Pearson faces August 6 primary after redistricting split Memphis seat
More than a thousand people packed New Direction Christian Church in Memphis’s Hickory Hill neighborhood on Friday for a campaign rally supporting state Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democratic candidate for Congress, after four fatal shootings by members of the Memphis Safe Task Force over the past two months.
“Today we are in the fight of our lives to make this district, our state, and this nation better for ourselves and for those who will come after us,” Pearson told the crowd.
U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania joined the rally, which drew attention to both the task force shootings and the redrawing of the city’s congressional district after the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling.
Pearson first gained national attention in April 2023 when he and another Democratic lawmaker were expelled from the Republican-controlled Tennessee House after protesting what they called insufficient gun control measures following the Covenant school shooting in Nashville. The Shelby County Commission later reappointed him.
Tennessee lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional map in May after the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling, which effectively dismantled a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, according to the Guardian. The redistricting carved the Ninth District — the state’s only Democratic-held seat, covering a city with 400,000 Black residents — into three districts, none of which has a Democratic voting majority.
Pearson, 31, had planned to challenge longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen before the redistricting, but Cohen retired rather than run in the altered district, the Guardian reported.
Pressley told the crowd: “Justin has shown up in the quiet moments for the neighbor in need. He shows up in the consequential moments when our rights are on the line. He shows up when the nation is watching Tennessee.”
Lee described the redistricting as reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. “Memphis, I hope you know that you’re at the epicenter of a storm that’s brewing all over this country,” Lee said. “When I can’t afford gas, I don’t need a white paper on affordability … We have a lot of people who are just hoping that we can just put our heads down and get back to a normal that did not work for Memphis.”
Ocasio-Cortez said her political consciousness was shaped by the civil rights movements in Memphis, Montgomery and Atlanta. She said the speed with which Republicans redrew the Memphis map was no accident of timing.
“We are here to pick up where King left off 50 years ago,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referencing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.
She highlighted Pearson’s background as an environmental activist in Southwest Memphis, the city’s most polluted area, where he led campaigns that “forced two — not one, but two — billion-dollar corporations to abandon their projects,” according to Ocasio-Cortez. She also referenced environmental damage from the xAI data center on Memphis’ south side and the wealth of Elon Musk, which the Guardian described as recurring topics at the rally.
Relatives of some of those killed by task force agents joined Pearson on stage.
The most recent death was that of Tywin Johnson, 20, a musician with no criminal record killed by National Guard soldiers who were responding to a report of a robbery suspect downtown, according to the Guardian. Task force spokespeople said Johnson was armed but have refused to release video footage from a Memphis police street camera near the shooting location, and the soldiers were not wearing body cameras, the Guardian reported.
“Our worst fears have been realized,” Pearson said. “Let us remember these beloved families whose lives have been forever altered.”
Pearson faces M LaTroy A-Williams, London Lamar and Jim Torino in the Democratic primary on Aug. 6. Under the new map, the winner will face a heavily Republican general election electorate in November.