After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, Tennessee quickly moved to do President Trump’s bidding. In early May, as hundreds of protesters spilled into the State Capitol in Nashville, the legislature’s Republican supermajority passed a gerrymandered congressional district map eliminating the state’s only Democratic seat, the locus of Black voting power. Democratic lawmakers locked arms and chanted on the House floor, waving signs and banners. State Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) stood on her desk, singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem. State Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) burned a picture of the Confederate flag outside the chamber.
State Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) helped lead those demonstrations. No stranger to bold moves, the young leader—he’s 31—rose to national prominence three years ago after being expelled from the Tennessee House alongside Jones after staging a gun reform protest in the wake of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. Their white colleague, state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), was not expelled. Pearson regained his seat in the legislature after the Democrats on the Shelby County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to reinstate him; the Republicans didn’t turn up for the meeting. This time around, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton stripped Pearson and the rest of the House Democrats of their committee assignments as punishment, accusing them of disrupting the legislative process.
Memphis-born and -raised, Pearson graduated from Bowdoin College. He was elected to the state legislature, his first bid for public office, in 2023. Pearson is one of several candidates now seeking the Democratic nomination to represent Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District, which was redrawn during the redistricting frenzy.
Despite the mid-decade redistricting crisis, Pearson is optimistic: The support he’s received from across the country is “what’s giving me some wind at my back to keep pushing forward,” he says. “This is a difficult, hard time to be an elected official who’s also approximate to the pain of the people who’ve been deprived of political voice for a very long time in halls of power from either political party.”
Last week, I spoke to Pearson about gerrymandering, Black liberation theology, and the importance of fighting against injustice in America’s most misunderstood region. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Naomi Bethune: How would you describe the redistricting protests in Nashville?
Rep. Justin J. Pearson: It felt holy that we were engaging in actions that our forebears have engaged in for the preservation of freedoms that they had to fight for. Now it’s our time to fight for it. This is a difficult, painful, intense moment to be alive in America, where our rights are being stripped away from us. White supremacy is again thwarting Black progress as a part of the centuries-long playbook of stripping us of our humanity and our agency.
[We’ll] continue to defend the ideals of democracy in the new district that [Republican state lawmakers] think has been drawn in the way to destroy our ability to win. I really feel the tension of the past, present, and future in my chest, on my shoulders, in my mind, in my heart. I have been feeling a sense of hopefulness from the people who keep showing up and refuse to throw in the towel.
It’s difficult to believe that the state’s only majority-Black district that includes Memphis—has been dismantled and erased.
This is an acute political moment. The pain of this moment demanded action outside of the norm for us to stand up and speak up against what was happening, but also to use the privilege that we have as a show of power against the tools of white supremacy that are bearing down on us as the neoconfederacy is rising in the South.
Black women organizers should get the most credit for the fight in Tennessee and bringing thousands of people to the Capitol in a matter of days. Everybody had to put their egos down because we’re in a fight for our lives and for our representation in government. We all know that this is not just in congressional seats—state House and state Senate seats are likely next. This was one tool that [Republicans] are using right now in the immediate term, but this isn’t where they stop.
What do the Republicans’ decisions mean for Tennessee?
[The Republicans’] goal is to be cruel and to disrupt and to destroy Black political power at all costs. Their ultimate project is to take away and strip away the rights of every historically marginalized group and cement their power for generations to come, particularly as more people of color are born and grow into the majority in America.
I’m not surprised by [Tennessee House Speaker] Cameron Sexton stripping away Black Democrats, in particular, of their committee assignments. This is the same Speaker of the House that ensured that me and my other Black colleague got expelled from the state House, but our white colleague did not. He did not care about the voices, the thoughts, the needs of our communities at all and he never has.
We have to see these people for who they are. They are not hiding their robes. They have been weaponizing their positions, taking away Black people’s voices, discouraging Black people from speaking up and speaking out by refusing to have any of their legislation passed through committees. We have to ensure our consciousness is raised across the South, in particular, to see what is happening and to call it out for what it is.
I’ve had colleagues of mine who would say, “They’re not going to let you pass a bill if you keep calling out the patriarchy and white supremacy.” I look at them now and I say, “Hey, did any of the bills they allowed you to pass prevent them from taking away the only majority-Black district in the state? Did the modicum of faux democracy that we were allowed to participate in actually do anything to help save our voices?” No, they have made us play into their game, and while we were doing that, they stripped away our democracy. This has been a long-term project that they’ve been on for a while.
What did you learn from the 2023 protest when you, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson faced expulsion?
What the expulsion showed me was they are willing to change rules, disobey rules, statutes, and laws for their own seeming political benefit. When they changed the law to allow them to take away our only majority-Black district, it was the same evil that had them violate our permanent rules of order to expel me instead of just censuring me. They don’t have any fidelity to the law, to social norms, to justice or morality.
I learned that three years ago, and I see it again today. It’s being replicated across the South. I think what is so visceral is how quickly it happened, how little recourse there is, and how widespread this is going across the South. Tennessee was first, but the neoconfederacy is rising in an attempt to not separate from the country, but within the country, use its most insidious forms of bigotry and racism and race neutrality to submit its power.
How do you navigate political negativity?
Faith is central to my fight. I practice Christianity, I have a deep sense of faith and a belief that our responsibility in this life is to do for the last, the lost, the least, and the left out. It also teaches me that God never ends the story on a bad note, that even when Jesus is crucified by the military and by the [Roman] empire, there’s always an empty tomb, there’s resurrection.
That tells me we may go through horrible things. The government will do horrible things, like killing American citizens, deporting people, stealing, and rigging massive elections, but that is not how the story ends when people hold on to faith, and hold on to the fight for what is right and for who is most marginalized in the communities in which they find themselves.
Where I come from, you don’t quit. I really believe in this country’s ideals. I believe in freedom, I believe in equal justice under the law. I believe in “E pluribus unum” and “We the people.” Even though this country’s laws have consistently and utterly tried to do the opposite of all of its ideals, there have always been people who fall for those ideals and turn them into ideas, into laws, anyway. I’m just one of those people.
Are you motivated by and connected to the tradition of political activism by Black Christians in the South?
Absolutely. Think about Dr. James Cone, one of the authors and fathers of turning Black liberation theology into canon and academia: It’s a social gospel. God always on the side of the oppressed. I don’t think about faith as separate from us fighting for a better future, a better planet, a better world than the one we currently inhabit against empire.
That is what we are called to do, and right now we have a tyrannical government destroying the lives of everyday working-class people for the benefit of a tyrant and for the benefit of billionaires. If your faith doesn’t call you into action now, then what you are believing in isn’t Christianity or one of the major religions. What you’re believing in is white supremacy and this white Christian nationalism.
What should Americans understand about the current political climate in Tennessee?
The good news here [is] that [Democrats] can still win in the South. Now is not the time to ignore the South. Now’s the time to invest in [elections in the region], because at the congressional level, seats have gotten more competitive, and even at the state House level, there are Republicans who do not like the way that things are going, who want to have different people serving in office. But those candidates are not being resourced in the same way as the other Republicans are, which is what’s creating the most significant barrier for our communities.
So, the support is one of the things people need to know is going to make a difference in whether the South is the way that the South is, indefinitely, or if we actually are able to become a place where this multiracial democracy is called for, is engaged in, and is more possible for Democrats. We’re going to keep doing what we need to do, which is going to communities to organize power, mobilize people to show up at the polls, and make sure they are advocating and activating when the overreaches of authoritarianism happen.
How do you think voter turnout, particularly amongst progressive young people, is going to be affected by the events of these past few weeks?
We’re going to likely see the largest increase in voter participation and mobilization of young people that we’ve seen since President Barack Obama. I really think this has excited people in defense of democracy, in defense of the future we want to create, and against a dangerous status quo that we’re currently experiencing and dealing with. It’s one of the reasons why I believe we have a strong chance of winning this.
How does the United States move forward from this unprecedented political situation?
We’ve got to have a multilayered strategy that operates with a long continuum from the outset. This is not winnable with just elections this fall. We have to be building something different as we move ahead. We need to invest in the South. People must not give in to nihilism. There are some people who’ve been lost to the MAGA mania, but the truth of the matter is that most people want a good job, a nice house, food on the table, a car that they can drive, and a good school that they can send their kids to.
