Back on the job: Alabama town’s first Black mayor reinstated, sworn into office
Editor’s note: This is the fourth part of a four-part series. Read previous entries here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
It was a typical Friday afternoon in Newbern, Alabama, when vehicles started arriving in the parking lot across the street from the town hall complex.
Outside of timber-hauling season, traffic through the center of town along State Road 61 is never busy. And, since the closing of the mercantile store across the street from the town hall, few vehicles have stopped to hang around. But on July 26, several people parked and waited until newly reinstated Mayor Patrick Braxton arrived.
What was special about this particular afternoon is that Braxton, the town’s first Black mayor, was about to take possession of the keys to the town hall after a U.S. district judge in Mobile signed off on a settlement agreement between Braxton and the town on July 23.
That agreement, negotiated on Braxton’s behalf by attorneys with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and Quinn, Connor, Weaver, Davies & Rouco, ended a years-long journey for Braxton to take his place as mayor of the town. The LDF attorneys took over the case shortly after one defendant filed a motion to move it to federal court, where heightened visibility led to viral media coverage.
This was the second time Braxton assumed the responsibilities of office. The first time, on Nov. 2, 2020, he was sworn in with a ceremony in the traditional manner. But in subsequent days, Braxton said, he faced obstacles at every turn. He contends that the previous mayor and administration blocked him from accessing the city’s accounts, records, post office box and town hall while enacting a plan to remove him from office.
On July 26, Braxton waited until after 3 p.m., when outgoing Mayor Haywood Stokes III promised he would leave the keys and town documents for Braxton.
Stokes, along with the four former town council members and the town clerk, agreed to step down from their official positions as part of the settlement that returned Braxton to power. This came three years and five months after those same council members voted to remove Braxton from office. In the settlement, the town of Newbern admitted that it had deprived citizens of their voting rights for decades, because the town had held no municipal elections. The offices of mayor and council member were simply passed from one administration to another without a vote.
Braxton broke that cycle in 2020, when he qualified to run for mayor of Newbern, a tiny town in Alabama’s Black Belt region. Because no one else qualified to run, he became the mayor-elect upon the close of the qualifying period.
‘Never seen anything like this’
Unlike most transfers of power, which are accompanied by at least a swearing-in ceremony, no one was in the Newbern Town Hall for Braxton’s return to office. Former Mayor Stokes was already gone. In the rear of the building, the town’s tractor and white pickup were parked after years of being stored elsewhere.
On a small table in the main meeting room sat a thin black binder with a key ring on top of it. There were no letters, no notes. No greeting or well wishes were left behind, unless you count the dust-covered Christmas card from 2023 that sat atop a stack of junk mail on a meeting table in the front office.
Jonathan Rossell, the former mayor of Akron, Alabama, accompanied Braxton on his return to town hall. Rossell, a representative of the Alabama Conference of Black Mayors, said he was shocked at how divisive the transition of power from Stokes to Braxton had been. As Braxton and Rossell – accompanied by a Hale County Sheriff’s Office deputy – made their way through town hall, Rossell used tools from his work as a private investigator to scan for electronic surveillance devices that they feared the Stokes team might have left behind. He found none.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Rossell said as they scanned the derelict building. “I’ve never seen anything like this during a transition. We have never had this problem.”
Lots of work to do
The years of infighting and legal challenges over the 2020 Newbern municipal election did not create divisions in the town; they highlighted the ones that were already there. The population of Newbern, which stands at anywhere between 130 in the 2020 census and 200 in more recent estimates, is 70% Black. But Braxton is the first Black mayor of the town that was incorporated in 1854. Only one Black town council member has ever served there.
Now, as Braxton resumes his interrupted term, he hopes to bring the community together. Even before the settlement was signed, he participated in the kickoff of a project to bring a sewage treatment facility to the town, courtesy of Auburn University’s Rural Studio.
“I think that will help the town a whole lot when we get the show up and running, start hooking houses and stuff to it,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of trailers that don't have sewage. It’s going to eliminate waste in the yards and creeks, so people won't have to worry about sewage backing up or have to worry about it running through the yard, running down the creeks and people calling the EPA on you.”
The previous administration had opted not to take advantage of the Rural Studio project, with former Mayor Stokes going as far as to say that Newbern didn’t need sewage treatment, according to the town’s meeting records. All of the homes in the town are on septic tanks or single-home wastewater systems.
“They did not like that the Rural Studio was working to help the Black community,” Braxton said. “That wasn’t something that they thought was important.”
One of the things Braxton worked on during his legal battle was putting together a council that better represented the community. As soon as the settlement agreement was signed, he sent the names of five people – two white, three Black – to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to be appointed to the town council until municipal elections come around again in 2025.
“I tried to have a balanced council the first time, but there wasn’t anyone in the white community willing to come forward,” Braxton said. “This time, they were.”
‘White neighbors are moving’
That tendency to isolate in the face of integration is alive today. Braxton said that one of the major drivers that kept white residents from serving on the town council was fear.
The removal and restoration of Braxton to office has put a spotlight on the elimination of Newbern residents’ rights to select their municipal leaders. But even the increased scrutiny has not eliminated the potential of blowback from the white minority which, for the first time, finds itself out of power.
Because of that fear, people who spoke out about the racism in Newbern were not willing to be quoted, instead requesting anonymity.
“Fear is alive and well in Newbern,” one white resident said.
Racial issues have long been a part of Newbern’s psyche. A native of nearby Greensboro said that the white resistance to integration, for example, has been entrenched since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered school integration across the country in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
“I knew a lot of people from Newbern, because they went to school in Greensboro,” the person said. “But once the schools began to integrate, they left and went to the private academies instead.”
It’s not too different today. Braxton said he knows of at least five white residents who have put their homes on the market in the two months since it became apparent that he would return to office.
“It’s scary for me because all of my white neighbors are moving,” one white Newbern resident said.
Waiting for results
Braxton was finally able to celebrate a ceremonial swearing-in on Aug. 3. The gym at First Baptist Church of Newbern was full as people from the town showed up to wish him well.
“It was really awesome,” said Vickie Moore, executive director of the Alabama Conference of Black Mayors, which hosted the ceremony. “It was one of those special occasions, a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
The celebration was the second one that the Conference has held in Newbern.
“We planned our first inauguration back in 2020,” Moore said. “It was only fitting we organized the swearing-in ceremony again and would have held it sooner, but we couldn’t get the keys to the town hall. It’s been a long walk to get here, that’s for sure.”
The organization is also helping Braxton set his agenda as he reorganizes the town and prepares for what may be its first-ever municipal election next year.
Moore said her team forwarded the list of potential council members to the Alabama Office of Minority Affairs, and from there it moved on to Gov. Ivey’s office. Another step toward ensuring that fair elections come to Newbern is making sure that the residents of Newbern are all registered to vote.
“Citizens of Newbern have never been given access to the ballot,” Moore said. “We’ve already started that process as well, to allow access to justice for all. It’s an element of democracy and human rights.”
The Conference of Black Mayors is also helping Braxton find the resources needed to commission an audit of the town’s finances.
“We have reached out to a firm that can help with that,” Moore said.
Looking back on her work with Newbern, she recalled an exchange with Braxton as he looked toward the town hall building during his first stint in the mayor’s office. He had just learned that the former mayor and council were organizing to oust him from office.
“My first talk with Patrick Braxton was about what needed to be done,” Moore said, recalling the way Braxton remembered that enslaved Black people built the residence and workplace of the president of the United States. “He looked at city hall and said, ‘I helped build that. It’s just like the White House. I am good enough to build it, but not good enough to serve in it.’”
Image at top: Mayor Patrick Braxton at a swearing-in ceremony hosted by the Alabama Conference of Black Mayors on Aug. 3, 2024. (Credit: Courtesy of Alabama Conference of Black Mayors)
