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Black Man Elected Mayor in Rural Alabama, but White Town Leaders Won’t Let Him Serve
For three years, Patrick Braxton says he has experienced harassment and intimidation after becoming the first Black mayor in Newbern, Alabama.
NEWBERN, Ala. — There’s a power struggle in Newbern, Alabama, and the rural town’s first Black mayor is at war with the previous administration who he says locked him out of Town Hall.
After years of racist harassment and intimidation, Patrick Braxton is fed up, and in a federal civil rights lawsuit he is accusing town officials of conspiring to deny his civil rights and his position because of his race.
“When I first became mayor, [a white woman told me] the town was not ready for a Black mayor,” Braxton recalls.
The town is 85% Black, and 29% of Black people here live below the poverty line.
“What did she mean by the town wasn’t ready for a Black mayor? They, meaning white people?” Capital B asked.
“Yes. No change,” Braxton says.
Decades removed from a seemingly Jim Crow South, white people continue to thwart Black political progress by refusing to allow them to govern themselves or participate in the country’s democracy, several residents told Capital B. While litigation may take months or years to resolve, Braxton and community members are working to organize voter education, registration, and transportation ahead of the 2024 general election.
But the tension has been brewing for years.
Two years ago, Braxton says he was the only volunteer firefighter in his department to respond to a tree fire near a Black person’s home in the town of 275 people. As Braxton, 57, actively worked to put out the fire, he says, one of his white colleagues tried to take the keys to his fire truck to keep him from using it.
In another incident, Braxton, who was off duty at the time, overheard an emergency dispatch call for a Black woman experiencing a heart attack. He drove to the fire station to retrieve the automated external defibrillator, or AED machine, but the locks were changed, so he couldn’t get into the facility. He raced back to his house, grabbed his personal machine, and drove over to the house, but he didn’t make it in time to save her. Braxton wasn’t able to gain access to the building or equipment until the Hale County Emergency Management Agency director intervened, the lawsuit said.
“I have been on several house fires by myself,” Braxton says. “They hear the radio and wouldn’t come. I know they hear it because I called dispatch, and dispatch set the tone call three or four times for Newbern because we got a certain tone.”
This has become the new norm for Braxton ever since he became the first Black mayor of his hometown in 2020. For the past three years, he’s been fighting to serve and hold on to the title of mayor, first reported by Lee Hedgepeth, a freelance journalist based in Alabama.
Incorporated in 1854, Newbern, Alabama, today has a population of 275 people — 85% of whom are Black. (Aallyah Wright/Capital B)
Not only has he been locked out of the town hall and fought fires alone, but he’s been followed by a drone and unable to retrieve the town’s mail and financial accounts, he says. Rather than concede, Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, the former white mayor, along with his council members, reappointed themselves to their positions after ordering a special election that no one knew about.
Braxton is suing them, the People’s Bank of Greensboro, and the postmaster at the U.S. Post Office.
For at least 60 years, there’s never been an election in the town. Instead, the mantle has been treated as a “hand me down” by the small percentage of white residents, according to several residents Capital B interviewed. After being the only one to submit qualifying paperwork and statement of economic interests, Braxton became the mayor.
Stokes and his council — which consists of three white people (Gary Broussard, Jesse Leverett, Willie Tucker) and one Black person (Voncille Brown Thomas) — deny any wrongdoing in their response to the amended complaint filed on April 17. They also claim qualified immunity, which protects state and local officials from individual liability from civil lawsuits.
The attorneys for all parties, including the previous town council, the bank, and Lynn Thiebe, the postmaster at the post office, did not respond to requests for comment.
The town where voting never was
Over the past 50 years, Newbern has held a majority Black population. The town was incorporated in 1854 and became known as a farm town. The Great Depression and the mechanization of the cotton industry contributed to Newbern’s economic and population decline, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.
By the 1960s, catfish became an integral part of the region’s economy. In the 1990s, Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design, and Construction built an off-campus program called the Rural Studio to provide students with experience in building housing and community facilities for low-income residents in the state’s Black Belt Region.
A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s attempt to overhaul elections in the U.S., siding with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the effort as unconstitutional.
The Republican president’s March 25 executive order sought to compel officials to require documentary proof of citizenship for everyone registering to vote for federal elections, accept only mailed ballots received by Election Day and condition federal election grant funding on states adhering to the new ballot deadline.
The attorneys general said the directive “usurps the States’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat.” The White House defended the order as “standing up for free, fair and honest elections” and called proof of citizenship a “commonsense” requirement.
Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts said in Friday’s order that the states had a likelihood of success as to their legal challenges.
“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.
Casper also noted that, when it comes to citizenship, “there is no dispute (nor could there be) that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections and the federal voter registration forms require attestation of citizenship.”
Casper cited arguments made by the states that the requirements would “burden the States with significant efforts and substantial costs” to update procedures.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Israel launched a blistering attack on the heart of Iran’s nuclear and military structure Friday, deploying warplanes and drones smuggled into the country to target key facilities and kill top generals and scientists — a barrage it said was necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon.
The operation raised the potential for all-out war between the countries and propelled the region, already on edge, into even greater upheaval.
Iran quickly retaliated, sending a swarm of drones at Israel as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned of “severe punishment.” Iran had been censured by the U.N.’s atomic watchdog a day earlier for not complying with obligations meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Israel had long threatened such a strike, and successive American administrations had sought to prevent it, fearing it would ignite a wider conflict across the Middle East and possibly be ineffective at destroying Iran’s dispersed and hardened nuclear program.
But a confluence of developments triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the election of President Donald Trump created the conditions that allowed Israel to finally follow through on its threats.
Israel had told the Trump administration that the large-scale attacks were coming, officials in the U.S. and Israel said on condition of anonymity to describe private diplomatic discussions.
On Wednesday, the U.S. pulled some American diplomats from Iraq’s capital and offered voluntary evacuations for the families of U.S. troops in the wider Middle East. On Friday, the U.S. began shifting military resources, including ships, in the region as Israel prepared for more retaliation, two U.S. officials said.
Countries in the region condemned Israel’s attack, while leaders around the globe called for immediate deescalation from both sides. Iran asked for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
Israel’s military said about 200 aircraft were involved in the initial attack on about 100 targets. Its Mossad spy agency positioned explosive drones and precision weapons inside Iran ahead of time, and used them to target Iranian air defenses and missile launchers near Tehran, according to two security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
It was not possible to independently confirm the officials’ claims.
Among the key sites Israel attacked was Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz, where black smoke could be seen rising into the air. Israel also said it destroyed dozens of radar installations and surface-to-air missile launchers in western Iran.
Israel military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the Natanz facility was “significantly damaged” and that the operation was “still in the beginning.”
Among those killed were three of Iran’s top military leaders: one who oversaw the entire armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri; one who led the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami; and the head of the Guard’s ballistic missile program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Iran confirmed all three deaths, significant blows its governing theocracy that will complicate efforts to retaliate. Khamenei said other top military officials and scientists were also killed.
The U.S. military is set to temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles while additional National Guard troops arrive in the city, a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters on Monday. The deployment comes as the city enters its fourth day of protests over President Donald Trump‘s immigration enforcement policies.
The Trump administration has pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and has conducted numerous Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, some of which have swept up individuals with proper documentation.
Trump announced on Saturday evening that he had authorized the mobilization of 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles after reported violence against law enforcement, specifically, ICE agents carrying out deportation raids in the city.
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