This is a special episode of Justice Above All recorded live at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Fifty-Fourth Annual Legislative Conference in September 2025. At the time the podcast was recorded, the federal government was deploying or threatening to deploy the National Guard to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago. Shortly after the recording, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee consented to the deployment of the state’s National Guard to Memphis in conjunction with the Memphis Safe Task Force, a local, state, and federal law enforcement task force created through executive order by President Donald Trump. The deployment in Memphis has been challenged by local and state officials.
These deployments in various cities came weeks after the federal government pushed false narratives describing the cities as having high crime rates that required federal intervention. Several states have used similar tactics to undermine local elected officials in majority-Black cities, and this tactic is now being used at the federal level with the takeover of cities led by Black mayors. This episode of Justice Above All explores the historical and ongoing dynamics of state and federal intervention in U.S. cities, particularly those with large Black populations or led by Black mayors.
Director, Thurgood Marshall Institute
Policy Counsel, Legal Defense Fund
Mayor, Shelby County, Tennessee
The National Guard was founded in 1636 as an organized militia that defended the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Today, it carries out the mission of the Department of War’s National Defense Strategy. The National Guard has a dual sovereignty structure, which means that it operates under both its respective state government and the federal government.
When deployed outside the United States, the National Guard functions as another arm of the U.S. military. This raises concerns about its use domestically. The deployment of the National Guard domestically is generally intended to provide aid during emergencies such as natural disasters. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, troops were deployed to states to support response efforts.
The military, and therefore the National Guard, cannot be involved in local law enforcement except for very specific circumstances. Collectively, the Posse Comitatus Act, the Insurrection Act, and 10 U.S.C. §12406 state that these specific circumstances include but are not limited to an “invasion by a foreign nation” or “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
However, at times, the National Guard has also been deployed to American cities in deeply concerning ways. For example, National Guard troops were deployed to Detroit, Michigan, to quell protests calling for racial justice in 1967. Michigan Governor George Romney and U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the deployment at the request of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh to respond to a multi-day uprising of Detroit’s Black residents stemming from their frustration with decades of economic injustice, police violence, and segregation. The National Guard reportedly killed at least eleven people during this deployment. Later, President George H. W. Bush, at the request of California Governor Pete Wilson and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles in 1992 following several days of protests in response to the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police Department officers who brutally beat Rodney King, a Black man.
Deploying the National Guard against U.S. residents is extremely dangerous, particularly in light of the long history of militarized policing and racialized violence targeting Black communities. Militarized policing can be traced back to slave patrols who chased and apprehended formerly enslaved Black people. From the response to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s to the War on Drugs to Black Lives Matter protests, Black communities across the United States have long faced militarized police forces in their neighborhoods, and they continue to be targeted by federal intrusions into local law enforcement issues today.
Furthermore, the deployment of the National Guard against U.S. residents is also ineffective in improving public safety. Research shows that militarized policing strategies do not reduce crime.
During this episode, Karla McKanders spoke with Mayor Lee Harris of Shelby County, Tennessee. Memphis, which is in Shelby County, has a long history of National Guard deployments.
On February 1, 1968, after a malfunctioning garbage truck killed two Memphis sanitation workers, nearly 1,300 predominantly Black sanitation workers in the city went on strike to protest their inhumane working conditions and low pay. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Memphis on March 28, 1968, and led a march to show support for the workers. After the march turned violent, a police officer fatally shot sixteen-year-old Larry Payne. The mayor requested the deployment of the National Guard, which the governor approved.
At the request of local officials, the governor deployed the National Guard to Memphis to suppress protests that occurred following Dr. King’s assassination there on April 4.
Approximately 1,400 union Memphis firefighters went on strike and walked off the job. Local police officers also went on strike in solidarity with the firefighters. Days later, more than 200 fires broke out in Memphis. The mayor declared a civil emergency and called for the National Guard to be deployed and support fighting the fires, and the governor approved of the deployment.
At the request of local officials, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee ordered a curfew in Memphis and the deployment of the National Guard across the state to quell protests that occurred in response to George Floyd’s murder by police.
Aside from domestic deployments of the National Guard, states have usurped certain functions in several majority-Black cities. Facets of structural racism, such as residential segregation and declining state and federal funding, have deprived majority-Black cities of crucial resources. Instead of addressing this deprivation, some states have chosen to intervene in local functions, such as public school administration. This promotes the dangerous narrative that Black communities cannot effectively govern themselves.
As Thurgood Marshall Institute Senior Researcher and Statistician Dr. Sandhya Kajeepeta wrote in the 2024 brief When the State Takes Over, “[S]tates usurp local political power, undermine the will of voters, and promote the false notion that local elected leaders in majority-Black cities are incompetent. Political representation through voting is vital to ensuring citizenship and full participation in a democratic society. State takeovers threaten this essential democratic principle.”
In April 2023, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed into law two bills that represent what residents and elected leaders describe as a hostile state takeover of the City of Jackson. The first law, Senate Bill 2343, expanded the jurisdiction of the state-controlled Capitol Police from a limited perimeter around state buildings to cover almost the entire City of Jackson. The second law, House Bill 1020, established a new court system for part of the city to be served by a state-appointed judge and state-appointed prosecutors, and it encroached upon the power of the county’s democratically elected Circuit Court judges by mandating the appointment of four new Circuit Court judges to serve alongside the elected judges. The Circuit Court judges hear felony criminal prosecutions, civil lawsuits, and appeals from lower courts. Together, these laws subject Jackson residents, more than eighty percent of whom are Black, to a “separate and unequal” criminal legal system controlled by the appointees of white state officials, thereby usurping the political power of the city’s majority-Black locally elected leaders. The laws have been challenged in state and federal lawsuits. Then-Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba firmly denounced these actions by the State of Mississippi, stating, “They don’t think Black people can govern themselves. They want to seize through policy what they can’t achieve through a democratic process.” In September 2023, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that H.B. 1020’s provision requiring the appointment of Circuit Court judges in Hinds County was unconstitutional because the Mississippi Constitution states that Circuit Court judges “shall be elected by the people.”
