LogFAQs > #974954151

In fucked up news, there's been a three year long battle in a rural Alabama town. A black man ran for mayor and won... and the old (white) mayor and their council locked him out, refused to acknowledge his victory, called a special election in secret which they of course won, and reappointed themselves to their positions.

https://capitalbnews.org/newbern-alabama-black-mayor

Story is worth reading in full, but to try and summarize some of the big points:

The town, Newbern, is 85% Black. Braxton decides to run for mayor and is the only one to file the legally required paperwork and disclosure forms to be eligible to run and so effectively runs unopposed. Following that, the former mayor and his council hold a secret meeting to call a special election because they allegedly "forgot" to file that paperwork and because they did this in a secret meeting naturally they're the only ones who end up qualifying for this special election and upon winning it reappoint themselves and are sworn in by the rest of the town apparatus.

They lock Braxton and his appointees out of Town Hall and the bank the town works with says "you're not the mayor" and refuses to share town financials with him. When interviewing residents about the situation, it basically paints the picture that the town operated under feudalism or some shit where town mayor was just passed down to (white) family members or friends with no elections.

Braxton himself also sounds like a great guy who has the patience of a saint who has been fighting this kind of racism forever - as a volunteer firefighter who finds himself the only one responding (they even try to take the keys from him) to fires to black houses. And he tried to save a woman having a heart attack but they fucking changed the locks on the firehouse so he couldn't get the AEDs and had to instead to drive back to his house to get his personal AED (the woman unfortunately passed) and it wasn't until he contacted the county that he could get back into the fire station.