For decades, white officials appointed Newbern’s mayor and council members in lieu of holding elections. Most residents weren’t even aware that there were supposed to be elections for these positions.
The settlement will reinstate Patrick Braxton as the mayor of Newbern, the first Black person to hold the position.
Braxton was the only candidate who filed qualifying paperwork with the county clerk in 2020, so he won the mayoral race by default. The incumbent, Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, hadn’t even bothered to fill out the paperwork to run again. Haywood Stokes Jr., his father, had previously been mayor of the rural Black Belt town.
Cross posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16944653
I remember when this happened, and I was stunned. There are only 133 people in the town and the vast majority of them are black, it should have been a self solving problem to throw out the white minority.
Another good article here:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/06/us/newbern-alabama-mayor-dispute/index.html
Kinda hard to throw them out when the majority didn’t know that they could.
Most residents weren’t even aware that there were supposed to be elections for these positions.
I think he was meaning more “run them out of town” and less “vote them out of office”
