It’s a process that has become all too familiar for civil rights lawyers this past year — sitting at a computer poring over yet another video showing a state official killing or injuring another unarmed Black person. But hearing of the death of Sandra Bland in a Waller County, Texas, jail was especially challenging for me.
As a voting rights lawyer, I have spent a great deal of time working in the county, west of Houston.
I know its history of racial discrimination and how that history is inextricable from the quality of democracy available to Black Waller County residents today. And ask any voting rights advocate in the country, and he or she can confirm a troubling reality — Waller County is ground zero for Texas’ long and inglorious history of racial discrimination against Black voters.
Read the full op-ed here.
