BOSTON (AP) – Kim Janey, who as a child threw stones at his school bus during the Boston breakdown era, marked his historic rise as the first woman and the first black person to serve as the city’s mayor with a ceremonial oath event Wednesday.
Janey replaces fellow Democrat Marty Walsh, who resigned on Monday to become secretary of labor for President Joe Biden. She was mayor and will serve as mayor until an election for mayor in the fall.
Janey didn’t say if she was going to run. But she embraced the innovative nature of Wednesday’s transition.
“Today is a new day. I stand before you as the first woman and the first black mayor of Boston, the city I love,” said Janey during the event at City Hall. that came before me. ”
Janey, 55, promised to bring urgency to work. She said her government would be open to those who feel disconnected from the city’s power structure.
Helping the city to get out of the pandemic and create a more just economy will be among the main goals of his government, according to Janey, who has pledged to increase access to tests and vaccines in the neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19.
Janey also pledged to address food, housing and public transport insecurity and work to close the city’s wealth gap, in part, by ensuring that minority-owned companies have a fairer shot at city contracts. She also pledged to work to ensure that the city police serve all residents fairly.
“Last year, the same communities most affected by the public health crisis experienced the highest rate of food and housing insecurity,” said Janey. “I will address these economic disparities with a new urgency to reopen Boston’s economy with equity.”
Judge Kimberly Budd, who administered the oath, was named president of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2020, the first black woman to lead the state’s highest court.
US Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, who chaired the ceremony, was the first black woman to serve on the City Council and to be elected to Congress by Massachusetts.
Pressley described Janey as “a proud fourth generation daughter of Roxbury,” the heart of the city’s black community.
“She will lead with clear eyes, a full heart and a steady hand,” said Pressley. “It will make a profound difference.”
Rev. Willie Bodrick, II, senior pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church, made the invocation.
Janey’s grandfather, Daniel Benjamin Janey, was a member of the Twelfth Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. worshiped while studying at Boston University. His father was one of only eight black students who graduated from the city’s prestigious Boston Latin School in 1964.
During the second phase of Boston’s tumultuous school breakdown, Janey was taken by bus as an 11-year-old girl to Charlestown’s predominantly white neighborhood.
“I had stones and racial slanders thrown on my bus just because I was in school while I was black,” she said.
She began her legal career with Massachusetts Advocates for Children, pushing for policy changes that, she said, aimed at ensuring equality and excellence for public school students in Boston.
In 2017, she won a run of 13 candidates and became the first woman to represent her district, which includes most of Roxbury and parts of the South End, Dorchester and Fenway areas of the city.
Janey is also widely seen as welcoming a new chapter in Boston’s political history.
Among those actively seeking the job are three black women – current councilors Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi George. Representative John Barros, of Cape Verdean and state descent Jon Santiago, also competes. Barros served as head of economic development under Walsh.