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In rural Texas, black students' fight for voting access conjures a painful past
Politics
In rural Texas, black students’ fight for voting access conjures a painful past
By Amy Gardner
September 24 at 9:47 AM
PRAIRIE VIEW, Tex. — First came the poll taxes and whites-only primaries that targeted African Americans in this southeastern Texas community.
In recent decades, students at the historically black Prairie View A&M University were required to complete a “residency questionnaire” to prove their eligibility to vote. They saw their power at the ballot box diluted when their campus was carved into separate districts. Some were arrested when they tried to cast ballots, accused of improper voting.
Then came the 2018 midterm elections, when county leaders scheduled fewer early-voting hours on the university campus than in whiter communities nearby.
“Here we go again,” Jayla Allen, a third-generation Prairie View student, thought angrily at the time. She and other students sued, determined to fight what they viewed as racial injustice just as others had done in the past, she said.
Freighted with centuries’ worth of mistreatment of African Americans, the debate over Waller County’s election practices has emerged as a battle about more than just voting hours. The relatively narrow dispute tapped into deep feelings of marginalization and anger over long-standing efforts to keep black voters from the polls.
The intensity of the reaction in Prairie View echoes discussions across the country about racial inequality, which are prompting new examinations of past injustice to understand the present.
....
Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
Amy Gardner joined The Washington Post in 2005. She has worked stints in the Virginia suburbs, covered the 2010 midterms and the tea party revolution, and covered the Republican presidential nominating contest in 2011-2012. She was a politics editor for five years and returned to reporting in 2018. Follow https://twitter.com/AmyEGardner
In rural Texas, black students’ fight for voting access conjures a painful past
By Amy Gardner
September 24 at 9:47 AM
PRAIRIE VIEW, Tex. — First came the poll taxes and whites-only primaries that targeted African Americans in this southeastern Texas community.
In recent decades, students at the historically black Prairie View A&M University were required to complete a “residency questionnaire” to prove their eligibility to vote. They saw their power at the ballot box diluted when their campus was carved into separate districts. Some were arrested when they tried to cast ballots, accused of improper voting.
Then came the 2018 midterm elections, when county leaders scheduled fewer early-voting hours on the university campus than in whiter communities nearby.
“Here we go again,” Jayla Allen, a third-generation Prairie View student, thought angrily at the time. She and other students sued, determined to fight what they viewed as racial injustice just as others had done in the past, she said.
Freighted with centuries’ worth of mistreatment of African Americans, the debate over Waller County’s election practices has emerged as a battle about more than just voting hours. The relatively narrow dispute tapped into deep feelings of marginalization and anger over long-standing efforts to keep black voters from the polls.
The intensity of the reaction in Prairie View echoes discussions across the country about racial inequality, which are prompting new examinations of past injustice to understand the present.
....
Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.
Amy Gardner joined The Washington Post in 2005. She has worked stints in the Virginia suburbs, covered the 2010 midterms and the tea party revolution, and covered the Republican presidential nominating contest in 2011-2012. She was a politics editor for five years and returned to reporting in 2018. Follow https://twitter.com/AmyEGardner
