backfired in a spectacular way.

Although there were constant attempts throughout the years, it took decades for people to mount the resistance necessary to topple Jim Crow. In today’s environment, action might occur more swiftly.

Holy Week is in the Christian religion. Events such as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday culminate in the observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. These liturgies commemorate the redemption — Jesus paying the price for humanity’s sin.

Redemption is a principle that helpsgirds hopes of salvation in many Christian traditions. It is likely that many of the Tennessee Republicans will go to church on Sunday to celebrate Easter.