Governor Greg Abbott delivered on Thursday his biannual State of the State address, outlining his vision for Texas and emergency items he wants taken up early in the legislative session.
Abbott named seven emergency items that lawmakers can vote on immediately: cutting property taxes, ending COVID-19 restrictions, school vouchers, school safety, making bail more difficult, border security and cracking down on fentanyl.
Reacting to Abbott’s address Rochelle Garza, President of the Texas Civil Rights Project, said Abbott is showing he’s not interested in responding to the needs of many in Texas. Garza is also the former Democratic nominee for Attorney General.
College Voting Site Ban
A bill filed Thursday in the Texas legislature would ban the placement of polling locations on college campuses. House bill 2390 was authored by District 72 Representative Carrie Isaac, whose district includes Comal and Hays County.
Katya Ehresman is the Voting Rights Program Manager for Common Cause Texas
Slocum Massacre Update
In 1910 in Slocum, Texas, an unincorporated community in Anderson County near Palestine in East Texas a white mob attacked and murdered multiple African Americans, the numbers aren’t clear, and there is an estimate of as many one hundred murdered.
There has been a lack of official documentation about the Slocum Massacre which is why for decades the state of Texas declined to officially acknowledge it happened. Only in the last few years that has changed due to the work of the descendants of Slocum and the work of writer ER Bills.
Now a trove of court documents about the Slocum massacre has been uncovered by Steven A. Reich professor of history at James Madison University.
ER Bills joins me to explain the importance of this find.
ER Bills is the author of multiple books including The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas, as well as other books and articles about Texas history. He has written about the discovery of the historic Slocum documents in the current issues of the Fort Worth Weekly.
