The town of Newbern saw white officials deny its first Black mayor, Patrick Braxton, from exercising his duties for three years

The town of Newbern saw white officials deny its first Black mayor, Patrick Braxton, from exercising his duties for three years

The town of Newbern, Alabama, has not had a political election in the last several decades. But that could all change this November if a new motion is successful.

The Legal Defense Fund (LDF), an organization that focuses on racial and civil rights, along with an Alabama-based private law firm, filed a preliminary injunction to force Newbern, a town of about 133 people, to hold elections and allow its citizens to vote for the first time in years.

The town, about an hour and a half away from Montgomery, captured national attention last summer, after white officials had refused for three years to allow Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history, to exercise his mayoral duties.

Newbern is about 80% Black and 20% white, but the town’s leadership, with the exception of Braxton and his town council, has been majority white for years. The defendants in the lawsuit, including the previous mayor and council, have refused to hold elections.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
    157·
    9 months ago

    I remember first hearing about Braxton a couple years ago, when he still hadn’t actually managed to take office. (And the racist fuckers down there are still fighting him on it). The amazing thing was that until Braxton, the office of the mayor was inherited. The town leadership was quite literally landed gentry, operating a miniature feudalistic society.

  • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
    1041·
    9 months ago

    The defendants, listed as former mayor Haywood “Woody” Stokes III and his town council, held a secret, special election, preventing Braxton from appointing his town council. During their special election, the previous town council re-elected themselves, and ultimately reappointed the previous town mayor. They were aided, the lawsuit alleges, by the town’s bank and clerk. Newbern has effectively had two mayors since 2020.

    I thought the FBI came in when these fucking inbreds pulled shit like this.

        • Jtotheb@lemmy.world
          134·
          9 months ago

          Like trying to get MLK Jr. to kill himself, or you thinking more like the ‘inventing terrorists so they can arrest them’ angle

          • SpaceCowboy
            76·
            9 months ago

            The FBI isn’t exactly a small group of people and there probably aren’t too many people there now that were around in the MLK days.

            If you’ve ever worked anywhere you’ll know there’s going to be good people in the workplace and also some really shit people. All companies, government institutions, educational institutions, political parties, and yes even non-profit organizations are like this. If you measure the value of an organization be the actions of the worst people in that organization through all history, then all organizations are horrible things, and you should just go live alone in a cabin in the woods because everything is terrible.

          • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
            59·
            9 months ago

            Actually I was thinking of the incredible number of integration issues they dealt with, but sure. When you look for shit, all you’ll see is shit. It’s not the best way of going through life. It’s incredibly easy, if lazy and intellectually dishonest, to see things binary.

            • whoreticulture@lemmy.world
              51·
              9 months ago

              Was that before or after they undermined civil rights movements?? Oh yah, both, they’ve been continuously doing that for decades.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      12·
      9 months ago

      As far as they’re concerned this is a state matter. Which is hilarious because it’s a denial of their basic rights. Which the feds respond to all the time.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        272·
        9 months ago

        No it is a minority, they just happen to be very spread out and vocal. And our system of government was setup to give them a massively oversized voice on the national scale.

        • PunnyName@lemmy.world
          41·
          9 months ago

          “Much” still applies. As in “too much” of the US is a bunch of bigoted assholes.

        • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
          22·
          9 months ago

          Perhaps a minority by population (I doubt this myself) but a majority by surface area (which matters a lot in federal elections).

          • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            Yeah the whole effectively “land” votes system we use is a relic of colonization and needs to be destroyed.

  • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
    61·
    9 months ago

    It all reads like an onion skit, but it’s real. Braxton was officially made mayor in 2020 and now 4y later still has no access to the town’s official bank account, post box or even a key to the town hall. How can an ongoing crime that is this blatant, take years to resolve? Alabama I guess.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/26/black-mayor-alabama-town-locked-out

    The reason that it’s in the news again, is because mayor Braxton and a civil rights organisation are trying to have an actual election take place, which probably isn’t easy to organise if you don’t control the town’s postbox. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/29/newbern-alabama-election-lawsuit-mayor

    So after 4 years of this, the anti democratic cliques still haven’t faced any negative consequences for their clearly illegal power grab. Completely insane, I would not have expected this to be possible in any western democracy.

    • exanime@lemmy.today
      81·
      9 months ago

      I would not have expected this to be possible in any western democracy.

      It isn’t… And it’s time to admit the USA does not have democracy

      Democracy in the USA is like those sugary cereals pretend to be “part of a healthy breakfast”

  • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
    37·
    9 months ago

    Conservatism is a plague of racism and oppression. It always has been.

    Conservatives need to go to prison in this case. Where is the FBI?

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    9 months ago

    Unincorporate it and the county can tax their asses and give them nothing in return.

  • derf82@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    9 months ago

    But Chief Justice John Roberts assured us racism was over when he gutted the voting rights act. /s