A black man has filed a federal lawsuit claiming he was elected mayor of a town and that white leaders allegedly blocked him from taking office.

Patrick Braxton, 57, contends that he was lawfully elected the mayor of Newbern, Alabama in 2020 but was never allowed to take office according to the Daily Mail. He filed a lawsuit in April taking aim at a clique of white residents he says have kept him from taking the position. If found to be the actual mayor, Braxton would be the first black mayor in the town’s 165-year history.

His assertion is that he filed all the proper paperwork to run for office and then won the election. After that, Braxton contended that the incumbent mayor, Haywood Stokes III, and the town council held a secret election to keep him from taking office.

(Video Credit: The People’s Justice Council)

Stokes and his council members are also charged with changing the locks at Town Hall after their secret election to prevent Braxton from becoming mayor. He claims he was not able to access the building until a month after the election when he found “someone had removed official Town documents from the building.”

Braxton claimed to have been blocked from accessing the town’s P.O. box since Lynn Theibe was appointed to the postmaster position in late 2021. He charged that Theibe was and is “acting in concert and/or at the request” of Stokes and the city council.

The suit also states that Stokes and his council have not held any public meetings at the Town Hall since 2020. Instead, they have held the meetings at their homes, according to the Daily Mail.

There are only 133 residents in the small town and it has allegedly been led for decades by a group of white residents who don’t hold formal elections. The office of mayor is allegedly “inherited” by a hand-picked successor. The Alabama town is 80 to 85 percent black.

“Braxton alleges that he was the only candidate to qualify for any elected municipal office in Newbern,” the filing claims.

The suit is currently making its way to the Alabama Southern District Court.

Last week, I traveled to rural Newbern, Alabama, a predominately Black town of about 275 people.

In 2020, Patrick Braxton became the first Black mayor after being the only one to submit the qualifying paperwork. For three years, he’s suffered harassment and intimidation. pic.twitter.com/EhN4SgJ1P1

— Aallyah Wright (@aallyahpatrice) July 19, 2023

The lawsuit names four other plaintiffs that include James Ballard, Barbara Patrick, Janice Quarles, and Wanda Scott. Those individuals were selected to serve on Braxton’s Town Council once he took office. They were also denied office according to the suit ostensibly because they are black.

The incumbent is the acting mayor and has been in that position for approximately a decade. The suit details how Stokes allegedly “conspired with the other defendants to unlawfully remain in office in order to prevent a majority black Town Council from taking office.”

“In order to do this,” city officials “met in secret” on October 6, 2020 “without giving notice of the meeting and adopted resolutions to conduct a special election,” according to the suit.

The Daily Mail reported that Braxton is a volunteer firefighter and emergency responder. He decided to run for the position due to “concerns that the Town Council and Mayor were not responding to the needs of the majority black community.”

The suit goes on to charge that Stokes and several members of his cabinet filed statements of candidacy. They then decided they were the ones who qualified for the special election.

NEWBERN, Ala. — There’s a power struggle in Newbern, Alabama, and the rural town’s first Black mayor is at war with the previous administration who he says locked him out of Town Hall.
After years of racist harassment and intimidation, Patrick Braxton is fed up. pic.twitter.com/sISndZjIlq

— Charles Pleasant (@ple11567) July 23, 2023

Stokes and his cabinet then “effectively reappointed themselves” to their positions, according to the suit. They allegedly “unlawfully assumed their new terms” before being sworn in.

The lawsuit also says that Braxton approached Stokes for information about running for the position of mayor but he misled him, allegedly providing “wrong information about how to qualify” and not providing public notice to residents. Despite that roadblock, Braxton says he gave then-city clerk Lynn Williams his statement of candidacy and a qualifying money order.

The lawsuit just recently got covered by the media. Braxton claims the moves by the local leaders were intentional.

“When confronted with the first duly-elected black mayor and majority black Town Council, all defendants undertook racially motivated actions to prevent the first black mayor from exercising the duties of this position,” the lawsuit states.

Braxton claimed that he asked black and white residents to serve on the city council, but no white residents agreed to sit on it.

“In 2020, a controversy arose as the only candidate to file for the mayoral election — Patrick Braxton — was obstructed from assuming office by the previous officeholder (Woody Stokes III) and the town council.” https://t.co/NHof2aQLIf

— Mandahl (@Mandahl) July 20, 2023

The white leaders named in his lawsuit admit that they “effectively reappointed themselves” to their positions, but insist they did so within the confines of the law.

CBS News got a hold of a response to Braxton’s lawsuit by the town’s leaders. They “admit that Plaintiff Patrick Braxton is black and is the former Mayor of the Town of Newbern,” but then deny several of the other allegations. They also copped to Braxton initially being the only person to qualify for mayor.

In another damning admission, the leaders said that they held a special election to appoint themselves for town council positions, and “that Defendant Stokes became Mayor of the Town of Newbern after Plaintiff Braxton lost the position by operation of law.”

Stokes’ attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The mayor’s office stated that his and the council’s actions were conducted “under the color of law.”

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