David Dinkins, who became the first and only African-American mayor of New York City during the 1990s, died Monday.
He was 93 years old. Dinkins’ Health Assistant found him unconscious in his apartment on Monday night, reported ‘NBC New York’ and the ‘New York Post’.
Dinkins was born in 1927 in Trenton, New Jersey. He attended Howard University and Brooklyn Law School. He eventually made it to Harlem, the historically black neighborhood in upper Manhattan, where he rose through the ranks of local politics.
In Harlem, Dinkins was part of a group of agents of black power, known as the “Band of Four”, which also included the congressman Charles Rangel, Percy Sutton y Basil Paterson, the father of the future governor of New York, David Paterson.
In the 1989 mayoral race, Dinkins defeated Acting Democratic Mayor Ed Koch, and Rudy Giuliani, a Republican prosecutor who would return to defeat Dinkins four years later. “I extend my condolences to the family of Mayor David Dinkins and to the many New Yorkers who loved and supported him, “Giuliani said on Twitter.” He gave so much of his life serving our great City. “
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