Patrick Braxton said that the "minority White residents of (Newburn), long accustomed to exercising total control over the government, refused to accept his election as mayor.

A Black man who says he was elected mayor of a rural Alabama town but has been kept from taking office by White leaders of the town has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.

  • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
    100·
    1 year ago

    Braxton said in the lawsuit, which CBS News reviewed, that Newbern had not held an election “for decades.” Instead, “the office of mayor was ‘inherited’ by a hand-picked successor,” and that mayor then chose town council members, again without an election. All prior mayors have been White residents, the lawsuit said, even though about 85% of Newbern’s population is Black. Only one Black person has ever served on the town council.

    • Jackcooper@lemmy.world
      58·
      1 year ago

      Inheriting political positions is literally anti-American. We fought a war over this. Fucking Alabama.

    • ed_cock@kbin.social
      267·
      1 year ago

      Braxton was allegedly the only person who qualified for the position of mayor, according to the lawsuit. Stokes “did not bother to qualify as a candidate,” the lawsuit said, even though he knew Braxton was planning to run. No candidates qualified for town council positions, either.

      Braxton was elected mayor by default, making him the first Black mayor of Newbern in the 165 years since the town was founded.

      That’s an important bit of context, they still didn’t have a proper election.

      • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
        60·
        1 year ago

        They did have a proper election. There was only one candidate, so he won. Then they had a second, improper election where only the previous council was allowed to qualify for office or vote.

        • ed_cock@kbin.social
          222·
          1 year ago

          Legally yes, but part of the article makes it sound like there was a regular election between two candidates with everything you expect and the winner is being denied. That’s not the case and we don’t know how the citizens actually feel about this. It did, after all, take decades for someone to do this.

          Not that any of this should have ever happened in the first place, they should have just run the elections normally.

          • zaph@lemmy.world
            16·
            1 year ago

            There are a large number of local elections decided because only one person applied for the job and they don’t have any issues like this.

            • ed_cock@kbin.social
              110·
              1 year ago

              Yes, but in this case a different (much dumber) system had been established for decades without objection it seems. That’s different than just having regular, official elections with just one candidate, which is what they should have done in the first place. We don’t know who would have won if it was a normal, two-candidate election.

              This going to court is a good thing because a) anyone could have filed the paperwork and won by default, including someone who would abuse the position and be really terrible for the town and b) this is certainly the end of the unofficial-official system they’ve had and might bring bad stuff to light. But keep in mind that the article’s coming on very strong because they mostly cite the prosecution.