Black Alabama mayor reinstated after nearly four-year battle

Patrick Braxton, the first Black mayor of an Alabama town that has not held elections in several decades, has spent the last four years fighting to be recognized. Finally, after an extensive legal battle, he and the town officials who refused to acknowledge him as mayor have reached a settlement, according to federal court documents.

Per the settlement agreement, Braxton will be officially be seated as the mayor of Newbern, Alabama, and be able to fully serve in this capacity for the first time in nearly four years, pending approval by by Judge Kristi K. DuBose of the Southern District of Alabama.

The town has also committed to holding regular municipal elections, which will happen openly and transparently, beginning in 2025. Until then, all current town council members will resign. An interim town council, composed of new people and members of the town council Braxton originally appointed, will help guide the town until it has elections.

Morenike Fajana, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, which has been involved with the case since last year, said: “It’s been a really long battle.

“It’s been four years that this has been ongoing and there have been different setbacks and challenges,” she said. “But I feel like [Braxton] is appreciative of the fact that this is happening now and he is proud to have the opportunity to serve the town of Newbern.”

Braxton said that he has kept his church and community members informed of daily updates about the court case and is happy to finally give them some good news.

“Everybody is pleased and happy,” he said. “They’re glad we can put this behind us and start moving forward and working for the town … The children, some of them don’t quite understand about everything, and then some of them are old enough to know this is a big deal for the community.”

All of the community will hear the news by 30 August, by which time the parties will hold a public town meeting informing Newbern residents of the agreement.

Braxton is excited to finally do what he set out to do nearly half a decade ago: to unify and improve the town.

“I think I got a wonderful team, people that’s going to work with me and help the community,” he said.

Newbern, located about an hour and a half away from Montgomery, captured national attention in 2023 when it became widely known that white officials had refused for three years to allow Braxton, the first Black mayor in Newbern’s history, to exercise his mayoral duties.

The 133-person town is about 80% Black and 20% white, but the town’s leadership, excluding Braxton and his town council, has been majority white for decades. The defendants in the lawsuit, including the previous mayor and council, refused to hold elections.

During discovery for the case and last month’s hearing about an motion for preliminary injunction, those on the former town council admitted to never holding elections.

“They claimed that they didn’t know they had to,” Fajana said. “Instead, their process was when a position became vacant, they would just kind of recruit among their community and the people that they knew. They would just appoint that person and it would happen, basically, in a covert manner. That had been the process for as long as anybody could remember. Anybody who was serving in the past town council said that’s how they came to power.”

Per the settlement, the defendants “specifically deny having engaged in any wrongful practice, or other unlawful conduct,” instead they reached the “compromise” to avoid protracted litigation.

Braxton told the Guardian in 2023 that the town’s previous mayor had told him that it wasn’t possible to have elections in the small town. He decided to run anyway, out of a desire to help his community, which has a significant poverty rate.

“For decades, officials in my town have excluded me and other voters from participating in elections and having a say in what happens here,” Braxton said in a statement provided by the Legal Defense Fund earlier this year.

In 2020, Braxton became mayor by default when he was the only person to file for office. Following his election and swearing in, he appointed a town council.

Unbeknownst to him, or anyone else in the town, the previous town council and mayor held a secret, special election during which they voted themselves in as town council. Braxton did not attend their parallel town council meetings, not recognizing them as legitimate. The parallel town council removed him from office and reappointed the former mayor to the position. They were aided, the lawsuit alleges, by the town’s bank and clerk.

“It’s really about those facts, it’s about what happened in 2020 with this alleged parallel election process and then also, which is equally important, the failure of the town to have any sort of municipal election, whether for mayor or town council, for decades dating back to as long as anyone who has been involved in this case can remember,” Fajana said.

Now that he’s fully recognized as mayor and able to serve in that capacity, Braxton is looking towards the future.

Per the agreement, he will submit a list of potential names for town council to Alabama governor, currently Kay Ivey, who will fill the positions. If she does not, the probate judge of Hale county will declare a special election on December 31, 2024. All elected officials elected or appointed before the 2025 municipal election, including Braxton, will have their terms end that year, in pursuance with Alabama law.

“Once we get my town council in place,” he said, “I think the town is going to take off and start moving from here.”