New wave of black mayors

Ebony, Feb, 1994

From the traditionally Black political strongholds of Detroit and Atlanta to the near lily-mute electoral bastions of Minneapolis and Rochester, N.Y, a political sea change has ushered in a new wave of Black mayors who will play a major role in charting the course for urban America in the years to come.

Politically savvy, fiscally astute and unapologetically committed to improving the plight of inner-four cities represent a new generation of municipal chief executive officers.

Two of the new mayors--Dennis Archer of Detroit and Bill Campbell of Atlanta--replace legends of the Civil Rights Movement--Detroit's Coleman Young, and Atlanta's Maynard Jackson, who became the first mayor of a major Southern city on his first election in 1973. The other two mayors featured here won surprise victories in predominantly White cities. Sharon Sayles Belton, a co-founder of a women's shelter and a veteran political leader, attracted national attention with a solid victory in Minneapolis. Bill Johnson, the president of the local Urban League, won his first political victory in Rochester, N.Y

Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer is not ashamed to admit that he is a dreamer, for his dreams have been the guiding force behind his climb from abject poverty in his hometown of Cassopolis, Mich., in the state's southwestern corner, to the pinnacle of political power as mayor of the nation's seventh-largest city.

When Archer took the oath of office in January, he ended the unprecedented 20-year term of former Mayor Coleman Young, who was elected the city's first Black mayor in 1974. The swearing-in ceremony marked yet another milestone in the long road Archer has trod from his boyhood ram-shackled farmhouse to Manoogian Mansion, the mayor's official residence.

From the pit of despair, Archer dreamed of a better life, although everything around him seemed void of hope.

The old farmhouse where Archer grew up was set hard by the railroad tracks and shook when trains rumbled past. There was no insulation in the dwelling to block the winter winds from whipping through the walls and plank floor.There was no indoor plumbing, only an outhouse. Water was drawn from a hand pump outside and hauled into the house in a pail.

Still, Archer was determined to make it. He studied hard and told his classmates that he would someday be a schoolteacher, even though they laughed at him because the only suit he owned was his marching band uniform.

Yet, Archer's hard work paid off. He graduated from Cassopolis High School in 1959 and washed dishes to put himself through Western Michigan University. After graduation, he landed a job as a special education teacher and later graduated from law school.

Archer was elected to an eight-year term on the Michigan Supreme Court, but resigned his seat in December 1990 to explore a run for mayor.

"When I was growing up in Cassopolis, I did not envision that I would ever become a teacher," Archer reflects. "I never thought I'd even be a lawyer. I wouldn't even have thought enough to dream about being on the Michigan Supreme Court. Now, I find myself priviledged to serve our citizens as the next mayor of Detroit. That is something that was beyond my comprehension."

Today, Archer no longer lives in a wind-whipped farmhouse, but a in a plush home in the stylish Palmer Woods neighborhood of Detroit. He no longer wears hand-me-down clothes, but tailored suits. He is no longer earning a dishwasher's wages, but he is taking a pay cut in his six-figure salary as a partner in a prominent Detroit law firm to accept the mayor's pay of $117,000 a year.

But one thing hasn't changed. Archer is still an unabashed dreamer He plans "to make people proud to say that they are from Detroit."

Archer also intends to deal directly with business owners seeking to set up shop in the city. He plans to be accessible to the city, 76 percent of whom are Black.He also plans to continue to lead his busy social life with his wife, Trudy, a district court judge. The couple is often is often seen rubbing elbows with Detroit's powerbrokers and social elite.

Turning around a city struggling under the weight of a sluggish automobile industry and the urban blight is a daunting tasks even for an energetic, gregarious man like Archer.

But the new mayors remains optimistic that he change. "In the Year 2000, Detroit will be the |in' place to live, to raise a family, to business and to experience cultural diversity," Archer predicts."[In that] year, the City of Detroit will have received an award as the most improved city in the decade of the |90s."

AT 6 a.m. every morning during the mayoral campaign, candidate Bill Campbell hit the streets running, handing out campaign literature, shaking hands and talking to voters. Campbell's blistering pace of visiting churches, community organizations and business groups in a 18-hour work day was sustained by "a lot of prayer and old-fashioned shoe leather" and was rewarded finally with resounding victories in a 12-way nonpartisan election and a run-off election to replace the retiring mayor, Maynard Jackson.