Addressing the crowd packed into Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia on Thursday, Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton and three other Black House speakers from around the country outlined the steps they’re taking in their state legislatures to safeguard the future of American democracy under President Donald Trump’s administration.
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McClinton hosted the three House speakers — Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown, New York House Speaker Carl Heastie, and Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch — for the discussion on America’s progress toward its founding ideals 250 years ago. Each of the speakers, including McClinton, are the first Black person or Black woman to lead their chambers.
The event was moderated by WURD radio host Solomon Jones. Attendees from around the city, including at least two high school classes, packed Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in Society Hill, which is on the oldest property continuously owned by African American people in the United States since 1791.
The three blue-state leaders from Illinois, New York, and Delaware have enshrined voting protections into state law under the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that dismantled some federal protections.
“When we talk about voting, it’s very personal,” said Welch. “When I first got elected to the state House in 2012, I won my election by 36 votes … Eight years after winning the election by 36 votes, I became the state’s first Black speaker. You can’t tell me every vote doesn’t count.”
Similar legislation has yet to become law in Pennsylvania, where the General Assembly is split, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate.
McClinton, the first woman and first Black woman to lead the Pennsylvania state House, said she was jealous of her blue-state neighbors, as Pennsylvania Democrats are vying for control of the state Senate in November. The state House passed a bill to expand voting access to include same-day voter registration in a bill titled the Leroy Irvis Voting Rights Protection Act to memorialize the late Pennsylvania House speaker, who in 1977 became the first Black person to lead any state legislature since Reconstruction. That bill has yet to be called up for a vote by the GOP-controlled Senate.
“I know I’m not supposed to be envious of my neighbors,” McClinton joked from the table set up in front of the church pulpit.
Each of the leaders acknowledged the ways Black Americans were purposely excluded from many of America’s liberties by the nation’s founders, progress in broadening civil rights since then — and how their state governments are trying to safeguard those protections under Trump’s administration. They each expressed concern about voting access, immigration, healthcare, and their state-level efforts to protect them through legislation.
“State legislatures have power,” McClinton said, noting Pennsylvania’s increased investments in public education and a focus on Black maternal health. “We are not in charge of ICE, we are not in charge of the president, but we do have power, and we do good work.”
In New York, Heastie said state lawmakers included protections in this year’s state budget to discourage U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from appearing near polling places as Trump ramps up his efforts against noncitizen voting that advocates fear will discourage American citizens from going to the polls.
Each of the legislative leaders encouraged the young people in attendance to get involved in their local government, expressing hope for the future.
“I look at pictures of my late aunt and uncle back in the 60s and 70s and I see them at protests,” Minor-Brown said. “When I see those pictures, I look at our young people today and know that’s the direction that we’re going in. That’s where we’re at right now, and that’s what brings me hope that we’re going to get to a better place. I know we will, because our young people are so energized and ready to move and ready to close these gaps.”
McClinton also noted the ways the Trump administration has tried to rewrite history just a few blocks away from Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church at the President’s House Site, where officials swapped panels detailing the brutality of slavery for ones that sanitize George Washington’s history as an enslaver.
“We see the fact that this federal administration continuously out an eraser and says, ‘Oh that didn’t happen, that’s not how it occurred,’” McClinton said. “We, in this moment, have to recommit to the promise of this nation.”
During Thursday’s panel, the speakers fielded questions on a number of current events, including about the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. McClinton recalled her experience in college at the time, and said that America is at risk of another terrorist attack due to Trump eroding the nation’s image in the rest of the world.
“Thank God we’ve not had another attack … But we have to also recognize that our policies are impacting our perception around the world,” she said.
Several Pennsylvania Republicans were quick to seize on her comments on the eve of the anniversary as insensitive and trying to blame America for the terrorists’ actions.
Earlier in the week, McClinton presided over a ceremonial session of the state House in Independence Hall, the same place where the Declaration of Independence was signed 250 years ago, and the building that also served as Pennsylvania’s first statehouse.
She stood at the rostrum, leading the same room where in 1787 the nation’s founders decided that enslaved Black people would only be counted as three-fifths of the number of white residents when tallying America’s population to calculate congressional representation.
“We are in a day where ‘We, the people’ should mean what it says, finally,” McClinton said Thursday. “But starting with the inception of this country, it did not mean all of us. ‘We, the people’ meant white men who owned a certain amount of property.”
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