Congressional Black Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, for the next 60 minutes, we have a chance to speak directly to the American people on issues that are of great importance to the Congressional Black Caucus, Congress, the constituents we represent, and all Americans.

I rise today for the Tennessee Three, who stood in the face of bigotry and vitriol to fight for the communities they serve.

After six lives were lost due to gun violence in Nashville, the Republican-led Tennessee Legislature expelled two Black lawmakers who stood with families, teachers, and students to demand a solution.

What happened to Representative Justin Pearson and Representative Justin Jones is an utter disgrace. This expulsion was a blow to our democracy and underscored the legislature's flagrant disrespect for their First Amendment rights.

The families of those who lost loved ones in The Covenant School shooting deserve real legislative solutions, not bigotry and petty politics.

As elected officials, it is our solemn responsibility to keep our communities safe from gun violence. Extreme Republicans have other priorities; protecting the NRA instead of our children and silencing the voices of our Black leaders.

Extremist Republicans continue to look the other way as our schools become firing ranges; as our movie theaters become firing ranges; as our places of worship become firing ranges.

It should provide us with some comfort that both of these lawmakers expelled were recently reinstated with unanimous support. Local leaders in Shelby County and Nashville were able to see through the hatred and recognize that representatives Pearson and Jones were fighting for their constituents.

However, let's not forget that what happened in the Tennessee Legislature can happen in any community anywhere in our country. Any State could be next, including my home State of Florida.

We cannot forget about why Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled in the first place. They were fighting for an answer to end the gun violence epidemic that wreaks havoc in all communities in our country.

Nashville, like so many other cities, has been touched by this crisis. Families in South Florida know it all too well after a gunman entered the grounds of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and took 17 innocent lives in 2018.

Enough is enough. I urge Congress to come together in passing an assault weapons ban before more lives are lost. This senseless violence can no longer be left unaddressed.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Clarke).

Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Cherfilus-McCormick) for yielding, and I thank Mr. Jackson for co-anchoring this evening's Special Order hour.

Mr. Speaker, I rise on this day praying for the speedy recovery of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl of Kansas City, Missouri, who was released from the hospital today after being shot in the head for ringing the wrong doorbell.

We live in a society today where more and more communities are living in a recurring nightmare, reeling from gun violence.

Gun violence is the number one killer of children in the United States of America. While it has always been Black communities that have borne the brunt and have been the most victimized and terrorized by gun violence, and have too often assumed the blame of a poorly regulated gun industry, I truly expected that there would have been some bipartisan action taken to protect the next generation after the tragedy at Sandy Hook all those years ago.

Instead, the far right stays licking the boot of the NRA, taking their blood money and looking the other way. It has become crystal clear that the rightwing Republicans couldn't care less.

It is unconscionable that they care so little for the lives of children. I mean, look at what has happened just this past week in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama.

Mass murder and mass casualties have become commonplace, but we can't make them normalized.

It is not lost upon me that two Black lawmakers, Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were expelled from the Tennessee House after joining peaceful protests against gun violence. Another generation that has had to grow up doing gun violence drills in their schools has now taken leadership and is leading the charge.

Let's be clear. The CBC won't stand by and allow another Jim Crow era to take root while further GOP legislators abuse their power, as we saw in Tennessee. The CBC will continue to push back against any and all efforts by Republicans to subvert the will of the American people, whether it is the effort to overturn our election on January 6 or efforts to silence or expel members from statehouses who advocate for a better nation, a better America, safe from the horrors of gun violence.

Again, I thank the gentlewoman from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for yielding.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, can I inquire how much time is remaining?

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Jackson Lee), from the 18th District.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted but sad but empowered but anguished but yet fulfilled but yet rising but yet encouraged but yet ready to fight this evening. I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for her distinguished leadership and friendship.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted as well with the gentleman from Illinois for his shining leadership and transformational changes that are happening in and around his district in Chicago.

I am honored to be here with my other colleagues that are here. I thank Chairman Horsford and Chairwoman Beatty, emeritus of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I am honored to again call the Congressional Black Caucus the conscience of the Congress, and, yes, the conscience of the Nation. We can say that because in our midst we have had the Honorable John Lewis.

Mr. Speaker, I want to go down memory lane just a bit. As I do so and before I speak to the irony of the connection of the Tennessee Three to the historical record. Does anyone remember the Georgia 33, as we have brought to highlight? There were 33 Black legislators right after the Civil War, 1866 to 1868, proud and standing tall because they had some way of gaining the right to vote and the people there--the freed slaves, after the 13th Amendment was eliminated ending slavery in the United States--our freed slaves could vote. Property owners, as I believe.

They elected 33 Black legislators, and they were proud. You could see them with their button-down suits, speaking the best English they could, and fighting for their constituents. That is what we are to do here. Listening to the people and having the ear of their constituents.

Yet, within a few moments of their great victory, election to the Georgia Assembly they were expelled, thrown out because of the color of their skin, which began the demise of reconstruction and the Black codes and the horrors of the rage of the Klan and others leading into the 1900s.

Mr. Speaker, I am reminded of George White who stood on the floor in 1901, who had been drawn out of this Congress, a Member of Congress, and said: The Negro will rise like the phoenix.

Then in 1966--I am still stunned--a brilliant young man by the name of Julian Bond was duly-elected by the constituents, he had their ear, and they had his ear. A young man. He had all the willingness to do what was right as an elected member of the Georgia Assembly, and he was expelled for his supporting the fact of the SNCC, the organization that he previously led, indicating that the Vietnam war violated international law.

He didn't speak of the soldiers, which I have repeatedly said that our soldiers put on uniforms unselfishly. We never accuse them. They fight and they die. They died in Vietnam from all of our communities from the South to the North to the East to West, from our backyards. But because he expressed a democratic belief, meaning his right to a belief that might have been different, and because of democracy he had the right to speak, he was expelled.

Now we come to the fear and the absolute outrage of lack of understanding. I am baffled by the expulsion of the Tennessee Three: Representative Pearson, Representative Jones, and Representative Johnson.

All they did was come to hear the cries of America's best, the youth, the children, crying out again: How much more bloodshed can we take? The Congressional Black Caucus has been a leading force joining with our colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, let me say this tonight--we come from the same State-- let me just say this. We all tend to oratory, we are passionate and emotional. After all these years and all the deaths of children, can we find even a sense of Congress that will lead us to be able to condemn gun violence as being the number one killer of our children through homicide?

The very fact that four children died and other innocent persons in Nashville just a mere couple of weeks ago, I want you to know that I feel personal pain when the news rises up in the early morning hours of what happened the night before, or the weekend, I have a personal pain.

My tenure here was a tenure during the assault weapons ban, but in the midst there was Columbine. The numbers showed that they went down, the assault weapon incidences. Now I am living with Sandy Hook. I am living with Parkland, Virginia Tech. I am living with Texas Tech. I am living with any number of those in Texas from the Walmart to the church to Uvalde where I went and talked with the families and went to funerals and cried and wondered why children were dead--19 of them.

These young men in Tennessee were walking the pathway of the Georgia 33 and Julian Bond. As history reflects, they did nothing wrong. These three individuals, one who was not expelled, did nothing wrong as well. They were representing their constituents. They were nonviolent. They were in the midst of civil disobedience. They could not be heard. They were on the floor where one could do a lot of things.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record an article titled ``The `All Things Being Equal Test' Part II: Blatant Racism in the Tennessee House.'' [From Forbes, Apr 7, 2023] The `All Things Being Equal Test' Part II: Blatant Racism in The Tennessee House (By Susan Harmeling)

The shocking but not surprising expulsion of two young Black men by the Tennessee State Legislature while their 60- year-old White colleague was spared ouster despite breaking house rules in the exact same way is a blatant display of racism, pure and simple. It may sound ridiculously obvious, but it needs saying. Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were clearly kicked out because they are Black, and also supposedly not ``apologetic'' enough for their White, male counterparts who decided to pursue the nuclear option and remove them from office instead of using other, lesser punishments such as censure. Representative Gloria Johnson, who a few days earlier had joined Jones and Pearson in taking to the house floor to demand an assault weapons ban following the slaughter of three little kids in their school, was protected by her whiteness, as she herself publicly stated.

This is an important moment in our society as it exposes both an ugly truth and an opportunity for progress. The ugly truth is obvious: two young, Black men in Tennessee--the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan--were expelled for breaking rules of ``decorum'' while their White colleague who, again, joined them every step of the way still has her job. As Rep. Jones pointed out, there have been only two other expulsions from the Tennessee House in the last 157 years. In l980, a representative was found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office and in 2016, another was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment. Recently, neither an arrest on charges of domestic violence nor admitted child molestation nor alleged urination on the seat of a fellow legislator was enough to warrant these offenders expulsion, but loudly protesting inaction on gun violence after three 9-year-olds are executed--and especially protesting such horror while Black-- was reason enough for a Republican supermajority to take this extreme action. In a particularly repulsive and condescending comment, Rep. Andrew Farmer, R-Seviervi11e, blamed Pearson for throwing a ``temper tantrum with an adolescent bullhorn''. He continued addressing Pearson, ``That yearning for attention, that's what you wanted? Well, you're getting it now.'' Farmer may as well have preceded his ugly rant with the word ``boy'' for good measure.

But take heart! Farmer is right in one sense--these young men are clearly going to get attention, just not the kind of attention Farmer was hoping for. This is clearly not the last we have heard from Jones and Pearson, both of whom are extraordinarily talented young legislators and orators. In fact, the Tennessee Republicans picked the wrong targets if they are hoping for this issue to go away. I personally have hope that their strong and powerful voices, particularly on the epidemic of gun violence, will not be silenced by this temporary, unjustified setback.

I would like to focus on the opportunity--and more specifically the lesson--that this sorry episode presents. Too often, white people (or any people whose own ``tribe'' acts in such a blatantly racist way) look for alternative explanations for such behavior. But if it walks like racism and quacks like racism, it is racism. Due to our tendency toward homophily, our knee-jerk reaction is to start explaining away the bad behavior of people who look like we do. But we have to stop it. And the best way to stop it is to put the episode through the ``all-things-being-equal'' test (otherwise know as the ``but for'' test), as in, would these young men have been expelled ``but for'' their race? Well, in this case, our answer was served up on a silver platter because Rep. Johnson was spared while her two colleagues lost their seats.

Typically, it's a bit more subtle. Would I have been called ``confident'' in teaching evaluations but for my gender? The answer is no, because not one single one of my male counterparts ever saw that adjective on their evaluations. Their confidence was simply assumed. Would Joe Biden have called Barack Obama ``clean and articulate'' but for Obama's race? No, because in the next breath he called him the first ``mainstream African American''. Would a young woman I recently interviewed have been asked by an older male colleague what she was making her boyfriend for dinner had the gender roles been reversed? Again, very doubtful (she swears she doesn't cook and never told this man that she does). Would George Floyd still be here today but for his race? Would a young, Black female former student of mine have been told by her White male boss that she could get promoted more quickly if she just ``told a few more jokes'' ``but for'' her race and gender? You get the idea. . .

Assumptions, stereotypes, and the natural human desire to hang around with our ``Amen Choir'' only serve to further divide us and to keep certain members of society from reaching their full potential. I suspect that those conservative, White, male Tennessee legislators would be a lot more comfortable with Reps. Jones and Pearson if they tried harder to conform to their ways of dress, behavior, speech and ``decorum''. In fact, Representative Pearson's previous decision to wear a traditional, African dashiki on the house floor really got some of those guys riled up.

But the promise of America is that it is a melting pot where we are called by our better angels to treat all fellow citizens with respect and tolerance. And the punishment for rule-breaking (or law-breaking) should be proportionate to the transgression, and the same for everyone. The quest for fairness in all areas of society, from law to politics to business to our many daily personal interactions, would benefit from the regular application of the all-things-being- equal test--``but for'' the individual's race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc, would things have played out in the same way? In Tennessee, if you're a young, Black male in the statehouse, the answer is clearly no.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I come today to be able to join my colleagues and to again ask for the question of justice and democracy and freedom, and to be able to salute these three. To say that in their name, from Tennessee, now from Alabama where teenagers were murdered, can we not do our work on the floor of the House: from abandoning assault weapons, from passing a sensible storage bill, the Emily Vaughan storage bill, to getting rid of ghost guns, to making red flag laws permanent and not voluntary--because of what happened in Louisville, mental health concerns, and a number of other places. Can we not do this?

I simply close with respect to the late Representative John Lewis. I simply close and pay tribute to him, for it was before your tenure, Mr. Speaker, that we did take to the floor of the House to sit with his leadership in the pain of another shooting of children way back during Parkland. We couldn't take it anymore. I wonder if this is not the moment when we can find common ground. I am going to look for my friends on both sides of the aisle to see whether we can find common ground on some form of gun safety legislation. Then I will say to those Tennessee Three what John Lewis said: Never give in, never give out, and never give up.

I pay tribute to them and all others who have never given up, never given out, and never given in

God bless all of you, and God bless the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, last week, we witnessed acts reminiscent of the extraordinary punitive action against lawmakers that can be traced back in Tennessee's deeply rooted racist history.

In fact, the third time since the Civil War era that the Tennessee House has expelled a lawmaker from its ranks and threatens to further inflame the partisan rancor within a bitterly divided state.

The silencing of the voices of two Black members for peacefully protesting gun violence is not only racist and anti-democratic, but also morally bankrupt, and out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe that we need common sense gun control reforms to save lives.

The expulsions of Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones and Representative Justin Pearson--two Black duly elected members representing minority districts--makes clear that racism is alive and well in Tennessee, and in America.

If we want to progressively advance as a democracy, we must recognize and acknowledge these ugly truths and work towards eradicating racism when and where it rears its ugly head.

These expulsions showcase is a harsh and racist retaliation against Representatives Jones and Pearson because they rightfully supported peaceful student protestors and demanded that the Republican majority in the legislature do more to protect communities against gun violence in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting.

I ask, why have we come this far to achieve progress for our democracy to go backwards?

What occurred in the Tennessee Legislature and to our fellow lawmakers was a blow to our democracy.

We must be cognizant of that.

This should concern every American because the hallmark of a vibrant and healthy democracy is the very thing the Republicans in the Tennessee Legislature shut down: Freedom of Speech.

It is hard to ignore the racial dynamic that played out. Its clear race is involved when two Black members were expelled and not the white member for the same alleged offense.

Tennessee Speaker Sexton comparing children, parents, teachers and their representatives--who only want children to be safe from gun violence in the classroom--to insurrectionists shows how morally- bankrupt Republicans are in our country.

There is absolutely no comparison between that peaceful protest, and the violence in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

I stand today to acknowledge, support, and engage as much as possible to make sure reinstatement is upheld, equal democracy is demonstrated across all levels of government no matter the party affiliation, and we move forward as a democracy.

We must be weary, however, that this extraordinary abuse of power in Tennessee is an ominous sign of what is currently taking place and what may still lie ahead in other state legislatures.

These anti-democracy efforts are spreading in red states around the country, including: the Texas State TEA's move to take control of Houston schools, removing the elected school board and superintendent; and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's abuse of power in removing a prosecutor for political reasons.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis abused his power by removing an elected prosecutor because he didn't like his policy positions. A federal judge said DeSantis acted unconstitutionally, but the judge said he did not have the power to reinstate the prosecutor. DeSantis is now considering removing a second prosecutor.

And in my home state of Texas, the state Government Education Agency will soon take oversight of the Houston school system away from the elected school board and superintendent. The takeover, an ACLU Texas attorney explains, ``is not about public education but about political control of an almost entirely Black and brown student body in one of the country's most diverse cities.''

Like our ancestors and civil rights legends, we must stand up and push back against these growing, dangerous attacks on our freedoms and democracy.

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.
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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Kamlager-Dove).

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Mrs. CHERFILUS-McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

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