Race in America It was once a KKK stronghold. Last year BLM came to town
O n June 5th last year, the town of Vidor in East Texas, home to 11,000 people, awoke in a nervous sweat. It was a hot summer and waves of anger and indignation were rippling across the country after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Maddy Malone, a 23-year-old white woman from Vidor, had been attending Black Lives Matter protests in nearby towns and wanted to organise one in her own community. She called Yalakesen Baaheth, a black friend who lived in Port Arthur, a more racially diverse city nearby. We need to do something, said Malone. Would Baaheth help her organise a march? Baaheth’s initial enthusiasm dwindled when she learned precisely where Malone wanted to hold it. “Oh Vidor?” she replied. “That might be a problem.”
In this part of Texas, Vidor is notorious for being a former haven for the Ku Klux Klan. Some 98% of the population is white (compared with 79% in the entire state of Texas). For generations, black people warned each other not to stop there even to buy petrol. Many knew the stories of the few black people who’d been run out of town after trying to settle there. In 1993 a cover story in Texas Monthly labelled Vidor “Texas’ most hate-filled town”.
