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‘The Justins’ Follow a Legacy of Resistance in Tennessee [1]

['Clyde Mcgrady', 'Emily Cochrane', 'Jon Cherry']

Date: 2023-04-14

Earlier this year, Justin Jones arrived at the State Capitol in Tennessee as a freshly elected lawmaker representing parts of Nashville. A 27-year-old Black Democrat, he belonged to a party vastly outnumbered by a largely white Republican majority. The advice was clear.

“Everyone kind of kept their head down and told us to do the same, you know, to assimilate, to conform,” he said.

Months later, Mr. Jones and another even newer colleague, Justin J. Pearson, are two of the most high-profile state representatives in the country, after the two young, Black Democrats were expelled and then reinstated to their seats in an extraordinary political drama that jolted Tennessee politics while intensifying a debate on race and representation.

Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel the men for leading a gun control protest on the House floor after the slaughter of six people, including three 9-year-old children, in a Christian school in Nashville. Representative Gloria Johnson, a white lawmaker who joined the protest, narrowly survived her expulsion vote.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/14/us/justin-pearson-justin-jones-tennessee.html

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