After the “Tennessee Three”-  Rep. Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson and Justin Pearson took to the house floor to protest gun violence, the 2 Black legislatures were expelled, and the partisan punishment smacked of familiar racism.

The Old South rose again in the Tennessee State House yesterday, even as they sunk to a new low.

Score one for the Lost Cause.

When three brave legislators spoke out about banning assault rifles in a state that just saw the tragic slaughter of nine years old school children, two representatives were expelled by the Republican legislation

All three Tennesseans were duly elected Democrats.

Two were black

Guess who got thrown out?

In a chivalrous nod to the glory of the old South, the southern white lady was saved while the two black scoundrels were removed from office.

First, the Tennessee legislatures tried to ban drag shows now they are dragging their state back to its dark history of systemic racism.

They won’t ban guns but they will ban the dangerous teaching of critical race in school,  whitewashing history, and the total erasure of the experience of Tennesseans of color.

When it comes to race discrimination, Tennessee’s history past and present are pretty shady

A bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest is displayed in the Tennessee State Capitol Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Tennessee’s public spaces were once littered with bronze monuments and statues of local boy makes good General Nathan Bedford Forrest, beloved  slave trader and the grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan

It took until the summer of 2021 for a bust of the Confederate General to be removed from the state capital in Nashville. In response, Lt. Governor Randy McNally who voted against the removal complained that “ the woke mob means ultimately to uproot and discard not just southern symbols but American heroes and history as well.”

America’s Heroes

Tennessee members of the KKK participate in Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Birthday march 2021

All American heroes like members of the KKK, Tennessee’s homegrown terrorist organization, perhaps?

In 1865 just eight months after the end of the civil war a group of Confederate veterans convened in Pulaski, Tennessee to form a secret society that they christened The Klu Klux Klan. Originally formed as a social club it quickly grew to be a violent terrorist organization that sought to push back against key Reconstruction policies championed by Radical Republicans in Congress — policies that for the first time enfranchised former African-A American slaves.

Two Members of the Klu Klux Klan in their Disguises published in Harpers Weekly  Dec 19,1868 Harpers Weekly Archives

By 1868, the Klan had evolved into a hooded terrorist organization to restore white supremacy that its members called “The Invisible Empire of the South.” The reorganized Klan’s first leader, or “Grand Wizard,” was Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had been a Confederate general during the Civil War.

The KKK was dedicated to the suppression of reconstruction reforms and sought to restore white supremacy through terrorist activity,

“Visit of the Ku-Klux” by Frank Bellew (1872) depicts two members of the Ku Klux Klan entering an African American household and prepare to commit violence. Bellew’s portrait is one of the most visceral depictions of KKK violence during the Reconstruction era. Library of Congress

In the name of preserving law and order in a white-dominated society, Klansmen violently punished newly freed blacks for a variety of reasons, including behaving in an “impudent” manner toward whites. The Klan sought to do away with Republican influence in the South by terrorizing and murdering its party leaders and all those who voted for it

The KKK wearing the disguise of long flowing white robes and hoods capped by horns, and claiming to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers, performed heinous acts of violence against African Americans, especially those running for office in the South.

The ghosts of the Confederacy still haunt the Tennessee State House.