Justin Pearson, a Black Democratic lawmaker from Tennessee who was expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives for staging a gun-control protest on the House floor, has been reinstated. Pearson returned like a boomerang to his seat after a whirlwind week that deepened the state’s partisan rancor and catapulted him and his fellow lawmaker, Justin Jones, into national political stardom. Pearson, 29, was reappointed with a unanimous vote by the Memphis Shelby County commission, all Democrats.

After the vote, an exuberant Pearson had just three minutes to speak from the gallery, but he made sure to use every last second. “A message for all of you in Nashville who decided to expel us,” he bellowed. “You can’t expel hope! You can’t expel our voice! And you sure can’t expel our fight!”

Before the vote, Pearson put on his drum major hat and marched to the commission meeting with hundreds of supporters in tow, led by a thumping djembe drum and a brass trumpet tooting “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The source of the sonic cacophony was the National Civil Rights Museum, located at the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968. At the hallowed site, Pearson thundered that the civil rights movement in Memphis still lived, a message for the Republicans in Tennessee and the entire United States of America.

The reinstatements of Pearson and Jones have brought fresh twists to an emotional political drama that has highlighted the GOP-dominated Tennessee legislature’s efforts to stifle dissent and pass conservative policies over the objections of the state’s Democratic-leaning cities. The fallout from their expulsion has transformed the two lawmakers into Democratic icons, with Pearson and Jones now enjoying the support of donors, President Biden, and Vice President Harris.

If the Tennessee Republicans had aimed to weaken Pearson and Jones’s influence, their plan had clearly backfired, as U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) observed outside the county government building Wednesday: “They certainly did elevate the three legislators, and they elevated the issue. They just didn’t have any comprehension beyond their small hollers. Now they do.”