Black Alabama Man Thought He Was Mayor. White Folks Said ‘Naaah.’

It’s hardly sunny for Black people in Newbern, Alabama. It’s more a hazy shade of Jim Crow.

Patrick Braxton is Newbern’s first Black mayor in the rural town’s almost 170-year history. However, Braxton recalls that after he broke this barrier, a white woman told him that “the town was not ready for a Black mayor.” Technically, the town had already had a Black president but Barack Obama was probably easier to ignore all the way in Washington DC (presumably the Secret Service never let Obama anywhere near Newbern).

This feels like the set-up for a Blazing Saddles remake, except without the biting humor. What Braxton has endured just bites.

The population of Newbern is 85 percent Black, by the way, but that doesn’t matter much. It was almost 50 percent shortly before the Civil War. Since he became mayor in 2020, the 15 percent of Newbern residents who are white have mostly refused to acknowledge that Braxton’s their duly elected mayor.

Braxton has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the town’s white leaders of blocking him from office. They even locked him out of town hall. The acting mayor, Haywood Stokes III — a name with the distinct whiff of “Boss Hogg” — allegedly held a “special election” with the help of white town council members. Stokes “won” this Putin-style election.

Braxton further alleges in the lawsuit that Newbern hadn’t held a true election “for decades,” which is very failed state of them. Instead, “the office of mayor was ‘inherited’ by a hand-picked successor,” as if it’s Democratic House leadership. The hand-selected “good ole boy” mayor would choose the town council members, also without an election. All prior mayors have been white and only one Black person has ever served on the town council. Apartheid South Africa apparently lives on in Alabama.

Braxton, 57, is a volunteer firefighter and first responder, where he experienced the white population’s blistering hot racism. He claims he was the only volunteer in his department who bothered responding to a tree fire near a Black resident’s home. So much for those much-vaunted “small town” values. While Braxton worked to put out the fire, a white volunteer tried to take the keys from his fire track so he couldn’t use it. Perhaps the tree resembled a cross.

Braxton described overhearing an emergency dispatch call for a Black woman who was having a heart attack. When he tried to retrieve the automated external defibrillator, or AED machine, from the fire station, he discovered that the locks were changed. He raced back to his house for his personal machine, but he wasn’t able to make it back in time to save her.

So Braxton rightly “had concerns that the town council and mayor were not responding to the needs of the majority Black community,” especially during the COVID-19 pandemic that disproportionately impacted Black people while white elected officials in the South resisted sensible mitigation measures.

Braxton looked into running for mayor and Stokes, ever the sportsman, graciously provided Braxton with the “wrong information about how to qualify” for the election, and didn’t offer public notice to residents that the election was even taking place. We assume he didn’t want to embarrass Braxton in case he lost. What a guy!

Despite all this underhanded shadiness, Braxton claims he gave then-city clerk Lynn Williams his statement of candidacy and a qualifying money order. According to Braxton’s lawsuit, he was the only person who qualified for the mayor position. Stokes didn’t even bother going through the motions on his end. Braxton was elected by default.

County probate Judge Arthur Crawford informed Braxton that because no one had qualified for the town council seats either, he could appoint people to those positions, according to the lawsuit. (Previous mayors had also appointed council members.) Braxton asked both Black and white residents to join his council, but no white person agreed to work with him. You see, he’s Black and all.

Just weeks after the election, Stokes and his own council members Gary Broussard, Jesse Donald Leverett, Voncille Brown Thomas, and Willie Richard Tucker allegedly “met in secret to adopt a ‘special’ election ordinance.” The group set a “special election” for Oct. 6, 2020, and since they were the only ones who knew about it, they conveniently were the only ones who qualified. They then “effectively reappointed themselves” to their positions, according to Braxton, and “unlawfully assumed their new terms.”

“When confronted with the first duly-elected Black mayor and majority Black Town Council, all defendants undertook racially motivated actions to prevent the first Black mayor from exercising the duties of this position and the first majority Black Town Council from exercising legislative power,” the lawsuit said.

In a response to Braxton’s lawsuit, reviewed by CBS News, Stokes and his council “admit that Plaintiff Patrick Braxton is Black and is the former Mayor of the Town of Newbern,” and denied many of the allegations. The defendants did admit that Braxton was the only person to qualify for mayor, and that no other candidates qualified for mayor or council membership. They admitted that a special election was held to put themselves in town council positions, and “admit that Defendant Stokes became Mayor of the Town of Newbern after Plaintiff Braxton lost the position by operation of law.” 

Yeah, so, like … damn.

This is the history Republicans don’t want kids learning — precisely because it’s still going on today.

[Capital B News / CBS News]

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