By Brentin Mock, Bloomberg CityLab + Equality, April 9, 2021
On Tuesday, Tishaura Jones became the first Black woman elected mayor of St. Louis, taking over the city during a time of anxiety around the Covid-19 pandemic, police violence, worsening racial disparities and a wave of violent crime. She joins a growing list of Black women who’ve taken over U.S. cities as mayors in recent years, including Keisha Lance Bottoms in Atlanta, LaToya Cantrell in New Orleans, London Breed in San Francisco, and, most recently, Kim Janey as acting mayor in Boston.
Jones now steps into office ready to make good on several promises she made as far back as 2017, when she first ran for mayor andlost by less than 900 votes to Lyda Krewson, the city’s outgoing mayor who decided not to run for re-election. These promises gained widespread attention in a letter that went viral about why she would not seek the local St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper’s endorsement. In that letter, she outlined how she, as mayor, would launch a participatory budgeting process, employ tax incentives coupled with community benefit agreements for development, and close down the city’s medium-security prison, known as the “Workhouse” (which Jones called “that rat hole” in her letter).
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