| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

African-American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City. Ed. by David R. Colburn and Jeffrey S. Adler. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001. x, 266 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-252-02634-9.)

In 1967, Carl Stokes (Cleveland) and Richard Hatcher (Gary) won mayoral elections, starting what the co-editor Jeffrey S. Adler calls "a sea change in urban society." By 1990, more than three hundred African Americans had become mayors of U.S. cities, aided by white flight and by black population growth and political mobilization. 1

The University of Florida historians Adler and David R. Colburn begin with useful overviews of mayoral campaigns and administrations. Their contributors follow with eight well-executed chapters on ten big-city black mayors: Hatcher (by James B. Lane), Stokes (Leonard N. Moore), Harold Washington of Chicago and Ernest "Dutch" Morial of New Orleans (Arnold R. Hirsch), New York's David Dinkins (Roger Biles), Tom Bradley of Los Angeles (Heather R. Parker), Atlanta's Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young (Ronald H. Bayor), Washington's Marion Barry (Howard Gillette Jr.), and Detroit's Coleman Young (Heather Ann Thompson). 2

Most of these men won owing to extraordinarily high black voter support and turnout combined with the support of small but crucial numbers of white liberals and/or big businessmen. This alliance enabled them narrowly to overcome opposition from most white voters, who put racism above partisanship or social class. African American mayors tried to enhance blacks' employment and business opportunities, improve police-community relations, and connect minority residents more closely to local government. Few had easy times as mayors. Fiscal challenges, white resistance, institutional barriers, and their own political mistakes limited their success. . . .

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