Justin Jamal Pearson was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1995, the son of a preacher and a teacher, and spent part of his adolescence in the Washington, D.C. area before returning to Memphis, where he attended Mitchell High School and became active in student government, lobbying for textbooks and Advanced Placement courses. He went on to graduate from Bowdoin College with a degree in Government & Legal Studies and a minor in Education Studies. In 2023 he won a special election to the Tennessee House of Representatives to represent District 86, becoming one of the youngest members of the state legislature. Shortly after being sworn in, he was expelled — along with two colleagues — for leading a gun control protest on the House floor in the wake of a school shooting, but he was quickly reappointed and won reelection, solidifying his standing as a bold, outspoken progressive.
Pearson first gained broader public attention through his role in organizing against the Byhalia oil pipeline, a project slated to pass through underserved neighborhoods in South Memphis and over the Memphis aquifer; his work as a community organizer helped build his reputation as someone willing to take on environmental and racial justice issues in his hometown. In 2025 he announced that he will challenge the 10-term Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District in the 2026 Democratic primary, drawing support from national progressive groups committed to injecting new energy into the party. His campaign frames itself as a generational reckoning—he speaks of necessity rather than critique, saying the district needs leadership that understands poverty, housing instability, gun violence, climate burdens, and the gaps in health care from lived experience, not as distant policy abstractions. While Cohen is well established and has strong institutional advantages, Pearson’s backers see his moral clarity, organizing roots, and willingness to challenge the status quo as assets in a contest over the soul of Democratic politics in a deep blue but evolving district.