Translating enthusiasm into votes is hard for any political party. For the Harris-Walz ticket in Coastal Georgia, it ‘s an even bigger challenge.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.
Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, stopped for barbecue at the hallowed locally owned Sandfly BBQ for a taste of smoked meat.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.
Bernice Atchinson, an 85-year-old advocate from Alabama, has been fighting for more than 40 years on behalf of her fellow Black farmers. She even represented them in the landmark case Pigford v. Glickman, a class-action lawsuit alleging the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against Black farmers from 1983 to 1997 when they applied for federal financial assistance, and failed to respond to complaints of discrimination.
While it’s been challenging for past administrations to address the ongoing concerns of Black farmers, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris recently issued $2.2 billion to 43,000 farmers who have been discriminated against. The funds will be administered through the USDA.
But, Atchinson says it’s still not enough.
“I testified before Congress on Nov. 18, 2004, and we are just getting an award assistance, not a settlement,” she wrote Capital B in a statement. “We are looking for something better.”
Despite the limited progress, Atchinson still feels that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “will be a good team” to help Black farmers.
“This is my 40th year of working for our people … walking the streets of Washington, visiting … [Capitol] Hill. I’ve went and spoke, now who shall speak for me at 85? My hope is that Vice President Kamala Harris will,” Atchinson said. “There is always hope for us. How can I have faith in someone [former President Donald Trump] who has been convicted on 34 counts by his own peers?”
Atchinson is one of many Black farmers who are hoping that Harris and Walz make it to the presidency. It’s partly due to the lack of resources they received during Trump’s tenure in the White House. He handed out historic levels of pandemic-related funding, but less than 1% went toward Black farmers.
While many Black farmers are on board to usher the two into the White House in November, there are concerns that the new administration might not deliver the relief they’ve been seeking for decades. Additionally, there’s uncertainty about whether changes will be made within the USDA, which has historically discriminated against Black farmers.
One of those people: Todd Western III a sixth-generation farmer from Iowa who works on the 200-acre heritage farm that has been in his family for more than 160 years.
“To be honest with you, I think they [Harris-Walz] care about [issues with Black farmers], but it’s so low on the totem pole for them,” he said. “In my opinion, they would care about it when it bubbles up. But to be proactive? I don’t know that they’re going to do that.”
Western referenced how earlier this year, a white farmer from Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit against Walz and the commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture for alleged discrimination in one of its grant programs. The program aimed to give financial assistance to “emerging farmers” who were defined as women, veterans, persons with disabilities, American Indian or Alaskan Natives, members of a community of color, young, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or asexual (LGBTQIA+), or urban.
The farmer claimed his application being denied was a violation of his civil rights. Though he was picked ninth in the grant lottery, he claims he was pushed down the list because he was a straight, white male, according to AgWeek. In July, Walz signed the legislation, but removed the reference of “emerging farmers” in the language. The lawsuit was dismissed.
“If white farmers can win in liberal Minnesota, and this is under the Biden-Harris administration, if Trump gets in, it can only get worse,” Western added. “If Biden and Harris are protecting us now, she’s not gonna do any better in the next administration if she wins.”
Western is focusing his efforts on building support for the farmers in his state. Recently he co-founded the Iowa Farmers of Color Conference to connect Black farmers — fewer than 45 in the state — with local, state and federal resources to help sustain their operations, but also keep their land.
What’s happening in Minnesota follows a similar issue after Biden was elected into office.
When he signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law, it included a $4 billion debt relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers — which included Black communities. The program would have offered up to 120% of the outstanding indebtedness.
In June 2021, the same month the USDA planned to start loan payments to eligible borrowers, a judge issued a restraining order on the program in response to a lawsuit brought by a group of white farmers alleging that the debt relief program racially discriminated against them. After white farmers and banks fought back against the program, it fell through.
Rather than implement the existing loan forgiveness program, the Inflation Reduction Act replaced it with a $2.2 billion Discrimination Financial Assistance Program for all farmers and ranchers who experienced discrimination in USDA farm loan programs prior to 2021.
Representatives with the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, an organization formed in 1994, and Justice for Black Farmers Group called out the Biden-Harris administration in an Aug. 14 letter for its race-neutral approach with the discrimination assistance.
“Those who deserved to be compensated for their actual losses received little to nothing. On top of that, Mr. President, those few Black farmers who have had their debts full or partially forgiven will now face the onerous task of dealing with … hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes,” the authors wrote. “Due to having to pay taxes, we think, many will be at risk to lose their land, houses, and property. Additionally, we are of the opinion that the ‘process’ for addressing discrimination by farmers is flawed and inadequate.”
That wasn’t the only incident of reverse discrimination.
Two months ago, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointee in Texas, issued a preliminary injunction on a USDA emergency relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers after a group of white farmers sued.
John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Capital B that putting Harris on the ticket was the right thing to do to motivate Black people, but there are still a number of issues plaguing Black farmers that need to be addressed, like removing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who has a decades-long fraught relationship with Black farmers and ensuring full debt relief.
“We didn’t get the debt relief under this administration … so I’ve been reaching out to the Democratic Party and Harris’ campaign to see if I could have a conversation about that,” Boyd said. “She’s motivating the base, but we need answers. We shouldn’t be losing land and farmers. We lost 40,000 Black farmers under this [Biden-Harris] administration.”
Farmers like Boyd are optimistic that Harris will have a listening ear.
With Walz’s background in agriculture and farming, the duo could serve as a benefit for Black farmers. Walz helped shape farm policy during his time as U.S. representative in Congress in a Republican district. According to Politico, he helped draft and pass the 2008, 2014, and 2018 Farms Bills, the largest piece of legislation for food and farming that is passed every five years. He was the top-ranked Democrat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and served on the House Agriculture Committee for 12 years, where he oversaw rural conservation and energy programs.
Even after his time in Congress, his commitments to agriculture continued. In Minnesota, he created the Governor’s Committee on Safety, Health, and Wellbeing of Agricultural and Food Processing Workers.
With excitement for Harris and Halz, it seems the Trump-Vance ticket hasn’t won over most Black farmers. U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance’s recent comments during an Aug. 11 interview on Face the Nation didn’t help. After condemning attacks on his wife, Vance went on to talk about the $2.2 billion financial assistance program, suggesting the program is racist against white farmers:
“I do think that there’s been this thing in America where we’ve said that we should judge people based on their skin color, based on their immutable characteristics, based on things that they can’t control. I frankly think that unfortunately, a lot of people on the left have leaned into this by trying to categorize people by skin color and then give special benefits or special amounts of discrimination. The Harris Administration, for example, handed out farm benefits to people based on skin color. I think that’s disgraceful. I don’t — I don’t think we should say, you get farm benefits if you’re a Black farmer, you don’t get farm benefits if you’re a white farmer. All farmers, we want to thrive, and that’s certainly the President Trump and J.D. Vance view of the situation.”
Boyd called out Vance and demanded he issue an apology to Black farmers for his “racist, inaccurate, and anti-Black comments.”
“This was not a ‘farm benefit’ based on skin color given to Black farmers,” he said. “Decades of discriminatory behavior by the USDA have contributed to significant economic differences between white farmers and farmers of color that directly impact their access to credit.”
Despite Vance’s latest derogatory remarks, neither Trump nor Vance has laid out clear policies for helping Black farmers. But, under Project 2025, a transition plan created by The Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president, proposes to eliminate important federal conservation programs and cut spending to crop insurance subsidies.
During his tenure in the White House, Trump didn’t do much for Black farmers. Despite the historic amounts of emergency relief under his administration, the money didn’t flow to the pockets of Black folks.
Under his administration, government assistance reached a record $46 billion in 2020 — and $26 billion of that came from the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, which kept some producers afloat. With that pandemic relief funding, only 0.1% went to Black farmers, according to Vilsack — just $20.8 million.
“We saw 99% of the money going to White farmers and 1% going to socially disadvantaged farmers, and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent,” he told The Washington Post. “Look at it another way: The top 10% of farmers in the country received 60% of the value of the COVID payments. And the bottom 10% received 0.26%.”
The year before, farmers received $22 billion, the highest in farm subsidies in 14 years. One of the subsidies was the Market Facilitation Program, which was designed to help farmers directly affected by foreign retaliatory tariffs from China. Nearly 100% of the bailout payments disproportionately benefited white farmers, according to The Counter.
Despite who wins in November, some farmers are calling on Biden to finish what he started before he leaves office.
In the letter to Biden, Lawrence Lucas and Waymon Hinson with the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and Justice for Black Farmers Group asked Biden to “do good for our Black farmers and others suffering at USDA, especially when there is lingering skepticism about USDA and your support of USDA Secretary Vilsack.”
They included a partial list of demands for Biden, including:
“In short, Mr. President, we, Black farmers and advocates, are seeking accountability, transparency, and justice. USDA, until these factors are included, will continue to be labeled ‘the last plantation,’ because, indeed, Secretary Vilsack runs the agency like a plantation, and it has been that way for decade after decade.”
If Biden acts on the list of demands, the farmers feel the support for Harris-Walz will increase.
The post Justice Has Been Delayed for Black Farmers, and They’re Looking to the Next President for Answers appeared first on Capital B News.
Bridging Access:
Across rural America, communities of color may be facing barriers to health care, but they’re also laying the groundwork for a more equitable future. Whether it’s hospitals reopening, a community’s holistic approach to maternal care, or the grassroots work to bring comprehensive services to immigrants, these stories offer a road map. This story is part of a collaborative reporting effort led by the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network, with visual support from CatchLight. Photo credits: Ariel Cobbert and Aallyah Wright.
BROWNSVILLE, Tenn. — On a late evening in 1986, sharp pains hit Alma Jean Thomas-Carney’s stomach like lightning.
Days earlier, she’d just returned home to Brownsville, after dancing all weekend at her high school reunion hundreds of miles away in Illinois. Maybe that’s where the pain originated, she thought.
She cried profusely to her husband to take her to a hospital. But not the local Haywood Park Community Hospital, a 62-bed facility built in 1974.
“Please don’t take me up there. Don’t take me up there,” she pleaded. He rushed her to the car and drove to Jackson, Tennessee, nearly 40 miles away.
When she arrived at the hospital in Jackson, she underwent exploratory surgery. They found cysts on her ovaries, a diagnosis she says she wouldn’t have gotten at Haywood Park.
“I didn’t trust I would get the proper care or care that would help me to survive,” she told Capital B.
Years prior, she experienced an unwelcoming environment from white staffers, including doctors, at Haywood Park. Upon entry, she’d walk to the reception desk, only to be ignored or met with unpleasant looks.
“They acted like you were invisible,” she said. “Whether they were talking or drinking coffee, they kept doing whatever they were doing and didn’t pay attention to you.”
Haywood Park’s reputation deteriorated over the years. Some residents voluntarily drove elsewhere if they could, or went without critical care, which contributed to low patient volume. Many more reasons, such as financial instability, resulted in its ultimate demise.
The hospital closed in 2014, after a long, slow decline. But, the news saddened the community, including Thomas-Carney. “Despite my ill-feelings or experiences I had in that environment … you have indigent people living in Haywood County who need to get to the closest facility available.”
From 1990 to 2020, 334 rural hospitals have closed across 47 states, which disproportionately affect areas with higher populations of Black and Hispanic people. Since 2011, hospital closures have outnumbered new hospital openings. In Brownsville, they’ve been able to do the impossible: reopen a full-service hospital. They’re not the only ones.
Less than three hours away in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, leaders in Marks reopened their facility in 2021, after a five-year shutdown. In neighboring Georgia, county officials received millions in congressional funding to reopen their hospital in Cuthbert, which closed in 2020. Currently, they’re researching what model is feasible for their town.
When a rural hospital closes, there’s usually no turning back. Yet, Brownsville became an outlier two years ago and is part of a growing but short list of hospitals in rural counties that have been able to fully reopen. What’s happening in this 68% Black town of 9,700 people is quite uncommon, health experts say. Usually hospitals cut back or reduce services, such as obstetric departments, to keep their doors open. The most recent alternative to prevent closures include the Rural Emergency Hospital designation, a new model established in 2020 that eliminates in-patient beds but keeps an emergency department in order to receive a boost in federal support. At least 29 rural hospitals have converted to rural emergency hospitals, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.
While this is a fix for some, it may not be the most viable for others, experts say.
“Once you’ve seen one rural community, you’ve seen one rural community; they’re very different. We understand that not every rural hospital that is struggling will benefit or will want to convert to this rural emergency hospital,” said Shannon Wu, senior associate director of payment policy at the American Hospital Association. “We see this as a tool in a toolbox for those that fit their community needs.”
Thomas-Carney lost faith in the local health system long before the establishment of Haywood Park 50 years ago.
As a kid, she witnessed her grandmother lying in a hospital bed in the basement of the Haywood County Memorial Hospital, a 30-bed facility built in 1930 during Jim Crow. Steel pipes followed the linings of the walls. The sounds of steam echoed in her ears.
“I just remember looking around, and it didn’t look like nothin’ that I had seen in a book about a hospital,” she explained.
Thomas-Carney’s grandmother’s experience was not uncommon, as most Southern, white-run hospitals refused to accept Black patients. The few that did placed them “on inferior Black wards, often in the basement, and usually with no separation by disease process,” writes historian Karen Kruse Thomas.
Kruse Thomas details how prior to World War II, hospitals in the South were racially separate and Black patients mostly went to all-Black hospitals, if they had one. Few and far between, Black hospitals were unaccredited, underequipped, and struggling to remain open.
In the 1940s, the federal government began to address hospital segregation through the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, known as the Hill-Burton Act. At the time, the South had the highest population of Black folks with the worst rates of morbidity and mortality. In 1938, the surgeon general called the South “the number one health problem in the nation.”
Today, the health disparities can be described the same.
Black people still experience higher rates of disease, chronic illnesses, and mortality in comparison to their urban counterparts. In Tennessee, Haywood County has higher percentages of adult diabetes, obesity, and overall poor health in comparison to the state and national averages.
Unfortunately, where you live dictates your health and the type of access you have.
Only recently did a study in the National Library of Medicine distinctly spell out that structural racism — in addition to poverty, education, and environmental conditions — is a major contributor to why such health disparities continue to persist.
“In rural areas, especially in the South, it is important to understand how institutional policies, such as the Jim Crow laws that segregated hospitals and neighborhoods, led to differences in resource allocation between white populations and nonwhite populations, which may impact healthcare access today,” the study’s authors noted.
Greta Sanders, a Brownsville resident, recalled how Eva Rawls, a Black registered nurse who worked at Haywood County hospital, was forced to work under the supervision of white women who were licensed practical nurses, even though she was the superior.
That hospital closed in 1974, the same year Haywood Park opened.
“When [the new owners] found out that a registered nurse was working underneath the LPNs, they were just blown away,” said Sanders, a retired lab technician who worked at Haywood Park. “When the white LPNs had to start working under her supervision … they did not like it.”
Many residents in Brownsville — the birthplace of the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner — have received life-saving care at the local hospital.
One of those people: the wife of John Ashworth, a local civil rights activist and historian who co-runs the Dunbar Carver Museum with Thomas-Carney. Some time ago, Ashworth’s wife got stung by a bee. By the time she arrived at Haywood Park, her blood pressure was extremely high. They immediately admitted her and stabilized her.
“I have mixed emotions, but I really think it was a good hospital,” Ashworth said. “I am absolutely convinced that my wife would not be alive today if that hospital had not been there at the time.”
Ashworth believes some deaths could have been prevented had the hospital been open.
Fed up with the poor health outcomes in his community, William “Bill” Rawls Jr. ran for office. He became the first Black mayor in Brownsville in 2014. Before he could celebrate the win, the hospital closed its doors for good.
So, he thought.
Rawls set out on a mission to work with Michael Banks, a local attorney, and county officials to bring back the hospital. Like many small towns, the train tracks here still represent a divide, a symbol of racial segregation.
While Banks worked to find quality suitors for the hospital, Rawls started the Healthy Moves Initiative, a health education and preventive care effort. He hosted health fairs, quarterly free wellness screenings, built walking trails and a dog park, and created a farmer’s market. But, it didn’t create the impact he’d hoped for.
It’s still a work in progress, he says, but the challenge is getting more participation.
Two years after Brownsville lost its hospital, Marks, a small town in the Mississippi Delta, did, too. The closure of the only critical access hospital in Quitman County resulted in the loss of 100 jobs. Similar to Brownsville, limited health care access resulted in longer waits to receive emergency and medical assistance.
Six months later, the Black town of 1,600 people lost its only grocery store.
During this time, Velma Benson-Wilson returned to her hometown after 20 years in Jackson, Tennessee. It started as frequent trips to conduct research to write What’s In The Water?, a tribute to her mother. She stayed a bit longer to work as a consultant on cultural tourism for the county, particularly the construction of the Amtrak project and memorializing the history of the Mule Train, which kicked off the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign.
But, the health crisis and food desert in Marks motivated her to dig deeper.
Wilson became the Quitman county administrator, the first Black person and female to serve in the position. After she helped close the Amtrak deal in 2018, she turned her focus to the hospital and worked with the county supervisors to find a solution.
After working to save a hospital in Holly Springs, roughly 90 minutes from Marks, Quinten Whitwell, an attorney from Oxford, and Dr. Kenneth Williams, a Black physician, launched Progressive Health Group to keep rural hospitals from closure across the South.
Five years after the Marks hospital closed in 2016, its Certificate of Need was set to expire. The legal document was required to reopen, establish or construct a health facility.
Whitwell, in quarantine, worked with his team on a plan to get it approved by the state.
Manuel Killebrew, president of the Quitman County Board of Supervisors, said that state Democratic Sen. Robert Jackson passed legislation to help reopen the hospital. Soon after, in 2021, the county supervisors voted to reopen the hospital in partnership with nearby Panola Medical Center in Batesville, Mississippi. The county gave Whitwell’s group a loan, and Citizen Banks of Marks gave a $1 million donation to reopen the facility as Progressive Health of Marks, a critical access hospital. The same year, a local entrepreneur opened a new grocery store across the street from the hospital.
The hospital has a walk-in clinic, emergency room, radiology department, and several other services, such as telehealth, according to Mejilda Spearman, the administrator for the Quitman hospital. They currently have four in-patient beds and are currently renovating their senior care unit. They’ve hired fewer than 50 people. While they’ve seen a steady increase in patients since, they still struggle to get community support.
But, some residents still aren’t satisfied, Killebrew added.
“There’s still people who gripe, but the hospital here is the closest place to get medical treatment,” he said. “If one of their loved ones were shot or had a heart attack, they get here, and at least they’ll survive.”
Despite low support in Marks and Brownsville for a hospital, residents in Cuthbert, Georgia, have prayed for more health care options in their predominantly Black community of fewer than 3,100 people.
The Southwest Georgia Regional Hospital in Cuthbert, the county’s only hospital, closed at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic due to increased costs from aging infrastructure and underinsured and uninsured patients. Officials added that the inaction of Medicaid expansion in Georgia also contributed to the closure in Randolph County, which is majority Black.
Before the hospital closed, some uninsured residents relied on the emergency room for primary care. Now for emergencies or other care, many travel 30 minutes to Eufaula, Alabama, or nearly an hour to Albany, Georgia, said Cuthbert Mayor Bobby Jenkins.
Minnie Lewis, a retired educator, travels to Albany and Columbus frequently for appointments and would love to eliminate the additional time it takes for roundtrips there.
“In fact, I just had a health scare, but I had to go to have a CT scan there. Then I had to go to Sylvester [Georgia] to a hospital there because they didn’t have enough space there for me for that particular thing,” she said. “I would have had that CT scan right here in Cuthbert, if it was open.”
When the hospital closed, the doctors left, too. Until about a year ago, the town had no doctors, despite Care Connect, an urgent care clinic, opening immediately after the hospital closed in 2020. Jenkins and residents hope the draw of a hospital will bring more jobs, affordable housing, and food options into the town, which is racially divided.
“With the white there and the Black here, you can’t get nothin’ done. We don’t go to church together, but at least we can have some common ground when it comes to the community and for the betterment of all the citizens,” said Cuthbert council member Sandra Willis.
The hospital is the only issue that they’re united on, she says. The majority Black county commissioners, all-Black city council, and Randolph County Housing Authority have worked together to figure out a solution.
They’ve been able to get the attention of their state and federal officials. After four years, they have a plan.
Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop and Sens. John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock requested congressional earmarks to develop and reopen Southwest Regional. They secured more $4 million from the USDA Community Facilities Program and more than $2 million from HUD for the Randolph County Hospital Authority to move forward, according to a spokesperson in Bishop’s office.
There’s no date for when a hospital, or some version of it, will be reopened in Cuthbert. Will critical access, rural emergency hospital, or freestanding emergency department work best? County officials contracted with a third-party to conduct a feasibility study to decide what route to go with the hospital.
“What we hope is to have an emergency room so we can get ‘em stabilized,” State Rep. Gerald Greene said in a phone call. “We’re hoping this is going to work, but we’ll have some [inpatient] rooms. That’s our plan.”
In Brownsville, it took six years to find a solution. In attorney Banks’ eyes, it was all “pure luck.”
On a recent tour of the hospital, Banks — who is now CEO of Haywood County Community Hospital — pointed out a bed that displayed colorful LED lights with symbols, advanced technology that checks oxygen levels, weight, and heart rates.
“If a [patient] gets too close to the edge, the alarm goes off. So, the nurse at night – rather than waking someone up – they can come out and look at those lights.”
He credits Braden Health, the hospital management group that took over the hospital. As counsel for Haywood County, Banks would take prospective buyers on “a tour with a flashlight” because the building was boarded up. None of the deals panned out — until 2020 when they met Dr. Beau Braden, an emergency medicine specialist and co-founder of Braden Health. The county officials agreed that Braden Health could take if they improved the property and ran the facility as a full service hospital.
Two years later, they reopened Haywood Park Community Hospital, under a new name: Haywood County Community Hospital. They downsized to nine in-patient rooms and have a staff of 80 employees, all from Brownsville or neighboring communities.
In addition to an emergency room, they have an urgent care walk-in clinic, pharmacy, mammography, ultrasound, and radiology department. Despite the new infrastructure and quality, Banks averages about five patients a day, and about 25 patients in the ER. But, there have been times when they’ve had to send patients to other facilities because they are full, he said.
Residents stop by often for the handprint ceramic tile wall in the main entrance of the hospital. In the 1990s and early 2000s, kids in Brownsville painted these tiles. Many people come back to find their handprint. They built a conference room so local organizations can meet. They also eat at Annie Mae’s Cafe, a soul food restaurant in the hospital named after Tina Turner and run by two local cooks who lost their restaurant during the pandemic.
Banks, the mayor and residents, are optimistic about the hospital’s future. In fact, they’re planning to expand, adding things like a physical therapy section. They expect more traffic, especially with the opening of Ford’s Blue Oval mega facility.
“Ever since we opened the inpatient side, we’re breaking even. We’re profitable and growing more every month,” Banks said. “Even if Brownsville stayed the size it was, we’d be fine.”
Staying on top of the accounting, rural health-related policies and regulations, and making sure insurance providers pay is the key to being sustainable, Banks says.
Beyond federal dollars, there’s a need to expand Medicaid, increase Medicare payments, and incentivize health care professionals to work in rural areas, rural health experts say. They also advocate for health equity, specifically on better pay systems for rural hospitals and ensuring those investments focus on communities that have “faced historical and contemporary challenges of racism.”
Ultimately, everyone has to work together — government officials, local agencies and the residents.
“People are dying. Not because the hospital is there or not there. It’s because we’ve not taken control. We’re accepting a lesser quality of life and a shorter life expectancy,” Rawls said. “True systemic change is a grassroots effort, but you will need people from the top pushing legislation that’s going to allow rural hospitals to survive or reopen.”
The post Healing a Dark Past: The Long Road to Reopening Hospitals in the Rural South appeared first on Capital B News.
Patrick Braxton is overwhelmed with gratitude.
He’s been juggling a yearslong legal battle to serve as the lawful mayor of his hometown, Newbern, Alabama. After years of harassment, his rural town enters a new chapter: Its first Black mayor will finally get to serve.
Braxton will be reinstated as mayor of Newbern, according to a proposed settlement reached on June 21. The settlement awaits the signature of U.S. District Judge Kristi K. DuBose. After 60 years of no elections, residents will get to exercise their right to vote. The town has also pledged to hold regular municipal elections beginning in 2025.
In nearly a year since Capital B was among the first to report on Braxton’s fight, he has garnered support locally and nationally.
On a recent morning in May, he traveled nearly three hours from his hometown to Mobile for a preliminary injunction hearing, asking the courts to demand the town hold regular elections in November.
When he and his council members arrived, they were met by a busload of more than 30 residents who also traveled nearly three hours to showcase their support.
In 2020, Braxton became the first Black mayor in Newbern and experienced harassment and intimidation for doing so. However, the previous majority-white town council blocked him from the post.
He and his council filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against them in 2022 for conspiring to deny his civil rights and position because of his race, challenging the racially discriminatory voting and electoral practices in Newbern in the process, Capital B previously reported.
Read More: A Black Man Was Elected Mayor in Rural Alabama, but the White Town Leaders Won’t Let Him Serve
For at least 60 years, there’s been no elections in this 80% Black town of fewer than 200 people, which Braxton’s attorneys argued is a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Act provides an avenue to challenge states and jurisdictions using racially discriminatory voting policies.
Since 2020, when Braxton ran for mayor, he says some white residents have moved away.
Though the court denied the request to hold an election in November, Braxton didn’t feel defeated. In fact, he felt optimistic.
“I knew I was gonna be able to serve again, you know,” he told Capital B in a phone call last week. “It’s just how long it was gonna take for us to get some kind of resolution first for this.”
This week, that long overdue resolution came.
When he received the news that he’d get reinstated, Braxton shared it with his pastor, who exclaimed, “Finally. It’s been a long time coming. You know if you pray, change will come.”
This win in Newbern is important because it shows citizens nationwide can still use the courts to be heard, despite the attacks on the Voting Rights Act, said Morenike Fajana, co-counsel on the case and senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund Inc.
“It’s important just to highlight Mayor Braxton’s tenacity, and the fact that this is a four-year battle that he’s had to fight in different courts and at different levels — and now finally, a court is going to say, ‘Yes, we agree. You were wronged. And you were the mayor,’” Fajana told Capital B. “I think that is very inspirational and important. And it’s also very sobering, just the amount of work that it takes and time that it takes to have your rights vindicated.”
For the past few years, it’s been a heap of long nights and early mornings for Braxton, a volunteer firefighter for years.
Not only was he locked out of the town hall and forced to fight fires alone, but he was also followed by a drone and denied access to the town’s mail and financial accounts, he told Capital B last year. Rather than concede, Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, the former white mayor, and his council members reappointed themselves to their positions after ordering a special election that no one knew about.
“It hurt my heart because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” Braxton said. “We had some plans to do some work in Newbern. … It might not have been the time for us to do it.”
The setback didn’t stop him, he said. He’s hosted several community events for the youth and the town’s elders. Two months ago, he used his personal funds to feed more than 125 people at his church, First Baptist. This week, he helped plan a Fun Day Out, a type of summer reading program, at the local library.
He’s also been working overtime to build a racially diverse city council amid the lawsuit. He wakes up early in the morning, knocking on doors and “running down people” to talk to him. In 2020, no white person seemed interested.
That has changed.
He will submit his list of interim council members to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey for confirmation. If the governor does not affirm the positions, she must notify the Hale County probate judge to declare a special election, which Braxton will administer, the settlement states.
One of those people: his “ride or die” Janice Quarles, a Newbern native and plaintiff who volunteered to serve on Braxton’s council in 2020.
Read More: How Some States Are Responding to the Worst Attack on Voting Rights in Decades
The most stressful part of this journey for Quarles has been finding adequate legal representation and a listening ear to hear their concerns.
“It seemed as if we weren’t moving. It seemed to me as if we weren’t being heard,” Quarles said. “By being from such a small little town, I kind of felt like we weren’t getting enough attention. But eventually, we kept pushing and got into the courts.”
With the recent news, she is beyond “elated” and hopeful it will bring together the community across racial lines.
“We don’t do a lot of integrating. We don’t do too many things together. But I just feel that it’s gonna be a change because sometimes it has to work on both sides,” Quarles said. “I’m just filled with joy because … there always comes a time for change — everywhere in every country, every state, every city. And now the time has come for us here in Newbern.”
While this chapter is closed, the fight is not over, Braxton said. He’s hoping his journey will inspire others.
“Like I told the pastor, I’m not fighting for myself,” Braxton said. “I’m fighting for all the younger generations coming up behind me. They can do the same thing and be successful in this town. You don’t have to move away from your hometown just to accomplish something. We finally got the door open for me, so y’all can come in. I don’t want to hold this seat forever.”
The post After Years of Litigation, First Black Mayor in Rural Alabama Town Gets to Serve appeared first on Capital B News.
Ben Brubaker, a row crop farmer on Comer Road, said this summer’s prolonged heat and drought have substantially impacted his day-to-day operations.
“We’ve been having to run irrigation pretty much around the clock to just try to stay ahead of the heat and lack of rain,” he said. “What’s called (our) dry land, basically the land that doesn’t have irrigation, has just been withering up to nothing, essentially.”
There has been a concerted effort by the Trump and Biden presidential campaigns to woo the Black vote during recent efforts in metro Atlanta, other Georgia cities.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.
Voter turnout is highest when a future president is on a November ballot and is consistently lower for all other elections.
The Current is an inclusive nonprofit, non-partisan news organization providing in-depth watchdog journalism for Savannah and Coastal Georgia’s communities.