From the Pulpit to the Polls: Tré Murphy’s Mission for Justice

Tré Murphy knows what it means to answer a call to preach. He was doing it as a young teen. He didn’t know then how far beyond the pulpit that call would carry him.

Today, as director of community organizing at the Legal Defense Fund, he leads a national team working with Black communities to challenge racial discrimination. With the midterm elections approaching, much of his attention is on protecting the ability to vote and ensuring that Black participation means something after the ballots are cast.

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It is civil rights work. It is community organizing. And for Murphy, it is ministry.

“You never know where God is going to call you to be and how he’s going to call you to practice the ministry,” he says.

Called at a Young Age

Murphy grew up in the Methodist church in Baltimore, learning about the obligation of service. By age 12, Murphy says, he sought his purpose through God, a quest that guided him through his young adult life. He envisioned a career in the clergy, his life organized around Sunday sermons and midweek Bible studies. 

But in conversations with people in his community, he noticed a pattern: Black children going to school without adequate food, books, or support, he recalls. The same families kept meeting the same problems at their front doors.

Murphy started to see himself as a street minister, but one who doesn’t just preach the Gospel. While those he ministered to sought answers to spiritual questions, their needs — food, shelter, education, jobs — were more immediate. Murphy began connecting people to services, helping them recognize both their own worth and the power of the ballot. 

Those experiences led Murphy to a job with the Baltimore Algebra Project, a youth-run organization that combines peer math tutoring with leadership development and advocacy for better schools in low-income communities. He also began working with groups and nonprofit organizations on issues ranging from the school-to-prison pipeline to inequitable housing. 

In 2015, when Freddie Gray died under questionable circumstances in the back of a Baltimore police van, Murphy’s experience and connections became an asset. He was a key organizer during the community uprisings and helped create Baltimore United for Change to foster policy changes at the Baltimore Police Department.

That experience also sparked him to co-found Organizing Black, a grassroots social justice organization. He became the first field organizer for the ACLU of Maryland’s Engagement and Mobilization Department before joining the LDF in 2020.

From the Streets to the Movement

Murphy’s evolution from street preacher to an organization with a storied history has a throughline. To him, it’s about transforming faith into action, channeling God’s love into helping underserved communities exercise their political power and protect their rights — starting at the ballot box.

“I could not have imagined that I would have been sitting at the nation’s oldest civil rights law organization talking to individuals around how God shows up in practice,” he says.

For Murphy, preparing people to vote begins well before they arrive at a polling place.

“Folks have to have a plan,” he says.

The Legal Defense Fund’s voter information website⁠ helps voters check their registration, locate their polling places, explore early and mail voting options, review identification requirements and research candidates and issues. Available options and deadlines depend on the state. 

Murphy wants churches to help people work through those details. A reminder from the pulpit can start the conversation. Congregations can follow through by helping members find reliable information, arrange rides and identify somebody to accompany them, he says.

That kind of care is familiar territory for congregations accustomed to getting people to doctors’ appointments, delivering meals and checking on elders. Getting someone to the polls belongs in that work of looking after one another.

Vigilance at the Polls

At polling places, voters should be alert to threats, harassment or conduct intended to scare them away, according to the LDF. Murphy raises concerns about the possible use of armed officers or other armed individuals to intimidate voters. He describes that as a threat communities should prepare for, rather than a reason to surrender their participation.

LDF’s election protection guidance states that voter intimidation is illegal. It also identifies access problems worth reporting, including inadequate signs, inaccessible polling places, ballot shortages and technology failures that produce delays. 

Machine problems or registration record issues need attention. It should not leave a voter without answers about what to do next.

Voters can ask an election official for help and call the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) with questions or to report problems, including suspected intimidation. 

Murphy wants that number in people’s hands before they need it. Churches can share it alongside voting information. Families can save it in their cellphones, he says. The point is to arrive informed, supported and prepared to seek help.Ask Murphy what he will do after the election, and he makes clear that the work will continue.

His team is preparing to watch what happens as ballots are counted and results move toward certification. He anticipates possible challenges to votes and election outcomes and wants communities ready to remain engaged.

“We’re not taking our boots off,” he says.

After Election Day

His concerns reach beyond Election Day disputes. Murphy sees efforts to restrict participation and dilute Black voting power as threats to the democracy generations struggled to expand.

He also sees discouragement as a danger: The suggestion that voting accomplishes nothing, that the outcome is already settled, that ordinary people have no power worth exercising.

His answer is a question implicit in the work itself: If Black participation carries so little power, why is there so much effort to weaken it?

For Murphy, getting people to the polls is one part of helping them understand and use that power. The next part is making sure the leaders they elect answer to the people and are held to account for their campaign promises and the results in their communities.

“When the church gets activated, we know society changes,” he says.

He believes that responsibility remains urgent.

“The role of faith communities is not to tell people what to think,” he says.

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He describes the church’s task as giving people information and tools and encouraging them to act on what they believe. Souls to the Polls cannot be the end of the assignment.

“We must also organize those souls into civic power,” Murphy says. “Faith without works is dead.”

And then he makes the connection that has become central to his ministry: “Democracy without participation is fragile.”