On Jan. 7, President Biden nominated Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to serve as the nation’s secretary of labor. If the Senate confirms Walsh, as expected, Boston City Council President Kim Janey will become the city’s first female and first African American mayor, as prescribed by the city charter. The council is expected to waive a prescribed special election, leaving Janey serving as acting mayor until citizens elect a permanent one on Nov. 2. Having Janey as mayor will be a historic moment in Boston, a city known for its racial tensions.
What should we expect from an African American female mayor of Boston? My research examines the way that Black female mayors win elections and govern in several cities.
Kim Janey’s significance for Boston history
In “The Caribbeanization of Black Politics: Race, Group Consciousness, and Political Participation in America,” I wrote about Boston’s troubled past and African Americans’ politically inferior position throughout its history. Black candidates weren’t elected in the city until the 1960s. In the 1970s, Boston made national headlines as it was roiled by ferocious battles over busing, pitting impoverished White and Black neighborhoods against each other. In 1983, state Rep. Mel King was the city’s first Black mayoral contender, almost defeating competitor Raymond Flynn.
During the 1980s, Boston’s race relations again leaped into national attention after Black leaders proposed the Greater Roxbury Incorporation Project, later renamed Mandela City, which would have organized 90 percent of the city’s Black residents as a separate city within city limits. At the end of that decade, the city again made national headlines when a predominantly White police force brutalized Black men throughout the city after Charles Stuart, a White man, blamed a Black man for murdering his pregnant wife, which Stuart himself had done. Behind these incidents were myriad smaller acts of racial terrorism and violence.
In this century, Black Bostonians finally made significant political gains. In 2010, Ayanna Pressley became the first Black female and first Black at-large city council member. In 2018, she became the state’s first Black female congressional representative. By 2020, women and people of color held most of the seats on the city council. Now Boston will have a Black woman as mayor. How might her governance and campaign — if she chooses to run for mayor this fall — compare with that of other Black female mayors in the United States?
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In 1971, Ellen Walker Craig-Jones of Urbancrest, Ohio, became the nation’s first elected Black female mayor. In 1973, she was followed by Lelia Foley-Davis of Taft, Okla., and Doris A. Davis in Compton, Calif. Before 2000, a few Black women won such offices, but most Black mayors were men. In general, Black female mayors have presided over small- or medium-size cities, although they’ve also held office in larger cities like Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. One observer declared 2017 the “Year of the Black Woman Mayor” because of the record number of Black female candidates.
In my forthcoming edited book, scholars examine the way that Black women campaign for office and issues they emphasize after taking office. The chapters examine the influence of race, gender or the combination of both on the campaigns and governance of current or former mayors in Atlanta, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Charlotte, Chicago, Compton, Daytona Beach, Flint, Lauderdale Lakes, New Orleans, Pontiac, Rochester, San Francisco, Shreveport, Tacoma, and Washington, D.C., and in other regions such as Florida’s Broward County and the Mississippi Delta. In all, the book examines 35 women who have served in American cities.
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My own research finds that most were community activists and city council members before becoming mayor. Like these women, Janey’s community activist work has been extensive. A Roxbury native and Smith College graduate, Janey worked as a community organizer for Parents United for Child Care, was a senior project director for the nonprofit Massachusetts Advocates for Children, and served on the executive committee of the Boston NAACP before winning a seat on the Boston City Council in 2017 and becoming its president in January 2020.
With the exception of Acquanetta Warren of Fontana, Calif., all 16 currently serving Black female mayors in my research database are Democrats. All worked in traditional occupations — law, business, education and community activism — before entering politics. Most also won open seats, defeated Black male candidates, presided over cities with large minority populations, and didn’t heavily emphasize their race and gender. Their elections weren’t as racially polarized as those of the earliest Black mayors. Still, on average, they got the votes of 86 percent of Black female voters, a higher percentage than from other groups. They also received an average of 78 percent support from Black men, 73 percent from Hispanic women, 65 percent from Hispanic men, 48 percent from White men, and 43 percent from White women.
If Kim Janey runs and is reelected mayor, she is likely to emphasize economic development and job creation, as do other city mayors, whether Black or White, male or female. To determine the governing priorities of the 35 mayors in the book, I studied media reports, speeches, and public documents about each woman during her mayoral term(s). Much like White mayors, these women often promote gentrification initiatives, even when those displace poor residents. Some serve in cities where well-publicized police brutality incidents occur on their watch, as in Atlanta, Baltimore and Baton Rouge. Like other mayors, they must address police-community relationships. That will be true for Janey: In December, recordings were released of Boston police officers bragging about attacking nonviolent racial justice protesters. And like other mayors, they must help their cities recover from the pandemic’s fiscal challenges. In other words, while their backgrounds and demographics may be different, the challenges they face as mayors are similar.
Many city residents feel a sense of pride in having a Black female mayor and think of these women as trailblazers. Their elections suggest progress in cities that once had seemingly unbreakable glass ceilings for African Americans and for women.
Kim Janey says she is giving a mayoral run “serious consideration” after her acting term ends. Whatever her political future, she is poised to become something that few until recently would have predicted an African American woman would be: the mayor of a city known for its racial polarization and Black political exclusion.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately characterized Raymond Flynn as the incumbent in his 1983 Democratic Boston mayoral primary race against Mel King. We regret the error.
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Sharon Wright Austin is professor of political science at the University of Florida and author of Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors (under contract with Temple University Press).
