The Seat Evelyn Built: Has District 4 Lost Its Voice for the Voiceless?

Evelyn Turner Pugh spent 31 years standing with the community that elected her. Five years after her passing, many in District 4 are asking whether Councilor Toyia Tucker has carried that legacy forward — or walked away from it.

COMMENTARY | By [Wane Hailes] | The Courier Eco Latino

When Evelyn Turner Pugh held the District 4 seat, there was never any question about where she stood. For 31 years, the woman who rose from East Carver Heights to become Columbus’ first Black woman mayor pro tem described her mission in words this community has never forgotten: to be “a voice of the people who didn’t have a voice.” She fought for Forrest Road, for parks and recreation, for the overlooked corners of East Columbus — and she never forgot who sent her downtown. This month marks five years since her passing, and the question hanging over the district she built is a painful one: has her successor carried that torch, or let it go dark?

Toyia Tucker won the District 4 seat in 2020, stepping into shoes that were always going to be hard to fill. But it is not the size of the shoes that troubles many of her constituents. It is the pattern of her votes on the two most consequential personnel decisions this city has faced in a generation — decisions that removed the two most prominent African American public servants in Columbus government.

The first came in 2023, when Police Chief Freddie Blackmon, only the second Black chief in the city’s history, was pushed toward the exit. Blackmon’s supporters rallied outside the government center, alleging that a majority-white council was treating him unfairly because of his race. The chief presented a restructuring plan to address the concerns raised in an outside consultant’s study; the next day, the mayor handed him a severance offer. Tucker did not stand in the breach. She advocated for a nationwide external search to replace him and publicly defended the council’s handling of his departure, which ended with Blackmon accepting a $400,000 severance and retiring that April. Whatever the merits of the consultant’s findings — many residents of District 4 wanted their councilor to fight for due process for a Black chief the way Evelyn Turner Pugh fought for Forrest Road: relentlessly, publicly and without apology.

The second decision removed any doubt about the pattern in the minds of many. On the night of May 27, 2025, Tucker joined a 7-3 majority to terminate City Manager Isaiah Hugley — the first African American ever to hold that office, a nearly 40-year servant of this city, and a man just seven months from his announced retirement. Black clergy, civil rights advocates and community leaders packed the council chambers to oppose the firing. Rev. Dr. Johnie H. Flakes III warned the council about how the action would be received. National NAACP board member Ed DuBose called it a termination carried out “under the cover of darkness.” The three votes to keep Hugley came from Gary Allen, Bruce Huff and Travis Chambers. The councilwoman from Evelyn Turner Pugh’s district was not among them.

The council majority gave its reasons: operational failures cited in the finance and animal control departments, and a stated loss of confidence in Hugley’s leadership. Tucker and her colleagues are entitled to that judgment, and fairness requires printing it. But fairness also requires printing what happened next. In June of this year, the people of Columbus delivered their own verdict: they elected Isaiah Hugley the first Black mayor in this city’s history, winning the June runoff a year after his firing. The man seven councilors deemed unfit to serve seven more months was chosen by the voters to lead the entire government. It is hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of that May night.

Evelyn Turner Pugh taught this community what District 4 representation looks like. “It’s not about you as an elected official,” she said. “It’s about what you can do for your constituents.” She was ferocious — Mayor Skip Henderson called her “one of the most ferocious and tenacious battlers when she believed in something” — and what she believed in was her people. When her district needed a champion, she never had to be asked twice.

Tucker, to her credit, defended her seat at the ballot box in 2024. But the discontent in District 4 is real, and it is growing. In the barbershops, the church fellowship halls and the community centers of East Columbus, the conversation has already turned to 2028 — and to whether the seat Evelyn built still belongs to the community she built it for.

Five years after her passing, the standard Evelyn Turner Pugh set has never wavered. It remains what it has always been: a fearless voice for the voiceless. District 4 is still searching for that voice. Sadly, it has been replaced by one that too often appears influenced, controlled, or manipulated by other members of the City Council rather than standing as an independent advocate for the people it was elected to serve.