Black Mayors Research Articles

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Downtown Redevelopment, by Timothy Jon Curry, Kent Schwirian, and Rachael A. Woldoff. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2004. xiv, 184 pp. Protecting Home: Class, Race and Masculinity in Boys' Baseball, by Sherri Grasmuck. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 304 pp. ISBN: 0813535557 (paper). Desegregating the City: Ghettos, Enclaves, and Inequality edited by David P. Varady. State University of New York Press, 2005. 310 pages + xix Mobilizing an Asian American Community, by Linda Trinh Võ. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. 304 pp. ISBM: 1‐59213‐262‐6 (paper). Planet of Slums, by Mike Davis. New York: Verso, 2006. 228 pp. ISBN: 1844670228 (cloth). Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy, by J. Phillip Thompson, III. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 360 pp. ISBN: 0195177339 (cloth).

Deracialization or Racialization: The Making of a Black Mayor in Jackson, Mississippi1

In 1997, Harvey Johnson made history by becoming the first black to be elected as mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. Four years prior, Johnson failed to make the Democratic primary runoffs. The following research question is addressed: what explains Johnson’s victory in 1997, when compared to his defeat in 1993? In answering this question, I rely heavily on elite‐level interviewing and newspaper accounts. I also examine the black and white vote for Johnson, using aggregate‐level election and census data. Gary King’s Ecological Inference technique is used to examine these data. Based on the findings, I conclude that Johnson ran a deracialized campaign in 1993 and a racialized campaign in 1997. The deracialized campaign failed to attract white voters and attenuated his black support. In 1997, however, he was able to almost double his support from black voters. This increase can be attributed in part to his racialized campaign strategy. Lord have mercy! We’re going to have a black mayor in Jackson, Mississippi. —An anonymous black woman quoted in Chappell (1997, 76)

The Pomp of Power: Black Mayoralties in Urban America*

Objectives. Although urban scholarship has come to better understand the dynamics of black political incorporation in the United States, to date scant empirical attention has been paid to an important element of minority representation in local politics—the rise of black mayors. The present study addresses this gap in the extant literature.Methods. We analyze incidences of black mayoralties by fitting standard pooled and random effects probit models to a panel of 309 cities observed between 1971 and 2000.Results. Although cities' racial profiles are strongly associated with the incidence of black mayoralties, black representation on city council, black educational attainment, and reformed governments increase the odds of black mayoral emergence. On the other hand, southern location continues to depress the rise of black mayoralties, as do partisan elections, particularly in cities where no racial group constitutes a majority.Conclusions. Although our results partially confirm extant research on the diffusion of black mayoralties in American urban politics, they also call into question conventional wisdom. Our study emphasizes the need for more large‐N studies of minority representation in urban politics and provides suggestions for how the independent effects of black mayors on municipal policy outcomes might subsequently be analyzed empirically.

Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy – J. Phillip Thompson

Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Call for a Deep Democracy – J. Phillip Thompson

Race, Location, and Education

Throughout the 1990s, unprecedented numbers of Black mayors were elected in large American cities. Previous explanatory factors for Black mayoral success based on the 1970s and 1980s may no longer be adequate given the economic transformations to cities in the 1990s. This study examines structural demographic data to investigate the trends in Black mayoral success. The author finds that the proportion of the Black population, educational attainment, and regional location affect the electoral success of Black mayors.

Making Life Work in Crowded Places

The author of City: Urbanism and its End (2003) recounts his stint as Chief Administrative Officer of New Haven, Connecticut under that city’s first Black mayor and during one of its toughest fiscal crises. The piece seeks, first, to interpret the failure of Black political succession, which is increasingly evident in many American cities, and to chart the changing features of urban regimes such as New Haven’s. Among the regime changes to which the paper gives special attention are: (1) the decline and delocalization of business, (2) the shift of labor politics from private to public (and nonprofit) institutions, (3) the rising importance of well-capitalized nonprofits such as hospitals and universities, (4) the declining significance of political parties, and (5) the expanding importance of state government in local governance.

:To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875–1906.

The race relations of no American city have been as thoroughly scrutinized historically as those of Atlanta, and with good reason. As progressive as any southern city, Georgia's capital touted a cluster of black colleges and served as the operational base of intellectual, political, and religious leaders from W. E. B. Du Bois to Martin Luther King, Jr. It was the first major city to elect black mayors, who, along with moderate white leadership, earned the city a reputation as one “too busy to hate” during the civil rights era and since. Such claims overshadowed far more complex racial dynamics that in 1906 included one of the most brutal of the South's race riots. All of this has been extensively documented and analyzed in a wealth of scholarship—including three new books on the riot—over the past few years (so much so that Stephen G. N. Tuck sought to distinguish his 2001 study of modern race relations in Georgia as a whole by entitling it Beyond Atlanta). Much of Allison Dorsey's story therefore covers familiar ground. And yet, Dorsey's perspective on the formative era of the city's African‐American community adds significant new layers to our understanding of what made Atlanta exceptional.

Race and Tourism in America's First City

In 1988, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau established its Multicultural Affairs Congress (MAC) to attract and monitor minority tourism in one of America's most historic cities. Four years later, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce acknowledgedMAC's efforts and ranked Philadelphia the nation's top destination for African American tourists. Coinciding with the fulfillment of several key civil rights projects, particularly the election of Philadelphia's first black mayor, African American tourism ties Philadelphia's existing political and economic growth to the city's racial past. Placing changes in city policies and landscape that accompanied the emergence of this industry in context with overall economic, political, and spatial shifts marking Philadelphia's entrance into a service-driven economy, this article explores the possibility that African American tourism in Philadelphia represents a fusion of politics and racial formation within urban development that opens the door to investigating a new plane of urban racial politics.

Seeking Effective Power: Why Mayors Need Community Organizations

To many, mayors are the most familiar elected officials. Unlike federal representatives, mayors often directly coordinate community services like trash removal, policing, and in some cases oversight of public schools. Despite the seeming transparency of mayoral duties, bottom-line judgments about mayors' performance are political, and, unlike profit margins in business, essentially aesthetic. The public does not evaluate mayoral performance in accordance with “objective” or “rational” criteria; rather, its judgment has more do with values than “facts.” In addition, mayors' performances, including their credibility and ability to implement agendas, has as much (if not more) to do with local politics as with their political orientation. I will address these two points in turn.J. Phillip Thompson is associate professor in the Department of Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (jt71@mit.edu). He is author of a forthcoming book on black mayors (Oxford University Press). He was director of Mayor's Office of Housing Coordination and deputy general manager of the New York Housing Authority in the administration of Mayor David Dinkins (1990–93).

"Do Whites Have Rights?": White Detroit Policemen and "Reverse Discrimination" Protests in the 1970s

By the time Judge Ralph Freeman announced his decision on affirmative action in the Detroit Police Department on May 9, 1975, the crowd of white protesters outside had swelled to over a thousand. In the large, marbled U.S. District Courthouse on West Lafayette Avenue in downtown Detroit, Freeman ordered that the traditional “last hired, first fired” seniority principle be modified so that police officers recently hired under the city's new affirmative action plan retain their positions in the face of massive layoffs. As Freeman delivered his ruling, the line of Detroit Police Officers Association (dpoa) members, their family and friends, city council members, and union sympathizers from as far away as Buffalo and Chicago stretched through the streets surrounding the courthouse. They held signs reading “Detroit Is an Un-Equal Employment Opportunity Employer,” “Uphold Our Contract,” “Do Whites Have Rights?,” and “Real Affirmative Action: Fire the Mayor.” The last sign referred to Coleman A. Young, the city's black mayor and the author of the much-hated affirmative action plan.1

Applying Black Threat Theory, Urban Regime Theory, and Deracialization: The Memphis Mayoral Elections of 1991, 1995, and 1999

ABSTRACT:Until 1991 Memphis was the only major US city with a majority-black population that had not elected a black mayor. Various explanations, including in-fighting and competition among black city leaders and citizen aversion to candidates who attempt cross-racial appeals, have been offered to explain the lack of an elected black mayor of Memphis prior to 1991. We first investigate how Herenton overcame these electoral obstacles to become Memphis’ first elected black mayor in 1991, and then won reelection in two consecutive reelection attempts. We then apply Herenton’s campaign strategy and the vote in these elections to several popular theories of voting and election strategy in urban elections—black-threat theory, urban regime theory, and deracialization. Our findings point to the new trend of biracial coalitions in the urban setting and suggest the importance of reconsidering the traditional theories of racial politics, such as the black threat thesis.

Straight into Compton: American Dreams, Urban Nightmares, and the Metamorphosis of a Black Suburb

This article traces the historic evolution of the California city of Compton, both as a physical place, and as a popular cultural idea. A recipient of the coveted All-American Cities Award in 1952, the almost exclusively white city of Compton quickly integrated after the landmark Supreme Court housing desegregation cases of the early 1950s. By the late 1950s, Compton was a symbol of black middle class achievement, and by the 1970s it would become a vanguard for black political power, with a black mayor and city council. However, by the 1980s, the intense concentration of gang activity in Compton, coupled with the city's proximity to the movie and music-making industries of Hollywood, contributed to the recasting of Compton as a symbol of black crime and poverty throughout urban America. The article explores this transformation of Compton from a place name to a metonym in local and national media reporting, hip-hop music, and the so-called "gangsta" films of the 1980s and 1990s. A quick glance at local business and county land annexation patterns suggests, as well as the battle to rename Compton Boulevard, suggests that by the late 1980s, the idea of Compton became almost as important—and in some cases, far more so—than the actual history of the place. The lesson of the Compton story, the author concludes, is that an engaged citizenry should approach "truths" about physical places with as much skepticism as we do "truths" about races of people.

Race and Representation in Detroit’s Community Development Coalitions

This article examines how race affects conflict between advocates of community development and neighborhood revitalization and local government led by a black mayor. The article shows that partly due to issues of racial representation in community development leadership, some activists, even white activists and leaders supportive of social change, can be ensnarled in the fissures of racialized community development politics. The article analyzes the advocacy initiatives of the Detroit Save Our Spirit (SOS) coalition—a majority white but progressive alliance—as they challenged Mayor Coleman Young’s community proposals between 1985 and 1993. Although Young was admired because he challenged racial inequality, his promotion of a progrowth economic development agenda led him to exploit Detroit’s racial divide to demobilize black and white critics. We demonstrate how SOS represented a multicultural inclusion model to overcome some of the racial fissures in community development.

Community Development and the Politics of Deracialization: The Case of Denver, Colorado, 1991-2003

This article examines the mayoralty of Wellington Webb, 1991 to 2003, the first black mayor of Denver, Colorado, as a case study for testing the idea that “deracialization” produces benefits for the black community. Deracialization is essentially a political current within neoliberalism that argues black leaders should deemphasize race in favor of certain political styles and symbols. Upon examining Mayor Webb’s administrations—from the perspective of community development—municipal employment, public schools, police accountability, and affordable housing are found to have worsened, or reflected ambiguous change, for Denver’s poor and working-class neighborhoods. Supported with social and economic data, as well as interviews with community activists, the study concludes that race remains a significant issue for understanding how community development is pursued in black neighborhoods in some cities.

Black Mayors/White Mayors: Explaining Their Approval

Performance models have been the norm in research on national and state executives, but oddly this model has rarely been extended to the next level of executive office, mayors. The increasing number of African American mayors suggests that race may complicate the performance model of approval at the local level. This research tests a performance model of mayoral approval that takes racial factors into account. The model is tested in two white cities with white mayors and two black cities with black mayors. Performance is measured by citizen evaluations of a variety of urban conditions, some of which citizens can observe firsthand. Findings indicate that (1) performance matters in evaluating black and white mayors, and its influence does not seem to be related to the race of the mayor; (2) performance has more explanatory power over mayoral approval than race, a pattern that holds for both black and white mayors; (3) race has more impact on the approval of black mayors than on white mayors; and (4) blacks in black cities have lower evaluations of local government performance in their cities than blacks in white cities. We conclude that the performance model is generalizable to the local level, even with the complications of race.

Subordination and Violence against State Control Agents: Testing Political Explanations for Lethal Assaults against the Police

This study examines the relationships between economic and political subordination and the use of lethalforce against state officials charged with controlling the underclass. More specifically, it uses count estimators to assess thefactors that lead to felonious killings ofpolice officers in the largest U.S. cities. Economic and racial inequality and the presence of a black mayor are used to assess economic and political subordination. Threat effects are measured by the percentage of blacks and by growth in this percentage. With violent crime and social disorganization indicators held constant, the results show that police killings are most likely in cities with the largest differences in black-white resources, but the presence of a black mayor reduces these killings. In a supplemental analysis, the samefactors explain the more common injurious assaults against officers. The findings suggest thatforms ofpolitical subordination increase the probability of violence directed against the street-level state-control agents.

White Residents, Black Incumbents, and a Declining Racial Divide

Despite the hopes of the civil rights movement, researchers have found that the election of African Americans to office has not greatly improved the well-being of the black community. This study focuses on the white community, however, and finds that black leadership can have a profound effect. Under black mayors there is positive change in the white vote and in the racial sentiments expressed by members of the white electorate. Although white Republicans seem largely immune to the effects of black incumbency, for Democrats and independents an experience with a black mayoralty tends to decrease racial tension, increase racial sympathy, and increase support of black leadership.

Performance and race in evaluating minority mayors.

This research compares a performance model to a racial model in explaining approval of a black mayor. The performance model emphasizes citizen evaluations of conditions in the city and the mayor's perceived effectiveness in dealing with urban problems. The racial model stipulates that approval of a black mayor is based primarily on racial identification or racism. A model of mayoral approval is tested with two surveys over different years of citizens in a city that has had 20 years' experience with black mayors. Findings indicate that performance matters when evaluating black mayors, indicating that the national performance models of presidential approval are generalizable to local settings with black executives. Implications for black officeholders are discussed. However, the racial model is alive and well, as indicated by its impact on approval and the finding that, in this context, performance matters more to white voters than to black voters. A final, highly tentative conclusion is offered that context conditions the relative power of these models. The performance model may explain more variation in approval of the black mayor than the racial model in a context of rapidly changing city conditions that focuses citizen attention on performance, but during a period of relative stability the two models are evenly matched.

Interracial Conflict and Interracial Homicide: Do Political and Economic Rivalries Explain White Killings of Blacks or Black Killings of Whites?

What factors lead to interracial killings? Because racial conflict explanations have been overlooked in the previous literature, this article studies the determinants of disaggregated interracial killing rates in 165 U.S. cities by testing economic, political, and social control accounts. After holding the probability of interracial contacts and the total murder rate constant, the results show that cities with a black mayor and greater economic competition between the races have more white killings of blacks. The same hypotheses explain black killings of whites, but these killings are less likely in cities with black mayors. Police department size does not explain white killings of blacks, but cities with larger departments have fewer black killings of whites. The findings suggest that economic rivalries and contests for political influence lead to greater interracial violence.

Someone else's house: America's unfinished struggle for integration

Thirty-five years after the 1963 March on Washington, blacks and whites are still trying to achieve Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic dream of racial inclusion. What ever happened to integration? What happened to the vision of a single, shared community in which both blacks and whites would feel they belong? Barriers have fallen; prejudice is abating. Blacks have made astonishing progress in many areas. Yet if anything, King's vision seems more remote than ever, and most Americans, black and white, remain divided by anger and mistrust. In Someone Else's House, Tamar Jacoby asks what happened to the King dream, calling the nation back to its most hopeful and promising ideal of race relations. Moving beyond the stale blame game of left and right, Jacoby uses history to show what's worked and what hasn't. Her story of the unfinished struggle for integration leads through the volatile worlds of New York in the 1960s, the center of liberal idealism about race; Detroit in the 1970s, under the city's first black mayor, Coleman Young; and Atlanta in the 1980s and 1990s, ruled by a coalition of white businessmen and black politicians. Based on extensive local research and reporting, her vivid, dramatic account evokes the specific flavor of each city and gives voice to a host of ordinary individuals, black and white, caught up in the frustrations of trying to translate a vision into reality. Someone Else's House is a story of strong emotions and bitter conflict-- over Black Power, busing, ghetto policing and affirmative action. There are occasional heroes and some villains, but very few conventional morality tales. In Jacoby's view, the recent history of race relations is more often a story of blindness and tragic mistakes-- of blacks caught between their racial resentment and their yearning for integration, of whites led to do the wrong thing less by prejudice than by good intentions. Jacoby's conclusions are as straightforward and clear as her history is nuanced. Most of the means we've used to achieve integration haven't worked. Our growing preoccupation with color consciousness leaves little room for the communality King dreamed of. The ideals of the early civil rights movement-integration, forgiveness and a sense of one community based not on color but on shared national purposes-- remain the only possible American answer for race relations. But if we can only listen to history, Jacoby tells us, we can still find our way back to that path.