When measured by the way he brightened kids’ lives, Larry Thorn was a figure of vital importance at the A. Maceo Walker Middle School in Memphis, Tennessee.
“As a school secretary, Larry Thorn was often one of the first faces that greeted our students,” reads a statement by the Memphis-Shelby County Schools. “His radiant spirit welcomed everyone into the building with warmth.”
But Thorn was not at work when he was fatally shot, so his killing after leaving his home on the night of Jan. 9 received none of the attention that would have accompanied a school shooting. Even with the added horror of him then being set on fire outside an abandoned church, his still-unsolved killing was tallied as just more gun violence in a city with a murder rate 10 times that of New York.
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The loss was monumental for the family and friends who staged a candlelight vigil in Thorn’s memory outside the Crystal Palace skating rink on the night of Jan. 20. A former classmate at Mitchell High School arrived with something that provided at least a modicum of comfort to mourners doubly chilled by the killing and the temperature dipping into the low 30s.
“He bought hot chocolate,” Thorn’s mother, Lavonda Henderson, told the Daily Beast.
The classmate was Justin Pearson. He had been a sophomore when he announced at a school board meeting that he and many of their fellow students were not being provided with textbooks. He said that he hoped to attend the Air Force Academy, but could not do his studies without the necessary materials.
"I am not a failure,” Pearson declared. “I will not allow anyone to say I cannot succeed.”
Two days later, the school announced that it in fact had the textbooks, but had placed them in storage rather than distributing them to students who might lose them. The school board reprimanded the principal and ordered him to distribute the books. Pearson told the Commercial Appeal that he had learned an important lesson: Nothing would have been done if he had not spoken up.
He set aside his Air Force Academy ambitions and adopted as his mentor a Memphis educator and community activist named Dr. Yvonne Nelson. She was 60 when she was shot to death by a 33-year-old woman following a verbal dispute last August.
Now, in January, Pearson was attending a vigil for another victim of gun violence. Pearson had just turned 28 and he was carrying the lesson of the stashed-away textbooks into electoral politics. He was a candidate in a special primary for a seat vacated by State Rep. Barbara Cooper. She was a Democrat who had died at 92 in October of last year, but had nonetheless been re-elected that November with 78 percent of the vote.
The primary was just five days away, on Jan. 25, and there were nine other candidates, including Cooper’s daughter Tanya. Pearson could have been off campaigning, but he instead stood in the cold and voiced a view of Thorn shared by seemingly everybody except the unknown killer.
“To know Larry was to love Larry,” Pearson said at the gathering.
He added, “Our entire class of 2013 of Mitchell High School is mourning and grieving alongside his family.”
Pearson also attended Thorn’s funeral at the Temple of Deliverance Church of God In Christ the next day. Others present included members of the Maceo Walker Middle School pom-pom team, which Thorn coached. Thorn had also helped oversee the band, having played trumpet, trombone and French horn during his own school days. The band now performed at this final send-off for a vital part of their school.
Three days later, on primary day, Pearson showed up at the home of Thorn’s grandmother and asked if she needed a ride to the polls. Pearson managed to garner more than half the vote and, as the winner of the primary of an overwhelmingly Democratic district, became the presumptive winner of the upcoming election. The next day, the county council went ahead and appointed Person to serve as an interim state representative.
On Pearson’s second day in office, the whole world focused on horrific video released by the Memphis police showing multiple officers fatally beating Tyre Nichols. Pearson was a leading voice in the ensuing protests, but he did not forget Thorn. He still took time to check on Henderson. And he joined the family and other friends who gathered in late March at the boarded-up church where the burnt body had been found, cellphone and wallet gone, car parked two blocks away.
“He has been really there, really there,” Henderson said of Pearson. “It’s amazing.”
The Republicans did not even bother to run a candidate in Pearson’s deep blue district, and he won unopposed in the March 14 general election. He was sworn in on March 27, the same day as the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
The GOP supermajority in the general assembly had a moment of silence for the victims and considered several supposed school safety measures that would make no significant difference. But any attempt by Pearson and other Democrats to talk about meaningful gun reform was either ignored or muted by turning off their mics.
When hundreds of students from two nearby high schools gathered at the Capitol in protest, Pearson stepped with Reps. Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson into the chamber’s well. The trio, soon to become known as “The Tennessee Three,” voiced their support for the protestors. Pearson subsequently addressed a “dear colleagues” letter to all the members of the assembly.
“I recognize that I did not follow decorum this past Thursday on the House floor, and I take full responsibility and accountability for my actions,” he began. “When I saw thousands of people—mostly children and teenagers—protesting and demanding action from us after the slaying of six innocent people, including three 9-year-old children , it was impossible to sit idly by and continue with business as usual. I could not help but think about Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, Hallie Scruggs, Mike Hill, Katherine Koonce and Cynthia Peak.”
Those were the ones who died at the Covenant School. Other names arose in Pearson.
“I thought about my mentor Dr. Yvonne Nelson and my classmate Larry Thorn, who were tragic victims of violence in Memphis last year and earlier this year, respectively. Memphis has seen a 44 percent increase in murders compared to this same time last year due to the proliferation of guns in our streets.”
He went on, “I intended to honor the Covenant victims and my own community members during ‘Welcome and Honoring’, but was not given the opportunity to do so.”
He was referring to a protocol that allows representatives to praise and memorialize constituents, family members and friends from the House floor.
‘It was untenable to hear the chants, pleas and cries of thousands of peaceful children outside our chambers and do nothing,” he continued. “That is why I walked to the Well between bills to speak up.”
The GOP majority responded by moving to expel Pearson, along with Johnson and Jones. Johnson, who is white, was spared by one vote. Pearson and Jones, who are Black, were expelled.
But as anyone could have predicted, Jones was reinstated on Monday by the Metro Nashville Council, the heavily Democratic local governing body in his district.
On Tuesday, Pearson called Thorn’s mother, Henderson, and asked her to meet at 11:30 a.m. the following day at the Civil Rights Museum, which occupies the onetime Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated. She and the memory of her son will join Pearson in marching the 1.2 miles to the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, which is expected to immediately reinstate him to the state Assembly.
In the meantime, the Tennessee Three appear to have successfully applied to gun control a variation of the stashed textbook lesson. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced on Tuesday that he was signing an executive order to “keep guns away from dangerous people.”
“When there is a clear need for action, I think that we have an obligation, and I certainly do, to remind people that we should set aside politics and pride and accomplish something that the people of Tennessee want to see get accomplished,” said Lee.
That, from a governor who has always put politics and pride first—until the body count made it untenable.
The tally now includes a father in Memphis who was shot to death on Sunday while preparing to join his kids on an Easter Egg hunt.
