Carrie Saxon Perry was a barrier-breaking African American mayor

Carrie Saxon Perry, the first African American woman to lead a major New England city as the mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, and a civil rights advocate who had rubbed shoulders with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson, has died at 87.

She died Nov. 22, 2018, but news of her death emerged only last week, with a mention on Facebook. She had had a heart attack and renal and coronary artery disease, according to her death certificate. She died at Waterbury

Hospital in Connecticut, the certificate said.

Perry had been a vital presence in Hartford’s civic life for decades, easily recognized by the trademark hats she wore, many of them broad-brimmed but some floppy or worn tight to her head.

She was a social worker and state representative before serving as mayor from 1987 to 1993.

In 1992 she helped maintain calm in Hartford as riots erupted elsewhere across the country after four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, a black motorist.

After she lost reelection in 1993, she became active in the Greater Hartford branch of the NAACP and served as its president from 2004 to 2008.

In recent years she had gone blind and cut back on her civic activities, gradually receding from public view. No announcement was made or obituary published after her death.

“I was totally stunned and shocked” on hearing the news, said Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut chapter of the NAACP. “I’ve never heard of anything like this, someone so high profile, one of the first powerful leaders of our community, to be dead for a year and not have a proper memorial.”

Thirman L. Milner, the first African American to be elected mayor of Hartford, in 1981, and one of Perry’s closest friends since childhood, said a lawyer for Perry’s son, James M. Perry III, had recently called to tell him of her death. He said he had lost contact with Perry a few years ago, when she was moved to a convalescence home.

Attempts by The New York Times to reach James Perry and other family members were not successful.

Milner said he was “upset and disappointed” that her friends had not had the chance to mourn her and honor her. “She belonged to the city of Hartford,” he said in a phone interview.

A spokesman for Mayor Luke Bronin said a memorial service for her would be held in January.

Carrie Saxon was born in Hartford on Aug. 30, 1931. Her father, David Saxon, left when Carrie was 6 months old, and she and her mother, Mabel Lee, moved in with extended family in a cold-water flat in the city’s North End.

Her mother did the ironing at a Chinese laundry, worked as a presser at the cleaners and cleaned classrooms at a local school. Carrie was raised chiefly by her grandmother, Pearl Lee, whom she called Big Mama.

“Money was tight when I grew up, but I didn’t know I was poor until I read about it,” she told The Hartford Courant in 1988. “Because all the basics were in place, like loving and caring and discipline.”

She was an avid reader. And, uncharacteristically for a girl in her circumstances in that era, she grew up with the assumption that she would go to college.