Tennessee...

 

The "Tennessee Three": Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Jones. The Tennessean

© April 6, 2023, the Griot Poet

My big sister was a Civil Rights Activist,

She’s retired. Her name is Mamie Douglas.

She’s not in any history books,

As women in the movement were ignored, discarded: and overlooked.

 

Think about how sad she is that,

All that marching,

All the high-pressure water hosing,

All the bricks that were thrown,

All those police batons and dogs biting,

All the arrests my Frat brother, John Kenneth Lee, bailed her and her Winston-Salem State University classmates out of,

It doesn’t look like their activism amounted to anything,

 

In Tennessee,

Democracy went on life support on Maundy Thursday.

Before the day commemorating Christ’s crucifixion,

 

They voted to expel three Democratic lawmakers:

 

Knoxville’s Representative Gloria Johnson, a former teacher who witnessed the terror of her students, survived a school shooting.

Representative Justin Jones, Nashville, who got shoved by a Republican member,

And Representative Justin Pearson, Memphis, where Dr. King and Tyre Nichols were murdered,

He managed to channel Martin and Malcolm simultaneously in his eloquence,

They were all backbenchers in a lower chamber until this incident.

 

Representative Lamberth told the truth:

“It’s not about the rules.”

 

You can’t ban books fast enough!

You can’t criminalize drag shows fast enough!

You can’t rip away the bodily autonomy of women fast enough!

 

Tennessee: congratulations! You just put “woke” on steroids!

 

When they expelled Jones and Pearson, two black men,

The descendants of Klansmen probably called them “uppity,”

Keeping Gloria Johnson was a ploy to sow division.

“It might have to do with the color of our skin,” she said.

Gloria Johnson, my fellow teacher, is standing with them.

 

Racism is a simple formula:

Racism equals prejudice plus political power!

We know that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

So do Republican supermajorities,

North Carolina has one since former Democrat Tricia Cotham switched parties in Kristen Senema fashion,

I wonder how much dark money Trish received to make that happen.

The only black man who died in Covenant was its custodian.

One of the children slaughtered was the pastor’s daughter.

The Principal killed was a friend of the First Lady of Tennessee!

 

And yet, before that,

Bill Lee signed his open carry contract with hell at the campus of a gun manufacturer!

Governor’s office? Crickets!

 

Tennessee,

It's the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan,

After cross-burnings,

Burnings at [the] stake, and taking pictures for sadistic postcards,

Castrations,

Cutting ears and noses and fingers as souvenirs!

Hanging men and women (some pregnant),

Yet, they’re not designated, domestic terrorists.

Nashville used to have a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest!

The first grand dragon of this evil empire,

A statue that many racist lawmakers didn’t want to part with,

 

I was wondering why the Republican legislature,

Didn’t parade from the floor in full Klan regalia,

The confederacy was proto-fascism.

In this undemocratic action,

Tennessee showed us exactly what “MAGA” means!

 

Hitler got some of his most sadistic ideas,

From the example of the so-called “United States,”

Some were so depraved the Nazis couldn’t mimic them,

But they sure took eugenics and put it on steroids,

Six million people were exterminated,

Right after they burned books before Auschwitz,

Its modern analog is book banning,

Check this:

You can exterminate a people when you destroy their history.

 

Think about how sad my sister is,

All that marching,

All the high-pressure water hosing,

All those police batons and dogs biting,

All the arrests,

All the near misses with death,

“Make America great again,”

It is a return to Confederate fascism!

My sister and a lot of activists didn’t think they would be successful,

 

It was in that darkness,

One of our Civil Rights ancestors,

US Congressman John Lewis,

He got his head cracked on the bridge named for Edmund Petis,

A grand dragon of his Tennessee coven,

Despite that:

We got the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act in succession.

 

African Americans, Asian-Pacific Islanders, Immigrants, Hispanics/Latinos, LGBTQ, Women,

 

A better world is coming!

The right is going crazy because they know they can’t stop it!

 

If he were alive in Tennessee today, Dr. King would have called the Tennessee legislature the “children of darkness.”

 

The “children of darkness” inadvertently propelled “The Tennessee Three” to international prominence.

 

The Third Reich was defeated.

Lord Palpatine was pitched into the abyss by his apprentice in “Return of the Jedi,”

A double entendre on the ascension of Luke Skywalker and the redemption of his father, Anakin,

Civil Rights went from movement to legislation.

By the way:

We also need to kick off the Supreme Court, the corrupt, oligarch-bought Clarence Thomas; just saying!

 

Justin Pearson said:

“Resurrection is a promise and a prophecy from the cotton fields.”

The “children of darkness” will be defeated,

The true “children of light” need to keep voting and fighting!

“Don’t get weary in well doing.”

Keep grinding,

Keep demonstrating,

Keep posting,

Keep motivating,

Keep getting in “good trouble” for our brother, John Lewis,

And keep VOTING!

Rename that bridge in Selma for him,

I have never had more confidence that:

You will save the planet!

My sister passes the torch to a worthy generation.

Go out now, and first save this nation.