Bradshaw to Mississippi activists: Reject ‘no chance in hell’ and run

By Morgan Jealous

Former Tennessee Democratic Nominee for U.S. Senate, Marquita Bradshaw, came to the Mississippi environmental justice summit sponsored by Jesus People Against Pollution (JPAP) with a simple message for her fellow activists to the South: run for higher office now! 

Bradshaw’s quest speaks to the depth of untapped political potential amongst Black activists throughout the region. 

In South Memphis, where a predominantly Black neighborhood was poisoned by the Memphis Defense Depot, Bradshaw’s political journey began. The military had buried chemical and biological waste beside homes and schools. The youngest residents suffered in the most profound ways. “When children grow up in polluted communities it robs them of developmental skills,” Bradshaw says. “The damage is mutagenic – it changes the DNA for your children’s children.”

Her family lived that truth. Her great-grandmother Susie died of cancer; her mother, Doris DeBerry Bradshaw, died prematurely from kidney failure after uncovering the pollution across from her daughter’s elementary school. Yet before her death, Doris “planted a seed for me to sow justice,” Bradshaw says, a seed that became a lifelong mandate.

After years of grassroots advocacy and unanswered pleas, one moment of systemic indifference changed everything. “Officials joked about losing nukes in my neighborhood,” Bradshaw recalls. “That’s when I knew protest wasn’t enough.”

Earning less than $15 an hour, she took on the establishment – running for the U.S. Senate with just $22,000 against million-dollar opponents. When told she had “no chance in hell,” she fired back: “Chances and opportunities don’t come out of hell, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.” On August 6, 2020, she made history as the first Black woman to win a major statewide party nomination in Tennessee, proving that conviction can defy conventional politics.

Though she lost the general election, 35% of Tennesseans voted for her call to protect clean air, water, and soil. She transformed that momentum into Sowing Justice, an organization that builds community power through capacity building, relational organizing, and civic engagement, helping others “actualize the power they already have.”

Following her 2020 Senate bid, Bradshaw founded Sowing Justice, an organization focused on increasing civic engagement and environmental justice. The organization is a nonpartisan nonprofit focusing on increasing civic engagement in fence-line polluted communities utilizing citizen science and Environmental Justice principles.

Her movement stretches across the South, joining forces with leaders like Dr. Charlotte Keys, founder of JPAP  in Columbia, Mississippi, who continues the fight after the Reichold plant contamination.

“Whether you live on a farm or in the urban core, we’re all still interconnected,” Bradshaw explained to the crowd at the summit. “What happens to you matters to me.”

From poisoned ground to political power, Marquita Bradshaw’s message to every activist is clear: Don’t just protest. Run.