Walter Burton carried Fort Bend's Reconstruction politics to the Texas Senate

Fort Bend's postwar government included Black officeholders with names worth remembering. Walter Burton served as sheriff and tax collector. Shade Croome was a justice of the peace, and Tom Taylor was a county commissioner.

Burton had been brought to Texas while enslaved and learned to read and write. After emancipation, he bought land and entered politics. Voters elected him sheriff and tax collector in 1869, then sent him to the Texas Senate in 1873.

In Austin, Burton championed Black education and helped advance a bill to establish Prairie View Normal School. His Fort Bend story reaches from the county sheriff's office to what became Prairie View A&M University.