Ugly History Of Racism Dogs Texas County Where Sandra Bland Died
By Tom Rowley July 27 at 11:59 AM
HEMPSTEAD, Tex. — Elton Mathis never expected to be famous when he was elected Waller County district attorney nine years ago, working in an office just 15 miles from the town where he was born. The last two weeks changed all that.
Now Mathis can be seen on television screens across the nation, and his name will forever be linked to Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old black woman who drove here from Illinois for a job interview and wound up dead in the Waller County jail.
Bland’s death earlier this month is shining a national spotlight on a small corner of Texas that was already facing an uncomfortable struggle to come to terms with an ugly history of racism. Lynchings were once rampant in Waller County. And as recently as 2004, Mathis’s predecessor was arguing that students at historically black Prairie View A&M University did not have the right to vote locally.
Mathis casts himself in the vanguard of efforts to change the place, even as he battles charges of racism himself and his staff endures death threats. At 39, he is one of the state’s youngest district attorneys, and he claims to be part of a more “progressive” generation.
“The county’s in growing pains,” Mathis said in an interview. “You have a newer generation that sees things different than possibly our grandparents did. .?.?. We’re trying to get rid of a lot of those vestiges of the Old South that are negative.”
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