Sheila Stubbs says she's knocked on thousands of doors in Madison, Wisconsin, in her 12 years as a county supervisor and has never had a problem in the community.
But last month, someone called the police while she was campaigning for a seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly -- because they thought she was a drug dealer.
Stubbs is the only African-American on the 37-member Dane County Board of Supervisors. What happened to her is just the latest in a string of highly publicized incidents in the US in which police were called on black people for innocuous activities such as napping, barbecuing or meeting over coffee.
The incident happened August 7, although Stubbs is just talking about it publicily now. It occurred when she was visiting voters in a predominately white neighborhood on the west side of the city. She was wearing a name tag, carrying campaign literature with her picture on it and had a "walk list" with the names and addresses of potential supporters.
