A GOP power grab shatters 30 years of political progress for Black voters in Galveston County
Community activist Roxy Hall Williamson at a new mural commemorating Juneteenth in Galveston on April 4. Last November, a white Republican majority on the Galveston County’s commissioners court voted to redraw Precinct 3 boundaries, splitting Black and Hispanic voters into majority-white districts. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune
A GOP power grab shatters 30 years of political progress for Black voters in Galveston County
Republicans dismantled the only Galveston County commissioners precinct in which voters of color held political clout. It’s a major blow for Black and Hispanic voters who had been building political momentum.BY ALEXA URA MAY 20, 20225 AM CENTRAL
TEXAS CITY — Miles inland from Galveston’s beaches and colorful vacation homes, a group of Black men dribble and jump on a covered basketball court, aiming for a chain-link net.
Carver Park in Texas City, created during segregation, is considered the first African American county park in the state. It sits on land donated by descendants of freedmen who survived slavery and pioneered one of Texas’ oldest Black settlements, the footprint of which sits just a few blocks away.
Until last year, the park sat at the heart of Galveston County’s Precinct 3 — the most diverse of the four precincts that choose the commissioners court, which governs the county along with the county judge. Precinct 3 was the lone seat in which Black and Hispanic voters, who make up about 38% of the county’s population, made up the majority of the electorate.
The precinct sliced the middle of coastal Galveston County, stretching from the small city of dikkinson on the county’s northern end through residential areas of Texas City and down to the eastern end of Galveston Island. Its residents included medical professionals and staff drawn in by The University of Texas Medical Branch, petrochemical workers that operate a large cluster of refineries and commuter employees of the nearby NASA Johnson Space Center.
The area stood as an exemplar of Black political power and progress. For 30 years, Black voters — with support from Hispanics — had amassed enough political clout to decide the county commissioner for Precinct 3, propelling Black leaders onto a majority white county commissioners court. They worked to gain stronger footholds in local governments, elevating Black people into city halls across the precinct. Two years ago, they reached a milestone, electing Texas City’s first Black mayor and a city commission on which people of color are the majority.
Members of the community attend a Cinco de Mayo festival in Texas City. Black and Hispanic residents account for roughly 60% of the population. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune
Leticia Solis approaches a group of horses after the Cinco de Mayo parade. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune
But the white Republican majority on the Galveston County’s commissioners court decided last November to dismantle Precinct 3. Capitalizing on its first opportunity to redraw commissioner precincts without federal oversight, the court splintered Black and Hispanic communities into majority-white districts.
Under the final map, which will be used for this year’s election and possibly for a decade, white voters make up at least 62% of the electorate in each precinct, though the county’s total population is only about 55% white. Because white voters in Galveston — like Texas generally — tend to support different candidates than Black and Hispanic voters, the map will effectively quash the electoral power of voters of color.
The new map was so egregious to officials at the U.S. Department of Justice that it prompted the department to file its only federal lawsuit at the county level in the entire nation challenging a redistricting plan as discriminatory.
Black residents here have often needed federal intervention to help them pursue equality and fairness. Without it, it’s possible the white power structure will never voluntarily grant them them political equity and would continue threatening the gains they’ve achieved over the last few decades.
“With the district, people feel that they have a voice and a choice. Without it, no voice, no choice,” said Lucille McGaskey, a longtime Galveston County resident whose community in the city of La Marque was drawn out of Precinct 3. “It’s a shame … that it has come to people trying to wipe other people out.”
Fighting the past
Commissioner Stephen Holmes was appointed to the role after Wayne Johnson, the county’s first Black commissioner, died in 1999. Holmes is used to casting the lone dissenting vote on the Republican-majority commissioners court. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune
Galveston’s ignominious racial past looks over the shoulders of the tourists and passersby traversing The Strand, a street of historic Victorian-style buildings just off Galveston Bay.
An imposing 5,000-square-foot mural, completed just last year, depicts the long journey from slavery to freedom that runs through Galveston. Known locally as the Juneteenth mural, it covers the side of a building overlooking the spot from which a Union Army general issued the order in 1865 that led to freedom for a quarter-million enslaved Black people in Texas, among the last to be freed after the end of the Civil War.
Galveston’s dreams of greatness in those days rested on its access to the water and proximity to cotton fields, and it boomed as a trade gateway for Texas and the Southwest. In recent years, historical markers have been added along The Strand to more fully recognize that those economic aspirations depended on the dehumanization of people kept as slaves.
The markers and the mural are symbolic, though they offer those with long ties to the area a more official — or at least public — acknowledgement of this community’s history and the way Black residents still find themselves fighting the past.
Though he’s a product of Galveston County, Commissioner Stephen Holmes did not initially grasp the significance of Precinct 3 to the community when he was suddenly appointed to the job in 1999 after the previous commissioner died. A prosecutor by trade, he inherited the seat from Wayne Johnson, who had become the county’s first Black commissioner in 1988.
Once in office, Holmes was struck by the intense pride his constituents took in Precinct 3, the ultimate spoils of a yearslong struggle to build coalitions, often assisted by federal intervention to protect voting rights. Early in his tenure, he met older voters who were the grandchildren of people who had been held as slaves. Some of his constituents had participated in sit-ins, paid poll taxes, attended segregated schools and lived through a long stretch during which their voices were shut out at the highest level of local government.
“This is a 1960s-style fight for democracy,” Holmes said from his precinct offices housed in an old Wal-Mart building turned government complex in Texas City.
Holmes — who is Black, the only Democrat on the commissioners court and the only one who is not white — said it’s impossible for him to win reelection when his term is up in 2024 given the new Republican map dissecting his precinct. He sees the effort not as an indictment of his public service but a repudiation of his constituents.
During his time in office, Holmes has grown accustomed to being on the losing end of 4-1 votes — the sole foil to the court’s Republican majority. But he has at least captured the voices of his constituents on agenda items that have recently included a local disaster declaration regarding the border, which is 400 miles away, and putting COVID relief funds toward building a border wall. He was the lone dissenter to keeping a Confederate statue on the grounds of the old county courthouse.
He has also built strong ties with his constituents in moments of both joy and despair.
Holmes proudly displays in his office a large panoramic photo of a jubilant crowd at one of the annual barbecues he hosts. The soiree is a community staple and highlight for some of the older, mostly Black residents who typically attend. In recent years, the event has included dance performances by some of those residents who dub themselves the “Stevettes.”
The photo hangs over a waiting area Holmes and his team used as a makeshift FEMA help center in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s destruction when his constituents faced hourslong wait times to request assistance through the federal agency’s disaster phone line. Holmes set up county laptops so his constituents without computers or internet could access a FEMA website and he helped figure out transportation for those who couldn’t get to his office on their own.
From left: Galveston County Commissioners Darrell Apffel and Joe Giusti, County Judge Mark Henry, and Commissioner Stephen Holmes pose for a group photo during a Galveston County Commissioners Court meeting. Holmes is used to casting the lone dissenting vote on the Republican-majority court. Credit: Annie Mulligan for The Texas Tribune
Republican power play
Set back behind a row of massive crepe myrtle trees with thick trunks that, like the rickety shiplap of nearby houses, are showing their age, the old entrance of the “Colored Branch of Rosenberg Library” sits on a quiet street near downtown Galveston in a portion of the island that used to fall within Precinct 3.Given its proximity to her home, Sharon Lewis has had to explain the significance of the relic of segregation to her granddaughter, using the same refrain she uses to describe historical inflection points to her — “a moment in history.”
Lewis was among the last to speak of the roughly 40 mostly Black residents who packed the November meeting to vociferously oppose the court’s redistricting plan. Just two people testified in support. Pastors, local officials and longtime residents took turns admonishing the court for dismantling Precinct 3, leaving hardly any room for them to participate in the process and turning back the clock on their representation. The ordeal was in some ways a preview of what they feared will result from the county’s mapmaking — that they will no longer have a voice.
The events leading up to commissioners’ vote on the map had proved to be a bold exercise of Republican power wrangling.
The proposal was placed on the court’s agenda on the last day by which the county could make changes before the March primary election. The meeting — the only one allowing public testimony on the proposal— was scheduled for the middle of a workday in an annex building at the county’s edge instead of the larger county courthouse. The room was so small that only two commissioners and County Judge Mark Henry fit on the dais; Holmes sat at a small white table down in front of them.
Scores of residents showed up and many were left in the hallway straining to follow the proceedings or hear their names called to speak.
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