Alabama Town Finally Has the Right to Elect Its Own Officials After 60 Years of Racial Injustice

Residents of Newbern, Alabama, a predominantly Black town, have had their leaders chosen for them for six decades, all of whom have been white. Now, after a lengthy legal battle, they are finally able to elect the town’s first Black mayor.

Only 133 people live within the town limits of Newbern, and because of its small numbers, the town was generally unknown even to other Alabama residents—at least until now.

For six decades, the small town’s officials, including council members and even the mayor, have been appointed rather than elected, and the chosen government officials were almost always white.

Leah Wong, a voting rights attorney with the Legal Defense Fund, explained, “White folks in this town essentially handed down the positions of power to one another. Throughout the decades, there were never any municipal elections held for mayor or town council. Black folks weren’t even told how to get on the town council.“

The small town is just an hour away from Selma, where the Edmund Pettus Bridge attack occurred during a civil rights march in 1965. Many members of Newbern were there that day and have been feeling the repercussions of the nation’s systemic racism ever since.

This man, Patrick Braxton, hoped to ignite change and return Newbern’s municipal administration to an elected government by running for mayor in 2020. However, things did not quite go according to plan.

The previous mayor, Haywood “Woody” Strokes III, hadn’t filled out the paperwork to run again and, according to the law, was immediately ousted from his self-proclaimed seat.

Then, they held a secret meeting in which they illegally re-elected both themselves and the former mayor “Woody” Stokes III. There were no notifications of the special election, so no residents appeared to vote either way.

Since there was nothing he could do to convince Woody and the other so-called government officials to step down and allow Newbern residents to vote for their leaders, he sued the town at the Alabama District Court.

The ruling also states that the town will have the right to vote for all government leaders in 2025 at their first election in more than 60 years.

Over the years, Braxton has even used his own money to provide Newbern residents with COVID-19 relief supplies and hosts food drives and many other necessary community events.

She continued, “This case matters so much because, on its face, it sounds so absurd that this could happen, but we see it mirrored in different parts of society all the time. It’s not until we challenge those conditions do we realize how much work is being done from other folks to keep it that way.”