Earlier this week, Kim Janey, the first black woman to lead the city of Boston, became acting mayor.
She was sworn in by the first black woman to head the highest court in Massachusetts, Kimberly Budd, and by the first black Congresswoman in Massachusetts, Ayanna Pressley.
This is great news for a city that was central to the abolitionist movement and the educational home of civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr, who studied at Boston University.
Fifty-four white men have led Boston since it was incorporated as a city in 1822, most described as “New England Yankee” or Irish ancestry, and before that countless white selectors from when it was colonized in 1630.
That changed this week with Janey’s rise to acting mayor, with the strong prospect that she will run for election in November in hopes of consolidating her position.
Kim Janey
(@Kim_Janey)History. He did. pic.twitter.com/ZyqMqDmwjF
The outgoing mayor, Martin Walsh, has just left to become Secretary of Labor for Joe Biden. As chairman of the board, Janey was next in line, with the title of acting mayor granted by the city’s charter.
The rise is a long way from when she was 11 years old being transported by bus from the predominantly black neighborhood of Roxbury to a high school in a much more white and bolder neighborhood in Charlestown in 1976, watching angry white faces protesting the effects of a court – effort required with the intention of disaggregating the school district.
“For months I saw them throw stones, bottles, sticks, shout racial slanders … ‘Go back to Africa’, ‘You don’t belong here,'” she told the Guardian.
Janey returned to that school on her first day as acting mayor, stopping at a class of students learning about desegregation.
“Being able to hear their thoughts about it and then talk to them like someone who has lived through it and is now in their classroom as the first black mayor is very powerful,” she said.
Janey’s ancestors escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad to Nova Scotia, with some settling in Boston seven generations ago, as described by Massachusetts genealogist and author Chris Child.
Janey became a mother at the age of 16 and attended community college while supporting her daughter, Kimesha.
She moved to Smith College, where she cleaned toilets to pay for her studies. Her studies were interrupted to care for a relative, but she finally obtained her diploma from Smith in 1994.
Before entering politics, she worked as an activist and project director at Massachusetts Advocates for Children, promoting educational equality.
Janey won a city council election in 2017 and came to represent parts of the wealthiest neighborhoods in South End and Fenway, and the most racially diverse neighborhoods in Dorchester and Roxbury.
Many of its constituents fit the statistic often cited in the 2015 Federal Reserve Bank report in Boston – that the average net worth for black families in the city is only $ 8, compared to $ 247,500 for white families.
This, she said in her first speech to the mayor, “is not an accident. It is a product of the discriminatory policies that we all inherit. We need to summon. “
His term begins at a time when racial and financial inequalities were exposed by the coronavirus pandemic that arose in Boston’s colored communities, especially among essential workers.
Janey’s stated immediate goals are fair distribution of vaccines, especially getting more vaccines to underprivileged black communities, returning children safely to school and centralizing disadvantaged workers in the city’s economic recovery. But it inherited a set of additional challenges.
Janey will be the primary facilitator in a budget battle that may reflect the struggle she led last year. Shortly after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a white police officer, Janey led a group of councilors to demand that Walsh cut the police budget by $ 414 million by 10% and infuse social programs with $ 300 million in funds from the City.
The effort was unsuccessful and received a furious response from the police union. Instead, Walsh transferred funds from the police overtime budget to other programs.
Although he did not commit to the same budget cut, in an interview with the Guardian this week, Janey said he was reviewing police reform and plans to hire a director to head the city’s new police accountability office, a measure signed by Walsh in January.
In addition, she wants to “think more about issues beyond police overtime” and reimagine how residents can respond to crises.
“If a resident is calling 911 when he sees someone who may be fighting eviction or if he sees someone sleeping on the front porch of a store, is the police the right answer?” she said, adding alternatives like doctors and housing experts may be a better answer.
She said she wants to face economic struggles and inequality.
“The same communities most affected by the public health crisis are facing the highest rates of food and housing insecurity,” wrote Janey in an opinion article, saying that she will address the issue with “a new urgency.”
Segun Idowu, executive director of the Massachusetts black economic council, worked with then-councilwoman Janey on issues faced by small black companies and marijuana shops hard hit by the pandemic, and hopes she will improve support.
“What is important about this is that, in Boston’s 200-year history, the person at the corner office does not need an intensive course to understand the experiences of half the city’s population,” said Idowu.
Janey did not announce whether to run for mayor in November, but two people close to her told the Guardian she is seriously thinking about it.
She would face the challenge of city councilors Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell, Annissa Essaibi George, of state deputy Jon Santiago and of the city’s chief of economic development, John Barros, the most racially diverse candidate pool in the history of the Boston mayoral campaign.
But now, Janey is savoring her historic moment.
“One hundred and ninety-nine years is enough time. Madam. Mayor. Kim. Janey, ”says one posted video on his Twitter account, showing all the white male faces of Boston’s mayors, ending on his own.