In Tennessee, two young state legislators are being heralded as living echoes of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, when leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis organized protests across the American South.
Squint a little as you take in the scene, or just close your eyes and listen to the voice, and 2023 stumbles back into another era. Another Memphis.In barely two weeks, two young Black Tennessee state legislators have gone from neophyte politicians to national prominence
“You can’t expel hope!” the young man cries in his powerful voice, his message aimed at the Tennessee state legislators who had expelled him and another Black lawmaker a week earlier. “You can’t expel justice! You can’t expel our voice.” “Two young Black men” were forced from office, Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday at a convention in New York City of the civil rights group the National Action Network, calling the expulsions “an attempt to silence the voice of the people.”“Now, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson are back in their seats!” Harris said to cheers.
He has no regrets about the protest that got him expelled, when he, Pearson and a white colleague, 60-year-old legislator Gloria Johnson, walked to the speaker’s podium while the Legislature was in session and led chants calling for gun control. He sees himself in the young protesters who flooded the capital to call for gun control, even though he calls himself “an elder now in the movement.”
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