19 Black Women Elected Judges in One Texas County

19 Black women were elected judges in a single Texas county.

“Here we are here in Texas, which is, you know, historically and politically a very conservative state and we made it. We got elected,” stated one of the judges-elect Germaine Tanner. “The people said it was time for a change.”

The group ran on a Democratic ticket for positions in Harris County, the largest county in Texas and the third largest in the U.S. The women were dubbed online as the #Houston19.

“Going into this, it wasn’t to make history, you know, I don’t think we realized the magnitude of what we were doing until we were, you know, it was after the primaries and everybody had won their respective primaries and we look around and we’re saying, wait a minute, it’s 19 of us and we’re African American and I don’t think this has happened anywhere,”Tanner said.

Harris County is extremely diverse. Of its 4.5 million people, 70% are non-white. However, according to a report by the Houston Chronicle, roughly 96% of youth sent to state lockups were children of color.

In January, the women will begin their four-year terms in the county’s civil, criminal, family, and probate courts.