MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Justin Pearson, one of two Black Democratic lawmakers expelled by Republican state representatives for leading a gun-control protest on the Tennessee House floor, was reappointed to the office Wednesday, returning to his seat after a tumultuous week that deepened partisan rancor in the state and transformed the pair into national political figures.

Seven local commissioners in Shelby County voted unanimously to reinstate Pearson six days after the contentious expulsion and two days after commissioners in Nashville also voted unanimously to return the other expelled lawmaker, Justin Jones, to the statehouse. Their ejection from the legislature, where Republicans hold a supermajority, followed a mass killing at a Nashville school that ignited grief and demonstrations in the capital and spurred Pearson, Jones and a third Democrat to protest in the House chamber.

The vote to reappoint Pearson, 29, was considered less certain in Shelby County, where the 13-member commission includes four Republicans. Only seven members, all Democrats, were present for the vote. Pearson is expected to be sworn in Thursday morning, resuming his duties exactly one week after his ejection.

Given three minutes to comment from the gallery following the vote, Pearson used all of them.

"A message for all of you in Nashville who decided to expel us," he shouted. "You can't expel hope! You can't expel our voice! And you sure can't expel our fight!"

Pearson, a community organizer who rose to prominence for protesting a proposed crude-oil pipeline that would have run through majority-Black neighborhoods in southwest Memphis, had been in office for just two months when he was expelled, having won the seat in a special election in January. The interim appointees will have to win special elections later this year to keep the seats. Both have said they plan to run.

Before the vote, marching to the tune of a thumping djembe drum and a brass trombone playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," Pearson helped lead hundreds of supporters on a walk to the commission meeting from the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed April 4, 1968.

Pearson cited King's assessment that the civil rights movement "lives or dies in Memphis."

"Here in this hallowed place, this sacred place, we're showing the United States of America and the Republicans in Tennessee the movement is still alive," Pearson said to cheers from supporters.

The votes over the futures of Pearson and Jones were the latest twists in an emotional, bitter political drama that spotlighted the GOP-dominated Tennessee legislature's efforts to suppress dissent and pass a raft of conservative policies over the objections of many in the state's Democratic-leaning cities. Republicans, who mostly ignored calls for stricter gun laws after the Nashville shooting, called the Democratic lawmakers' March 30 protest an unacceptable breach of decorum. The Democrats called the protest a response to Republican failures and decried the removals as a retaliatory attack on democracy.

In a statement ahead of the vote to reinstate Jones, GOP House Majority Leader William Lamberth and Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison said they would "welcome" Jones and Pearson back to the chamber if they were reappointed but advised them to "follow the rules of the House as well as state law."

The expulsions of the two Black lawmakers temporarily left more than 130,000 residents of Democratic-leaning Memphis and Nashville with no political representation in the House and threatened to deepen racial tensions in the state. The third Democrat who stood with Pearson and Jones as they used a bullhorn to lead protesters in the gallery - Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is white - escaped expulsion by one vote, and she has suggested that her race may have been the reason she was spared.

The protest may have temporarily cost the two young men their seats, but it catapulted them to Democratic stardom and dramatically elevated their calls for gun control. Protesters amassed at the Capitol ahead of the expulsion vote and have continued to demonstrate. President Joe Biden called the lawmakers, and Vice President Kamala Harris visited them. Donations have poured in for their reelection campaigns.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., joined Pearson outside the county government building Wednesday to celebrate the lawmaker's victory. If Tennessee's House Republicans sought to diminish Pearson and Jones's influence, Cohen said, they've done the opposite.

"I don't think they had any idea what was going to happen," Cohen said in an interview. "They certainly did elevate the three legislators, and they elevated the issue. They just didn't haven't any comprehension beyond their small hollers. Now they do."

In what some observers viewed as a nod to demonstrators' demands, Tennessee GOP Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday signed an executive order strengthening background checks for gun purchases and called on state lawmakers to pass a red-flag law that would temporarily remove guns from people deemed dangerous.

Johnson joined Pearson and Jones at the head of the march in Memphis on Wednesday, riding a motorized wheelchair over the Main Street trolley tracks. Johnson has unsuccessfully pushed red-flag legislation that would add Tennessee to a growing list of states with such laws.

"These are common-sense measures to make sure the wrong people don't have guns," Johnson told The Washington Post after the Nashville shooting, "and Republicans are ignoring them to make the NRA and the Tennessee Firearms Association happy. I don't understand the mentality."

Pearson and Jones, 27, did not deny that their protest had violated the legislature's rules of decorum, but Pearson described it as a "peaceful act of civil disobedience" in a New York Times column Wednesday. Republicans disagreed, with some comparing it to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and others deriding it as a "temper tantrum."

Republicans meted out swift consequences: Within days, Johnson and Jones had been stripped of committee assignments (Pearson did not yet have any committee positions). After the chamber voted 72-25 to expel Pearson and Jones, their names were quickly removed from the legislature's phone directory and website, and their seats were listed as "vacant."

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Brulliard reported from Boulder, Colo.