State Sen. Jim Summerville has been stripped of a chairmanship in the General Assembly over an email. This month the state lawmaker led a hearing into grade fixing allegations at TSU, ultimately deemed a misunderstanding.
During that meeting of the Senate Higher Education Subcommittee, Rep. Barbara Cooper – a Democrat from Memphis – suggested that the Senate was on a witch hunt at TSU, a historically black university.
COOPER: “I see you smiling, but I’m serious about this.”
SUMMERVILLE: “[gavel strike] The gentle lady is out of order.”
Senator Summerville gaveled down Cooper, in part because she is not a member of the committee that was meeting. Cooper followed up with the Republican committee chairman by sending a report from the Black Caucus. It also suggested racial motivations in the grade-fixing hearing. A one-sentence response from Summerville says – in more crude language – he couldn’t care less what the Black Caucus thinks.
Senator Delores Gresham – who chairs the full Education Committee – issued a statement saying that Summerville’s tone and word choice “went beyond” the standard of courtesy and that he would lose his chairmanship.
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