Texas City Votes to Leave in Place Street Name Changed to Honor Sandra Bland

The newly-minted Sandra Bland Parkway in Prairie View, Texas, will keep its name.

The Prairie View City Council voted Tuesday to keep the name for a road that leads into Prairie View A&M University and was renamed this summer in honor of Bland, who died at the Waller County Jail in July after she arrested during a traffic stop, according to KHOU.

Police said Bland was found hanging in her cell after the July 10 arrest. But suspicions arose after the release of a police dashcam video of Bland’s traffic stop and arrest. An officer had stopped Bland for failing to signal a lane change, but their encounter became confrontational, and the officer arrested her for allegedly assaulting him.

To ease tensions in the community, the City Council voted in August to change the name of University Boulevard to Sandra Bland Parkway. It is the same stretch of road on which she was stopped and arrested. Not everyone agreed with the name change, and city leaders on Tuesday heard from a divided community on the issue. But lawmakers decided to keep the new name in honor of Bland, who had moved back to Texas in July to take a job with her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University.

“The whole world is talking about Sandra Bland,” said one supporter from the council podium, reports the news outlet. “And Sandra Bland is putting Prairie View on the map.”

When the street was renamed in August, ABC 13 reported that hundreds of Prairie View A&M alumni gathered with current students to march from the student-union building to the site where Bland was stopped, and then on to City Hall, where the street was renamed.

“If every time they pull over a student, they have to be reminded of what took place here, then that will help the relationship to be more respectful between the officers and the students,” protester Hannah Bonner told the news station in August.

Read more at KHOU.
article by Lynette Holloway via theroot.com