The state has a separate appointed board that administers the Alabama Community College System.
Six of the board members are female, two of which are African-American (Ms. Richardson and Ms. Ella Bell) and two are male (Mr. Newman and Mr. Reynolds).
The first African-American to serve on the Alabama State Board of Education was Peyton Finley (1871–1873) from Lafayette in Chambers County who was "free-born" from birth in 1824.
Active in the Republican Party after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction era, he served a single term on the State School Board.
The first African-American woman to serve on the Alabama State Board was Democrat Ethel H. Hall (1987–2011) of Fairfield, Jefferson County.
Mr. Brown was defeated for re-nomination by Jackie Ziegler on April 12, 2016, but remained as a member of the Board until his term expired in January, 2017.
From 2019 to 2020, there was a vacancy on the board due to the death of District 5 member Ella Bell (served 2001–2019) who died on November 3, 2019, shortly before qualifying closed for the seat.
On January 7, 2020, Governor Kay Ivey appointed Dr. Tommie Stewart for the remainder of the unexpired term.
[citation needed] In the Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature in 2019, it passed a proposed constitutional amendment to abolish the current eight elected School Board members and replace them with an eight-member Commission appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the State Senate.
African-American voters also rejected this, with the Alabama Political Reporter describing it as an attempt to remove their right to vote.