Lisa Davis and her husband drove from Montgomery, starting their day at 3 a.m. to visit their elegant, 4,000-square-foot, brick home surrounded by maples and magnolias on 1.5 acres in Anniston. After nearly two years on the market, the house won’t sell.

The Davises bought the house for about $400,000 in 2006. She now fears it may take a $100,000 price cut to find a buyer.

Davis drops a hose into the filter of her outdoor pool after several weeks of scorching temperatures. If the water levels fall too low during the hot season, the motor will malfunction. While they were away last winter, the pipes froze and sprayed icy slush down the to the street.

“We just don't have that kind of money that we can lose,” she said.

Lisa Davis is a former educator who believes Anniston schools are the biggest reason for the poor housing market. (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek)

Today Davis is open to a new, seemingly radical alternative: Splitting the City of Anniston in half and leaving its troubled school district and conflict-ridden government behind. The secession would largely track racial lines.

“Annexit,” as some call it, appears to be part of a global trend towards separation. The effort follows in the wake of other Southern U.S. separation movements in racially fraught communities like Stockbridge, Georgia, and Baton Rouge, LA.

They are rare, and usually unsuccessful. But whereas other areas have seen divided communities spring up in the suburbs, declare themselves a new city and open new schools, Anniston is far more jarring. The proposal here is to break a longstanding city in half, a veritable divorce.

De-annexation, says Councilman David Reddick, is about the fears of some white residents that they may soon lose control. Reddick, who is mixed race, thinks blacks will win a city council majority or even the mayor’s office in the next election.

“I don’t believe in segregation,” he said. “That’s basically what that would be to annex the whites out of our city would be a form of racial segregation.”

Secession supporters search for a way out

Driving to their house that morning, Davis saw multiple “for sale” signs in the neighborhood. To her, the problem comes down to the decline of local schools.

“When people are going to move somewhere, like all of us, we Google the area,” she said.

The schools are simply better in the next town over, says Davis. Few families would choose Anniston, she said.

Anniston’s schools have recently been removed from the state’s failing school list. The city has the greatest number of African American residents concentrated in Calhoun County.

“It's easier to create a [new] place. It's harder to leave a place,” said Russell Smith, Winston-Salem State University geography professor, who notes that the effort, referred to as a “de-annexation” is more accurately a secession. Experts say if the split goes forward, it could set a precedent for other Southern cities.

Glen Ray, the president of the Calhoun County chapter of the NAACP, stands before a memorial to the Freedom Riders in downtown Anniston. (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek)

Attorney Charles Turner is leading Anniston’s secession effort, called Forward 4 All.

Turner says separating about half of the roughly 22,000 population of Anniston and forming a new city, with better schools, would mean a jump in home values.

“It seemed to me that all we had to do was just realign ourselves as far as political jurisdiction and that value would be back in the market,” he said.

Forward 4 All wanted their section of town to join next-door Oxford, but Oxford leadership said immediate annexation would be too costly given the services the city would need to provide.

“It’s a lot of money you’ve got to put out to take in some houses,” said Oxford Mayor Alton Craft, who says he hopes the people of Anniston can work out their differences.

“That’s close to 10,000 residents that Oxford would all of a sudden have to take care of, and it’s just not going to happen that way.”

A look at Anniston's potential 'Annexit,' along with racial breakdown in Calhoun County | graphic by Ramsey Archibald

Now Forward 4 All wants the state legislature to create a referendum allowing only residents of the Anniston wards that would depart to vote on forming a new city.

According to Turner, Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, said he is open to supporting the effort if he sees significant local support for the separation.

“Senator Marsh has not taken a position, of which I am aware, for or against de-annexation,” said Turner.

Marsh did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story.

Turner says the group is considering other options. One possibility is closing the Anniston City Schools and joining the Calhoun County system.

Anniston is split roughly in half demographically, with a slightly higher black population, but its public schools are 95 percent black.

Last school year, Anniston’s high school was on the state’s list of failing schools. That year the Anniston City Schools system was graded a C on the state’s report card, up from a D the year before. Calhoun County Schools received a B.

Meanwhile, many white residents send children to private schools.

Anniston’s litany of troubles

Anniston has a reputation for dysfunction. While Anniston schools have the state’s 5th highest spending per pupil at $12,083, the district was one of 14 in Alabama without necessary funds in its coffers to meet its end of year expenses in fiscal year 2018. The City of Anniston has financial difficulties too. Several council members say Anniston risks defaulting on its fire and police pension fund after failing to make minimum contributions for a number of years.

To those who wish to leave, Anniston’s problems come down to a failure of leadership, including a history of conflict on the city council.

Crime rates are high. Environmental toxins are a concern. Anniston was once one of the state’s leading industrial cities, but many jobs disappeared after Fort McClellan and other leading employers left town in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Developers often abandon efforts to locate to Anniston in favor of neighboring Oxford.

Racial tension is a significant backdrop.

Turner believes the white and black halves of his city, split between East and West Anniston, aren’t equipped to solve their problems together. Specifically, the city is not “set up” to address the needs of the predominantly black, low-income wards.

The dynamic on the city council, which is split along racial lines, creates a general malaise in Anniston, he said.

“Every matter is contested,” he said. “I think their goal has been to disturb the status quo,” he said of the two black members. “The [white] majority seems to have PTSD.”

Leaders from both sides agree there’s a divide, but they tell conflicting versions of how this came to be.

Charles Turner in front of his downtown law office in Anniston. (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek)

The view from the other side of town

For Councilman Reddick, the breakdown is the result of a history of racism.

Reddick believes city council invests a majority of city funding on development in predominantly white areas and fails to address racial disparities in law enforcement and local courts.

He acknowledges that during his time on the council, he has pushed back against the majority, but rejects the idea that he doesn’t support the initiatives of his white co-council members. However, he says, much of what he tries to do for his ward is shot down.

“For years it was almost impossible to get basic things done in my community,” said Reddick. "By neglecting black wards, yes, it affects the property values on your side of town,” he added.

A row of houses in a predominantly black neighborhood near N St. and S. Leighton Ave in Anniston. It's a part of town that would remain in Anniston under the proposed separation. (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek)

Questioning the value of integration

At a public comment session during a recent city council meeting, a line of black residents spoke about obstacles they face.

An older black man, Harold Ray, spoke after the meeting about a traffic stop he witnessed where an officer pulled a young black man over “for nothing.”

“The black community is not a place where you can play your games. We live there. That’s our livelihood. It needs to be respected. It shouldn’t be taken advantage of because I don’t have a million dollars like you over there on the east side,” he said. “I’m a human being.”

City data shows more traffic stops and citations of whites than blacks in recent years. However, in 2015, the police department fired two officers for membership in the white supremacy group League of the South.

Leaders in the black community complain that a rule requiring promotion from within the department makes it difficult to hire black police leadership.

Glen Ray, president of the county chapter of the NAACP, recalled to the council his memories of being forced to use a separate entrance, the back door, at Anniston businesses when he was a kid.

Ray marched for the integration of schools when he was a high schooler in Anniston. He recalls the attack of a Freedom Riders bus at Anniston’s Greyhound Bus station in 1961. The bus was bombed after it drove out of town.

Ray finally saw Alabama integrate its public schools in 1963, nearly a decade after Brown v. Board of Education.

Today Ray, who is retired, drives a grey sedan around Anniston with piles of paper in his trunk, a backup record of his legal advocacy work. He carries complaints he’s filed against public defenders, who he says all too often effectively work for the prosecution, and records of police stops of Anniston citizens he says were made without cause. He has marched at the courthouse, sued, and filled city council meetings with protesters, to little effect.

Which is why Ray is for de-annexation. In fact, he’s on the board of Forward 4 All. Ray wants to see Black control of Anniston.

“We don’t have a voice in the city,” he said. Blacks make up the majority of Anniston, He wants to see a black mayor and build a new high school.

“We have always sacrificed for integration. We have lost good leaders for wanting people to do what’s right. There’s people here that just ain’t going to do right. They going to always look at a black person as someone beneath them.”

Proponents of Annexit say the areas proposed for de-annexation make up more than a third of the city’s property tax revenue base. The city did not immediately provide the corresponding data by district.

But the prospect of bankruptcy resulting from lost tax revenue from the wealthier neighborhoods of Anniston doesn’t scare Ray.

“Blacks been bankrupt for years. You ain’t never done anything for the black community, so how am I going to get hurt if the city goes bankrupt?” said Ray.

A wake up call

Millie Harris sits at her home office in a large, brick, tree-shaded home on top of a hill in Ward 4, which is proposed, along with parts of two other wards, for de-annexation. She is a former educator and a city councilwoman who represents the ward.

Harris says she can’t, in good conscience, allow the city to go bankrupt and default on the pension fund. She opposes de-annexation, but she sympathizes with the reasons for the push to separate.

“For these people to feel they are paying taxes that are not helping them, specifically, paying police to patrol areas of high crime, paying for a school system that’s not performing, I can understand that they feel ‘I’m tired of it, I want to go,’" she said.

“They are people feeling a sense of hopelessness.”

Councilwoman Millie Harris represents a part of Anniston that would separate if the de-annexation goes forward. She does not think the split is likely to happen. (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek)

Harris says the weekly conflict on the council has caused her health problems from stress. She’s tired of being called a racist, which she says happens at just about every city council meeting. And she says she experiences racism herself.

“If you stereotype me because I’m a Caucasian woman, that is racism as well,” she said.

“I am very sorry for what happened in the 60’s,” she added. "I can’t go back and change what happened. All I can say is I’m very sorry. We must move forward."

In January of 2019, The Anniston Star, which has extensively covered the Annexit campaign, published a video of Councilman Ben Little yelling at Millie Harris and her husband at a city meeting after she accused him of overspending his city travel budget.

Harris questions claims of inequity on the council. She thinks the council has been fair in spreading resources between Anniston’s wards.

She is skeptical that racial profiling is an issue with the city police, and she thinks fees and fines levied at the city courts are fair. She is perplexed by criticism that white council members haven’t addressed the needs of predominantly black wards.

“I would need specifics. I don’t know what [they] mean by that, I really don’t,” she said.

Harris thinks that the de-annexation effort is going nowhere, but perhaps it has served a purpose as a wake-up call to the community. There’s a new tone of civility on the city council.

Reddick and Ray agree.

“Didn’t make a difference when blacks were complaining,” said Ray. “But now whites saying ‘You can have the city, we gonna leave,’ [The council responds] ‘Why you leaving? We been doing the blacks wrong?’”