Voters Just Flipped a Book-Banning School Board

Extremists are losing, even in Knoxville Tennessee

Knoxville has been a Republican stronghold for a long time. Not only did Trump win the county by 20%, the last Democratic president they voted for was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944.

For years, their school board had been following a similar path. They’ve banned 123 books from school library shelves, including the 1976 classic Roots by Alex Haley. (Yep, the same Roots that taught millions of Americans about the horrors of slavery with its wildly popular TV adaptation starring LeVar Burton.)

The removal of Roots was the last straw for many parents in the community. They demanded more transparency and a new book review committee made up of school board members, parents, and teachers.

But yesterday, voters decided that wasn’t enough. They elected a mom named Brandy Jenkins to a school board seat in South Knox County, flipping the board to a 5-4 Democratic majority. Brandy had run on a platform of “giving families a real voice” instead of politicians pushing book bans and school vouchers, and it turned out that her neighbors wanted those very same things.

A standing ovation broke out for Jenkins at the Democratic watch party as her win was announced last night. “We did it guys!” she told her supporters with a giant smile. “We flipped the school board. We can actually advocate for things that are going to matter.”

Brandy Jenkins celebrates with her fellow school board members (Caitie McMekin/News Sentinel)

But Brandy isn’t the only new face on the Knox County school board. Fellow mom Breyauna Holloway also beat her Republican challenger. “Politics is not made for somebody like me,” she said. “I’m a poor Black woman with a whole lot of kids. If it was not for my kids, I would not be in the schools the way that I am.”

Breyauna, Brandy, and the other three Democratic women who now form the majority on the school board (Caitie McMekin/News Sentinel)

We’re so proud of these awesome women and excited to see what’s to come for the Knox County school board. It just goes to show that Americans, even somewhere like Knoxville, Tennessee, are sick of book bans and culture wars in our public schools.

If you want to flip your own local school board but don’t know where to start, consider joining (or starting) a Red Wine & Blue Network group in your community! As amazing as these candidates are, they didn’t win their elections on their own — they did it with the help of neighbors who shared their vision of a better future. Let’s keep this momentum going!