Thompson refused.
“Folks I do know fought and died on this nation for me to have the suitable to constitute them and for them to have the suitable to vote,” Thompson instructed CNN. “I am not going to let any insurrectionist, rioter, loopy individual come right here and take this pin.”
For Thompson, main the Congressional investigation into the assault on america Capitol comes with an unheard of mandate of reminding electorate how a lot was once nearly misplaced that day. “Our democracy is at stake,” Thompson says. “We need to shield our democracy. We need to shield our executive.”
For Thompson, 74, chairing the Jan. 6 committee could also be about how his personal private historical past has come complete circle.
As a manufactured from the Jim Crow south, Thompson sees the suitable to vote — and be counted appropriately in a unfastened and honest election — as his existence’s paintings.
Thompson’s congressional colleagues perceive the historical past. “It is an atypical arc in a political profession,” says Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a January 6 committee member. “He needed to fight for illustration on the native degree, on the county degree, on the federal degree.”
Certainly, as Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, any other January 6 committee member, issues out, “It wasn’t imaginable in his state for an individual of colour to be elected till vote casting rights law.”
Reuben Anderson, a former Mississippi State Ideal Court docket Justice, concurs.
“Such a lot of Mississippians misplaced their lives over a the suitable to vote. That sticks with you for awhile,” he mentioned.
Or a life-time.
In Washington, Thompson is “Mr. Chairman,” however in his fatherland of Bolton, Mississippi, he is nonetheless Bennie. House each weekend, again to the similar small the city the place he ran as mayor within the Nineteen Seventies, Bennie is a standard presence in his district. His just right buddy, NAACP Chair Derrick Johnson, mentioned Thompson’s house place of business is sort of a the city lounge.
“Folks stroll in, they sit down down, they move get one thing to drink…It is just like the neighborhood place of business,” Johnson mentioned.
And he is by no means left the neighborhood. Thompson lives in the similar brick ranch area, in the similar inexpensive housing neighborhood he fought to construct as mayor. And when he is house, he drives round his 300 mile-long district, which contains a lot of the capital town Jackson and the agricultural Mississippi Delta. He loves to go back and forth along with his fishing pole and weapons within the truck. “I can name pals and say, ‘Glance, I will be within the house. Let’s move searching.'”
They usually move.
It is acquainted terrain to Thompson, as are the reminiscences of the deeply segregated South, the place he went to colleges attended best by way of Black scholars. His early training was once at The “Bolton Coloured Faculty.” It was once with out indoor plumbing and had no cafeteria, no library, no counselor. There have been no new books.
“I had by no means long gone to college with a White scholar,” he remembers. “I had by no means been taught by way of a White instructor”
Till faculty in 1964.
The personal, desegregated Tougaloo Faculty was once a revelation for the younger Thompson: no longer best was once he in categories with White scholars, however he may additionally listen Black leaders talk to a mixed-race target market — one thing that was once nonetheless no longer allowed in public constructions in Mississippi.
Again then, the Black Energy motion discovered its voice at Tougaloo Faculty, and Thompson discovered his.
Thompson made up our minds Mississippi would stay his house and lifelong undertaking, and he began by way of registering electorate — together with his mom.
“I instructed my mom how excited I used to be to visit Sunflower nation to lend a hand check in deficient African American citizens, to check in and vote. And my mama mentioned, you realize, ‘We do not vote right here in Bolton.'”
Thompson modified that.
For years, the courts turned into his battleground as his native election wins had been persistently challenged. And when he turned into Bolton’s first Black mayor in 1973 — profitable by way of simply 18 votes — he was once sued as soon as once more by way of a White challenger.
“Folks mentioned someway I cheated, that it could not be a lawful election,” Thompson remembers. “Speedy ahead. One of the most identical feedback that I heard again then resonated on January sixth.”
“I would like as an African American as a way to say to the arena that I helped stabilize our executive when insurrectionists attempted to take over,” he says. “And the issues that we will be able to suggest when followed will ensure that the ones insurrectionists won’t ever, ever do it once more.”
