Pleasant Grove, a small Alabama city outside of Birmingham, made history Tuesday by electing a majority-Black city council. The city, which is nearly 60% Black, had never previously elected a Black candidate to the city council.
Tuesday’s election was the first after the city settled a 2018 lawsuit filed under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 civil rights law, and agreed to change its system for holding elections. The city had long allowed all residents of the city to vote for all the city council members, regardless of where they lived, allowing white voters to cast their ballots in a cohesive bloc that blocked Black candidates from winning elections. Similar practices, often called “at-large elections”, had long been used throughout Alabama to block African Americans from gaining political power at the local level.
Black residents there told the Guardian in February they felt shut out from the town’s all-white city council. Late last year, Pleasant Grove agreed to settle the case and adopted a new election method called cumulative voting, in which each eligible voter gets five votes they can allocate however they want among candidates.
Yolanda Lawson, a longtime Black resident of Pleasant Grove who lost her election when she ran in 2016, was elected to the city council on Tuesday. Kevin “KD” Dunn and Ray Lassiter are the other two candidates who won. There were long lines at the polls to vote on Tuesday, and some voters were erroneously told they would not be able to vote even though they were in line when the polls closed , according to al.com.
A Pleasant Grove City Council candidate tells me there have been hour long waits all day to vote, with one of the largest turnouts he’s seen in 25 years. Even though it’s 7pm, this is the line that wraps around the parking lot @abc3340 pic.twitter.com/fR95nMGoEF
— Ashley Gooden (@AshleyGoodenTV) August 26, 2020
In 2016, when Lawson ran for city council, she faced attacks on social media that she was an outsider to the city, even though she lived in the city for decades. She said she wanted to run again because she still felt like she had something to offer to improve the city.
“It definitely means being part of history. But it also means being part of what I hope will be part of a transparent government that wants to move our city forward,” she said. “To me, it’s more about just being elected to represent the underrepresented.”
Priscilla McWilliams is the only Black person to ever serve on the Pleasant Grove city council. She was appointed to a seat 2014 but lost when she ran for her seat in 2016, said she was thrilled by the results on Tuesday.
“It is outstanding, I am overwhelmed. I am ecstatic to have African Americans be a part of the city’s government,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it this quickly, but I knew it was coming. It should have been long ago, but I’m glad it’s here now.”
Jerry Brasseale, the city’s mayor since 1992, also nearly lost his re-election to Robert Sellers, a Black challenger. Brasseale won the election by just 40 votes.
Tuesday’s election is evidence that the Voting Rights Act was not outdated said Deuel Ross, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represented the plaintiffs in the case.
“It shows why the voting rights act is absolutely still necessary,” he said. “It’s only after the Voting Rights Act was used in 2020 that people are finally able to have some representation in their city and local governments.
“Black people are obviously, and others, are standing up in a way that we haven’t in 50 years,” he added. “Anything that gives people more of a voice in their local government, where a lot of these decisions about funding, policing, schools are being made is great news.”