Fred Klonsky is a retired teacher who blogs regularly about Chicago, Illinois, the nation, politics, and culture. In this post, he draws an interesting comparison between the recent expulsion of two Black legislators in Tennessee and events concurrent with the end of the Reconstruction era and the reign of Jim Crow. There is this difference: The two ousted members are very likely to be restored to their seats in the legislature by their local elected officials. The Tennessee Three are now national figures revealing the fascist hand in the iron glove of the Republican Party when it has the majority.
Robert Smalls, Congressman during Reconstruction.
The expulsion of Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson from the Tennessee legislature has a direct historical link to the overthrow of real democracy and Reconstruction following the Civil War.
On May 13, 1862 an enslaved man named Robert Smalls, who labored on a Confederate steamer in South Carolina’s Charleston harbor, set into motion a daring plan.
As his great-great-grandson Michael Boulware Moore explained, “He saw that the Confederate crew had left, and he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not to come back until the next day.”
For Smalls and six other enslaved people and their families, the stakes couldn’t have been higher. “They knew that if they got caught, that they would be, not just killed, but probably tortured in a particularly egregious and public manner,” said Moore.
Disguising himself in the straw hat and long overcoat of the ship’s white captain, Smalls piloted the ship past Fort Sumter towards the Union blockade, and freedom.
After serving on a Union Naval vessel during the Civil War, Smalls returned home to Beaufort, S.C., and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives – one of more than a dozen African Americans to serve in Congress during the period known as Reconstruction, when the formerly-rebel states were reabsorbed into the Union, and four million newly-freed African Americans were made citizens.
South Carolina, and throughout the former Confederacy, the era of Reconstruction saw the rise of Black political power and representation in both the U.S. Congress and Southern state legislatures.
During the 1870s, more than a dozen African American men, many of whom had been born into slavery, were elected to the U.S. Congress.
It was a great democratic movement that ended all too quickly.
Former Southern insurrectionists, aided by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, violently organized an anti-democratic counterrevolution.
Born in South Carolina, Aaron A. Bradley was a shoemaker in Augusta Georgia. Sometime around 1834 he ran away to the North, where he became a lawyer.
In 1865 he returned to Georgia. He was the most outspoken member of the Black delegation to the constitutional convention.
In 1868 he was elected state senator from the First District. Bradley rallied plantation workers around Savanah with his insistence that the formerly enslaved people be given land.
But Black political power and Reconstruction was short lived.
One quarter of the Black legislators in Georgia were killed, threatened, beaten, or jailed. In the December 1870 elections the Democrats won an overwhelming victory in overthrowing democracy and Reconstruction.
In 1906 W. H. Rogers from McIntosh County was the last Black legislator to be elected before Black voters were legally disenfranchised in 1908.
The actions by white Republican members of the Tennessee legislature to expel two elected Black members has all the stench of the overthrow of Reconstruction and the establishment of Jim Crow.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What is most galling is that this backlash is so obvious to all. Cynicism seems a quaint word for politicians who use the cult as an excuse for what they’ve wanted to do all along anyway. Not Tennessee, but topic is same:
Whoops! Meant this, sorry!:
The tiny minority of whites who benefit from the current socio-economic system need two things to sustain the support or acquiescence of non-wealthy whites: (1) Believe that inequity and scarcity are inevitable; (2) An impoverished, feared, and despised non-white population so that someone is worse off–believed to be such do to their own fault.
What is the alternative “socio-economic system” you’d propose?
We’ll, can’t provide a full fledged “system” but it certainly prioritizes all people’s wellbeing, equity, and human rights over profit for the few, rejects all forms of racism, sexism, etc and a healthy sustainable environment, a resolution of conflict without recourse to war. That’s my non inclusive shortlist.
Ah, utopia.
What an absurd posting. Expulsion was too severe a punishment, but those state legislators willingly violated rules of decorum and procedure. Imagine if three anti-abortion legislators in, say, California or New York did exactly what the TN legislators did. This blog would celebrate their ouster, and there would be no contorting of history to advance a preferred narrative.
No one has ever been expelled from the Tennessee legislature for a breach of decorum. Aside from expelling unregenerate Confederates in the 1860s, the only two legislators were expelled: one for soliciting bribes, the other for gross sexual misconduct.
Don’t predict how I would react to something that has not happened. Why do you think I would celebrate an illegal act?
Meridith: the rules of decorum were regularly bent to allow a Republican legislator to ring a cowbell. Similar disruptions go back generations. The legislature has won condemnation from both former governors, Rep Haslsm and Dem Bredesen. This is an outrage and an embarrassment for us. Our state had been taken over by extremists. They want the notoriety. Worldwide condemnation means nothing to these people, who hold their bowels in their skull.
As kids we used to call people who couldn’t think very well “Shit for brains.” I guess a more acceptable phrase is “Bowels for brains”, eh!
Actually, I don’t have to imagine anything. I watched the State of the Union live. Decorum indeed. Absurd doesn’t begin to describe the depths of inanity of this comment.
@Meredith Vikster: There is nothing absurd about addressing gun control and the obstinacy of the GOP. You admit that expulsion was too severe. The 3 Democratic legislators had no choice but to violate decorum because they were/are up against a GOP controlled legislature that stymies and surpresses them at every turn. The GOP is the problem nationally as well, it stands in the way of any gun controls and proposed weapons bans.
The Democratic minority in the Tennessee legislature complained that they were not given time to speak on issues and that their microphones were cut off whenever the leaders wanted to.
“In the December 1870 elections the Democrats won an overwhelming victory in overthrowing democracy and Reconstruction.”
New era, new quote:
In November 2020, while supporting a traitorous, serial liar of a former president, #45, fascist MAGA-RINO Republicans lost the presidential election, won a meager majority in the House of Representatives, but lost the U.S. Senate by a sliver, failing to overthrow democracy in the 21st century.
When Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel 2 Black members — Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — they revealed their resemblance to the anti-democratic, authoritarian Redeemers of more than a century ago.
The White Southern REDEEMERS took over state legislatures.
To disenfranchise Black voters. Bar Black people from holding political office. Establish a politics making the White power structure impervious to disruption. 1868-2023!
Jemar Tisby is a professor of History at Simmons College of Kentucky.
He is the author of the books “The Color of Compromise” and “How to Fight Racism.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/08/opinions/tennessee-three-expulsion-redeemers-tisby/index.html
Refer also to C Van Woodward’s work, in which he traces the career of Tom Watson. Woodward points to the use of racism to disenfranchise not only freed slaves, bout poor whites as well.
I grew up in an oligarchy trying to find its way out of the forest created by the age of white supremacy.
We had come far before this present unpleasant reinvigoration of the buffoonery
The term “redeemer” is a wonderful example of how we have let a lie enter our vocabulary. They redeemed nothing other than the superiority they had prior to the Civil War under new rules. Part of teaching history of this age includes putting this term in its rightful context. Redemption in the way we have all come to understand the term was the last thing on their minds.
To an extent, historians have used this term ironically, depending on the period of historiography.
The tiny minority of whites who benefit from the current socio-economic system need two things to sustain the support or acquiescence of non-wealthy whites: (1) Belief that inequity and scarcity are inevitable; (2) An impoverished, feared, and despised non-white population so that someone is worse off–believed to be do to their own fault.
May I add a third? Perpetuation of the myth that everyone has opportunity to achieve the American Dream. White southerners and their offspring around the country feel they are entitled to it. Perhaps that’s the lottery corollary to point one above.
Yes. The “everyone has an opportunity” myth is often paired with “if you work hard and play by the rules,” repeated by Democrats too, suggests that failure to “climb the ladder” is a failing of “personal responsibility” rather than systemic racism and inequity.
I would recommend Kenneth Stamp’s book The Era of Reconstruction. It is short and very good.
Interesting comparison between the recent expulsion of two Black legislators in Tennessee and events concurrent with the end of the Reconstruction era and the reign of Jim Crow. There is this difference: The two ousted members are very likely to be restored to their seats in the legislature by their local elected officials. The Tennessee Three are now national figures revealing the fascist hand in the iron glove of the Republican Party when it has the majority.
Robert Smalls, Congressman during Reconstruction. The expulsion of Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson from the Tennessee legislature has a direct historical link to the overthrow of real democracy and Reconstruction following the Civil War.