Halls Hill native recalls making history with Civil Rights-era lawsuit over voting in Arlington

Halls Hill native recalls making history with Civil Rights-era lawsuit over voting in Arlington

As a 23-year-old voter in still-segregated 1960s Virginia, Portia Haskins was convinced she had followed all the rules in order to cast a ballot in Arlington. Election officials disagreed, saying she had failed to pay the appropriate poll tax still required in the Old Dominion, maintained in part to disenfranchise Black voters. Haskins took the