Black History Month Profile Series: Ernie Chambers

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Black History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable Black Americans whose work affect­ed the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The first in the series is retired Nebraska state sen­a­tor Ernie Chambers. 

As a trail­blaz­ing fig­ure in Nebraska pol­i­tics, Ernest ​“Ernie” Chambers is best known for his unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to jus­tice and equal­i­ty. Elected in 1970, Chambers served in the Nebraska state leg­is­la­ture for 46 years. Throughout his career, Chambers cham­pi­oned a vari­ety of caus­es, includ­ing equal pen­sions for women, the ces­sa­tion of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools, and the elim­i­na­tion of sales tax on gro­ceries. Across 36 leg­isla­tive ses­sions, he spon­sored bills to abol­ish the death penal­ty, includ­ing the 2015 bill that tem­porar­i­ly repealed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Nebraska. Sen. Chambers said his mis­sion was to serve ​“the least, the last, and the lost,” a tes­ta­ment to his ded­i­ca­tion to the mar­gin­al­ized and underserved. 

When the leg­is­la­ture debat­ed whether to over­ride Governor Pete Ricketts’ veto of the 2015 death penal­ty abo­li­tion bill, Sen. Chambers said, ​“This will be the shin­ing moment of the Nebraska Legislature. The world, by anybody’s reck­on­ing, is a place filled with dark­ness, con­tention, vio­lence. We today can move to lift part of that cloud of dark­ness that has been hov­er­ing over this state for all these years.” The bipar­ti­san 30 – 19 vote made Nebraska the 19^th state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Gov. Ricketts lat­er per­son­al­ly fund­ed and led an effort to rein­state the death penal­ty via vot­er ref­er­en­dum, and in 2016, Nebraska vot­ers over­turned the state legislature’s decision.

Sen. Chamber’s effort to end the death penal­ty began in 1971 when he vis­it­ed a pen­i­ten­tiary: ​“I don’t see how any­body comes out of prison with­out being filled with an unrea­son­ing, bit­ter hatred.” In his own words, ​“Since I was first con­scious of the dif­fer­ence between right and wrong, I have been opposed to the death penal­ty. My argu­ment is sim­ple: Nobody should kill any­body. And killing some­one as pun­ish­ment is the most bar­bar­ic act of all.” 

Sen. Chambers’ jour­ney into the world of activism and pol­i­tics began with a moment that shaped his under­stand­ing of the pow­er of words. As a young Black man work­ing in a local post office, he spoke out against work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion, only to be fired in retaliation. 

Sen. Chambers retired from the leg­is­la­ture in 2021 when he reached the state’s term lim­it. His god­daugh­ter and fel­low leg­is­la­tor, Senator Patty Pansing Brooks, gave a speech hon­or­ing him at his retire­ment. She described Sen. Chambers as a man who stands as a bea­con of resilience: ​“Senator Chambers is also a Nebraska leg­end, whose voice rose and pierced our hearts at times when we failed to live up to our best ideals.” Brooks empha­sized that to hon­or Sen. Chamber’s lega­cy, “[we must] do every­thing we can to change things so that they do not remain the same…We must vote and believe we can help to change the world for good.”