Politician broke barriers as NYC’s 1st Black mayor
NEW YORK — David Dinkins, who broke barriers as New York City’s first African American mayor but was doomed to a single term by a soaring murder rate, stubborn unemployment and his mishandling of antiJewish rioting by young Black men in Brooklyn, has died. He was 93.
Dinkins’ death Monday was confirmed by 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 the age of 89.
Dinkins, a calm and courtly figure with a penchant for tennis and formal wear, was a dramatic shift from both his predecessor, Ed Koch, and his successor, Rudy Giuliani — two combative and often abrasive politicians in a city with a worldclass reputation for impatience and rudeness.
In his 1990 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.”
But the city he inherited had an ugly side, too.
AIDS, guns and crack cocaine killed thousands of people each year. Unemployment soared. Homelessness was rampant.
The Brooklyn violence began after a car in the motorcade of an Orthodox Jewish religious leader struck and killed 7yearold Gavin Cato, who was Black. During the three days of antiJewish rioting by young Black men that followed, a rabbinical student was fatally stabbed. Nearly 190 people were hurt.
A state report in 1993 cleared Dinkins of the repeated charge that he intentionally held back police in the first days of the violence, but criticized him for not stepping up as a leader.
But Dinkins did a lot while at City Hall. He raised taxes to hire thousands of police officers. He spent billions revitalizing neglected housing and cleaning up thenseedy Times Square.