PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas — When Dist. Atty. Oliver Kitzman announced his plans to resign from office, black leaders here compared it to nothing less than the Emancipation Proclamation.
Kitzman, a political fixture in Waller County who caused a firestorm last year when he questioned whether students at a local black college could vote in local elections, announced during a county Republican Party meeting that he would step down later this month. He later said in an interview that his reasons were "personal and private" and had nothing to do with allegations of discrimination.
Black community leaders, however, said Kitzman had become a symbol of deep-seated racism in their community. And that as welcome as his resignation was, they knew their work had just begun.
In lawsuits, documented complaints to authorities and interviews, civic leaders pieced together a detailed allegation of what they called a "reign of terror" shouldered by the black community here.
Kitzman and other white officials denied that anyone had been targeted or harassed because of race.
But black leaders described the county as a throwback to a time the South had tried to overcome -- a time when black men were called "boys," or worse, and whites walled off the political and justice systems to keep blacks out.
They allege not only that crude intimidation techniques were used -- rocks thrown through house windows, police cars passing slowly and repeatedly by homes of black "troublemakers" -- but even schemes to suppress blacks' voting rights.
They charged that authorities routinely declined to pursue cases brought against white residents by black residents. Conversely, they said, flimsy charges and indictments were frequently drummed up against black community leaders, only to result in dropped charges and acquittals, but not before damage was done to reputations and meager bank accounts.
"It is selective prosecution. This is the new front in civil rights," said Waller County Judge DeWayne Charleston, a black justice of the peace who repeatedly faced ethics and timecard falsification charges. He has been cleared by state ethics officials and has not been convicted of a crime.
"The objective is not to get a conviction," he said. "They don't care about that. The objective is to hit you in your wallet, to discredit you, to disenfranchise you."
