View Comments AUSTIN — Senfronia Thompson was in her 20s and living in Houston when grainy black-and-white news footage flickered on televisions showing Blacks in the South seeking the right to vote being bowled over by firehoses and menaced by dogs straining at leashes held by uniformed police police officers. Those images first flashed nearly 60 years ago, but they remain seared in her memory. "Persons were killed, dogs unleashed on them, firehoses unleashed on them for the rights that we all share in this room," said Thompson, now 82 and the longest-serving Black member of the Legislature in Texas history. "I can tell you, from growing up in Texas, I can recall when my grandparents could not vote."