HOUSTON (AP) — Sylvia Ann Miller-Scarborough remembers when people of color had to pay a poll tax to vote in Houston. She recalls her grandmother, undeterred by such obstacles, reminding her how important it was to be heard at the ballot box.
Miller-Scarborough worries that much of the hard-won progress she’s seen in more than a half-century of voting in the largest county in Texas could be erased by Republican lawmakers. And she says it’s gotten harder to convince her own grandchildren that it matters.
“They don’t believe in voting,” she said. “They are all in their thirties, but they don’t vote. They won’t go to a political rally with me. They say what’s the use? Nothing has changed, as far as they can see.”