Republicans' expulsion of 2 Black members draws comparisons to Tennessee's 'dark history'

After Tennessee Republicans expelled two rising young Black Democratic state representatives April 6 for leading a protest demanding gun reform, people inside and outside the legislature began saying the quiet part out loud.

In a state fraught with racist history and in a Capitol where the bust of the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan was just recently removed, the April 6 vote was too much for so many who see old patterns reasserting themselves. Though three Democrats faced expulsion for their protest March 30 in the chamber of the House of Representatives, only one survived the votes: Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a white woman.

The all-day spectacle was political retribution for Johnson and her two freshmen Democratic colleagues, Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis, for leading "disorderly" gun reform chants that briefly disrupted House proceedings three days after three 9-year-olds and three adults were murdered in a hail of gunfire at The Covenant School in Nashville.

“The people spoke today for all three of us and sadly the body didn’t listen to everybody, and I think there’s a good indication of what the difference was here,” Johnson said. “I don’t think there’s a question how those two young, Black men were spoken to was in a different manner than the way I was spoken to.

“The representative who questioned me multiple times (Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood) kind of treated me as someone beneath him, as a woman who just didn’t know quite as much as he did,” she continued. “Mansplaining, so to speak. But it’s a whole different attitude than the questioning I saw go to Rep. Pearson and Rep. Jones.”

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, tweeted a video clip of similar Johnson comments and wrote “Say the quiet parts loudly …”

‘Sad day for the state of Tennessee’

Democratic Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, chairman of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislatures, spoke to Knox News late Thursday night after the vote. He was beat up, tired out, worn down.

“This is a sad day for the state of Tennessee because I think what happened is the spotlight of what we’ve been enduring was exposed to the nation, really to the world," he said. "There’s just been a systemic push, a steady drum beat of marginalization both as a Democrat and then, as you see today, as a Black man.”

He went down a list of issues that have come up in this session:

• A GOP-led effort to rename a portion of John Lewis Way that includes the legislative office building after Donald Trump, partly to ensure the former president’s name appeared in the address on legislators’ business cards and stationery in place of the iconic civil rights leader’s.
• A suggestion by Rep. Paul Sherrell, R-Sparta, that the state use lynching as an alternative for executions
• The state's handling of the housing crisis at Tennessee State University, the lone state-funded member of our nation's historically black universities

"They don't get it," McKenzie said.

Still, McKenzie won't say the GOP-led legislature is racist. It's not helpful, he said, because it will end any conversation with his colleagues across the aisle.

“But I’ll say they’ve let their far-right divisive concept, anti-LGBTQ, anti-African American studies wing take over," he said. "To the point where, you can’t call an obvious vote on racial lines what it is. That was horrible.

"I’m sad. It was a bad day."

'Dark, dark history'

Before he was ousted, Jones drew a parallel between what he called the state’s “dark, dark history” and what Republican lawmakers did April 6.

"What you're really showing for the world is holding up a mirror to a state that is going back to some dark, dark roots,” he said.

“A state in which the Ku Klux Klan was founded is now attempting another power grab by silencing two of the youngest Black representatives and one of the only Democratic women in this body. That’s what this is about, let us be real today.”

Rep. Johnny Shaw, D-Bolivar, has served in the House since 2000, one of the longest-serving Black members. He said he can't say Republicans who voted to expel Jones and Pearson are racist because he doesn't know what's in the heart of each legislator. Collectively, however, their actions were another drum beat to an old song.

“Every time it seems like we could close the door on some issue, somebody opens the wound back,” he said. “They won’t let us forget the hangings or the ‘colored only’ signs or that people gave their lives for us to register to vote.”

Nzinga Bayano Amani, a Knoxville activist and past candidate for the city council, said Johnson’s win shows the “obvious racism” within the legislature.

“The difference between Gloria and (their) expulsion shows the different experiences that we as Black people have compared to white people, especially in politics,” Amani said.

Shaw spoke glowingly about Jones, 27, and Pearson, 28, but he cautioned his young Black colleagues that progress takes time and he suggested that Johnson might have escaped harsher punishment by not sticking her finger in the collective eye of her Republican colleagues when she answered questions during her expulsion hearing.

“She was wise," he said, "to not talk herself out of an opportunity."

Friday morning, a group of the Black Caucus held a press conference to address the expulsion votes. Sen. Charlane Oliver, D-Nashville, got right to it. Oliver came into the legislature with Jones in the 2023 freshman class and said she's watched "a lot of political bullying going on behind the scenes" directed at Jones. 

“This idea that he and Rep. Justin Pearson must apologize is a mindset set in white supremacy,” she said. “A mindset that we, as Black folks, are not on par or peers to them, and we must be inferior and subservient to their demands.

“Here, at the General Assembly, we are equals. I can't tell you how many times Rep. Jones has come into my office after something has happened on the elevator, or a conversation with leadership where they called him a worthless human being. That's not leadership.”

Still, some legislators such as McKenzie and Shaw are limited by what they can say because they still have to work with the supermajority to make progress on legislation. Jones has no such reservations after that supermajority kicked him out of office.

On “CNN This Morning” on April 7, the day after the vote, Jones said it out loud, telling viewers the House’s actions were more reminiscent of 1963, not 2023.

"What we saw yesterday in Tennessee was an attack on democracy and very overt racism, as you can see the two youngest Black lawmakers were kicked out, but our colleague, my dear sister Gloria Johnson, a white woman, was not,” Jones said. “We see clearly – the nation has seen clearly – what is going on in Tennessee.

“This is what we’ve been challenging all session, was a very toxic, racist work environment where we are not even allowed to speak," he continued. "That’s why we went to the well because the speaker wouldn’t call on us (and) he turned off our microphones. He ruled us out of order any time we brought up the issue of gun violence. When I went outside to support the protesters he turned off my voting machine so I couldn’t even cast a vote on the House floor.

"This is what we’ve dealt with all session and yesterday the nation was able to see that we don’t have democracy in Tennessee, particularly when it comes to Black and brown communities.”

Tyler Whetstone is a Knox News investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Email tyler.whetstone@knoxnews.com. Twitter @tyler_whetstone.

Angela Dennis is the Knox News social justice, race and equity reporter. Email angela.dennis@knoxnews.com. Twitter @AngeladWrites. Instagram @angeladenniswrites. Facebook at Angela Dennis Journalist.

Tennessean reporter Melissa Brown contributed to this report.