New York City’s first Black mayor during time of racial discord
NEW YORK — Few American leaders have faced the battery of urban ills that confronted David Dinkins when he became New York City’s first Black mayor in 1990.
AIDS. Crack cocaine. A soaring murder rate. Rampant homelessness. Racial discord.
Dinkins was elected with high hopes of turning things around, but he became a lightning rod for criticism in his one tumultuous term in office, especially for his handling of a riot in Brooklyn.
It wasn’t until years later that he started getting credit for his efforts to reduce crime, heal divisions and lay the groundwork for the prosperous, tourist-friendly place that New York City became.
Dinkins died Monday night at age 93, according to his assistant at Columbia University, where he taught after leaving office, and by Mayor Bill de Blasio, his onetime staffer. The former mayor’s death came just weeks after the death of his wife, Joyce, who died in October at age 89.
“David Dinkins believed thatwe could be better, believed we could overcome our divisions,” de Blasio said at a news briefing Tuesday. “He showed us what it was like to be a gentleman, to be a kind person no matter what was thrown at him. And a lot was thrown at him.”
A calm and courtly figure with a penchant for tennis and formalwear, Dinkins was a stark departure from both his predecessor, Ed Koch, and his successor, Rudy Giuliani — two combative and often abrasive politicians in a city with a world-class reputation for impatience and rudeness.
In his inaugural address, he spoke lovingly of New York as a “gorgeous mosaic of race and religious faith, of national origin and sexual orientation, of individuals whose families arrived yesterday and generations ago, coming through Ellis Island or Kennedy Airport or on buses bound for the Port Authority.”
But the city he inherited had an ugly side, too, and Dinkins’ lowkey, considered approach quickly came to be perceived as a flaw. Critics said hewas too soft and too slow.
“Dave, Do Something!” screamed one New York Post headline in 1990, Dinkins’ first year in office.
Dinkins did a lot at City Hall. He raised taxes to hire thousands of police officers. He spent billions of dollars revitalizing neglected housing. His administration got the Walt Disney Corp. to invest in the cleanup of then-seedy Times Square.
Dinkins took office during a time of racial discord following the 1989 shooting death of Yusuf Hawkins, a Black teenager who was attacked by youths in a predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood.
“In that climate, he preached a gorgeous mosaic and proved that we could achieve the highest levels of municipal power in the nation’s largest city, and he did it when the city was torn apart, the Rev. Al Sharpton said in an interviewTuesday. “He did it by having a balance of understanding the community’s needs and the needs of the city.”
Dinkins didn’t get fast enough results, though, to earn a second term.
After beating Giuliani, a Republican, by only 47,000 votes out of 1.75 million cast in 1989, Dinkins, a Democrat, lost a rematch by roughly the same margin in 1993.
Born in Trenton, N.J., on July10, 1927, Dinkins moved with his mother to Harlem when his parents divorced but returned to his hometown to attend high school.
Back in New York with a degree in mathematics, Dinkins married his college sweetheart, Joyce Burrows, in 1953.
Survivors include his son, David Jr.; daughter, Donna; and two grandchildren.