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.
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.
Inheriting political positions is literally anti-American. We fought a war over this. Fucking Alabama.
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.
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.
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.
The real story is they don’t even have a mayoral position, so a nothing story ginned to stoke hatred toward white people.
Disagreeing with those specific people for their actions is not the same as hatred for white people. An asshole is an asshole whether they’re black, white or green.
Small towns suck. Big towns suck. Cities suck. America sucks and it’s not coming back.
it’s not coming back.
Implying America was ever good at this in the first place.
I’m still waiting for all the America haters to move to Holland.
If this happened in 2021 and 2022 why wait till now to file a federal lawsuit?
No one would take his case.
Not just that, the first lawyers he approached scammed him I think.
