It's 2018, right? Rachel Maddow suggested during this segment that sure, it feels like the TV should be black and white because this is some Jim Crow / Mississippi Burning BS right here.

Talking Points Memo is the source for the story, as a Democratic field operative is arrested after dropping off a letter at the courthouse regarding voting rights and procedures for the historically Black college (HBCU) Prairie View A&M University. TPM:

By this time, Aronowitz is walking out of the courthouse with his mission accomplished when he’s stopped by a county sheriff’s deputy who asks who he is and what he’s doing. Soon enough Aronowitz is surrounded by a court bailiff, a sheriff’s deputy and a city police officer. Aronowitz asks whether he is free to go or whether he’s under arrest. He also calls the candidate, Mike Siegel, who’s also a civil rights attorney. So Siegel is listening to the conversation and advising Aronowitz what to do as he’s being questioned and not allowed to leave.

Siegel didn’t say this to me in so many words. But from his description of the back and forth, it seems like that the law enforcement officers weren’t happy with Aronowitz but weren’t clear what exactly they could charge him with or if they could arrest him. After Aronowitz explained what he was at the courthouse to do and then identified himself, one of the officers asked Aronowitz which party his candidate was with.

Aronowitz told them Siegel was a Democrat. A couple minutes later the phone went dead and Aronowitz was placed under arrest for what he was told was “48 hour investigative detention.”

Watch above, Rachel Maddow interviews Aronowitz (who has been awake for 24 hours) and Mike Siegel, candidate for Congress in the Texas 10th district.