Volusia County, Florida — This was one of the last places in the South to end segregation, a land today of gun enthusiasts and NASCAR, where Jews are still cautioned not to draw attention by hanging mezuzahs on their doors, and local history books say little, or nothing, about African-American life here. The most notable change in the county’s demographics in the generations since Jim Crow is that black sharecroppers who used to tend white-owned farms have been replaced by thousands of undocumented Mexican farmhands.
So how, in this time of acrimonious national division, did Volusia County elect as its sheriff a man like Michael J. Chitwood, a product of South Philadelphia, a self-styled progressive reformer, a vocal defender of undocumented immigrants? How did Chitwood gain endorsements from both the National Rifle Association and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and decisively defeat both the favorite of the good-ol’-boy network and the darling of the deputies union?
[For more on this story by SIMONE WEICHSELBAUM, go to https://www.themarshallproject...orm-to-trump-country]
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