By
Bryan Sells, Voting Rights Project at 12:46pm
Martin is a small city in southwestern South Dakota. It lies at the center of Bennett County, which is surrounded to the north and west by the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and to the east by the Rosebud Reservation. Indians make up approximately 45 percent of the city's total population, and 36 percent of the city's voting-age population.
Martin has a well-documented history of racial conflict between Indians and whites. In the mid-1990s, for example, Martin saw a series of protests over a racially offensive homecoming tradition that depicted Indians in a demeaning and stereotypical way. Also in the mid-1990s, the United States Department of Justice sued and later entered into a consent decree with the local bank over alleged discrimination against Indians in the bank's lending and hiring practices. In early 2002, conflict resolution specialists from the Justice Department came to Martin in an attempt to quell rising hostility over claims of racial discrimination against Indians by the local sheriff and his deputies.
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