Tennessee House Republicans said it was a just a matter of decorum, the need to behave properly in the historic chamber of the State Capitol.

Two newly elected Black lawmakers had disrupted the sanctity of the chamber, Republicans said, when the young legislators yelled into bullhorns and chanted with gun control advocates during a protest that filled the gallery in the wake of a Christian school shooting last month that left six dead. A White female lawmaker had joined them and the trio — Justin Jones, 27, Justin Pearson, 29, and Gloria Johnson, 60 — quickly became known as the “Tennessee Three.”

Now the Republican supermajority — largely White and male — was set to take a vote Thursday to expel the lawmakers, overriding the will of thousands of voters in an unprecedented act of retaliation to silence its opponents. Their action risked further scarring a state with a legacy of brutal battles over race and power.

They were set to make history in a building already steeped in it. The 1859 State Capitol was built by enslaved people, and in 1866, the House expelled members who tried to block citizenship for formerly enslaved people. And Jones himself led a long campaign to remove a bust of an early Ku Klux Klan grand wizard from the building, taken down just in 2021.

What you’re really showing for the world is holding up a mirror to a state that is going back to some dark, dark roots,” said Jones, a Vanderbilt University divinity student who spoke in a preacherly cadence. “A state in which the Ku Klux Klan was founded is now attempting another power grab by silencing the two youngest Black representatives and one of the only women Democratic women in this body. That’s what this is about. Let us be real today.”

Try to get along, the mostly White, aging lawmakers chided the younger Black lawmakers during more than six hours of proceedings. Let others have a chance to speak, they said. Don’t elevate yourself above the victims of the tragedy, whose bodies aren’t even yet in the ground, one said.

Above their heads, the gallery was packed with protesters and the voices of others chanting outside the doors echoed through the chamber: “Shame. Shame. Shame.”

Don’t do this, the Democrats urged. The Republicans had acted in haste, they said. There was no investigation. No report.

“For a simple rule violation we have elevated this to the highest level of admonishment. That’s not democracy,” said state Rep. Karen D. Camper (D), 65, of Memphis. “I beg of you not to do that today. History will reflect it. And I am hoping you decide to be on the right side of history at this moment in time.”