“(I) grew up in the moral movement with Rev. Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign,” Jones said. “That’s the divinity school I can get my accreditation from for now.”
Jones further highlighted Barber’s influence in his book “The People’s Plaza: Sixty-Two Days of Nonviolent Resistance,” which documents a two-month racial justice protest Jones helped organize in Nashville’s Legislative Plaza in 2020. In his book, which features a foreword written by Barber, Jones says he has looked to Barber as mentor, “spiritual father” and a “model of faith and justice” since 2013 — the year Moral Mondays protests began.
“I am so grateful and moved every time I see and experience your commitment to uplifting the rising generation,” Jones writes.
The same year Jones’ protest movement roared to life in Nashville, Pearson helped launch one of his own in Memphis. Pearson co-founded Memphis Community Against Pollution, a group dedicated to opposing the Byhalia Pipeline, a proposed 49-mile crude oil conduit that was slated to run through predominantly Black neighborhoods in South Memphis.
Former Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, waves to his supporters in the gallery as he delivers his final remarks on the floor of the House chamber as he is expelled from the legislature, Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
The effort turned into a yearslong series of demonstrations and protests aimed at defeating the pipeline, garnering attention from national media outlets such as Vice News and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, as well as pop star Justin Timberlake. Faith played a prominent role throughout, with Pearson, the son of a pastor, often using religious rhetoric in public events.
“They believed that even in a place like this, there was hope, there was love, there was possibility and there was a God,” Pearson said in a December 2020 speech, speaking as he stood on land where, he explained, his great-grandmother raised her children. “As my mama said, it was the God that was, the God that is and will be with us in this fight.”
Groups such as the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis supported the movement, and when Al Gore, himself a divinity school dropout, spoke at one of MCAP’s prayer-filled rallies in 2021, the former vice president couldn’t help but note the religious subtext.
“I feel like I’m in church,” Gore said as he began his speech. He went on to cite Scripture no less than three times, referring to Matthew 25, Galatians 6:9 and the book of Genesis.
