Here are the closing statements delivered by Reps. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), Justin Jones (D-Nashville), and Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) before the state House voted on expulsion resolutions last week. Pearson and Jones were ousted, while the Johnson was spared by a single vote.

Justin Pearson:

All glory and honor to God, who makes all things possible. Who takes the son of teenage parents, Kimberly Owens Pearson and Jason C. Pearson, and brings into an institution built by enslaved people’s hands. All glory and honor to God, who brings those who have been marginalized and excluded into this place and tells them that you still have a voice, that you still are somebody and that the movement for love and justice cannot be stopped. Because we’ve still got a heartbeat, because we’ve still got a movement for love that needs us. We’ve still got people who are calling on us to act and to do something, to all you who still believe that the best days for democracy are ahead. For all of you who still believe that our better days in Tennessee are ahead.

I want to tell you that I still believe with you. And how is it — that even now with this persecution on this holy week after my own brother Justin Jones, Representative Jones, gets expelled from the House — that we still have hope and faith and belief that the democracy of Tennessee, faith hope and the belief in the democracy of the United States of America? How is it that you still have hope, you descendant of enslaved people? How is it that you still have hope? Well, it’s because even from the bottom of slave ships. my people didn’t quit. Even in cotton fields and rice fields, my people didn’t quit. Even when they were whipped and chained and told they had no name, my people didn’t quit. Even when they incarcerated us, locked us up for a crack cocaine epidemic created by President Ronald Reagan to fund their war in South America, my people didn’t quit. Even when they defunded our schools, separated us and called us colored and white, even when they put us on lynching trees in the state of Tennessee, specifically in Shelby County, my people did quit.

Even now, as our own brothers and sisters lay to rest, because of the failure of people in positions of power to do something — because people are refusing to pass just laws to end the epidemic of gun violence in the state of Tennessee — my people have yet to quit. And so even now, amidst this vote, amidst this persecution, I remember the good news. Hallelujah, Jesus.

I remember that on Friday, the government decided that my savior Jesus, a man that was innocent of all crimes, except fighting for the poor, fighting for the marginalized, fighting for the LGBTQ community, fighting for those who are single mothers, fighting for those who are ostracized, fighting for those persons on the periphery, my Savior, my black Jesus. He was lynched by the government on Friday. And they thought that all hope had been lost. Outside it rained, and it’s thundering and everybody said everything was over. And it was some black women who stood at the cross. It was some black women who watched what the government did to that boy named Jesus.

They were witnesses, as you have been witnesses, to what is happening in the anti-democratic state of Tennessee. They were witnesses to what was going on. And I gotta tell you, it got quiet on Saturday. Yes, I tell you it was a sad day on Saturday. All hope seemed to be lost. Representatives were thrown out of the state House. Democracy seemed to be at its end. Seemed like the NRA and gun lobbyists might win. But there was good news for us. I don’t know how long this Saturday in the state of Tennessee might last.

But oh, we have good news, folks. We’ve gotten good news that Sunday always comes. Resurrection is a promise. And it is a prophecy. It’s a prophecy that came out of the cotton fields. It’s a prophecy that came out of the lynching tree. It’s a prophecy that still lives in each and every one of us in order to make the state of Tennessee the place that it ought to be. So I’ve still got hope. Because I know we are still here. And we will never quit.