Justin J. Pearson has been reinstated to representing Tennessee House District 86 by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners days after he was expelled.
In a 7-0 vote on Wednesday, the board decided to reinstate Pearson while six of the 13 members, including Republicans, were absent from the meeting.
Justin J. Pearson told reporters after the voting exercise, that he will go to the Capitol in Nashville Wednesday night to be present for Thursday’s House session.
House Democrats said they expect the proper paperwork to be sent to Nashville in order to swear in Pearson on Thursday morning before the 9 a.m. House floor session.
Chairman Mickell M. Lowery of the commission, said he moved the resolution to reinstate Pearson after he heard from people across the country who disagreed with the expulsion.
“I think that it’s important that the people of District 86 are represented by the person that they voted overwhelmingly to have in the office,” Lowery said in an interview.
Pearson led a march from the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis to the Shelby County Commission building on Wednesday, telling the rally-goers to “show me what Democracy looks like.
“This is the Democracy that is going to transform a broken nation and a broken state into the place that God calls for it to be. This is the Democracy that is going to lift up the victims of gun violence instead of supporting the NRA and the gun lobbyists,” he said.
Pearson was one oftwo members expelledlast Thursday for creating a disruption on the House floor to stand up for gun reform after The Covenant School shooting. Rep. Justin Jones has already made his return to the capitol.
Jones came with a bullhorn on that day with the crowd at the Capitol to try to talk to lawmakers about gun legislation after the mass shooting in a Christain School in Nashville. In the mass shooting, six people were killed; three kids who were nine years old and three aged adults in their sixties.
No damage was done to the Tennessee Capitol nor were there any arrests made on the day that Jones, Pearson and Johnson led the crowd from the House floor in the middle of the session with chants.
Justin J. Pearson’s reappointment creates another dimension to the political battle on accusations of racism in American politics: Republican House members, largely white and male, employed a disciplinary tool little used since the 1800s to expel Pearson and another Black Democrat, Rep. Justin Jones while sparing Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white.
The Republican supermajority voted to punish Pearson and Jones, of Nashville, after they — alongside Johnson of Knoxville — broke procedural rules to lead a protest from the House floor calling for gun law reforms.
When asked why Gloria Johnson did not get the same punishment as Pearson and Jones, Johnson replied, “It might have to do with the color of our skin.”
