Tennessee Progressives Fight So-Called ‘White Supremacist Legislation’ Banning Local Reparations Task Forces

Tennessee is divided over reparations, with a black Memphis pastor leading the charge against a bill that would prohibit the funding of a proposed reparations study in the state.

Rev. Earle Fisher, the senior pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, has garnered more than 1,100 signatures for his petition against the “reprehensible legislation” introduced to the state legislature to prohibit local governments from “engaging in the vital work of studying or disbursing reparations.”

The commissioners of Shelby County — which includes Memphis — voted last year to launch a “feasibility study to examine reparations for the descendants of slaves,” the Daily Mail reported.

The vote was divided among racial lines, with all eight black commissioners supporting the measure while all five white commissioners voting against it or abstaining. 

State Sen. Brent Taylor (R) is now sponsoring SB0429, a piece of legislation that would “prohibit local governments from expending funds for the purposes of studying or disbursing reparations.”

The Republican, whose district is within Shelby County, says his reasoning for going against the study — for which the county commissioners allocated $5 million — is not a “judgment” on reparations as a concept.

“I will make very clear, our vote today does not pass judgment on reparations,” Taylor said on the state senate floor. 

“That is a very significant and very important issue for many people in our country, but it is an issue that belongs to the federal government and does not belong to our cities and counties and I think it’s inappropriate for our cities and counties tax dollars to go to such an issue,” he argued.

Rev. Fisher is speaking out against the senate bill, as well as its identical House counterpart which will be voted on Wednesday, calling it “misguided” and “morally repugnant.”

“This is not about money. This is about ideology. This is about political power,” he said in an interview with NewsNation.

“This is about people who are hell-bent on maintaining racial and economic inequities across the state and they are scared to death that the truth would come out,” he continued. “So, they don’t want anybody to study it.”

According to the reverend, the state government should use whatever surplus it has for a worthy cause like slavery reparations. 

“If the state of Tennessee has hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in a surplus, surplus means we are taking care of all of our financial responsibilities, and this is how much money we have left over. We can even call it expendable income,” he continued.

“There are other entities and organizations that get 25 times that to do something most of us will probably say is a lot less significant.”

Fisher’s petition has been supported by progressive Tennessee politicians such as state Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D), who called the bills “white supremacist legislation.”

Multiple other local governments across the U.S. have also been seriously considering reparations, with cities like Boston, Massachusetts, St. Paul, Minnesota, St. Louis, Missouri, and Los Angeles, California all erecting task forces and panels.