David Dinkins, the first and only black mayor of New York City, passed away Monday at age 93.
The former Democratic mayor ruled this city on the east coast of the US from 1990 to 1993 after narrowly defeating Rudolph ‘Rudy’ Giuliani, who would take his revenge four years later.
“He was truly a great man … He put the city on the right track,” Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on his Twitter account Tuesday.
“He dedicated a large part of his life to serving the city,” Giuliani said.
His tenure, however, was marked by racial conflict, notably the Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn in 1991.
He died of natural causes at home, less than two months after the death of his wife Joyce.
Upon assuming, the city was the scene of racism, poverty and violence. More than a million New Yorkers received aid after the recession, and the city had more than 1,000 homicides annually.
He was chosen as a “stabilizing force” for the “beautiful melting pot” of races, as he once described New York, but he ran into many difficulties.
Due to his lack of assertiveness, Dinkins was called “too kind” and even “cowardly” by some critics.
However, he was a pioneer who appointed many women to positions of responsibility, the first Puerto Rican to head the city’s firefighters and an openly gay black psychiatrist to head the services for the mentally ill.
After leaving the mayor’s office, he was an unofficial advisor to other mayors.
“He was my tutor and my friend,” de Blasio said.
“He was very generous with his time with me when I was mayor,” tweeted Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani.
Born on July 10, 1927, Dinkins grew up in Trenton, in the neighboring state of New Jersey.
In 1945 he joined the Marines and later studied at Howard University, historically known for its black student body, where he excelled in mathematics.
He married his classmate Joyce, and the couple moved to New York, where Dinkins worked as a lawyer.
He won the mayoral election in 1989, but was defeated by Giuliani after just one term. In his defeat speech, he told his followers: “Friends, we have made history. No one can ever take that away from us,” recalled The Washington Post.
The next election for mayor of New York in November 2021, after the maximum of two terms for De Blasio, is announced to be disputed.
There are already a dozen candidates for the Democratic primary in June, including several blacks, including Raymond McGuire, former vice president of Citigroup, Eric Adams, current president of Brooklyn, and Maya Wiley, former city chief attorney and a respected television network analyst. MSNBC.
rbu-cat / mar / zm / lbc / llu
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